were such eminent Republicans as John A. Andrew, William H. Seward, Joshua R. Giddings, Henry Wilson and Charles Robinson. All efforts to connect leading citizens of the North with John Brown’s invasion failed after more than five months of persistent efforts by Mason, Davis and Fitch, of the committee.
To their surprise and chagrin, the fact was developed that John B. Floyd, Secretary of War and a Virginian, had been informed in the August previous that such an invasion was being organized by John Brown and that he took no steps to prevent it. A letter had been mailed to a member of this committee by some unknown person purporting to have been written to Secretary Floyd from Cincinnati, Ohio, august 20th, 1859, nearly two months before the attack upon Harper’s Ferry. This letter notified the Secretary that such a raid had been organized to be led by John Brown for emancipation of the slaves and that it would enter Virginia at Harper’s Ferry, probably very soon.
The Secretary, when called before the committee* and shown the letter, testified as follows:
“I received this letter last summer in Virginia. My attention was a little more than usual attracted to it, and I laid it away in my trunk. I receive many anonymous letters and pay no attention to them. I do not know but that I should have paid attention to this, notwithstanding it was anonymous, as the writer seemed to be particular in the details; but I knew there was no armory in Maryland, and supposed he had gone into details for the purpose of exciting alarm of the Secretary of War and have a parade. I was satisfied in my own mind that a scheme of such wickedness and outrage could not be entertained by any of the citizens of the United States. I thought no more of the letter until the raid broke out. Then I instantly remembered it and believed the first intelligence that we received from Harper’s Ferry to be true, because I recollected the contents of the letter. I had shown the letter to nobody except a member of my family, until the outbreak at Harper’s Ferry. Immediately after the outbreak the letter was hunted up and published. The object in publishing it was to show that the raid had more significance than a mere local outbreak, and that the country might be put on guard against anything like a
* See Report of Senate Committee, pp. 251-252.
