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Indiana University 
Services of humiliation and prayer were held in many churches 
at the North at eleven o’clock, on that memorable sec- 
ond of December, and the American Anti-Slavery Society 
denominated 1859 as the John Brown year in their calendar.^® 
There seemed something prophetic in all of this, when twenty- 
seven months later (March 1, 1862), a Massachusetts regi- 
ment led by Fletcher Webster, son of Daniel Webster, gath- 
ered on the spot where the execution had taken place at 
Charlestown and sang with fervor, “John Brown’s body lies 
a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on.”^*^ 
When the conspirators at the North who had aided Brown 
saw what they had done, they became frightened and de- 
stroyed all questionable correspondence in their hands. Most 
of them fled to Canada.®® When Congress met a strong effort 
was made to fix the blame for the Harper’s Ferry affair upon 
the Republican leaders of the North®^ instead of on the small 
number of idealists who were really guilty, but who had 
no political influence. The effort failed, of course, but it 
served for the time being as something out of which to make 
political capital. 
An eminent American historian once said in the presence 
of the writer that no other single event did so much to cause 
the South to withdraw from the Union as did the John Brown 
raid. The truth of the matter is that it was only a minor 
happening which did not seriously disturb the great current 
of historical events of that period. If it had never happened, 
Lincoln would have been elected, the South would have se- 
ceded, and the slaves would have been freed just the same. 
It is not easy to estimate correctly the place of John Brown 
in history. More harsh things have been said about him 
than about any other American unless it be Benedict Arnold 
or Jefferson Davis. To the slaveholders and the people of 
the South he was only a red-handed murderer and a criminal 
who justly met a felon’s death. He was to them a fair sample 
of the extremists among Black Republicans and Abolitionists 
who would with pleasure excite a servile war, a slave insur- 
Rhodes, op. cit., II, 410 ; Independent, December 8, 1859. 
The Liberator, November 25, 1859. 
Rhodes, op. cit., II, 416. For the origin of this famous song, see Ohio Archaeological 
and Historical Quarterly, XXX, 339, 340. 
Villard, op. cit., 529 ff. ; Sanborn, op. cit., 514. T. W. Higginson remained at home. 
Gerrit Smith became insane as a consequence of woiu-ying over his own part in it. 
Congressional Globe, 1 Sess., 36 Cong., 553, 554. 
