While John Brown's ability for military leadership was too insignificant even for comment, his moral and personal courage compelled the admiration of his enemies. Arraigned before a Virginia court, the authorities hurried through his trial for treason, conspiracy, and murder, with an unseemly precipitancy, almost calculated to make him seem the accuser, and the commonwealth the trembling culprit. He acknowledged his acts with frankness, defended his purpose with a sincerity that betokened honest conviction, bore his wounds and met his fate with a manly fortitude. Eight years before, he had written, in a document organizing a band of colored people in Springfield, Massachusetts, to resist the fugitive-slave law: "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. The trial for life of one bold, and to some extent successful, man, for defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy throughout the nation than the accumulated wrongs and sufferings of more than three millions of our submissive colored population." Even now, when mere Quixotic knight-errantry and his own positive violation of the rights of individuals and society had put his life in forfeit, this sympathy for his boldness and misfortune came to him in large measure. Questioned by Governor Wise, Senator Mason, and Representative Vallandigham about his accomplices, he refused to say anything except about what he had done, and freely took upon himself the whole responsibility. He was so warped by his religious training as to have become a fatalist as well as a fanatic. "All our actions," he said to one who visited him in prison, "even all the follies that led to this disaster, were decreed to happen ages before the world was made." Perverted Calvinistic philosophy is the key which unlocks the mystery of Brown's life and deeds. He was convicted, sentenced, and hanged on the 2d of December. Congress met a few days afterwards, and the Senate appointed an investigating committee to inquire into the seizure of the United States armory and arsenal. The long and searching examination of many witnesses brought out with sufficient distinctness the varied personal plottings of Brown, but failed to reveal that half a dozen radical abolition clergymen of Boston were party to the conspiracy; nor did they then or afterwards justify their own conduct by showing that Christ ever counseled treason, abetted conspiracy, or led rebellion against established government. From beginning to end, the whole act was reprehensible, and fraught with evil result. Modern civilization and republican government require that beyond the self-defense necessary to the protection of life and limb, all coercive reform shall act by authority of law only. [Sidenote] Mason Report, p. 18.