Modern civilization and republican government require that beyond the self-defense necessary to the protection of life and limb, all coercive reform shall act by authority of law only.
[Sidenote] Mason Report, p.

18.
Upon politics the main effect of the Harper's Ferry incident was to aggravate the temper and increase the bitterness of all parties.
Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; Mason, of Virginia; and Fitch, of Indiana, Democratic members of the Senate investigating committee, sought diligently but unsuccessfully to find grounds to hold the Republican party at large responsible for Brown's raid.

They felt obliged to report that they could not recommend any legislation to meet similar cases in the future, since the "invasion" of Virginia was not of the kind mentioned in the Constitution, but was "simply the act of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political authority." Collamer, of Vermont, and Doolittle, of Wisconsin, Republican members of the committee, in their minority report, considered the affair an outgrowth of the pro-slavery lawlessness in Kansas.

Senator Douglas, of Illinois, however, apparently with the object of still further setting himself right with the South, and atoning for his Freeport heresy, made a long speech in advocacy of a law to punish conspiracies in one State or Territory against the government, people, or property of another; once more quoting Lincoln's Springfield speech, and Seward's Rochester speech as containing revolutionary doctrines.
[Sidenote] Dec, 2, 1859.
[Sidenote] James Redpath, "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," p.

41.
[Sidenote] George Willis Cooke, "Life of Emerson," p.