Chicago Press and Tribune

“ It would have the bloody scenes of Harper's Ferry re-enacted in the new States to be carved out of our territories, and it would transmit to generations yet unborn the unspeakable dread arising from constant exposure to midnight carnage and the accompanying nameless horrors of insurrection.
As respects the attempt of an insane old man and his handful of confederates to excite a negro insurrection in Virginia and Maryland, it is easy to determine where the responsibility really belongs. ”

“ Through a chain of events, the one inseparably connected with the other, the last-named tragedy goes back to the first-named violation of plighted faith as its cause, including among its intermediate steps a series of outrages and wrongs which taken together, make up the blackest page of our National history. ”

“ Hence, in its zeal to save itself, its master, and its party from the consequence of their own acts, it falsely lays the blame upon those whose policy it is to diminish the chances of the recurrence of such tragedies, who deplore the crime whenever it is committed as a sore calamity, and who have no sympathy for the criminal by whom it is instigated.. The public intelligence will not be imposed upon by the effort of the Times to shirk a responsibility which belongs to itself and its political associates. ”