Document 12.5 State Register (Springfield, Illinois), The Irrepressible Conflict, 1859

Document 12.5

State Register (Springfield, Illinois) | The Irrepressible Conflict, 1859

While many Northerners shared Brown’s antislavery beliefs, most opposed his use of violence. The following editorial in the State Register (Springfield, Illinois), a Democratic Party paper, reflects the outrage felt throughout the nation. The State Register blamed Republicans for the Harpers Ferry raid, condemning William Seward and Abraham Lincoln for speeches they claimed had fueled the actions of John Brown.

The telegraphic dispatches yesterday morning startled the public with an account of one of the most monstrous villainies ever attempted in this country. It was no less than an effort on the part of a party of abolitionists and negroes to take possession of one of the national arsenals, at Harpers Ferry, with the military stores and the public money there deposited. Under the lead of the most infamous of the Kansas crew of black republican marauders, Ossawatomie Brown, the insurgents, to the number of five or six hundred, attacked and took possession of the whole town of Harpers Ferry, including the government buildings and stores, stopped the mails, imprisoned peaceable citizens, and, before they were dislodged, numbers were killed and wounded on both sides.

It was scarcely credible, when the first dispatch was received yesterday, that the object of the ruffians could be other than plunder, but late dispatches . . . show, conclusively, that the movement was a most extensive one, having for its object the uprising of the negroes throughout the south, a servile war, and its consequences—murder, rapine, and robbery.

The leader chosen was just the man to initiate the work. Bankrupt in fortune and character, an outlaw and an outcast, he was just the man to commence the work which ultra Abolitionism, through its diligent Parkers and Garrisons, hope to reach the millennium of their traitorous designs. Their open-mouthed treason . . . is but the logical sequence of the teachings of Wm. H. Seward and Abraham Lincoln—the one boldly proclaiming an “irrepressible conflict” between certain states of the Union . . . and the other declaring . . . that the Union cannot continue as the fathers made it—part slave and part free states. When such men, by specious demagogism [promoting factionalism], in the name of freedom and liberty, daily labor to weaken the bonds of our glorious governmental fabric, the work of sages and patriots, themselves the holders of black men as slaves, is it to be wondered at that ignorant, unprincipled, and reckless camp followers of the party for which these leaders speak, attempt, practically, to illustrate the doctrines which they preach. . . .

Brown, though a blood-stained ruffian, is a bold man. As a black republican he practices what his leaders preach. As it is urged by statesmen (save the mark!) of his party that there is an “irrepressible conflict,” he wants it in tangible, material shape. He believes in blows, not words, and the Harpers Ferry villainy is the first in his line of performance.

Source: “The ‘Irrepressible Conflict’ Fruits of the Lincoln-Seward Doctrine,” State Register (Springfield, Illinois), October 20, 1859.