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John Brown's Raid

       In the winter of 1857-58, John Brown, who had been a leader in and a promoter of lawlessness during the troubles in Kansas--undertaken, as he himself confessed, for the purpose of inflaming the public mind on the subject of slavery, that he might perfect organizations to bring about servile insurrections in the slave States----collected a number of young men in that territory, including several of his sons, and, with the use of funds and arms that had been furnished for his Kansas operations, placed these men under military instruction, by one of their number, at Springdale, in Iowa. In the spring of 1858 he took these men to Chatham, in Canada West, where, on the 8th of May, he assembled a "provisional constitutional convention," made up of those he brought with him and a number of resident free negroes. On the day of its assembling, this convention adopted a "provisional constitution and ordinances for the people of the United States," the preamble of which began: "Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion .... Therefore, we, citizens of the United States and the oppressed people who . . . are declared to have no rights which the white man is bound to respect . . . ordain and establish for ourselves the following provisional constitution and ordinances, the better to protect our persons, property, lives and liberties, and govern our actions." On the 10th, after appointing a committee with full power to fill all the executive, legislative, judicial and military offices named in the constitution adopted, this convention adjourned,

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