Brown abandoned the Kennedy farm on October 16th and gave orders to Cook to remove the supplies to a school-house which was located within about a mile of Harper's Ferry. On the morning of the 17th the latter peremptorily dismissed the school and took possession of the building. To the teacher, Mr. L. F. Currie, Cook explained what they were doing and how they intended to do it. Mr. Currie, in his testimony before the Mason Committee stated that Cook, Tidd, and Leeman, having a Mr. Byrne in charge as a prisoner, came to the school-house about 10 o'clock and demanded possession of it. They then with the aid of some negroes unloaded several boxes and a large black trunk from a wagon and carried them into the school-house. Continuing he said:

Currie remained at the school-house until evening. Between 2 and 3 o'clock the firing at Harper's Ferry became "very rapid and continuous," and Currie asked Cook what it meant; to which he replied: "Well it simply means that those people down there are resisting our men, and we are shooting them down." In answer to a question as to how many men were engaged down there Cook replied: "I do not know how many men are there now; there may be 5,000 or there may be 10,000 for aught I know."[408]

These exhibits are but a trifling fraction of the direct testimony relating to the subject; yet Mr. Villard, in wanton disregard of such testimony, and of the overwhelming preponderance of historical facts which corroborate it, puts forth his violent assumptions as to the truth; and asks the public to believe this great undertaking to have been merely a poorly planned raid which another general with the same purpose in view would have conducted differently: "established his mountain camp first; swooped down upon the town in order to spread terror throughout the state, and in an hour or two at most, have started back to his hill-top fastness."

"First a soldier then a citizen was Brown's plan" for the uplift of the "emancipated blacks." "There is no doubt," says this author,[409] "that he still expected the negroes to rise and swell his force to irresistible proportions." Numbers are not irresistible unless they be armed and organized. Why should "the leader of a new revolution," with the sword of Frederick the Great in his hand, plan "to take to the hills" in a trifling retreat, and abandon the military stores at Harper's Ferry—the stores that were necessary to equip the irresistible numbers for irresistible operations? The assumption that he intended to do so is not only illogical; it is absurd.

The declaration that Brown was the sole member of the "attacking" force to believe in the assault upon the property of the United States at Harper's Ferry is contradicted by competent testimony, and by the significance of the general order that provided for the occupation of the town, and that designated the officers and men who were to take charge of this same property. As to the unanimity of sentiment that prevailed in relation to the matter, Mr. Redpath says:[410] "On Saturday a meeting of the Liberators was held and the plan of operations discussed. On Sunday evening a council was again convened and the programme of the Captain unanimously approved."

Other documents disclose the facts that the "Captain" and his men not only intended to seize this United States property—the arms in the arsenal and in the rifle works—but that they intended to keep them and to use them. A general order issued from the headquarters of their war department provided for the organization of an army.

Jeremiah G. Anderson was one of Brown's veterans, who, with full confidence in the final success of their venture, approved of this movement. Late in September, writing from "near Harper's Ferry" he said:[411]

A victor is one who conquers—who defeats an enemy. In its relation to war, victory means the defeat of the enemy in battle. Anderson had an army in his mind, and battles and conquest, and the establishment of the Provisional Government, when he referred to victory, and used the word advisedly. A "raid" upon a place may be successfully executed but it cannot be, properly, called a victory over anything. John E. Cook believed the arms would be used and approved of the use of them. "But ere that day arrives," he said, "I fear that we shall hear the crash of the battle shock and see the red gleaming of the cannon's lightning."[412]

Brown leased the Kennedy farm because the location was suitable for his purposes in the furtherance of his plans. From there he conducted his secret negotiations, with the slaves, for the insurrection, and distributed the pikes, probably 500, which his co-conspirators were to use in their secret assassinations; but when he launched the invasion, and debouched his command, he abandoned it. Therefore, it was not necessary for him to leave a force "adequate" or inadequate "on the river bank to insure his being able to fall back to that base," or to cover a retreat still more illogical: a retreat of his little band, with a lot of slaves, and prisoners as hostages, "to the hills" where barren rocks afforded no shelter and "where starvation would have met him at the threshold of his eyrie."[413]

Aside from what the record contains relating to the subject, it is illogical to assume that the veterans of Brown's band would imperil their lives in a scheme so dangerous—a scheme involving death upon the gallows for every one of them if they failed—unless they approved of it with the fullest possible degree of confidence; only absolute confidence in the feasibility of their plans, and the hope of reward without a parallel, could have induced these men "with soiled lives behind them."[414] to undertake this conquest. Their arrogance upon entering the town is evidence of their enthusiasm, and confidence in the success of what they were doing, and of their approval of it. Their conduct was of the swaggering, domineering kind. It was of the: Halt! or I'll kill you! kind; conduct bred by contamination in an environment supercharged with the scheming for murderous deeds, reeking with the planning for assassinations, and nourished by the belief that they were not accountable to any power upon earth for their actions. Men do not shoot down their fellows-men for trivial causes, unless they believe they are in control of the situation, and are immune from punishment. These men were expecting trouble. They had come to Harper's Ferry believing they were about to write the bloodiest chapter in history; that the most desperate struggle in all history was imminent, and they were impatient to have it begin. They cut the telegraph wires; made prisoners of whomever they met; stopped the railway train carrying passengers and mails: shot at Watchman Higgins; shot and killed the baggage-porter, Hayward, because he did not obey the command to halt; and killed Mr. Boerly without any apparent provocation. Men who have no confidence in their supremacy; who do not believe they will succeed in what they are doing, but intend to run away, and laboriously "take to the hills" and act upon the defensive without facilities for defense, do not thus demean themselves. The logic of Mr. Villard's theory of Brown's plans is: That this score of "hard-headed Americans" believed they could shoot down and kill their fellow-citizens upon the streets of Harper's Ferry with impunity; that they could rob the homes of that neighborhood and not be held accountable therefor; that they could carry off property: watches, money, horses, carriages, wagons, and slaves, into the hills adjoining the town, and not be pursued by the local authorities; that they could take citizens of the United States into custody as prisoners, and carry them to a "hill-top fastness," and maintain themselves there without supplies of either food, water, shelter, or munitions of war, other than what they carried upon their persons.

They know little of Brown's plans and of his intentions, who criticize his strategy, in occupying Harper's Ferry, and his tenacious defense of the position. And they know nothing of the agreements at which he had arrived, and the engagements which he had entered into with the slaves of that section, whom he had taken into his confidence, during the preceding three months, and who were to launch the insurrection he had planned, and who were to constitute the rank and file of his army of invasion. The author of Fifty Years After seems to have no clearer conception of the subject herein, than the author of fifty years before assumed to have. Accepting, almost at par, Mr. Redpath's deceptive vagaries, he formulates a plan of campaign to conform with the conditions of his absurd conclusions; and then criticizes Brown because he did not execute his conceptions. The plans for their operations, whatever they may have been, were satisfactory to Brown and to the veteran adventurers who followed his flag. "The man of blood and iron" and the "hard-headed Americans" had the plans under consideration during the two years preceding, and had placed the seal of their approval upon them. If they were satisfactory to those who made them, and understood them, and staked their lives upon the successful execution of them, they should not be denounced too confidently, not to say flippantly, by those who do not know, or who assume not to know, what the plans were.

The details which Brown made from his command were not to "garrison various parts of the town" and "hold the bridges"; the assignments were made in pursuance of his well defined plan to organize and equip there the army which was to garrison the town and which was thereafter to burn the bridges and hold the approaches to it; the army that was to invade the Southern States; the army that was to "start from here" (Harper's Ferry) "and go through the State of Virginia and on South," conquering and to conquer.

The dispositions that he made of his forces were in harmony with the theory of the insurrection, which was the key-note of the invasion. The slaves from the east side of the Potomac—the neighborhoods of Sharpsburg, Boonsboro, and Hagerstown—after declaring their right to freedom, by assassinating their owners, were to report to Owen Brown at the "school-house," there to be organized into a battalion under his command, and, be armed with the rifles and supplied with the ammunition that were to be deposited there for that purpose. In the same way the slaves who were to arrive from the Middletown Valley, and from the Frederick country, through Pleasant Valley and Sandy Hook, were to report to Watson Brown at the Potomac bridge and by him, or by Taylor who was stationed there with him, taken to the arsenal, where Hazlett was in charge as quartermaster and ordnance officer, and there be armed and equipped from the "precious tools stored there," belonging to the United States, which were to be seized for this purpose. In a similar manner, the slaves from Loudoun Valley and the west side of the Shenandoah were to report to Oliver Brown and William Thompson and Newby at the Shenandoah bridge; while the slaves coming from the country lying between the Shenandoah and the Potomac were to report to Kagi, at the rifle-works, and by him and his assistants—Copeland and Leary—taken to the arsenal for their equipment. Brown had said to his friend Douglass: "When I strike the bees will swarm and I shall want you to help me hive them." In this manner they were to be hived, and furnished with stings.

This being true, Brown defied no canons when he crossed the Potomac nor did he thereby place a river between himself and his base of supplies. He had, in general orders, designated Harper's Ferry as his headquarters. Harper's Ferry, with its millions of dollars' worth of military stores, was thenceforth to be his base of supplies, and the State of Virginia and the South the field of his operations. Having paralyzed the South with the insurrection, the Potomac was to be his front, and behind its banks he intended to entrench his army. He appointed no place for his men to retreat to, nor made any provisions for retreating, for the word had no place in his vocabulary. He fixed no hour for his withdrawal from the town, because he did not intend to withdraw from it. He was not executing a raid. Why should his captains proudly march to Harper's Ferry; "their Sharp's rifles hung from their shoulders, their commissions duly signed and officially sealed in their pockets," if they were to trudge back again to the Kennedy farm in demoralizing retreat, with no booty, and without having seen an enemy, and before a hostile shot had been fired; and then "take to the hills," there to be hunted by dogs and men, as wild beasts are hunted, and be shot down as wild beasts are shot, by slave-catchers, patrols, and marshals. Their campaign was serious, heroic, and desperate beyond the comprehension of Brown's biographers. Rarely in history have men voluntarily stood to win or die as these men stood at Harper's Ferry. There was no place on the earth where they could retreat to and live. When Brown and his captains crossed the Potomac, the die was cast; the invasion was on. Thenceforth they might advance but not retreat; they might fight but not run. If they came back, it would have to be "with their shields or upon them."

There was no violation of military principles in Brown's occupation of Harper's Ferry, or in the dispositions which he made of his men, nor in his tenacious defense of his position. The military principles which he violated are not referred to in the charges and specifications preferred against him by this recent biographer. These violations were fatal to his enterprise, but they all antedate the night of October 16, 1859. If the hundreds of slaves whom Brown secretly armed with the Collinsville spears, with which to assassinate their masters and their masters' families, had done their bloody work as they had promised to do; then the fifteen hundred men that Brown believed would report to him for duty by 12 o'clock on the 17th,[415] and the 5,000 men whom Cook, at 4 o'clock, thought had already reported and were in action, would have arrived, and the story of Harper's Ferry would have been different. There would have been no violations of military principles then in Brown's tactics and strategy, to criticise by any authority whatever. "Another general, with the same purpose in view," and with the same forces at his disposal, would not have improved very much upon Brown's plans.

The hint at a hill-top fastness, where another general would have established his camp before he "swooped" down upon the town, is a modification of Mr. Redpath's invention of an "inaccessible fastness." It is a delusion none the less, a delusion that was shot to pieces within two years after Mr. Redpath framed it. Such a position has no existence, except it be in authors' imaginations. There is not now, and there never was a position upon either Maryland Heights or Loudoun Heights that cannot be "stormed at with shot and shell."

During the war between the States, the Union generals fortified Mr. Redpath's inaccessible fastness. Half way up the tangled steeps of Maryland Heights, on a small bit of plateau—less than an acre—they placed a battery of siege guns: two 9-inch Columbiads, a 50-pounder Parrott, and two or three field pieces. Also, they reënforced the natural defenses of the "hill-top fastness" by formidable breastworks, built of rocks and trunks of trees, and protected them by abatis. On the 12th of September, 1862, the Confederate infantry swarmed all over these inacessible fastnesses. During the 13th and 14th, the front of the "hill-top fastness," on the summit of Maryland Heights, was a sheet of flame and lead, enveloped in clouds of smoke. The rifle fire from the opposing lines stripped the bark from the trunks of all the trees, within a hundred and fifty yards of the front of these breastworks, as clean as though they had been girdled with an ax. Not only did Jackson's infantry penetrate these fastnesses, but during the morning of the 14th they took two pieces of artillery to the top of these "inaccessible" heights and "turned loose" with shot and shell upon the hill-top fastness. During the night of the 14th, the Union commander abandoned the inaccessible fastness, dismounted and spiked the guns on the mountain side, and joined the forces at Harper's Ferry, on Bolivar Heights.

On the 20th, a detachment from what had been Mansfield's Corps, of McClellan's Army—Crawford's Brigade[416]—then in command of Col. Joseph F. Knipe of the Forty-sixth Pennsylvania, with a section of artillery, also climbed these inaccessible heights to drive the Confederates from the position.[417]

There are many persons living who remember having marched or "tramped" or "climbed" or "trudged" or "stumbled" or "hoofed it" up and down and over these mountains, on campaign and on picket duty, during the years of the great war; but it is doubtful if any of them ever heard of a detachment that executed such maneuvers by "swooping." The real movement is different, especially so if it be executed at night.

In behalf of a patient public that has long been grievously imposed upon by partisan biographers, the writer asks unanimous consent that references to "fastnesses," with which Brown is said to have been "familiar for seventeen years" be barred, henceforth, from the literature of this subject; the inhibition to include all the patterns of fastnesses which have been exploited; from the inaccessible kind of 1859 down through the intervening years, ending with the hill-top variety of fifty years after.

CHAPTER XV

HIS GREAT ADVENTURE

Beginning with January, 1857, one thing is clearly disclosed and made conclusive by the record of Brown's subsequent activities: that he contemplated an armed invasion and conquest of the Southern States. His correspondence, and the long line of historical incidents which touch his life, during the time intervening between that date and the collapse of his fortunes at Harper's Ferry, show that his mind was preoccupied with plans for the accomplishment of that stupendous purpose. He believed that the slaves could be induced to rise against their masters; assassinate them and their families, and declare their freedom. From the ranks of the freedmen, he planned to recruit an army for the occupation of the territory affected by the insurrection, and for further invasion; and to establish and maintain the authority of a provisional government.

His scheme for conquest was probably a result of his relations with Hugh Forbes. Together the two adventurers planned the details for the undertaking. It was in pursuance of their plans for this purpose that Brown engaged Forbes's services, at a salary of a hundred dollars a month; ordered the thousand spears; published the Manual of the Patriotic Volunteer; planned to lure the soldiery of the Union from their "service with Satan to the service of God"; planned to drive a nail into Captain Kidd's treasure-chest—whatever that meant; planned the War College, whereat the prospective generals for the prospective army, and the prospective members for the prospective cabinet of the prospective Provisional Government, were to be instructed, under the direction of Forbes, in the science of war, and in the science of civil government. It was for his civil and military leaders that he engaged Stevens, Cook, Kagi, Tidd, Parsons, Realf, Gill, and others, and placed them in the school of instruction.

To hedge against treason, he met with his embryonic generals and secretaries at Chatham, Canada, and in convention assembled adopted a "Constitution and Ordinances" for the Provisional Government, which, among its provisions, declared the confiscation of the "entire personal and real property of all persons known to be acting with or for the enemy, or found wilfully holding slaves." This constitution had been printed and copies of it were available at the Kennedy farm. Every man who marched with Brown to Harper's Ferry had read it, or had heard it read, and had sworn allegiance to the government it represented.

December 23, 1858, Merriam wrote to Brown: "I have heard vaguely of your contemplated action and now Mr. Redpath and Mr. Hinton have told me your contemplated action, in which I earnestly wish to join you in any capacity you wish to place me as far as my small capacities go."[418] He spent the winter in Hayti in company with Redpath, and knew how Brown intended to "assail the Slave Power."[419]

The message that Brown requested Conductor Phelps to communicate to the management of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, interdicting further traffic over the road, was a declaration of war. It was the first and only "Proclamation" issued by the commander-in-chief of the army of the Provisional Government. At the time he gave out this declaration—1:25 a. m., October 17, 1859—he and his captains confidently believed their insurrection to be in the full tide of successful initiation; that the country in the vicinity was then in the throes of a slaughter that spared neither sex nor age; that hordes of black fiends, like furies, were surging over the land in a riot of unimaginable proportions. These adventurers believed that their dreams of conquest were about to be realized; and that the rioting thousands, excited into a frenzy by the bloody deeds which had set them free, were already pressing in bands to join them at the appointed rendezvous to fill the ranks of the "Army of Liberation"; that it was solely a question of time—a few hours at most—until these allies would be arriving, and they would have control of an army sufficiently strong to establish and maintain their authority.

That the slaves' sole way to freedom lay over the dead bodies of their masters, was a self-evident proposition. The slaves knew by tradition and by experience, and Brown and his captains knew, that if they—the slaves—ran away from their masters to join his forces, the masters, reënforced by the citizen soldiery, would pursue them immediately, and recover them before they could organize for either defensive or aggressive warfare. The problem of Harper's Ferry had been solved by the philosophy of the Pottawatomie. The same questions were involved in each venture: how to get the "goods" and keep them—how to get the slaves for the Provisional Army and forestall pursuit. It was the Pottawatomie amplified.

Brown intended to create the "Provisional Army" in the enemy's country; hence, it was essential for him to commence the undertaking by striking the most crushing blow that it was possible for him to deliver. The success of the movement depended upon his ability to strike a blow so terrible that the survivors of the carnage, dazed and paralyzed by the horrors of the existing conditions, would be incapable of organizing and sending any opposing force to attack him. Therefore the assassinations—the destruction of the persons who, otherwise, would pursue. That was the central feature of the movement, the base of the scheme, the blow which he intended to strike. It was the only blow which he could strike; the only weapon that he could use of which any one stood in awe. The blow which he would have to strike if he would win, was the blow which he had told his Eastern friends he could strike: a blow that would shake the slave system to its foundation—the blow which he had promised Gerrit Smith he would strike, and doubtless, told him how he intended to strike it.

To the men from the Pottawatomie, a massacre was simply a means to an end. Brown and his sons harbored no feelings of animosity toward the Doyles, the Shermans, and Wilkinson; but they knew that these men would not give up to them, peaceably, the property which they coveted, therefore they murdered them and took their horses. They knew that the owners of slaves and lands in the Southern States would not, peaceably, relinquish their ownership of this property; therefore they planned to incite the slaves to kill their masters while they slept—and having thus emancipated the slaves, confiscate the estates of the slave-holders, and put the assassins and themselves in possession of them. This massacre, the most horrible that was ever seriously contemplated in the brain of man, was to be executed under the pretense that it was an humanitarian measure. In the name of humanity, they proposed to undertake the midnight assassination of millions of men, women, and children, and to contend for justification for their actions. The word, with Brown, was a convenience, or an interchangeable term. A definition of it, in the sense in which he used the word, is found in his personal understanding, or interpretation rather, of its co-relation, "The Golden Rule." He is quoted by Sanborn and others as having stated "more than once": "I believe in the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence. I think that both mean the same thing; and it is better that a whole generation should pass off the face of the earth—men, women and children—by a violent death than that one jot of either should fail in this country. I mean exactly so, sir."[420]

The possibility that the blacks in the South might attempt to gain their freedom by a general massacre of the whites, was a condition co-existent with their enslavement. After 1831 that possibility became a fixed impending probability; and the question of means to prevent the inevitable cataclysm of blood, was a matter of constant concern in the economy of the Southern States; with the result that various preventive measures were adopted to discourage the possibility of attempts, by the slaves, to organize for such undertakings, or to fit themselves, by education or otherwise, to promote such organizations.

In the philosophy of John Brown, what Nat Turner had done in a section of Southampton County, Virginia, could, if properly promoted, be done in any other section or locality; and, if in any locality, then in every locality, or throughout the whole South. Therefore, an insurrection by the slaves, having for its object the overthrow of the existing State governments of the South, was a venture, from his point of view, which might be undertaken with reasonable prospects for success; the ultimate result depending largely upon his ability to organize the slaves effectively for revolt; to equip them for the initial uprising, and thereafter to capably direct the movement.

No disaster that ever befell our country, war not excepted, was in any respect comparable with the horrors which would be incidental to a slave insurrection; yet our people lived during more than half a century in the shadow of that menace. They lived in a state of continual apprehension that it, the most stupendous of conceivable calamities, might at any time overwhelm them.

It has been said, and there is great force in the statement, that the "Underground Railroad," instead of working hardship and great loss to slave-holders, was, in reality "the safety-valve to the institution." It was the sluice for the overflow of the dangerous class—the able and discontented. The Underground was organized at the close of the eighteenth century, and had on its rolls more than 30,000 "employees." It carried away from the South, probably 75,000 slaves of the value of more than $30,000,000. The slaves who thus sought and obtained their liberty, taking the risk of arrest and punishment in their attempts to gain it, were the ablest and the most influential among them. Had they remained in slavery, these men would have further developed and become leaders among the slaves, and would have organized them and led them into insurrection. "Had they remained, the direful scenes of San Domingo would have been enacted, and the hot, vengeful breath of massacre would have swept the South as a tornado and blanched the cheek of the civilized world."[422]

Brown knew about the hot vengeful breath which had swept the white population from the fair face of San Domingo. And he was familiar with the attempts which had been made to relight its fires in this country, and to start the tornado of death. He was familiar with what his predecessors in the insurrection business had done, and with what they had tried to do. He knew, too, or thought he knew, why they had failed. Naturally he sought to avoid the mistakes which they had committed, and to safeguard his operations by improving upon their methods. The seizure of Harper's Ferry was not a "Foray into Virginia," as Mr. Sanborn chooses to call it: neither was it a "Raid" as Mr. Villard, with conspicuous persistence, seeks to make it appear to have been; nor was it either an "attack" upon the town or a "blow" or any other specious form of movement. Brown selected the place and "occupied" it as the base for his military operations, because he intended to use the generous supplies of war material, which were then in store there, for the equipment of the army that he planned to organize. The occupation was to be permanent. It was a stratagem of his campaign, an incident in his main design.

By the logic of the assassinations, Brown believed he would secure immunity from an immediate, or counter assault. Instead of being compelled to defend his position against attack by the militia, and by companies of armed citizens, which might be improvised for the occasion, he contemplated spending the first "few weeks" of the campaign in comparative security; publishing, far and wide, the proclamation of the Provisional Government, with its lure for adventurers in civil and military life; debauching the citizenship of the country and the soldiery of the Union. He also contemplated having leisure to attend such diplomatic functions as might be incidental to the situation, including negotiations with foreign nations, and the problems of "Foreign intervention," Northern conventions, etc.[423]

Forbes's letter of May 14, 1858, heretofore quoted, discloses Brown's theory of the invasion: it deals with the facts of Brown's secret movement then pending in the untried future. These two men had agreed upon an invasion of the South under cover of an "insurrection." The opinion Forbes gave Dr. Howe therein is a dissenting one, for personal reasons, from his agreement with Brown. In the revised opinion, Forbes stated his belief that the insurrection would fail; that it would be "either a flash in the pan, or it would leap beyond his control or any control," and after having spent its force in a riot of blood would be stamped out. Brown thought otherwise; he was "sure of a response," and believed that he could safeguard against "a flash in the pan." With the question of "losing control" of the insurrection he was not concerned; that was a bridge which he would cross when he came to it. Under his control, a whole generation was to pass off the face of the earth by a violent death, and nothing much could occur in excess of that if the insurrection did happen to get beyond it. The hurricane of horrors which he proposed to unloose, could not sweep too far for his purposes; he would have it spread to every Southern State, and in the language of Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson, "make this land of liberty and equality shake to the center."[424]

That Brown expected to be strongly supported by a secret colored military organization existing in the North, and "that had its ramifications extended through most or nearly all of the Slave States," is more than probable. This organization was represented at the Chatham convention by G. J. Reynolds, of Sandusky, Ohio, "a colored man (very little colored, however)"; and after the convention adjourned, Geo. B. Gill was sent to Oberlin, Berlin Heights, and Milan, Ohio, to verify the statements which Reynolds had made concerning its forces. Gill met him and "under the pledge of secrecy which we gave to each other at the Chatham convention," he says. Reynolds took him to the room where they held their meetings, and used as their arsenal, and showed him "a fine collection of arms." "On my return to Cleveland," continues Gill, "he passed me, through the organization, first to J. J. Pierce, colored, at Milan, who paid my bill one night at the Eagle Hotel, and gave me some money, and a note to E. Moore at Norwalk; who in turn paid my hotel bill, and purchased a railroad ticket through to Cleveland for me." Reynolds asserted that they were "only waiting for Brown or some one else to make a successful initiative move, when their forces would be put in motion."[425]

It must not be assumed, because Brown did not publish a transcript of his plans for the insurrection and invasion, that he was "without any clear and definite plan of campaign," and that the consequences of his plans had not been anticipated, and provided for in minutest detail, for he was methodical. Also, secrecy was characteristic of his methods. Salmon Brown said:[426] "Father had a peculiarity for insisting on order.... He would insist on getting everything arranged just to suit him before he would consent to make a move."

And to Kagi Brown wrote July 10th:[427] "Do not use much paper to put names of persons & plans upon."

The nature of Brown's plans, and of his intentions, and of his engagements, must therefore be drawn from the documentary evidence obtainable, and from such reasonable inferences as can be derived from the actions of the invaders: from the things which they did while they were free to do as they pleased; while they were yet unrestrained by the forces which later overcame them; and from such contemporaneous testimony, relating to the subject, as may be available. What they said when in prison, and in view of the impending gallows, about what they intended to do, is not the best evidence of what their intentions were.

On the 19th of August, Mr. Frederick Douglass met John Brown, by appointment, at an old stone quarry in the vicinity of Chambersburg. At that interview, Brown disclosed to Mr. Douglass his intention to seize Harper's Ferry. Mr. Douglass said:[428]

The project that Brown had in view was clearly foreshadowed by Jeremiah C. Anderson, in a letter which he wrote, late in September, to a brother in Iowa. He said:[429]

The following interesting and instructive document discloses the formation of Andersen's mining company, and indicates the character of the "mining" which the operators intended to engage in. It reads as follows:

(This document is in the handwriting of J. H. Kagi.)[430]

Oliver Brown and Jeremiah G. Anderson were captains in the provisional army. A copy of Brown's commission is published herewith:

(This document is printed in the original, with the exception of the words in italics and the figures, which are in the handwriting of Kagi, with the exception of the signature of John Brown, which is in his own hand.)[431]

Except as to Mr. Sanborn and Mr. Stearns, it is hard to believe that the members of Brown's war committee were ignorant of his intention to incite a slave insurrection, and invade the South. Rev. Theodore Parker said: