Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches

[247] been summoned. He had never met John Brown but once — at a lady's house in Boston — and had given him twenty-five dollars without knowing what was to be done with it. Jefferson Davis and the other Southern members of the committee evidently sent for him to make capital against the Republican party, but the result was different from what they anticipated. Andrew told them squarely that the Harper's Ferry invasion was the inevitable consequence of their attempt to force slavery on Kansas against the will of its inhabitants, and that the Pottawatomie massacre, whether John Brown was connected with it or not, was not so bad in its moral effect as the assault on Sumner. It was what they might expect from attempting to tyrannize over frontier farmers. It is not to be supposed that such men will be governed by the nice sense of justice of an eastern law court.

His testimony in regard to the personal magnetism of John Brown is of great value; but he also admitted that there was something about the old man which he could not quite understand,--a mental peculiarity which may have resulted from his hard, barren life, or the fixedness of his purpose.

Andrew had already been elected to the Legislature, and had taken his seat there in January, 1860. Almost in an instant he became the