The slave-holding States were by no means blind to the amount of support and encouragement that was coming from Canada for the abolitionists.[6] They were quite aware that Canada itself had an active abolitionist group. They probably had heard of the Chatham convention; they knew of it, at least, as soon as the raid was over. In his message to the legislature of Virginia immediately after the Harper's Ferry incident Governor Wise made direct reference to the anti-slavery activity in Canada. "This was no result of ordinary crimes," he declared. "... It was an extraordinary and actual invasion, by a sectional organization, specially upon slaveholders and upon their property in negro slaves.... A provisional government was attempted in a British province, by our own countrymen, united to us in the faith of confederacy, combined with Canadians, to invade the slave-holding states ... for the purpose of stirring up universal insurrection of slaves throughout the whole south."[7] Speaking further of what he conceived to be the spirit of the North he said: "It has organized in Canada and traversed and corresponded thence to New Orleans and from Boston to Iowa. It has established spies everywhere, and has secret agents in the heart of every slave state, and has secret associations and 'underground railroads' in every free state."[8] Speaking on December 22, 1859, to a gathering of medical students who had left Philadelphia, Governor Wise is quoted as saying: "With God's help we will drive all the disunionists together back into Canada. Let the compact of fanaticism and intolerance be confined to British soil."[9] _The New York Herald_ quoted Governor Wise as calling upon the President to notify the British Government that Canada should no longer be allowed, by affording an asylum to fugitive slaves, to foster disunion and dissension in the United States. Wise even seems to have had the idea that the President might be bullied into provoking trouble with Great Britain over this question. "The war shall be carried into Canada," he said in one of his outbursts.[10] Sympathy for the South was shown in the comment of a part of the Tory press in Canada, _The Leader_ declaring that Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry was an "insane raid" and predicting that the South would sacrifice the union before submitting to such spoliation.[11] The viewpoint of _The Leader_ and its readers may be further illustrated by its declaration that the election campaign of 1860 was dominated by a "small section of ultra-abolitionists who make anti-slavery the beginning, middle and end of their creed." As for Lincoln he was characterized as "a mediocre man and a fourth-rate lawyer,"[12] but then some of the prominent American newspapers made quite as mistaken an estimate of Lincoln at that time.