299.
Amid this conflict of argument, public opinion in the free-States gravitated to neither extreme.

It accepted neither the declaration of the great orator Wendell Phillips, that "the lesson of the hour is insurrection," nor the assertion of the great lawyer Charles O'Conor, that slavery "is in its own nature, as an institution, beneficial to both races." This chapter would be incomplete if we neglected to quote Mr.
Lincoln's opinion of the Harper's Ferry attempt.

His quiet and common-sense criticism of the affair, pronounced a few months after its occurrence, was substantially the conclusion to which the average public judgment has come after the lapse of a quarter of a century: [Sidenote] Lincoln, Cooper Institute Speech, Feb.

27, 1860.
Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized.

What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry?
You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was "got up by Black Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible.