“The reason the federal government did not attempt to punish the conspirators: they didn’t want to.”
I don’t buy that. James Buchanan was President and while a Pennsylvanian he was friendly towards the South. His critics called him a “doughface”, a Northern politician sympathetic to the South.
Moreover Buchanan considered abolitionists to be violent and a danger to the country, and before Harper’s Ferry Buchanan had issued a reward for the capture of John Brown for crimes he had committed in Kansas.
“I don’t buy that. James Buchanan was President and while a Pennsylvanian he was friendly towards the South. His critics called him a “doughface”, a Northern politician sympathetic to the South.”
You are treating events before Brown’s failed revolution with the days after.
Does what I just wrote make any sense to you?