1.    Who is the author of this document? Who is his audience? What attitudes towards the raid on Harper’s Ferry might the author’s audience have?

2.    What are the two greatest lessons of Harper’s Ferry, according to Rice (page 15)?

3.    Which of John Brown’s character traits does Rice point to as demonstrating “that in his bosom there beat a noble Christian heart” (page 16)? Why might Rice want to paint Brown as a good Christian in his sermon?

4.    What is John Brown’s message in this passage that Rice quoted from a letter Brown wrote just before his execution: “I cannot remember of a night so dark as to hinder the coming of day; nor a storm so furious or dreadful as to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless sky” (page 16)?

5.    What is Rice’s opinion about the methods John Brown used at Harper’s Ferry to try to bring about abolition (pages 17-18)?

6.    Why was the raid on Harper’s Ferry, carried out by just 22 men, so terrifying for slaveholders in the south, according to Rice (page 18)?

7.    Near the end of his sermon, Rice says that Americans must “SPEAK THE TRUTH IN LOVE,—and slavery shall end in peace, and not in blood (page 18).” How likely is it that Rice’s congregation expected a peaceful end to slavery in the United States, at the end of 1859 when they heard this sermon?