While he was campaigning in Ohio, in 1859, occurred the John Brown episode at Harper's Ferry, which created intense excitement throughout the entire country and particularly in the South, where it was interpreted as an organized attempt of the abolitionists to arouse an insurrection among the slaves. In his speeches Lincoln did much to allay public sentiment in Illinois, for he construed the attack upon Harper's Ferry with his habitual common sense. He argued that it was not a slave insurrection, but an attempt to organize one in which the slaves refused to participate, and he compared it with many attempts related in history to assassinate kings and emperors. "An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people until he fancies himself commissioned by heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on Old England in one case and on New England in the other does not disprove the sameness of the two things." It was not long after the inauguration that President Lincoln was compelled to treat the slavery problem in a practical manner. To him it ceased to be a question of morals and became an actual, perplexing problem continually appearing in every direction and in various forms. The first movement of troops dislodged from the plantations of their owners a multitude of slaves, who found their way to the camps of the Union army and were employed as servants, teamsters, and often as guides. The Northern soldier took a sympathetic interest in the escaped slave, and as fast as he advanced into slave territory the greater that sympathy became. A Virginia planter looking for a fugitive slave in a Union camp was a familiar object of ridicule and derision, and he seldom found any satisfaction.