Chicago (IL) Tribune, "Dread of Slave Revolts," November 1, 1859

            Dread of Slave Revolts

   Speaking of the dread of slave revolts constantly in the minds of slaveholders the N. Y. Post says:

   One aspect of these slave revolts, which has often presented itself to our mind, has been impressed upon us with renewed force by the circumstances of the Harper's Ferry stampede. It is the panic by which they must ever be accompanied. No matter how slight the spark, the apparent combustion is terrific. Old Brown with his score of followers has set the entire commonwealth in commotion, and arrested the gaze of the world. The same number of men with the same means, anywhere else, might have been suppressed by the ordinary police of the village. In a slave community they require the interposition of Governors, Presidents, marines, militia and mobs. The fancied danger transcends the real danger. A spectre always stalks behind the incendiary, of enormous and shadowy proportions; not one spectre only, but a troop of spectres; such a caravan as Freiligrath describes in his poem of the desert, when the sand-wreaths seem to twirl into fearful shapes, and legions of dusky warriors come pressing onward in terrible array. The pilgrim trembles, and the very camels and horses grow frantic, because they fear the bursting of the Simoon.