Harpers Ferry – Mason Committee

After John Brown’s attack in October 1859 on the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, the United States Senate launched an investigation that became known as the Mason Committee. Yet when this committee released its findings in the summer of 1860, many regarded its efforts as ineffective. “Supporters of both sides were…heavily armed” in the visitor galleries of Congress and, as historian David Reynolds explains, “the Mason Committee knew it had to handle the Harpers Ferry matter with kid gloves.” House Divided has some material available on this committee, including an editorial originally published in the Ohio State Journal. This paper summed up the problem with the investigation in a single sentence – “The man who knew every thing was not summoned, and the man [who] knew nothing was imprisoned.”