Section B: American Option The origins of the Civil War, 1820-61 Read the sources and then answer both parts of the question. Source A The insurrection at Harpers Ferry was no insurrection at all. Not a single slave joined the reckless fanatics who sought to promote their hateful policy of emancipation by blood and treason. It was a silly invasion of Virginia by some eighteen men. Four or five men were killed and a few more were hanged and that will be the end of the enterprise in its mere physical aspects. However, events are often important, not on account of their immediate magnitude but on account of their significance. The great importance of the abolition riot in Virginia is that it shows to the people of the South the destiny that awaits them. Our connection with the North creates a permanent threat of insurrection in the South. The Union is a powerful organisation by which domestic unrest is created. The mightiest dangers threaten the South. From the 'Charleston (South Carolina) Mercury', October 1859. Source B There are men, both North and South—principally fanatics and fools under the control of scheming agitators—whose intentions seem to be to turn one section of the country against the other in hostile strife. These men, in the North, seize upon Brown's crime as a text to preach war against the South and, in the South, as a warrant for the dissolution of the Union. But the great mass of the people, both North and South, condemn Brown's treason. Our own opinion is that too much importance has been attached to this matter. Nor can we see any reason, in what has transpired, to urge sectional war between North and South. We are not here to say that the South has not suffered grievous wrongs and oppression from the North, for it has. However, we do not think the Southern states could better their condition by a dissolution of the Union. From the 'Arkansas Gazette', November 1859. Source C The Harpers Ferry affair ought to have been treated as the vulgar crime and outrage of a squad of reckless, desperate ruffians and they should have been accordingly tried and executed as vile criminals in the simplest and most summary manner. There should not have been the chance of elevating them to political offenders or making them representatives and champions of northern sentiment. In the South, every opportunity has been taken to portray these infamous fanatics as grand political criminals. The North, or at least the whole Republican Party, has been held responsible for their actions, which has spread the greatest excitement and indignation against that whole section. The Harpers Ferry outrage ought to have been met calmly and firmly, and made a means of added strength to us, both North and South. From a private letter by James Seddon, a Virginian lawyer and later Confederate Secretary of War, December 1859. Source D John Brown was violent, lawless and fanatical. His ruling passion was to become the instrument of abolishing slavery, by force, throughout the slaveholding states. With him, this amounted almost to insanity. The news of the attack on Harpers Ferry spread rapidly across the country. All were at first ignorant of the weakness of his force while public rumour greatly exaggerated the strength of it. In the already excited condition of public feeling throughout the South, this raid of John Brown made a deeper impression on the southern mind than all previous events. Considered merely as the isolated act of a desperate fanatic, it would have had no lasting impact. It was the enthusiastic and permanent approval of the object of his expedition by the abolitionists of the North which spread alarm and apprehension throughout the South. The Republican party has honoured him ever since as a saint or a martyr in a cause they considered so holy. From 'Mr Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion', published in 1866. The author of this book is usually accepted to be President Buchanan himself. Answer both parts of the question with reference to the sources.