Senators ask us why we have no sympathy with Virginia in this instance. Sir, we do not understand this case at all. What are the facts? Seventeen white men and five unwilling negroes surround and capture a town of 2,000 people, with a United States armory, any quantity of arms and ammunition, and with 300 men employed in it--as I am informed, employed in it under a civil officer--and hold it for two days. These I understand to be the facts, and you ask, Why have we not sympathy? We do not understand any such case as that. The Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Brown) asks, What would we say if North Carolina and Virginia were to attack the armory at Springfield? I do not know what is the population of Springfield, but I will guarantee if any seventeen or twenty-two of the Generals ... of the States of Virginia and North Carolina were to attack Springfield, if there was not a man within five miles of there, the women would bind them in thirty minutes and would not ask sympathy and the matter would not be deemed of sufficient importance to ask for a committee of investigation on the part of the corporation. Why, sir, Governor Wise compared the people of Harper's Ferry to sheep, as the public press state. That is a libel on the sheep. For I never saw a flock of fifty or a hundred sheep in my life that had not a belligerent ram among them. We do not understand any such panic as this. If seventeen or one hundred men were to attack a town of the size of Harper's Ferry anywhere throughout the region with which I am acquainted, they would simply be put in jail in thirty minutes, and then they would be tried for their crimes and they would be punished and there would be no row made about it. The pointed passage of the speech was the one in which he thanked a Southern Governor for demonstrating so conspicuously that treason was a crime punishable by death. He said, I am in favor of the resolution because the first execution for treason that has ever occurred in the United States has just taken place. John Brown has been executed as a traitor in the State of Virginia, and I want it to go upon the records of the Senate in the most solemn manner to be held up as a warning to traitors, come they from the North, South, East or West. Dare to raise your impious hands against this government, its constitution and its laws--and you hang!... Threats have been made year after year for the last thirty years, that if certain events happen this Union will be dissolved. It is no small matter to dissolve this Union. It means a bloody revolution or it means a halter. It means the successful overturn of this government or it means the fate of John Brown, and I want that to go solemnly on the record of this Senate!