In the midst of so much combustion and heated temper, it would have been remarkable, indeed, if there had been no "flame" that burst out here or there. In all impending struggles and revolutions there is always someone who voices the pent-up feelings of one party or the other, and sometimes of both. On the impulse of the moment, as it were by an act of inspiration, somebody steps out of the ranks, and becomes the leader on his side. The man who led the way on the part of the anti-slavery party, was the famous John Brown, who figured so largely in Kansas, and in 1859 seized upon the United States Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, in Virginia, while he was leading on a handful of white and colored men for the purpose of effecting a general rising of the slaves throughout the South. But the Virginians came pouring down upon him and his little band. Some were killed and wounded; others were missing, and John Brown himself and a few of his followers were hung. Still, John Brown was in the right. He was simply an outgrowth of the times. He regarded the slaves as prisoners, whom it was the duty of any man to set at liberty. They or their forefathers, at least, had been taken captive in Africa, and it—that is, American slavery—was the crying scandal of the entire Christian world. John Brown was one of the abolitionists of the North, and they were responsible for his actions. But the South was alarmed all over its dark domain. From Mason and Dixon’s Line to the Rio Grande the news of John Brown’s raid flew like wildfire, and the violent temper of the South grew to a white heat. And all the world—both at home and abroad—remarked, "If one single spark like this can raise such a conflagration, what shall we have when the anti-slavery party shall set their foot into the whole ’business’ on a grand scale? If one man at Harper’s Ferry can effect such a disturbance, what will ensue when the great overshadowing North will arise in her might, and call for a settlement of the whole question in favor of the oppressed African?" The war, indeed, was now nearer than before. The South would listen to no compromise nor reason of any kind. The haughty Southern lords would brook no interference. The Northern intruders who touched her "peculiar institution" touched "the apple of her eye." And now for war!