“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?”

“Sir, the angel of the Lord will camp round about me,” said John Brown with stern eyes when the timid foretold his doom.^[137] With a steadfast almost superstitious faith in his divine mission, the old man had walked unscathed out of Kansas in the fall of 1856, two years and a half before the slave raid into Missouri related in the last chapter. In his mind lay a definitely matured plan for attacking slavery in the United States in such a way as would shake its very foundations. The plan had been long forming, and changing in shape from 1828, when he proposed a Negro school in Hudson, until 1859 when he finally fixed on Harper’s Ferry. At first he thought to educate Negroes in the North and let them leaven the lump of slaves. Then, moving forward a step, he determined to settle in a border state and educate slaves openly or clandestinely and send them out as emissaries. As gradually he became acquainted with the great work and wide ramifications of the Underground Railroad, he conceived the idea of central depots for running off slaves in the inaccessible portions of the South, and he began studying Southern geography with this in view. He noted the rivers, swamps and mountains, and more especially, the great struggling heights of the Alleghanies, which swept from his Pennsylvania home down to the swamps of Virginia, Carolina and Georgia. His Kansas experiences suggested for a time the southwest pathway to Louisiana by the swamps of the Red and Arkansas Rivers, but this was but a passing thought; he soon reverted to the great spur of the Alleghanies.

“I never shall forget,” writes Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “the quiet way in which he once told me that ‘God had established the Alleghany Mountains from the foundation of the world that they might one day be a refuge for fugitive slaves.’ I did not know then that his own home was among the Adirondacks.”^[138]

More and more, as he thought and worked, did his great plan present itself to him clearly and definitely until finally it stood in 1858 as Kagi told it to Hinton:

“The mountains of Virginia were named as the place of refuge, and as a country admirably adapted in which to carry on guerrilla warfare. In the course of the conversation, Harper’s Ferry was mentioned as a point to be seized, but not held,—on account of the arsenal. The white members of the company were to act as officers of different guerrilla bands, which, under the general command of John Brown, were to be composed of Canadian refugees, and the Virginia slaves who would join them. A different time of the year was mentioned for the commencement of the warfare from that which had lately been chosen. It was not anticipated that the first movement would have any other appearance to the masters than a slave stampede, or local insurrection, at most. The planters would pursue their chattels and be defeated. The militia would then be called out, and would also be defeated. It was not intended that the movement should appear to be of large dimension, but that, gradually increasing in magnitude, it should, as it opened, strike terror into the heart of the slave states by the amount of the organization it would exhibit, and the strength it gathered. They anticipated, after the first blow had been struck, that, by the aid of the free and Canadian Negroes who would join them, they could inspire confidence in the slaves, and induce them to rally. No intention was expressed of gathering a large body of slaves, and removing them to Canada. On the contrary, Kagi clearly stated, in answer to my inquiries, that the design was to make the fight in the mountains of Virginia, extending it to North Carolina, and Tennessee, and also to the swamps of South Carolina if possible. Their purpose was not the extradition of one or a thousand slaves, but their liberation in the states wherein they were born, and were now held in bondage. ‘The mountains and swamps of the South were intended by the Almighty,’ said John Brown to me afterward, ‘for a refuge for the slave, and a defense against the oppressor.’ Kagi spoke of having marked out a chain of counties extending continuously through South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. He had traveled over a large portion of the region indicated, and from his own personal knowledge, and with the assistance of Canadian Negroes who had escaped from those states, they had arranged a general plan of attack.

“The counties he named were those which contained the largest proportion of slaves, and would, therefore, be the best in which to strike. The blow struck at Harper’s Ferry was to be in the spring, when the planters were busy, and the slaves most needed. The arms in the arsenal were to be taken to the mountains, with such slaves that joined. The telegraph wires were to be cut, and the railroad tracks torn up in all directions. As fast as possible other bands besides the original ones were to be formed, and a continuous chain of posts established in the mountains. They were to be supported by provisions taken from the farms of the oppressors. They expected to be speedily and constantly reËnforced; first, by the arrival of those men, who, in Canada, were anxiously looking and praying for the time of deliverance, and then by the slaves themselves. The intention was to hold the egress to the free states as long as possible, in order to retreat when that was advisable. Kagi, however, expected to retreat southward, not in the contrary direction. The slaves were to be armed with pikes, scythes, muskets, shotguns, and other simple instruments of defense; the officers, white or black, and such of the men as were skilled and trustworthy, to have the use of the Sharps rifles and revolvers. They anticipated procuring provisions enough for subsistence by forage, as also arms, horses, and ammunition. Kagi said one of the reasons that induced him to go into the enterprise was a full conviction that at no very distant day forcible efforts for freedom would break out among the slaves, and that slavery might be more speedily abolished by such efforts, than by any other means. He knew by observation in the South, that in no point was the system so vulnerable as in its fear of slave-rising. Believing that such a blow would soon be struck, he wanted to organize it so as to make it more effectual, and also, by directing and controlling the Negroes, to prevent some of the atrocities that would necessarily arise from the sudden upheaval of such a mass as the Southern slaves.”^[139]

The knowledge of the country was obtained by personal inspection. Kagi and others of Brown’s lieutenants went out on trips; the old man himself had been in western, northern and southern Virginia, and his Negro friends especially knew these places and routes. One of Brown’s men writes:

“My object in wishing to see Mr. Reynolds, who was a colored man (very little colored, however), was in regard to a military organization which, I had understood, was in existence among the colored people. He assured me that such was the fact, and that its ramifications extended through most, or nearly all, of the slave states. He, himself, I think, had been through many of the slave states visiting and organizing. He referred me to many references in the Southern papers, telling of this and that favorite slave being killed or found dead. These, he asserted, must be taken care of, being the most dangerous element they had to contend with. He also 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. None but colored persons could be admitted to membership, and, in part to corroborate his assertions, he took me to the room in which they held their meetings and used as their arsenal. He showed me a fine collection of arms. He gave me this under the pledge of secrecy which we gave to each other at the Chatham Convention.

“On my return to Cleveland he passed me through the organization, first to J. J. Pierce, colored, at Milan, who paid my bill over 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.”^[140]

Speaking of this league, Hinton also says:

“As one may naturally understand, looking at conditions then existing, there existed something of an organization to assist fugitives and for resistance to their masters. It was found all along the borders from Syracuse, New York, to Detroit, Michigan. As none but colored men were admitted into direct and active membership with this ‘League of Freedom,’ it is quite difficult to trace its workings or know how far its ramifications extended. One of the most interesting phases of slave life, so far as the whites were enabled to see or impinge upon it, was the extent and rapidity of communication among them. Four geographical lines seem to have been chiefly followed. One was that of the coast south of the Potomac, whose almost continuous line of swamps from the vicinity of Norfolk, Va., to the northern border of Florida afforded a refuge for many who could not escape and became ‘marooned’ in their depths, while giving facility to the more enduring to work their way out to the North Star Land. The great Appalachian range and its abutting mountains were long a rugged, lonely, but comparatively safe route to freedom. It was used, too, for many years. Doubtless a knowledge of that fact, for John Brown was always an active Underground Railroad man, had very much to do, apart from its immediate use strategically considered, with the captain’s decision to begin operations therein. Harriet Tubman, whom John Brown met for the first time at St. Catherines in March or April, 1858, was a constant user of the Appalachian route.”^[141]

The trained leadership John Brown found in his Kansas experience, and his wide acquaintance with colored men; the organization of the Negroes culminated in a convention at Chatham, Canada. The raising of money for this work, as time went on, was more and more the object of his various occupations and commercial ventures. These visions of personal wealth to be expended for great deeds failed because the pressure of work for the ideal overcame the pressure of work for funds to finance it. When once he discovered at Syracuse men of means, ready to pay the expenses of men of deeds, he dropped all further thought of his physical necessities, gave himself to the cause and called on them for money. In his earlier calls he regards this not as charity but as wages. He said once: “From about the 20th of May of last year hundreds of men like ourselves lost their whole time, and entirely failed of securing any kind of crop whatever. I believe it safe to say that five hundred free state men lost each one hundred and twenty-five days, at $1.50 per day, which would be, to say nothing of attendant losses, $90,000. I saw the ruins of many free state men’s houses at different places in the Territory, together with stacks of grain wasted and burning, to the amount of, say $50,000; making, in lost time and destruction of property, more than $150,000.”^[142]

And again: “John Brown has devoted the service of himself and two minor sons to the free state cause for more than a year; suffered by the fire before named and by robbery; has gone at his own cost for that period, except that he and his company together have received forty dollars in cash, two sacks of flour, thirty-five pounds bacon, thirty-five pounds sugar, and twenty pounds rice.

“I propose to serve hereafter in the free state cause (provided my needful expenses can be met), should that be desired; and to raise a small regular force to serve on the same condition. My own means are so far exhausted that I can no longer continue in the service at present without the means of defraying my expenses are furnished me.”^[143]

Finally, however, he had to appeal more directly to philanthropy. He was especially encouraged by the Kansas committees. These committees had sprung up in various ways and places in 1854, but had nearly all united in Thayer’s New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1855. This company proposed to aid free state emigration as an investment, but it failed in this respect because of the political troubles, and the panic of 1857. It did, however, arouse great interest throughout the nation. The National Kansas Committee, formed after the sacking of Lawrence, was more belligerent than philanthropic in its projects, while the Boston Relief Committee was distinctly radical. John Brown had some connection with Thayer’s company, but his hopes were especially built on the National Kansas Committee, which Lane had done so much to bring into being, and to which Gerrit Smith contributed many thousands of dollars.

Leaving Kansas secretly in October, 1856, John Brown hastened to the Chicago headquarters of this National Kansas Committee with a proposal that they equip a company for him. The Chicago committee referred this proposal to a full meeting of the members to be held in New York in January. John Brown immediately started East, clad in new clothes which the committee furnished and armed with letters from the governors of Kansas and Ohio. Gerrit Smith welcomed him and said: “Captain John Brown,—you did not need to show me letters from Governor Chase and Governor Robinson to let me know who and what you are. I have known you for many years, and have highly esteemed you as long as I have known you. I know your unshrinking bravery, your self-sacrificing benevolence, your devotion to the cause of freedom, and have long known them. May Heaven preserve your life and health, and prosper your noble purpose!”^[144]

But his half-brother in Ohio wrote:

“Since the trouble growing out of the settlement of the Kansas Territory, I have observed a marked change in brother John. Previous to this, he devoted himself entirely to business; but since these troubles he has abandoned all business, and has become wholly absorbed by the subject of slavery. He had property left him by his father, and of which I had the agency. He has never taken a dollar of it for the benefit of his family, but has called for a portion of it to be expended in what he called the Service. After his return to Kansas he called on me, and I urged him to go home to his family and attend to his private affairs; that I feared his course would prove his destruction and that of his boys.... He replied that he was sorry that I did not sympathize with him; that he knew that he was in the line of his duty, and he must pursue it, though it should destroy him and his family. He stated to me that he was satisfied that he was a chosen instrument in the hands of God to war against slavery. From his manner and from his conversation at this time, I had no doubt he had become insane upon the subject of slavery, and gave him to understand that this was my opinion of him!”^[145]

Mrs. George L. Stearns, the wife of the Massachusetts anti-slavery leader, writes:

“At this juncture, Mr. Stearns wrote to John Brown, that if he would come to Boston and consult with the friends of freedom, he would pay his expenses. They had never met, but ‘Osawatomie Brown’ had become a cherished household name during the anxious summer of 1856. Arriving in Boston they were introduced to each other in the street by a Kansas man, who chanced to be with Mr. Stearns on his way to the committee rooms in Nilis’s Block, School Street. Captain Brown made a profound impression on all who came within the sphere of his moral magnetism. Emerson called him ‘the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into action.’ His absolute superiority to all selfish aims and narrowing pride of opinion touched an answering chord in the self-devotion of Mr. Stearns. A little anecdote illustrates the modest estimate of the work he had in hand. After several efforts to bring together certain friends to meet Captain Brown at his home, in Medford, he found that Sunday was the only day that would serve their several conveniences, and being a little uncertain how it might strike his ideas of religious propriety, he prefaced his invitation with something like an apology. With characteristic promptness came the reply: ‘Mr. Stearns, I have a little ewe-lamb that I want to pull out of the ditch, and the Sabbath will be as good a day as any to do it.’

“It may not be out of place to describe the impression he made upon the writer on this first visit. When I entered the parlor, he was sitting near the hearth, where glowed a bright, open fire. He rose to greet me, stepping forward with such an erect, military bearing, such fine courtesy of demeanor and grave earnestness, that he seemed to my instant thought some old Cromwellian hero suddenly dropped down before me; a suggestion which was presently strengthened by his saying (proceeding with the conversation my entrance had interrupted), ‘Gentlemen, I consider the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence one and inseparable; and it is better that a whole generation of men, women, children should be swept away than that this crime of slavery should exist one day longer.’ These words were uttered like rifle balls; in such emphatic tones and manner that our little Carl, not three years old, remembered it in manhood as one of his earliest recollections. The child stood perfectly still, in the middle of the room, gazing with his beautiful eyes on this new sort of a man, until his absorption arrested the attention of Captain Brown, who soon coaxed him to his knee, though the look and childlike wonder remained. His dress was of some dark brown stuff, quite coarse, but its exactness and neatness produced a singular air of refinement. At dinner, he declined all dainties, saying that he was unaccustomed to luxuries, even to partaking of butter.

“The ‘friends of freedom,’ with whom Mr. Stearns had invited John Brown to consult, were profoundly impressed with his sagacity, integrity, and devotion; notably among these were R. W. Emerson, Theodore Parker, H. D. Thoreau, A. Bronson Alcott, F. B. Sanborn, Dr. S. G. Howe, Col. T. W. Higginson, Governor Andrew, and others.”^[146]

Sanborn says:

“He came to me with a note of introduction from George Walker of Springfield—both of us being Kansas committee men, working to maintain the freedom of that Territory, and Brown had been one of the fighting men there in the summer of 1856, just before. His theory required fighting in Kansas; it was the only sure way, he thought, to keep that region free from the curse of slavery. His mission now was to levy war on it, and for that to raise and equip a company of a hundred well-armed men who should resist aggression in Kansas, or occasionally carry the war into Missouri. Behind that purpose, but not yet disclosed, was his intention to use the men thus put into the field for incursions into Virginia or other slave states. Our State Kansas Committee, of which I was secretary, had a stock of arms that Brown wished to use for this company, and these we voted to him. They had been put in the custody of the National Committee at Chicago, and it was needful to follow up our vote by similar action in the National Committee. For this purpose I was sent to a meeting of that committee at the Astor House, in New York, as the proxy of Dr. Howe and Dr. Samuel Cabot—both members of the National Committee. I met Brown there, and aided him in obtaining from the meeting an appropriation of $5,000 for his work in Kansas, of which, however, he received only $500. The committee also voted to restore the custody of two hundred rifles to the Massachusetts committee which bought them, well knowing that we should turn them over to John Brown, as we did. He found them at Tabor, Ia., in the following September, and took possession; it was with part of these rifles that he entered Virginia two years later.

“At this Astor House meeting Brown was closely questioned by some of the National Committee, particularly by Mr. Hurd of Chicago, as to what he would do with money and arms. He refused to pledge himself to use them solely in Kansas, and declared that his past record ought to be a sufficient guarantee that he should employ them judiciously. If we chose to trust him, well and good, but he would neither make pledges nor disclose his plans. Mr. Hurd had some inkling that Brown would not confine his warfare to Kansas, but the rest of us were willing to trust Brown, and the money was voted.”^[147]

John Brown immediately made a careful estimate of the cost of the necessary equipment which with “two weeks of provisions for men and horses” amounted to $1,774. The funds of the committee, however, were low and the officers suspicious; in April they informed Brown: “The committee are at present out of money, and compelled to decline sending you the five hundred dollars you speak of. They are sorry this has become the case, but it was unavoidable. I need not state to you all the reasons why. The country has stopped sending us contributions, and we have no means of replenishing our treasury. We shall need to have aid from some quarter to enable us to meet our present engagements.”^[148]

Immediately Brown set out to raise his own funds and for three months worked fervently. Just before the Dred Scott Decision he spoke to the Massachusetts legislature from which his friends hoped to secure an appropriation for Kansas. This failed, and Brown started on a tour in New England. He spoke at his old home and made a contract for securing one thousand pikes near there. He showed a Kansas bowie-knife and said: “Such a blade as this, mounted upon a strong shaft, or handle, would make a cheap and effective weapon. Our friends in Kansas are without arms or money to get them; and if I could put such weapons into their hands, they could make them very useful. A resolute woman, with such a pike, could defend her cabin door against man or beast.”^[149]

In Hartford he spoke and said:

“I am trying to raise from twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars in the free states to enable me to continue my efforts in the cause of freedom. Will the people of Connecticut, my native state, afford me some aid in this undertaking? Will the gentlemen and ladies of Hartford, where I make my appeal in this state, set the example of an earnest effort? Will some gentleman or lady take hold and try what can be done by small contributions from counties, cities, towns, societies, or churches, or in some other way? I think the little beggar children in the street are sufficiently interested to warrant their contributing, if there was any need of it, to secure the object.

“I was told that the newspapers in a certain city were dressed in mourning on hearing that I was killed and scalped in Kansas, but I did not know of it until I reached the place. Much good it did me. In the same place I met a more cool reception than in any other place where I have stopped. If my friends will hold up my hands while I live, I will freely absolve them from any expense over me when I am dead. I do not ask for pay, but shall be most grateful for all the assistance I can get.”^[150]

On the day that Buchanan was inaugurated and two days before the Dred Scott Decision, he published a similar appeal in the New York Tribune “with no little sacrifice of personal feeling.” Once he writes: “I am advised that one of Uncle Sam’s hounds is on my track, and I have kept myself hid for a few days to let my track get cold. I have no idea of being taken, and intend (if God will) to go back with irons in, rather than upon, my hands.”^[151]

Dr. Wayland met him in Worcester where a Frederick Douglass meeting was being arranged just after Taney’s decision and says: “I called at the house of Eli Thayer, afterward member of Congress from that district, to ask him to sit on the platform. Here I found a stranger, a man of tall, gaunt form, with a face smooth-shaven, destitute of full beard, that later became a part of history. The children were climbing over his knees; he said, ‘The children always come to me.’ I was then introduced to John Brown of Osawatomie. How little one imagined then that in less than three years the name of this plain homespun man would fill America and Europe! Mr. Brown consented to occupy a place on the platform, and at the urgent request of the audience, spoke briefly. It is one of the curious facts, that many men who do it are utterly unable to tell about it. John Brown, a flame of fire in action, was dull in speech.”^[152]

Later in the same month Brown accompanied Sanborn and Conway to ex-Governor Reeder’s home in Pennsylvania to induce him to return to Kansas, but he declined. April 1st found Brown back in Massachusetts, where for a week or more he was again in hiding from United States officers, probably among his Negro friends in Springfield. It was in April, too, that he took another step in his plan, namely, toward securing military training for his band. He stated according to Realf that, “for twenty or thirty years the idea had possessed him like a passion of giving liberty to the slaves; that he made a journey to England, during which he made a tour upon the European continent, inspecting all fortifications, and especially all earthwork forts which he could find, with a view of applying the knowledge thus gained, with modifications and inventions of his own, to a mountain warfare in the United States. He stated that he had read all the books upon insurrectionary warfare, that he could lay his hands on: the Roman warfare, the successful opposition of the Spanish chieftains during the period when Spain was a Roman province,—how, with ten thousand men, divided and subdivided into small companies, acting simultaneously, yet separately, they withstood the whole consolidated power of the Roman Empire through a number of years. In addition to this he had become very familiar with the successful warfare waged by Schamyl, the Circassian chief, against the Russians; he had posted himself in relation to the wars of Toussaint L’Ouverture; he had become thoroughly acquainted with the wars in Hayti and the islands round about.”^[153]

Despite his own knowledge, however, he felt the need of expert advice, and meeting a former lieutenant of Garibaldi, one Hugh Forbes, he was captivated by him, and forthwith hired him to drill his men. Forbes was an excitable, ill-balanced Englishman, who had fought in Italy and at last landed penniless in New York. He thought Brown simply an agent of wealthy and powerful interests and that the whole North was ready to attack slavery. He proposed translating and publishing a manual of guerrilla warfare and John Brown gave him $600 for this work. He was then to join the leader and they would together go to the West and gather and drill a company. This large outlay left John Brown but little in his purse, for, after all, his efforts had been disappointing, and he departed from New England with a quaint half-sarcastic “Farewell to the Plymouth Rocks, Bunker Hill monuments, Charter Oaks and Uncle Tom’s Cabins.” He wrote:

“He has left for Kansas; has been trying since he came out of the Territory to secure an outfit, or, in other words, the means of arming and thoroughly equipping his regular minutemen, who are mixed up with the people of Kansas. And he leaves the states with the deepest sadness, that after exhausting his own small means, and with his family and with his brave men suffering hunger, cold, nakedness, and some of them sickness, wounds, imprisonment in irons with extreme cruel treatment, and others death; that, lying on the ground for months in the most sickly, unwholesome, and uncomfortable places, some of the time with the sick and wounded, destitute of shelter, hunted like wolves, and sustained in part by Indians; that after all this, in order to sustain a cause which every citizen of this ‘glorious Republic’ is under equal moral obligation to do, and for the neglect of which he will be held accountable by God,—a cause in which every man, woman, and child of the entire human family has a deep and awful interest,—that when no wages are asked or expected, he cannot secure, amid all wealth, luxury, and extravagance of this ‘heaven-exalted’ people, even the necessary supplies of the common soldier. ‘How are the mighty fallen!’

“I am destitute of horses, baggage wagons, tents, harness, saddles, bridles, holsters, spurs, and belts; camp equipage, such as cooking and eating utensils, blankets, knapsacks, intrenching tools, axes, shovels, spades, mattocks, crowbars; have not a supply of ammunition; have not money sufficient to pay freight and traveling expenses; and left my family poorly supplied with common necessaries.”^[154]

Forbes also disappointed him by his delay, lingering in New York and not appearing in Iowa until August. Brown, who had been sick again, was nevertheless pushing matters among his Kansas friends. He wrote in June: “There are some half-dozen men I want a visit from at Tabor, Ia., to come off in the most quiet way;... I have some very important matters to confer with some of you about. Let there be no words about it.”^[155]

Arriving at Tabor early in August, Brown’s first business was to secure the arms voted him. Because of a previous failure to equip emigrants at points further east, the Massachusetts Kansas State Committee had sent 200 Sharps rifles to Tabor, Ia. Here they were stored in a minister’s barn until John Brown called for and removed them. Hugh Forbes finally arrived August 9th, bringing with him copies of his “Manual for the Patriotic Volunteer.” Brown wrote home that he and his son Owen were “beginning to take lessons and have, we think, a capable teacher.”

Differences, however, soon arose. Forbes wanted $100 per month in addition to the $600 previously paid, while Brown apparently considered that he had already advanced a half year’s wage. Then too matters were on a meaner scale than Forbes had dreamed; there was no money, few followers and little glory in sight. He felt himself duped; he despised Brown’s ability and proposed taking full command himself, projecting slave raids into Missouri and other states. Brown was obdurate, and early in November, the foreign tactician suddenly left for the East. This disturbed Brown’s plans. He had intended to establish two or three military schools, one in Iowa, one in northern Ohio and one in Canada. Forbes’s desertion made him determine to give up the Iowa school and hasten to Ohio. He therefore passed quickly to Kansas, arriving in the vicinity of Lawrence, November 5, 1857.

Cook says:

“I met him at the house of E. B. Whitman, about four miles from Lawrence, K. T., which, I think, was about the first of November following. I was told that he intended to organize a company for the purpose of putting a stop to the aggressions of the pro-slavery men. I agreed to join him and was asked if I knew of any other young men who were perfectly reliable whom I thought would join also. I recommended Richard Realf, L. F. Parsons, and R. J. Hinton. I received a note on the next Sunday morning, while at breakfast in the Whitney House, from Captain Brown, requesting me to come up that day, and to bring Realf, Parsons, and Hinton with me. Realf and Hinton were not in town, and therefore I could not extend to them the invitation. Parsons and myself went and had a long talk with Captain Brown. A few days afterward I received another note from Captain Brown, which read, as near as I can recollect, as follows:

“‘Captain Cook:—Dear Sir—You will please get everything ready to join me at Topeka by Monday night next. Come to Mrs. Sheridan’s, two miles south of Topeka, and bring your arms, ammunition, clothing and other articles you may require. Bring Parsons with you if he can get ready in time. Please keep very quiet about this matter. Yours, etc.,

“I made all my arrangements for starting at the time appointed. Parsons, Realf, and Hinton could not get ready. I left them at Lawrence, and started in a carriage for Topeka. Stopped at a hotel over night, and left early next morning for Mrs. Sheridan’s to meet Captain Brown. Staid a day and a half at Mrs. S.’s—then left for Topeka, at which place we were joined by Whipple, Moffett, and Kagi. Left Topeka for Nebraska City, and camped at night on the prairie northeast of Topeka. Here, for the first, I learned that we were to leave Kansas to attend a military school during the winter. It was the intention of the party to go to Ashtabula County, Ohio.”^[156]

In this way Brown enlisted John E. Cook, whom he had met about the time of the turn of the battle of Black Jack; Luke F. Parsons, who was a member of his old Kansas company; and Richard Realf, a newspaper man. At Topeka Aaron D. Stevens, a veteran free state fighter, joined, with Charles W. Moffett, an Iowa man, and John Henry Kagi, who became his right hand. With these six he returned to Tabor, where he found William H. Seeman and Charles Plummer Tidd, two of his former followers; Richard Richardson, an intelligent Negro fugitive; and his son Owen. This party of eleven started hurriedly for Ashtabula, O., late in November. “Good-bye,” said John Brown, “you will hear from me. We’ve had enough talk about ‘bleeding Kansas.’ I will make a bloody spot at another point to be talked about.”^[157]

So the band started and pressed on their lonely way over two hundred and fifty miles across the wild wastes of Iowa until they came to the village of Springdale, about fifty miles from the Missouri. This was a little settlement intensely anti-slavery in sentiment. Here Brown had planned to stop long enough to sell his teams and then proceed by railroad, eastward. The panic of this year, beginning late in August, was by December in full swing, and he found himself without funds, and with no remittances from the East. He therefore decided to have his men spend the winter at Springdale while he went East alone. The Quakers received them gladly and they were quartered at a farmhouse three miles from the village, where they paid only a dollar a week for board. The winter passed pleasantly but busily.

Stevens was made drill-master; all arose at five, breakfasted, studied until ten and drilled from ten to twelve. In the afternoon they practiced gymnastics and shooting at targets. Five nights in the week a mock legislature was held either at the home or in the schoolhouse near by. Sometimes Realf and others listened to the townspeople, and there was much visiting. Before John Brown left for the East, he revealed his plans in part to his landlord and two other citizens of Springdale.

“Some time toward spring, John Brown came to my house one Sunday afternoon,” said this man. “He informed me that he wished to have some private talk with me; we went into the parlor. He then told me his plans for the future. He had not then decided to attack the armory at Harper’s Ferry, but intended to take some fifty to one hundred men into the hills near the Ferry and remain there until he could get together quite a number of slaves, and then take what conveyances were needed to transport the Negroes and their families to Canada. And in a short time after the excitement had abated, to make a strike in some other Southern state; and to continue on making raids, as opportunity offered, until slavery ceased to exist. I did my best to convince him that the probabilities were that all would be killed. He said that, as for himself, he was willing to give his life for the slaves. He told me repeatedly, while talking, that he believed he was an instrument in the hands of God through which slavery would be abolished. I said to him: ‘You and your handful of men cannot cope with the whole South.’ His reply was: ‘I tell you, Doctor, it will be the beginning of the end of slavery.’ He also told me that but two of his men, Kagi and Stevens, knew what his intentions were.”^[158]

The landlord several times sat late into the night arguing with Brown about his plans. Some of the neighbors were persuaded to join the band, among them the two Coppocs, and George B. Gill, a Canadian. Stewart Taylor also enlisted there. Hinton, however, still supposed the battle-ground would be Kansas. He says:

“There was no attempt to make a secret of their drilling, and as Gill shows and Cook stated in his ‘confession,’ the neighborhood folks all understood that this band of earnest young men were preparing for something far out of the ordinary. Of course Kansas was presumed to be the objective point. But generally the impression prevailed that when the party moved again, it would be somewhere in the direction of the slave states. The atmosphere of those days was charged with disturbance. It is difficult to determine how many of the party actually knew that John Brown designed to invade Virginia. All the testimony goes to show that it is most probable that not until after the assembling at the Maryland farm in 1859 was there a full, definite announcement of Harper’s Ferry as the objective point. That he fully explained his purpose to make reprisals on slavery wherever the opportunity offered is without question, but except to Owen, who was vowed to work in his early youth, and Kagi, who informed me at Osawatomie in July, 1858, that Brown gave him his fullest confidence upon their second interview at Topeka in 1857, there is every reason to believe that among the men the details of the intended movement were matters of after confidence. My own experience illustrates this. I was absent from Lawrence when John Brown recruited his little company. He had left already for Iowa before I returned. I met Realf just as he was leaving, and we talked without reserve, he assuring me that the purpose was just to prepare a fighting nucleus for resisting the enforcement of the Lecompton Constitution, which it was then expected Congress might try to impose upon us. Through this, advantage was to be taken of the agitation to prepare for a movement against slavery in Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian Territory and possibly Louisiana. At Kagi’s request (with whom I maintained for nearly two years an important, if irregular, correspondence), I began a systematic investigation of the conditions, roads and topography of the Southwest, visiting a good deal of the Indian Territory, with portions of southwest Missouri, western Arkansas, and northern Texas, also, under the guise of examining railroad routes, etc.”^[159]

Forbes in the meantime hurried East, nursing his wrath. He had all of a foreigner’s difficulty in following the confused threads of another nation’s politics at a critical time. He classed Seward, Wilson, Sumner, Phillips and John Brown together as anti-slavery men who were ready to attack the institution vi et armis. This movement which he proposed to lead had been started, and then, as he supposed, shamelessly neglected by its sponsors while he had been thrust upon the tender mercies of John Brown. He was angry and penniless and he intended to have reparation. He first sought out Frederick Douglass, but was received coldly. He appears to have been more successful with McCune Smith and the New York group of Negro leaders. He immediately, too, began to address letters to prominent Republicans.

John Brown was annoyed at Forbes’s behavior but seems at first not to have taken it seriously. He left his men at Springdale, and started East in January, arriving at Douglass’s Rochester home in February. Douglass says:

“He desired to stop with me several weeks, but added, ‘I will not stay unless you will allow me to pay board.’ Knowing that he was no trifler, but meant all he said, and desirous of retaining him under my roof, I charged him three dollars a week. While here he spent most of his time in correspondence. He wrote often to George L. Stearns, of Boston, Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, and many others, and received many letters in return. When he was not writing letters, he was writing and revising a constitution, which he meant to put in operation by means of the men who should go with him in the mountains. He said that to avoid anarchy and confusion there should be a regularly constituted government, which each man who came with him should be sworn to honor and support.... His whole time and thought were given to this subject. It was the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night till, I confess, it began to be something of a bore to me. Once in a while he would say he could, with a few resolute men, capture Harper’s Ferry and supply himself with arms belonging to the government at that place; but he never announced his intention to do so.

“It was, however, very evidently passing in his mind as a thing that he might do. I paid but little attention to such remarks, although I never doubted that he thought just what he said. Soon after his coming to me he asked me to get for him two smoothly planed boards, upon which he could illustrate, with a pair of dividers, by a drawing, the plan of fortification which he meant to adopt in the mountains. These forts were to be so arranged as to connect one with the other by secret passages, so that if one was carried, another could easily be fallen back upon, and be the means of dealing death to the enemy at the very moment when he might think himself victorious. I was less interested in these drawings than my children were; but they showed that the old man had an eye to the means as well as to the end, and was giving his best thought to the work he was about to take in hand.”^[160]

From Rochester went letters sounding his friends, as he was uncertain of the real devotion of the many types of Abolitionists. He wrote Theodore Parker:

“I am again out of Kansas and at this time concealing my whereabouts; but for very different reasons, however, from those I had for doing so at Boston last spring. I have nearly perfected arrangements for carrying out an important measure in which the world has a deep interest, as well as Kansas; and only lack from five to eight hundred dollars to do so,—the same object for which I asked for the secret-service money last fall. It is my only errand here; and I have written to some of my mutual friends in regard to it, but they none of them understand my views so well as you do, and I cannot explain without their first committing themselves more than I know of their doing. I have heard that Parker Pillsbury, and some others in your quarters hold out ideas similar to those on which I act; but I have no personal acquaintance with them, and know nothing of their influence or means. Cannot you either by direct or indirect action do something to further me? Do you know of some parties whom you could induce to give their Abolition theories a thoroughly practical shape? I hope that this will prove to be the last time I shall be driven to harass a friend in such a way. Do you think any of my Garrisonian friends, either at Boston, Worcester, or any other place, can be induced to supply a little ‘straw,’ if I will absolutely make ‘brick’? I have written George L. Stearns, of Medford, and Mr. F. B. Sanborn, of Concord; but I am not informed as to how deeply-dyed Abolitionists those friends are, and must beg you to consider this communication strictly confidential, unless you know of parties who will feel and act, and hold their peace. I want to bring the thing about during the next sixty days.”^[161]

To Higginson he wrote: “Railroad business on a somewhat extended scale is the identical object for which I am trying to get means. I have been connected with that business, as commonly conducted, from my childhood, and never let an opportunity slip. I have been operating to some purpose the past season; but I know I have a measure on foot that I feel sure would awaken in you something more than a common interest if you could understand it. I have just written to my friends G. L. Stearns, and F. B. Sanborn, asking them to meet me for consultation at Peterboro, N. Y. I am very anxious to have you come along, as I feel certain that you will never regret having been one of the council.”^[162]

The Boston folk hesitated and suggested that Brown come there. He demurred on account of his being too well known. Finally Sanborn alone went to meet Brown and thus relates his experience:

“After dinner, and after a few minutes spent with our guests in the parlor, I went with Mr. Smith, John Brown, and my classmate Morton, to the room of Mr. Morton in the third story. Here, in the long winter evening which followed, the whole outline of Brown’s campaign in Virginia was laid before our little council, to the astonishment and almost the dismay of those present. The constitution which he had drawn for the government of his men, and of such territory as they might occupy, was exhibited by Brown, its provisions recited and explained, the proposed movements of his men indicated, and the middle of May was named as the time of the attack. To begin his hazardous adventure he asked for but eight hundred dollars, and would think himself rich with a thousand. Being questioned and opposed by his friends, he laid before them in detail his methods of organization and fortification; of settlement in the South, if that were possible, and of retreat through the North, if necessary; and his theory of the way in which such an invasion would be received in the country at large. He desired from his friends a patient hearing of his statements, a candid opinion concerning his plan, and, if that were favorable, then such aid in money and support as we could give him. We listened until after midnight, proposing objections and raising difficulties; but nothing could shake the purpose of the old Puritan. Every difficulty had been foreseen and provided against in some manner; the grand difficulty of all,—the manifest hopelessness of undertaking anything so vast with such slender means,—was met with the text of Scripture: ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’ He had made nearly all his arrangements: he had so many men enlisted, so many hundred weapons; all he now wanted was the small sum of money. With that he would open his campaign in the spring, and he had no doubt that the enterprise ‘would pay’ as he said.

“On the 23d of February the discussion was renewed, and, as usually happened when he had time enough, Captain Brown began to prevail over the objections of his friends. At any rate, they saw that they must either stand by him, or leave him to dash himself alone against the fortress he was determined to assault. To withhold aid would only delay, not prevent him; nothing short of betraying him to the enemy would do that. As the sun was setting over the snowy hills of the region where we met, I walked for an hour with Gerrit Smith among those woods and fields (then included in his broad manor) which his father had purchased of the Indians and bequeathed to him. Brown was left at home by the fire, discussing the points of theology with Charles Stewart, an old captain under Wellington, who also happened to be visiting at the house. Mr. Smith restated in his eloquent way the daring propositions of Brown, whose import he understood fully; and then said in substance: ‘You see how it is; our dear old friend has made up his mind to this course, and cannot be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must support him. I will raise so many hundred dollars for him; you must lay the case before your friends in Massachusetts and perhaps they will do the same. I see no other way.’ For myself, I had reached the same conclusion, and engaged to bring the scheme at once to the attention of the three Massachusetts men to whom Brown had written, and also of Dr. S. G. Howe, who had sometimes favored action almost as extreme as this proposed by Brown. I returned to Boston on the 25th of February, and on the same day communicated the enterprise to Theodore Parker and Wentworth Higginson. At the suggestion of Parker, Brown, who had gone to Brooklyn, N. Y., was invited to visit Boston secretly, and did so on the 4th of March, taking a room at the American House, in Hanover Street, and remaining for the most part in his room during the four days of his stay. Mr. Parker was deeply interested in the project, but not very sanguine of its success. He wished to see it tried, believing that it must do good even if it failed. Brown remained at the American House until Monday, March 8th, when he departed for Philadelphia.”

On the 6th of March he wrote to his son John from Boston: “My call here has met with a hearty response, so that I feel assured of at least tolerable success. I ought to be thankful for this. All has been effected by quiet meeting of a few choice friends, it being scarcely known that I have been in the city.”^[163]

Leaving the money-raising to Sanborn and Smith, Brown turned to his Negro friends, saying to his eldest son, meantime: “I have been thinking that I would like to have you make a trip to Bedford, Chambersburg, Gettysburg, and Uniontown in Pennsylvania, traveling slowly along, and inquiring of every man on the way, or every family of the right stripe, and getting acquainted with them as much as you could. When you look at the location of those places, you will readily perceive the advantage of getting some acquaintance in those parts.”^[164]

And then he wrote two touching letters; one to his eldest daughter and one to his staunch friend, Sanborn.

To Ruth Brown he wrote: “The anxiety I feel to see my wife and children once more I am unable to describe. I want exceedingly to see my big baby Ruth’s baby, and to see how that little company of sheep look about this time. The cries of my poor sorrow-strieken, despairing children, whose ‘tears on their cheeks’ are ever in my eyes, and whose sighs are ever in my ears, may however prevent my enjoying the happiness I so much desire. But, courage, courage, courage!—the great work of my life (the unseen hand that ‘guided me, and who had indeed holden my right hand, may hold it still,’ though I have not known Him at all as I ought) I may yet see accomplished (God helping), and be permitted to return, and ‘rest at evening.’

“Oh, my daughter Ruth! Could any plan be devised whereby you could let Henry go ‘to school’ (as you expressed it in your letter to him while in Kansas), I would rather now have him ‘for another term’ than to have a hundred average scholars. I have a particular and very important, but not dangerous, place for him to fill in the ‘school,’ and I know of no man living so well adapted to fill it. I am quite confident some way can be devised so that you and your children could be with him, and be quite happy even, and safe; but God forbid me to flatter you in trouble!”^[165]

To his friend Sanborn he said: “I believe when you come to look at the ample field I labor in, and the rich harvest which not only this entire country but the whole world during the present and future generations may reap from its successful cultivation, you will feel that you are in it, an entire unit. What an inconceivable amount of good you might so effect by your counsel, your example, your encouragement, your natural and acquired ability for active service! And then, how very little we can possibly lose! Certainly the cause is enough to live for, if not to—for. I have only had this one opportunity, in a life of nearly sixty years; and could I be continued ten times as long again, I might not again have another equal opportunity. God has honored but comparatively a very small part of mankind with any possible chance for such mighty and soul-satisfying rewards. But, my dear friend, if you should make up your mind to do so, I trust it will be wholly from the promptings of your own spirit, after having thoroughly counted the cost. I would flatter no man into such a measure, if I could do it ever so easily.

“I expect nothing but to endure hardness; but I expect to effect a mighty conquest, even though it be like the last victory of Samson. I felt for a number of years, in earlier life, a steady, strong desire to die; but since I saw any prospect of becoming a ‘reaper’ in the great harvest, I have not only felt quite willing to live, but have enjoyed life much; and am now rather anxious to live for a few years more.”^[166]