During this month follow the letters, the sermons, the speeches, the editorials, the thinking, that were the immediate results of the attack. Never had the subject of Negro Slavery been so thoroughly ventilated. The liberation of the Slave was coming, and that speedily through the agency of Brown, but not in the way he had intended. While audiences throughout the North, and South, too, were roused to fever heat through the presentations, in different lights it is true, of this cause, the prime mover in the matter was making his final preparations for departure. Preparations, I say, not in the sense that we ordinarily give the word, for of his own future he had no doubt, but in that of care for the families of his stricken followers. To Mrs. Lydia Maria Child he writes asking her assistance in behalf of his daughters-in-law, whose husbands, his sons, fell by his side, three daughters, his wife, Mrs. Thompson whose husband fell at Harper's Ferry, and a son unable to wholly care for himself. To a Quaker lady of Newport, R.I., he sends asking her to write and to comfort the sad hearts at North Elba, Essex County, N.Y. To his wife "'Finally, my beloved, be of good comfort.' May all your names be 'written on the Lamb's book of life--may you all have the purifying and sustaining influence of the Christian religion is the earnest prayer of your affectionate husband and father, John Brown. P.S. I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day, nor a storm so furious or dreadful as to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless sky. But, beloved ones, do remember that this is not your rest; that in this world you have no abiding place or continuing city. To God and his infinite mercy I always commend you. J.B."