While of sound mind on most subjects, Brown had evidently lost his mental balance on the one topic of slavery.

His scheme miscarried the moment its execution was attempted, as any one not blinded by fanaticism could have from the first foreseen.
The matter was taken up in hot wrath by the South, with Governor Wise in the lead.

The design was not known to or approved by any body of men in the North; but an investigation was moved in the Senate, by Mr.Mason of Virginia, with the evident view of fixing the responsibility on the Northern people, or, at least, upon the Republican party.

These men affected to see in John Brown, and his handful of followers, only the advance guard of another irruption of Goths and Vandals from the North, bent on inciting servile insurrection, on plunder, pillage, and devastation.

Mr.Mason's committee found no sentiment in the North justifying Brown, but the irritating and offensive course of the Virginia senator called forth a great deal of defiant anti-slavery expression which, in his judgment, was tantamount to treason.