by the paper which was signed by at least two members of this House, who have been recommended by the Republicans for the Speakership.

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"Sir: Do these gentlemen suppose that slaveholders who have won the confidence of their constituents, and who have been sent here to assist in making laws and preserving the Constitution, and keeping the Government intact, feel themselves honored by their association? If they do, they are greatly deceived. We have been on terms of personal intimacy with them. Every gentleman in this House who knows me, knows that my intercourse with them has been marked with the utmost urbanity. I have met Representatives in this Hall coming from all parts of the country, as my compeers in every relation in life. But can I continue to do so, except gentlemen disclaim having advised my constituents-half of whom are non-slaveholders, to have no intercourse with me; not to visit the church where I worship; to strike down and ostracize slaveholding ministers; to abandon hotels where there are slave waiters; to discountenance patronage to newspapers that are conducted by slaveholders? If they expect to play this game, the sooner it is avowed the better. * *

"These gentlemen come in and say that the riches of the South are neglected by the bad management of the South; that the accursed plague of slavery does it; and, therefore, that the non-slaveholders of the South should rise in their majestypeaceably if they can, forcibly if they must-take their arms, drive out the plague of slavery, take possession of the country, and dedicate it to freedom.

"That is the sentiment of the book which those gentlemen recommend to have circulated gratuitously all over the South. Are such men fit to preside over the destinies of our common country?"

In this book occurs the following paragraph: "This is the outline of our scheme for the obliteration of slavery in the Southern States. Let it be acted upon with due promptitude, and as certain as truth is mightier than error, fifteen years will not elapse before every foot of territory from the mouth of the Delaware to the Rio Grande will glitter with the jewels of freedom."

There was a subscription set on foot in the city of New York for the gratuitous distribution of one hundred thousand copies. To the fund thus raised, it was said that the Governor of New York contributed one hundred dollars.

Besides the sixty-eight members of Congress who recommended HELPER's book, Senator WADE of Ohio said: "I had looked over the book, and saw nothing objectionable." Senator Seward also spoke favorably of it.

A portion of a pamphlet was read, Dec. 20, 1859, at the request of Mr. Vallandigham, " which was extensively circulated in the Northern, Southern, and Western States of this Union, and which contains the plan of associations to be formed for the purpose of carrying on hostilities against a portion of this Confederacy." After certain annunciation of principles, and after certain preliminaries, it was proposed "to land military forces in the Southern States, who shall raise the standard of freedom, and call the slaves to it, and such free persons as may be willing to join it.

"Our plan is to make war openly or secretly as circumstances may dictate, upon the property of the slaveholders and their abettors, not for its destruction, if that can be easily avoided, but to convert it to the use of the slaves. If it cannot thus be converted, we advise its destruction. Teach the slaves to burn their masters' buildings, to kill their cattle and hogs, to conceal and destroy farming utensils, to abandon labor in seed time and harvest, and let the crops perish. Make slave labor unprofitable in this way if it can be done in no other.

"To make slaveholders objects of derision and contempt by flogging them whenever they shall be guilty of flogging their slaves."

This plan JOHN BROWN attempted to carry into practice.

Mr. SHERMAN, the candidate for the Speakership, and against whose election Mr. CLARK's resolution was introduced, as one of the signers of the recommendation of HELPER's book, was defeated.

THE JOHN BROWN INVASION.

JOHN BROWN, in the autumn of 1859, with twenty-three others, obtained forcible possession of the armory at Harper's

Ferry, Virginia. In the Senate of the United States, Mr. MASON, Senator from Virginia, brought forward a resolution to appoint a committee to investigate the facts in the case. This resolution at its introduction had to encounter an amendment offered by Mr. TRUMBULL, of Illinois, designed, it was asserted, to embarrass the action of the Senate in the matter. It also had to encounter the argument and ridicule of Senator HALE, in the same body.

Mr. HALE, of New Hampshire, December 6: "I am free to say, sir, that while I desire now, as I have always desired, this Union may be perpetual, I confess I do see danger to it. I do not see danger from any thing we are doing in the Free States, not the slightest; but I do see danger to this Union from the continued obloquy, reproach, and crimination which is heaped upon the people of the Free States, every time there is any thing calling attention to the subject in the South.

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"I do not see, for myself, how Southern gentlemen can consent to live in a Union, if they believe that those who are associated with them are the characters which the public press represent us to be; if we are so utterly false not only to the oaths that we have taken to support the Constitution, but to the moral obligations which ought to bind us as patriots and Christians. If the sentiment, that we are so utterly wanting in all those qualities of character, is to be continually and eternally iterated and re-iterated from one of the sections of the country, where these transactions may take place, to the other, there will be a feeling generated which will be fatal to the Union."

Mr. HUNTER, of Virginia, on the same day spoke as follows: "Mr. President, I rise to express my surprise at the manner in which the resolution offered by my colleague has been received -a resolution temperate, proper, and made essentially necessary by circumstances of recent occurrence. I had presumed that no obstacle would be thrown in the way, but that Senators on all sides of the House would agree to go into the inquiry.

"It is known to all that a most atrocious outrage has been committed upon the State which I have the honor in part to represent; that the people of a town reposing in the hours of night, in all the confidence of peace and conscious innocence of all purposes of wrong to mankind, were suddenly invaded, and

attacked by a band of armed men from non-slaveholding States; that unarmed men were shot down in the streets; that murders were committed; that an attempt was openly made, not only to subvert the Constitution of the United States, but the Constitution of Virginia; that men were seized and dragged from their habitations at night, and that attempts were made to excite servile insurrection and civil war in its most horrid form. It is known too, sir, that complicity has been charged, not on the part of the South, but by individuals professing to have been in the employment of persons and associations in the non-slaveholding States; and it is also known to those who come from the South, at least, that the public mind has been startled, not so much by the foray of BROWN and his twenty-three men, as by the open sympathy and approbation which have been manifested by portions of the North in regard to that attempt, and the apparent indifference with which it has been treated by those who, we had a right to hope, would have been more conservative in their feelings and actions upon such a subject.

"Sir, I had supposed that such indecent exhibitions of sympathy for crime would have been frowned down by an outburst of public opinion on the part of those in the midst of whom such things were perpetrated. * *

"And now, sir, when my colleague proposes, in temperate language, merely to inquire into the facts of the case, and to raise a committee to see whether any thing can be done by the authorities of this Government to prevent the repetition of such outrages, how is it met? The Senator from Illinois proposes to stifle such inquiry by making a party issue, and turning the whole subject into a matter of mere partisan warfare and discussion.

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"Still less had we supposed that such a question was to be met with the levity of the Senator from New Hampshire. Why, sir, upon such occasions as these, upon such occasions as this—I will not say as these, for it has no parallel in the history of our Government-to see such a subject treated with the levity in which he is disposed to deal with it, sounds to me, at least, like the laugh of the inebriate or the insensate in the chamber of death itself. I tell him, sir, that much depends upon what is the real state of Northern feeling in regard to

these matters. We know that we can defend ourselves against such outrages as this; against the forays of men who may attempt to get up servile war among us; we hope we can defend ourselves against all the hazards to which we may probably be exposed; but it becomes a much graver question to say, how we are to deal with the subject if we become convinced that such attempts find support not only in the sympathy of the great mass of the North, but in contributions that may be actually raised for their assistance."

Mr. DOUGLAS, Jan. 23, 1860: "Without stopping to adduce evidence in detail, I have no hesitation in expressing my firm and deliberate conviction that the Harper's Ferry crime was the matured, logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican party, explained and enforced in their platform, their partisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and especially of their leaders in and out of Congress. *

"The great principle that underlies the organization of the Republican party is-violent, irreconcilable, eternal warfare upon the institution of American slavery, with a view to its ultimate extinction throughout the land. Sectional war is to be waged until the cotton fields of the South shall be cultivated by free labor, or the rye fields of New York and Massachusetts shall be cultivated by slave labor."

SYMPATHY WITH BROWN.

The admirers of JOHN BROWN made a distinction between his acts and his character, the means he employed and the end which he aimed at. The acts and the means they condemned, while his character and the end he aimed to accomplish they seemed to approve and admire. It appears that he spent some years in Kansas, where, being possessed by an evil spirit, he perpetrated acts which were denominated murder, theft, and robbery. "It cannot be disguised that the Northern heart sympathized with BROWN and his fate because he died in the cause of what they call liberty." On the day of his death bells were tolled in many places; cannon fired; prayers were offered for him as if he were a martyr; he was placed in the same category with Paul and Silas, for whom prayers were made by the