Part 17 (2/2)

31. William Henry Seward (1801-72), who had been a school-teacher and lawyer before embarking on a political career, was an implacable enemy of slavery. As Flashman was engaged in training militia at Paisley, and was briefly involved in a disturbance at a mill belonging to his future father-in-law, John Morrison (see Flash-man). Subsequently Pinkerton's Chartist activities took him into hiding to avoid arrest, and in 1842 he emigrated to Chicago. He worked as a cooper at Dundee, Illinois, but crime prevention was evidently in his blood, and after running down a counterfeiting gang he was appointed deputy sheriff of Kane County, and later of Cook County, Chicago. Here he organised his detective agency in 1852-3, and had considerable success against railway and express company thieves. He foiled an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt against President-elect Lincoln in 1861, and in the Civil War became effective head of the U.S. secret service, but while he was an efficient spy-catcher - he broke the Confederate espionage ring operated in Was.h.i.+ngton by the glamorous Rose Greenhow (see also Note 43) - he was less successful as a gatherer of military intelligence, and his over-estimation of Confederate strength in the peninsular campaign contributed to a Union reverse. He was eventually replaced, but his agency continued to flourish; one of its princ.i.p.al successes, ironically enough, was against a working-cla.s.s movement, the Molly Maguires, who terrorised Pennsylvania coalfields for more than twenty years before being penetrated by a Pinkerton agent.

Almost from his arrival in America Pinkerton had been a dedicated abolitionist and Underground Railroad agent. His house in Chicago was used as a ”station” on the escape route to Canada, and after John Brown's Missouri raid of December, 1858, in which eleven slaves were rescued, Pinkerton met them at Chicago, provided them with a railroad car and $500 which he raised at a meeting by personally taking round the hat, and saw them, ”rejoicing at the safety of the Union Jack”, across the Canadian border.

Physically he was as Flashman describes him - dour, tough, small but burly, and of nondescript appearance; in his best-known picture, taken during a meeting with Lincoln, he looks like a discontented tramp with a conspicuously clean collar.

George McWatters, of the New York Metropolitan Police, was another Scot, born probably in Kilmarnock about 1814, and brought up in Ulster. He emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1840s, studied law and collected debts in Philadelphia, took part (unsuccessfully) in the California gold rush, and settled in New York as a theatrical agent, his princ.i.p.al client being Flashman's old paramour, Lola Montez. In 1858 he joined the New York police, and recorded his twelve years' service in a wonderfully self-admiring autobiography which is nonetheless a mine of curious information about the New York underworld of his day. (See J. D. Horan and H. Swiggett, The Pinkerton Story, 1952; Allan Pinkerton, Thirty Years a Detective, 1884; Mrs Rose Greenhow, My Imprisonment, and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Was.h.i.+ngton, 1863; George S. McWatters, Knots Untied, or Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives, 1873.)[p. 166]

29. Flashman's reaction to the hamburger is what one would have expected. He would not know it by that name; the expression ”Hamburg steak” does not seem to have come into use until later in the century.[p. 170]

30. For once we are able to a.s.sign a definite date to an incident in the Flashman Papers. Senator Seward, the Republican leader, sailed from New York for Europe on May 7, 1859, on the ocean steamer Ariel, receiving a tumultuous send-off from two Republican committees and three hundred well-wishers ”with shouts and music, bells and whistles, dipping ensigns, waving hats, hands, and handkerchiefs”. (Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, 1900; G. G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, 1967.)[p. 177]

31. William Henry Seward (1801-72), who had been a school-teacher and lawyer before embarking on a political career, was an implacable enemy of slavery. As Governor of New York he had refused to move against those who rescued slaves, pa.s.sed laws to hinder the recapture of runaways, and in a memorable speech in 1858 coined the phrase ”irrepressible conflict”, which ”means that the U.S. must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding or entirely a free-labour nation”. His nomination as Republican candidate in the 1860 Presidential election was widely taken for granted, and when he visited Europe in 1859 he was received with the attention due to a President-elect: as he had forecast to Flashman, he met the Queen, Lord Palmerston (who had just become Prime Minister for the second time), the Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell, Gladstone, Lord Macaulay, and many other prominent figures. When the Republicans met in Chicago in the following year Seward was still firm favourite, but although he won the first two ballots he was defeated on the third by the comparatively unknown Abraham Lincoln, the ”prairie lawyer” as Seward called him. He became Lincoln's Secretary of State and rendered vital service to his country in the Trent Affair of 1861, when the seizure by an American wars.h.i.+p of a British vessel carrying Confederate diplomats to Europe caused a crisis which might well have led to war. Three things helped to a peaceful solution: the breakdown of the transatlantic cable made hasty communication impossible; Prince Albert and the Queen moderated the tone of the British Government's demand for the release with apologies of the diplomats, and Seward performed the apparently impossible by climbing down without losing face.

It was a turning-point in American history, for if the U.S. had refused to yield, and war had followed, she could not have hoped to fight Britain and the Confederacy together; the Civil War would have been lost and Southern independence a.s.sured. Yet yielding would have outraged the American public, which was jubilant at Britain's discomfiture, and might have weakened Lincoln's government to the point where it could no longer save the Union. That Britain was for once entirely in the right, naturally made the problem no easier. Seward solved it with a reply to the British demand which was a masterpiece of flannel, confused the question brilliantly (he even contended that the diplomats' persons were contraband), managed to suggest that America had won the argument, and concluded by saying that the diplomats would be ”cheerfully liberated”. He heaped coals of fire on the lion's head by granting free pa.s.sage across American soil to the British expeditionary force which had been sent to Canada in antic.i.p.ation of war with the U.S., but had been forced to put in at an American port because the St Lawrence was ice-bound. Seward's other claim to fame is as the purchaser of Alaska in 1867.

Flashman paints a fair picture of the shrewd, egotistical little statesman of whom it was said, justly or not, that he never spoke from conviction. His pa.s.sion for cigars, and for informal behaviour (one observer described it as ”lawless”) is well attested; in private he was genial, given to cursing, and to kicking off his shoes. He could not be described as an Anglophile, yet he obviously took entirely for granted what came to be called the ”special relations.h.i.+p”; references to the natural ”sympathy and affection” between the ”European and American branches of the British race” are to be found in his speeches and letters. (See Bancroft, Van Deusen, and S. E. Morison, Oxford History of the American People, vol. 2, 1965. William Howard Russell describes an inter-view with Seward in My Diary North and South, 1862.)[p. 184]

32. The Secret Six were Dr Samuel Howe, a devoted freedom fighter who had served in the Greek army against the Turks and aided the Poles against the Russians before becoming a pioneer in the education of the deaf and blind; Gerrit Smith, philanthropist, reformer, and Congressman who had run for the governors.h.i.+p of New York; Theodore Parker, a leading theological scholar and a tireless and influential abolitionist; George Stearns, a Boston businessman who, with Smith, was Brown's princ.i.p.al source of funds; Thomas Higginson, a fiery clergyman who became colonel of the first black regiment during the Civil War; and Franklin Sanborn, school-master, poet, and author, who was Brown's biographer and most devoted supporter. (See Villard; Oates; Sanborn.)[p. 188]

33. ”Young Stearns”, the twelve-year-old son of George L. Stearns, one of the Secret Six, had given all his pocket money to John Brown two years earlier, to help the anti-slavery cause. In return, Brown wrote the boy a remark-able letter, his famous ”Autobiography”, in which he describes his childhood in picturesque detail mingled with sound moral advice. The ”Autobiography”, addressed to ”My Dear Young Friend” and dated Red Rock, Iowa, 15th July, 1857, was much admired by Brown's supporters as evidence of his warm human qualities, but excited the scorn of Brown's fiercest critic, Peebles Wilson, who found it ”valuable as an exhibit of his scheming to finance [his] operations”. No doubt Brown knew it would impress young Stearns's parents, on whom he depended for funds, but that is not to say that he was being insincere, or was unmoved by the boy's gift. Anyway, it is a fascinating doc.u.ment; simple, homely, naive perhaps, eccentrically punctuated, and quite beautifully written. One would have to be a hardened cynic to be altogether untouched by it, and if, as Wilson suggests, it was written for sordid motives, then Brown, in addition to being a fine English stylist, carried hypocrisy into the realms of high art. (See Peebles Wilson; Villard; Sanborn.)[p. 206]

34. There are two words to describe John Brown's appearance: grim and formidable. Even allowing for the fact that photography of the time required the sitter to hold his pose for some seconds, which often resulted in a fixed stare, the face that looks out of his pictures is a daunting one; the long Anglo-Saxon head, prominent nose and ears, wide mouth set like a trap, stern certainty of expression, and above all, the level implacable eyes (”piercing blue-grey, flas.h.i.+ng with energy or drooping and hooded like an eagle”) bring to mind immediately words like Ironside, Yankee, Puritan, and Covenanter. It is, if not handsome (as most of his sons were), an extremely fine face, and it is easy to understand the spell that he seems to have cast over his followers and sup-porters; equally easy, too, to see why he was called a fanatic. The most impressive portraits show him clean-shaven: the early photograph, taken when he was in his mid-forties, one hand raised in pledge while the other holds the white flag; the imposing Boston portrait of 1858, by J. J. Hawes; the daguerreotype of 1857, in which he looks drawn and tired - quite the least convincing is the full-bearded painting by N. B. Onthank, based on a photo taken in the month when Flashman met him; by the time of his famous raid Brown had trimmed his beard short. Although only five feet nine inches in height, he looked taller, despite the stoop of his later years; he walked slowly, had a deep, metallic voice, normally wore a ”serious and patient” expression, and had a fine head of dark brown hair sprinkled with grey.[p. 207]

35. This promise of Brown's explains what would otherwise have been an insoluble mystery: why, in the highly detailed records of the Harper's Ferry raid, and in all the correspondence of John Brown and his a.s.sociates, is there no mention of ”Comber” and Joe Simmons? Plainly, Brown kept his word - as did those American agents and officers who were well aware of the presence in Brown's band, and at the Ferry, of these two additional raiders.[p. 207]

36. Brown visited London in 1849 on a wool-marketing venture which proved a costly failure. He travelled to Yorks.h.i.+re, and spoke highly of English farming, stone-masonry, and roast beef, but thought the horses inferior to those of the U.S. He had time for a brief trip to the Continent, where he visited Paris, Hamburg, Brussels, and the field of Waterloo. The ”poodle hair” story is to be found in his biographies.[p. 210]

37. Undoubtedly Mrs Julia Ward Howe, who two years later became famous as the author of ”The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. (See Note 3.)[p. 213]

38. This grim joke of Brown's was obviously one he enjoyed repeating; it occurs in a different context in his biographies, as do many of the remarks which Flashman reports from their first meeting at Sanborn's house. Artemus Ward's description of Brown appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer of March 22, 1859.[p. 215]

39. From the martial hymn, ”Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Gates of Bra.s.s”, by James Montgomery (1771-1854). [p. 216]

40. Jerry ( Jeremiah Goldsmith) Anderson echoed his words to Flashman in a letter of July 5, 1859: ”Their cries for help go out to the universe daily and hourly . . . there are a few who dare to answer this call . . . in a manner that will make this land of liberty and equality shake to the centre.”[p. 217]

41. The speaker may have been Henry David Th.o.r.eau, the celebrated American writer, who makes the comparison in his ”Plea for Captain John Brown” (A Yankee in Canada, 1866). Th.o.r.eau first met Brown in 1857, and became an immediate admirer, writing of his ”rare common sense . . . a man of ideas and principles” and ”his pent-up fire”. He also coined the description quoted earlier by Flashman: ”A volcano with an ordinary chimney flue”.[p. 223]

42. The first of Brown's anecdotes is to be found in his own ”Autobiography”, the second in Villard.[p. 225]

43. It is remarkable that Flashman never mentions ”the Senator” by name, and it is possible that he never knew it, but this was Henry Wilson of Ma.s.sachusetts. The physical description fits, and Senator Wilson described his meeting with Brown at the Bird Club (an abolitionist group who dined regularly at a Boston hotel) when he testified before the Senate Investigating (Mason) Committee after the Harper's Ferry tragedy; his account echoes Flashman's. Whether the warning note reached him or not is unimportant; the date apart, it merely con-firmed what he knew already, for he was one of the Republican Senators (Seward being the other) to whom Forbes had disclosed the plot a year earlier. Wilson was a fervent abolitionist, a former farm labourer and shoe-maker who became chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee during the Civil War. He was one of many leading politicians (President Buchanan and Seward were others) who came under the spell of the magnetic Mrs Greenhow, the Was.h.i.+ngton hostess who was also a highly successful Confederate spy. When she was arrested by Pinkerton, love-letters signed ”H” were found among her papers, but hand-writing experts decided that they were not Wilson's, which in view of his official position was just as well. (See Leech.)[p. 227]

44. Flashman is slightly misquoting Sir Francis Drake's famous dispatch to Was.h.i.+ngton: ”There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.”[p. 234]

45. Newby's Christian name was Dangerfield, but he may have been known jokingly as ”Dangerous”. The average age of Brown's followers was twenty-five; only two of them were over thirty, and this has led some commentators into the error of underrating them. In fact, they were a formidable party (in spite of Flashman's occasional disparagements) with no lack of experience of irregular warfare, and the standard of their weapon handling and marksmans.h.i.+p appears to have been high. The ironical nickname ”pet lambs”, which occurs in ”John Brown's Body”, speaks for itself. (For a full list of Brown's band, see Appendix III.)[p. 245]

46. Frederick Dougla.s.s (1817-95) was born in Maryland, the son of a white father and a Negro-Indian mother. He escaped from slavery in 1838, worked as a stevedore and handyman, and became a lecturer for the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society; his success as a speaker and journalist, combined with his fine presence and polished manners, gave rise to the suggestion that he had never been a slave at all, but he refuted this by publis.h.i.+ng a detailed autobiography. He was frequently a.s.saulted by pro-slavery supporters, for he went out of his way to fight segregation, and was also in danger from slave-catchers, but purchased his freedom in 1846 with funds raised on a visit to Britain. He published an abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, campaigned for women's suffrage, was active in black recruiting during the Civil War, and held the post of marshal of the District of Columbia before becoming U.S. Minister to Haiti. As Flashman says, he was the most famous black man in America; as a campaigner for his people he was to the nineteenth century what Martin Luther King was to the twentieth.[p. 250]

47. The ”mutiny”, Brown's resignation as leader, and his re-election, took place more or less as Flashman describes. Villard says that ”twice at least” there was almost a ”revolt” against the plan. Watson Brown's letters to his wife at this time give an interesting indication of the feeling at Kennedy Farm; in them he describes the suicide of a local slave whose wife had been sold, and the murders of five other slaves, and says: ”I cannot come home as long as such things are done here,” but it seems plain that, like some of his companions, he regarded Harper's Ferry as a death-trap.[p. 257]

48. Francis Meriam, the son of an abolitionist family, had made previous attempts to join Brown, but he was a frail, unbalanced youth, and according to Owen Brown his only qualification was his hatred of slavery. In September, 1859, he heard from a black freedman in Boston, Lewis Hayden, that Brown was short of money, and resolved to contribute part of a recent inheritance to the cause; he arrived at Harper's Ferry on the day before the raid, and was brought to the farm - by Kagi, according to Flashman, by one of Brown's sons, according to Villard.[p. 259]

49. if Flashman's map of Harper's Ferry is primitive and incomplete, it should be remembered that he was drawing it more than half a century later, and relying entirely on his memory of only a small part of the town, observed mostly at night and in a state of some alarm. It was a curious-looking place that he saw in 1859, half-village, half-armoury, standing on its peninsula surrounded by heights, and enclosed along its river banks by the tracks of two railways, the Winchester & Potomac and the Baltimore & Ohio, which ran on trestles and stone embankments designed to prevent flooding; six years later it had been reduced to ruin by nine major Civil War actions fought in the vicinity, and with the old land-marks gone it is not surprising that most historians of the Brown raid have confined themselves to written descriptions, or that Flashman's rough sketch leaves much to be desired. For example, in the area marked ”Town”, where he has shown a bare right angle of shops and houses, there were many more buildings behind, as there were between the a.r.s.enal and the rifle works; there were also some minor buildings between the Wager House and the armoury railings, close to the tracks, and beside Galt's saloon on the Shenandoah sh.o.r.e. He has forgotten that the a.r.s.enal and the large building adjoining (formerly an a.r.s.enal, then a storehouse) were within a railed enclosure, and has erred in showing the Shenandoah bridge farther downstream than it actually was. But despite these flaws, his map is accurate enough in its essentials - the relative positions of the Wager House, the armoury gates and engine-house, the a.r.s.enal, Galt's saloon, the railway lines, and the forked covered bridge across the Potomac - as I have been able to verify by comparison with the U.S. Government Printing Office maps of 1859, made available to me through the kindness of Jeff Bowers and Kyle McGrogan of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. (See GPO publications, ”John Brown's Raid” and Harpers Ferry pamphlets of 1981 and 1993; Frank Leslie's Ill.u.s.trated Newspaper, October 29, 1859; Dave Gilbert, A Walker's Guide to Harper's Ferry, and photographs and ill.u.s.trations in Villard and others.)[p. 268]

50. ”Old soldier” was a natural mistake on Flashman's part. Colonel Lewis Was.h.i.+ngton, great-grandnephew of George Was.h.i.+ngton, behaved with soldierly courage throughout the Harper's Ferry raid, but in fact he held his military t.i.tle as an aide to the Governor of Virginia. (See Keller.)[p. 281]

51. It was a strange chance that brought two of America's great military heroes together at a time when both were still virtually unknown. Robert Edward Lee (1807-70), a lieutenant-colonel of cavalry with a sound but unremarkable record as a military engineer and superintendent of West Point Military Academy, happened to be in Was.h.i.+ngton on leave from Texas in October, 1859; James Ewell Brown Stuart (1833-64), a subaltern who had invented a patent device for attaching a sabre to a belt, was waiting in the hope of showing it to the Secretary for War when news came of the Harper's Ferry crisis and he was abruptly despatched to summon Lee to the White House. When Lee was sent to deal with Brown's raid, Stuart accompanied him as aide - a curious beginning to a famous a.s.sociation. Only a few years later, Lee, as commander-in-chief of the Confederate armies, was being hailed by many as the greatest captain since Wellington, a reputation which his surrender to Grant at Appomattox did nothing to diminish, and ”Jeb” Stuart's skill and daring had made him the outstanding cavalry general of the U.S. Civil War; Lee called him ”the eyes of the army”. (See Captain Robert E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, 1904, and works cited in Note 57.) Flashman, who served on both sides in the Civil War, as a Confederate staff colonel and as a major in the Union forces, with whom he won the Congressional Medal of Honor (mysteries which will no doubt be explained when the relevant packet of his Papers comes to light), seems to have known both men well. That he rode with Stuart is already established (see his interview with President Grant in Flashman and the Redskins). He refers to Lee as ”my old chief ” in the present volume, and in an earlier one (Flashman) recalls a conversation which suggests that they were more than official acquaintances.[p. 295]

52. The young woman who intervened on Thompson's behalf was Miss Christina Fouke (not ”Foulkes”), sister of the Wager House's proprietor. In a letter to the St Louis Republican she explained that she wanted to see the law take its course, and to prevent any outrage in the hotel.[p. 300]

53. Although Flashman did not know it, his order for break-fasts for the raiders and hostages had been filled by the hotel, not without reluctance. The dishes were carried to the armoury by waiters, but Brown, Was.h.i.+ngton, and another hostage ate nothing, apparently suspecting that the food might have been poisoned.[p. 304]

54. In fact there were eleven hostages in the engine-house, chosen by Brown as being the most important of the thirty-odd whom he had taken prisoner. The remainder were left in the watch-room, which was attached to the engine-house but had no communicating door. [p. 312]

55. In view of Brown's religious upbringing, it is not surprising that he was familiar with the famous last words of Bishop Hugh Latimer, burned at the stake in 1555: ”Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by G.o.d's grace in England as shall never be put out.”[p. 314]

56. Flashman's memory must be playing him false here. There may have been a lantern in the engine-house during the parley with Captain Sinn, but Brown would hardly have left it burning afterwards to a.s.sist the besieging marksmen. Whatever illumination there was probably came from the engine-house stove.[p. 319]

57. J. E. B. Stuart described the parley at the engine-house door in a letter to his mother, and seems to make it clear that this was his only interview with Brown. However, Captain Dangerfield, clerk of the armoury, who was one of the hostages in the engine-house, and gave a detailed account of his experiences to the Century Magazine, states that Stuart made an earlier visit to the engine-house during the night with a demand for surrender, and said that he would return at dawn for a reply. Danger-field's recollections are so convincing - he talked at length with Brown during the night, and gives a vivid description of the fighting and final storming of the engine-house - that it is difficult to know what to make of this discrepancy, unless Dangerfield confused Stuart with Captain Sinn, who as we know called on Brown to surrender during the night. (Sanborn; H. B. McClellan, Life and Campaigns of J. E. B. Stuart, 1885; John W. Thomason, Jeb Stuart, 1930.)[p. 328]

58. Messervy was right. There was some trade in Harper's Ferry souvenirs, including fakes of the pikes with which Brown had intended to arm the slaves.[p. 337]

59. ”There have been few more dramatic scenes in American history,” wrote O. G. Villard of the extraordinary interview with John Brown which took place only a few hours after his capture. It was recorded by a reporter from the New York Herald, and the essentials are given in Sanborn. What must strike anyone who reads it is Brown's complete composure and alertness throughout; considering his wounded condition, it was a remarkable performance. Once or twice he gives a sharp retort to an aggressive question, but for the rest he is unfailingly courteous, measured, and even good-humoured. The impression he made on his interrogators was profound, and the report of Governor Wise of Virginia is particularly significant in view of the controversy about Brown's sanity:

They are mistaken who take Brown to be a madman. He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw .. . a man of clear head, of courage, fort.i.tude and simple ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, and indomitable.

Flashman's brief version of the interview corresponds with the Herald report, but he differs on small points from Harper's Weekly, which says that Brown's hair ”was a ma.s.s of clotted gore” and that ”his speech was frequently interrupted by deep groans, reminding me of the agonised growl of a ferocious beast.”[p. 342]

60. Because the Marines had been ordered to wear full dress, Lieutenant Green was carrying only a light ceremonial sword. This almost certainly prevented his killing Brown in the engine-house.[p. 343]

61. Political reaction to the raid was predictable. Stephen Douglas spoke for the Democrats when he called it the inevitable result of Republican policy. The Republican leaders denounced it and disclaimed all responsibility, but could not deny their sympathy with Brown's cause, if not with his methods. Lincoln thought it right that he should hang ”even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason”. Seward condemned the raid as a criminal act of sedition and treason, but could pity the raiders ”because they acted under delirium”. Neither statement did anything to mollify a South furious at the discovery that wealthy and influential Northerners like the Secret Six and others had been Brown's paymasters. For their part, three of the Six took prompt evasive action: San-born decamped to Canada, but soon returned and was briefly arrested; Dr Howe and George Stearns followed him and stayed away until after Brown's execution. Of the other three, Theodore Parker was dying in Europe; Thomas Higginson, the most militant of the Six, stayed put and tried, with Sanborn, to organise Brown's escape (see Note 62); Gerrit Smith went temporarily mad and spent six weeks in an asylum. Of all Brown's supporters, Frederick Dougla.s.s had most to fear; within hours of the raid a warrant was out for his arrest on charges of murder, treason, and inciting slave revolt, and he fled to Canada on the day after the raid, and subsequently to Britain.[p. 345]

62. Plotting to rescue Brown began within a few days of his capture. A group who included two of the Six, Higginson and Sanborn, commissioned one of Brown's defence counsel to investigate the possibility of an escape, but Brown himself refused to be party to any such attempt. Allan Pinkerton may also have considered the possibility of a jail-break; his biographer quotes him as follows: ”Had it not been for the excessive watchfulness [of Brown's captors] . . . the pages of American history would never have been stained with the record of his execution.”[p. 347]

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