ABSTRACT
Republican strategists thought they were asking for no more than a bare minimum of constitutional privilege. Southern leaders little separated them from the most abandoned abolitionists. The abolitionists had added a moral component to the political debate which Republicans could not expunge. In Kansas, fleeing with his Negro charges, he was welcomed by Augustus Wattles, a noted abolitionist and writer for the Herald of Freedom; in Iowa, he was received by the Reverend Josiah Bushnell Grinnell of the famous "Iowa Band" of missionaries. On October 25 of that same year, in a speech at Rochester, Seward expressed himself on "the irrepressible conflict" which existed between North and South. To be sure, there were those who met John Brown who mistrusted his spirit, and none of his patrons knew of Pottawatomie, having heard it, credited the murders. But an astonishing number knew that he was turning over in his mind more than defensive action in Kansas, more than raids into Missouri.
