He conceived the idea of rallying all the colored people around him in the impregnable mountains of Virginia, and having drafted a constitution, he proceeded to unfurl his flag and call out his supporters.  In October, 1859, he took possession of the United States Armory at Harper’s Ferry, interfered with the running of trains, and practically held the town with a force of some eighteen men, of whom four were colored.  Colonel Robert E. Lee quickly came on the scene with a detachment of troops and drove the Brown following into an engine-house.  They declined to surrender, and thirteen were either killed or mortally wounded.  Two of Brown’s sons were among those who fell, and the leader himself was captured.  He treated his trial with the utmost indifference, and went to the scaffold erect and apparently unconcerned.  His body was taken to his old home in New York State, where it was buried.

Abraham Lincoln must not be included in the list of enthusiastic Abolitionists, although he eventually freed the slaves.  In speeches made prior to the war he expressed the opinion that in slave States general emancipation would be ill-advised, and although his election was looked upon as dangerous to slave-holders’ interests, the fear seems to have been prophetic in a large measure.  It was not until the war had lasted far longer than originally anticipated that Lincoln definitely threatened to liberate the colored slaves.  That threat he carried into execution on January 1st, 1863, when 3,000,000 slaves became free.  The cause of the Confederacy had not yet become the “lost cause,” and the leaders on the Southern side were inclined to ridicule the decree, and to regard it rather as a “bluff” than anything of a serious order.  But it was emancipation in fact as well as in deed, as the colored orator never tired of explaining.

Such in outline is the history of the colored man during the days of enforced servitude.  Of his condition during that period volumes have been written.  Few works printed in the English language have been more widely circulated than “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which has been read in every English-speaking country in the world, and in many other countries besides.  It has been dramatized and performed upon thousands of stages before audiences of every rank and class.  As a descriptive work it rivals in many passages the very best ever written.  Much controversy has taken place as to how much of the book is history—­how much of it is founded upon fact and how much is pure fiction.  The ground is a rather dangerous one to touch.  It is safest to say that while the brutality held up to scorn and contempt in this book was not general in the slave States or on plantations in the South, what is depicted might have taken place under existing laws, and the book exposed iniquities which were certainly perpetrated in isolated cases.