THE SLAVE OUTBREAK IN VIRGINIA

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 237, 27 January 1860, Page 2

THE SLAVE OUTBREAK IN VIRGINIA

[From the Sydney Empire.) Late Californian papers, received yesterday, contain several references to the attempted slave insurrection in Virginia, alluded to by our correspondent in his telegram of the Salsette's news. Our papers, however, are not complete, and some of them, strange to say, make no allusion at all to the matter, apparently from a desire to smother it. From all that can be gathered, it appears that a certain party of men, headed by a noted abolitionist known as John Brown, or Captain Brown, mad* a descent upon a place called Harpers Ferry, in Maryland, seized the Government Armory, and held possession of the town (containing three or four thousand) for a whole night and day, when they were subdued, apparently with considerable loss of life. We must refer to the subjoined extracts for such further particulars as can be gathered of this sudden and ominous affak :—

The New York Times says:—

The following commission, taken from the pocket of Anderson, after death, will give an idea of the character and extent of this new organisation :— • •

[Number Seven.] Greeting. Head-quarters, War Department, ■ Near Harper's Ferry,

Whereas. Jere, G. Anderson has been nominated a Captain in the army establishe*d under the "Provii sional Constitution."

Now, therefore, in pursuance of this' authority vested in us by said constitution, we do hereby appoint and commission the said Jere G. Anderson, a Captain.

Given at the office of the Secretary of War, this day, October 15,1859. John Brown, Commander-in-chief. H. Kagi, Secretary of War.

Here we have developed a new Government under a constitution, a printed copy of which was also found, and delivered to the Federal authorities. This " Head-quarters " is a small tract of poor land, rented by Brown, under the name of Smith, for the ostensible purpose of farming, but planting or reaping was never done upon it. It lies six miles north-east of Harper's Ferry, in the State of Maryland. Here was to be the general rendezvous of the conspirators, and from this point they marched on Harper's Ferry on Sunday night last.

To Mr. Mills, Master of the Armory, who was captured and kept in custody by Brown, this ringleader said: —

"We are abolitionists from the north; we come to take and release your slaves; our .organisation is large, and must succeed; I suffered much in Kansas, and expect to suffer here in the cause of human freedom; slaveholders I regard, as robbers and murderers, and I have sworn to abolish slavery, and liberate my fellow-man. Such are the purposes declared by Brown him. - self to one of his prisoners. He stated after hig capture, that it was no part of his purpose to seize the public arms. He had arms and ammunition enough, furnished by the Massachusets Emigrant; Aid Society. He only intended to make the first demonstration at this point, when he expected to receive a rapid increase of allies from Abolitionists everywhere settled through Maryland and Virginia, sufficient to take possession of both States, with all the negroes they could capture. I asked if he did not expect to encounter the Federal troops ? " Not if I had followed up my plans. I intended to remain here but a few hours, but a lenient feeling towards the citizens led me into a parley with them as to compromise, ami by prevarication on their part, I was delayed until attacked and then jn self-defence was forced to entrench myself." '" What .course did you design taking from this, point?" I asked.. "I had only a general idea on that point, but do not wish to be too closely questioned, lest I should say something which might compromise me hereafter. But to your enquiry I answer, I purposed a general south-west course through Virginia, varying as circumstances dictated or required.'1 The New York Herald has the following :— Although Brown and his eighteen comrades managed to seize the Government Armory, where no less than two hundred men are constantly employed, and to hold possession of a town of some three or four thousand inhabitants, from Sunday night to Monday evening, the affair was a miserai ble failure. The slaves, without exceptf.cn refused to join it. Brown had but four or five blacks ! under his command, and they were freemen. This fact shows very plainly that the negroes themselves are not ready to accept what Mr. Gerrit Smith, calls their last resort. As to the whites of the Seward School, theie can oe but little doubt thai had Brown been able to hold out a few days longer his standard would have received numerous accessions from1 the North and West. The " irrepressible conflict would then have been commenced, and before it could have ended, mucli bjoodshed would have ensued. Such was undoubtedly the Seward programme. " " ' ' Thus the affair at Harper's Ferry is one of the straws that shew which' way' the political wind blows. Its lesson should not be misunderstood. Let the Southern opposition members of .Congress', when they'come to the organisation of tile House, not forget die Harper's 'Ferry outbreak, and the lessph it teaphes them. Th'a_t Mr. Seward ja the arch-agitator yflio is responsible for this ipsurrection. no one who has, read, his $,ochei?,t«r uianifestft

can deny. That his elevation to the Presidency vvould stimulate servile insurrections all over the Southern Country, is likewise beyond peradventure. Mr. Seward once in the White house, his doctrines, however fanatical, or brutal, or bloody, or cruel they may be, have a degree of importance and weight which they can obtain no other way; and while we should be among the last persons in the world to predict anything like real danger to the Union of the States, or the security of all our people in the enjoyment of their homes, and the peaceful possession of their properties, of whatever kind they may be, yet it must be admitted that the election of Seward would act as a powerful incentive to mien of the Brown stamp. The leading geward organ in this city is quite lachrymose over Brown and the Abolitionists —all mourn for him as for a chief in Israel fallen in the front of the battle.

The Philadelphia Press of October 19.th, contains the subjoined commuication from an abolitionist, from, which it would appear that Brown's attempt was neither unconsidered nor likely to be the last of the kind:— The following observations are from the pen of a leading anti-slavery man in this city, and will attract attention at this juncture:— You ask me what I know in regard to this outbreak in Harper's Ferry. I answer —I know nothing ; and yet I am not altogether ignorant of

it. More than a year ago, when the Kansas troubles had come to an end, a gentleman —for such he was by birth and breeding—fresh from the scenes of strife, and ready for another contest, called to see me at my office. He was a soldier by profession; had fought for freedom in Hungary and on the plains of Kansas, and was now ready, if an opportunity would offer, to draw his sword in the same behaifin the mountains of Virginia or in the swamps of South Carolina. On this last point he wanted to know my opinion, which, of course, I was prompt to give. " Our enterprise," I said, "is a moral one. It rejects the sword. It seeks to accomplish its ends by ideas. It appeals to the understanding, the heart, the conscience, the purse. Its object is, by changing public opinion, to effect a moral revolution; that to.<-be followed by a proper political reconstruction, the same to be accomplished by the least possible exercise of force." This, he said, was all well enough in theory, but it would not work in practice. It was too slow. In the initiatory stages of the movement it might do well enough, but the time had come when something more decisive was called for. He was not an Abolitionist in the common sense of the word, but he was a friend of Freedom the world over, and was ready at any time to unsheath his sword against oppression. Did I know John Brown, of Ossawatomie ? No I did not? know him though I had often heard of him. " Well," said he," I don't like him ;he and I don't agree. He has treated me badly; but he is a brave man and an efficient soldier. He has come home burning under a sense of the wrongs he and his countrymen suffered in Kansas at the hands of the slaveholders, and is determined to make reprisal. He wants to organise a band to go South, establish himself in the mountains and establish a species of guerilla warfare for the liberty of slavery. Are there any among your friends that would co-operate in such an undertakin ?" To the best of my knowledge and belief there was not one. Well he would find them somewhere; for he was bent on fighting the slaveholders with their own weapons the use of which they had so well taught him in the battles to Kansas.

Such in subtance, was the conversation between Captain and myself, of whom, or from whom, I have never heard since that time. But soon after this I heard from another source that John Brown was still meditating a descent on the slaveholders, and was only waiting to find coadjutors. And about six weeks ago, a highly respectable gentleman, just returned from foreign travel, stopped in this city, and, in the course of a conversation I had with him, dropped expressions implying his knowledge otßrown's intentions, and, ■what surprised me most, of his approval of them. Ascertaining my sentiments on the subject he did not make me a confidant, and, not anticipating any serious result, or any immediate result of any kind, I made no particular inquiries.

This is the extent of my knowledge in regard to this startling affair. When 1 heard the first rumor yesterday, I credited it, and believed gthat John Brown had a hand in it; subsequent disclosures have proved that I was right. This is the beginning of the end. The dragon's teeth which have been so profusely sown have sprung up, and are bearing their natural fruit.; Stringfellow and Burford initiated the movement who will be the men to consummate it ?

The Albany Evening Journal furnishes, or professes to furnish, a further clue to the incentives of the leader of the outbreak :—

If the conspirators were guilty of but half what was attributed to them, the authorities did no more than their duty in dealing with them as sternly and summarily as they have done.

The leader in the conspiracy is said to be Captain Brown, of Kansas notoriety. This fact affords an explanation of some points in it otherwise inexplicable. Brown was one of the victims of the Border Ruffian luvasion from Missouri. He was robbed of his property, maltreated, his house was burned, and three of his sons were murdered in cqld blood. It is not strange that these wrongs kindled in him a burning thirst for revenge amounting to monomania. Brooding over them lie has conceived the wildegt plans for repaying them, not oniy upon the guilty authors of his own misery, but upon all slaveholders. The whole transaction at Harper's Ferry evinces this. None but a madman could seriously expect that twenty men could make head against the whole Union, and none but those whose sense of justice was blunted by deep passion, could fail to see that they were committing a crime against innocent men, women and children, which would inevitably meet and justly deserve, condemnation.

The New York Times gives utterance to the following comments: —

There may be among us open Abolitionists of the north, some who would willingly foment insurrections among the southern slaves. Gerritt Smith, in a letter written less than two months ago, which we publish in another column, suggests the possibility of just such outbreaks as this, and prophesies from them results sq in keeping with his own desires, as to suggest his own complicity in their origin. But it does not follow that, because a man predicts a certain result, he was instrumental in bringing it a.bout; and we tnust see more conclusive evidence before we believe that the most rabid of the Abolitionists among us have had any direct agency in the insane and criminal outbreak which has just been crushed at Harper's Feny. No man can justify an insurrection of Southern slaves upon any other basis than this—that a better state of society for all concerned would certainly result from it than that which now exists. Anything less than this would not compensate for the slaughter ot innocent women and children, the wholesale destruction of property, the infliction of torture, rapine, and every imaginable horror, the overthrow of all order, peace and security, and the black and bloody anarchy which must inevitably attend upon the most successful insurrection of southern slaves which could possibly take place. But who can claim as even probable any suclv result 1 \^ho believes for a moment that the enfranchised negroes of the southern States, if they "were to throw off their chains to-morrow, could' possibly inaugurate a state of society better than that in which they now exist ? * * Aside from every theory of rights and of law-r-discarding all thought of the Constitution and loyalty to the common Union— the'instinct of social!order and self-preservation brands every attempt at a servile;insurrection in the southern States as the very height of madness sndofguilf;. And no man in his senses can fail % treat such paltry judicature's of rebellion as this afikir at "Harper's either as freaks of irresponsible insanity or as. outbreaks of. wild and reckless ciims.

The following is from the National Intelligencer;—

This outbreak, coming without any premonition, and roused by no provocation, has been as sudden as it is mysterious in its origin and objects. No longer assuming the proportions of a local riot it now appears to have been a phrenzied movement, conducted without preconcert as without any definite plan of operations, designed to stir up the fell spirit of servile revolt in the bosom of a peaceful community. It seems, indeed, difficult to conceive that any number of persons, however malignant, could deliberately embark in an enteterprise so foolhardy as this appears to have been, from the accounts thus far received, which represent the whole number of persons originally engaged in the movement not to have exceeded twenty-two, all told. But, whatever may be the extent or character of the conspiracy, its prompt suppression should serve to point a lesson in warning against any attempts of a nature so criminal, and which must ever be destined to an overthrow at once signal and summary. The time surely has not come when it is needful to paint the enormity of such a proceeding as that which has just come to an end so ignoble and disastrous to the misguided men who precipitated this outbreak, and for whose fate, if their motives and objects were such as is represented, there will be no sympathy entertained in any part of the land.

The New York Tribune alone seems to speak jn a tone of sorrow of those who fell in this at-

tempt,

Never before was such an uproar raised by twenty men as by Old Brown and his confederates in this deplorable affair. There will be enough to heap execration on the memory of these mistaken men. We leave this work to the fit hands and tongues of those who regard the fundamental axioms of the Declaration of Independence as "glittering generalities." Believing that the way to universal emancipation lies not through insurrection, civil war and bloodshed, but through peace, discussion, and the quiet diffusion of sentiments of humanity and justice, we deeply regret this outbreak; but, remembering that, if their fault was grievous, they answered it, we will; not, by one reproachful word, disturb the bloody shrouds wherein John Brown and his compatriots are sleeping. They dared and died for what they felt to be the right, though in a manner which seems to U9 fatally wrong. Let their epitaphs remain unwritten until the not distant day when no slave shall clank his chains in the shades of Monticello as by the graves of Mount Vernon. We conclude our necessarily imperfect notice of this affair, with an extract from the St. Louis Anzieger, a German paper:— The proverbial distaste for revolutions in the United States has not prevented their traces from being discovered even here. Fillibuster expeditions, vigilance committees, the forcible driving of citizens from the ballot-box and at last the insane attempt at Harper's Kerry are all equally nothing more than attempts at revolutions. Their extent or more correctly speaking, their narrow circle and the probability of their failure, are all that distinguish them from many other similar movements in our day, in other parts of the world ; in the opinion of those who lend themselves to them, they are revolutionary attempts—nothing more.

In Europe every rebellion, however frivolous the cause, finds defenders in a certain class of the people, and a portion of the Press; but every armed subject rising in the United States, though made on the justest grounds, cannot count on public support, or on defence by any newspaper. Even the party in whose favor it has been set on foot and to whose advantage it might possibly result, will loudly and promptly condemn it, and will even, perhaps, use the strongest language and advise the most violent measures against those guilty of it. This is a peculiarity of public life in this country which we will mention, but will not discuss. Whether it is right suddenly to tread under foot and rush to the gallows any man or set of men, because in a blundering, silly, forbidden manner, to which the instincts of this people are unused they attempt to execute the very thing for which others have for years bawled themselves hoarse and written their fingers off, and held meetings and conventions; for which those others have called on their God, their Religion, and their Bibles, and have represented it to be the holiest duty of life, and the obligation of our century—is a question we leave alone ; because discussion loses its rights when an entire people cries down any differences of opinion.

Those who make the Republican party, and Giddings and Seward responsible for Captain Brown's mad attempt, to as much beyond the mark as those who, in order to whitewash themselves, first declare him to be insane, and then wish to bring him to the gallows.

Defences op Port Jackson.—We have heard that Mr James, of Woolloomooloo, has invented a revolving battery, by means of which he believes the harbor of Port Jockson could be defended at a saving of £20,000 annually to the country. SJaeh battery, we believe, will carry 12 guns, These guns will move on a revolving platform, each presenting itself successively before a gunner placed on a stationary stage in the centre. Seven men, it is believed, will be sufficient to man a battery. One such battery at the Soutli Head, another on Shark Island, and a fourth at Bradley's Head, are deemed sufficient for the effective defence of Port Jackson. We believe a model of the invention has been submitted to his Excellency the Governor-General, for examination. Presuming the plan to realise the expectations of the inventor, Sydney will be provided with defences hitherto unexampled iv the civilized world.— Sydney Paper, Victoria v. New South Wales. —The following are the names of the gentlemen chosen by the respective colonies of Victoria and Nevy South Wales to take part in the pending rqatch, which comes off on the 2nd, Eird, and 4th February .—r P«cfon«.—Messrs,.' Willis, Elliott, Bryant, Bruce, Marshall, Wray, Huddlestone, Jacombe, Morres, Burchett, and Hammersley; 12th man, Mr. Butterworth; umpire, Mr. Cameron ; scorer, Mr. Hipwell. New South Wales. —Messrs. Adams, Dickson, Gilbert, Hilliard, Kinlock, 0. Lewis, R. Murray, Richardson, Samuells, and J. and N. Thompson. The 12th, or emergency man, has not yet been chosen. Captain Ward, and Mr. Beeston, the latter being now a resident of Newcastle, were selected in the eleven originally picked, but have both declined to play. The Sydney eleven play a match to-day in the Domain against sixteen chosen on the ground.— Sydney Era.

England v. Australia.—We take the following from Bells Life in Victoria of the '24th ultimo:—" By the last mail the Secretary of the M.C.C. received a communication from England to the effect that the All England eleven would pay a visit to Australia, for the purpose of taking the measure of the Australian cricketers, if the latter would guarantee to the eleven a'certain pecuniary consideration. In consequence of this ofiW, Messrs. Spiers and Pond, of the 'Cafe de P@ris, liave sent word to George Parr, telling him that they will guarantee all expenses of the journey overland here and back, and renumerate the players, should they make up tlieir mind to pay these colonies a visit. We need, hardly say how great would be the interest in a match between t^e picked eleven of England and s#y twenty-twq of Victoria, and we can, easily believe tha,t any enterprising agents cpul4 make a few su,cb, patches cover aU expenses." The D,innjer Safe.—An awkward m,an attempting to carve a goose, dropped it on the floor. '. There, no.w!" exclaimed h;s wife, " we've lost our dinner.'' " Qh, no, my dear," answered ha- 14 it's safe, X have got ray foot, on. it !'•