For $35 in gold Brown rented the farm, which consisted of two log structures, some outbuildings, and a pasture. The main house sat about 100 yards off the public road connecting Harpers Ferry with Boonesborough and Sharpsburg, Md., and contained a basement kitchen and storerooms, a second-floor living room and bedrooms, and an attic. The second floor was used as kitchen, parlor, and dining room, and the attic served as a storeroom, drilling room, and “prison” to keep the men out of sight. Near the farmhouse stood a small cabin that later became a storage place and sleeping quarters for some of the raiders.

Brown’s chief fear was that neighbors would become suspicious of “Isaac Smith & Sons” and possibly uncover his revolutionary plans. Reasoning that nearby families would be less distrustful with women among the group, he appealed to his wife and daughter Annie at their home in North Elba, N.Y., to come live with him, saying that “It will be likely to prove the most valuable service you can ever render to the world.” Mrs. Brown was unable to make the long journey, but Annie and Oliver’s wife Martha did join him in mid-July. Their presence proved of inestimable value not only in alleviating suspicion but in contributing to the morale of the men. Martha served as cook and housekeeper, preparing meals on a wood stove in the upstairs living room; Annie kept constant watch for prying neighbors. “When I washed dishes,” noted Annie many years later,

I stood at the end of the table where I could see out of the window and open door if any one approached the house. I was constantly on the lookout while carrying the victuals across the porch, and while I was tidying or sweeping the rooms, and always at my post on the porch when the men were eating. My evenings were spent on the porch or sitting on the stairs, watching or listening.

His base established, Brown laid plans to assemble his arms and supplies and to gather in his followers. On July 10 he wrote to John Kagi at Chambersburg, Pa., where an arms depot had been set up, giving him directions for forwarding the waiting men and the “freight”—200 Sharps rifles, an equal number of pistols, and a thousand pikes. The weapons, crated in large wooden boxes marked “Hardware and Castings,” were shipped from Ohio to Chambersburg where Kagi sent them by wagon to Brown at the Kennedy farm. Supplies were acquired at various places between Chambersburg and Harpers Ferry.

Alone and in twos and threes, Brown’s followers began to assemble at the farm. Watson Brown arrived on August 6. “Tall and rather fair, with finely knit frame, athletic and active,” the 24-year-old Watson brought with him two of his brothers-in-law and North Elba neighbors, William and Dauphin Thompson. The Thompsons had not previously taken active roles in the anti-slavery movement but they were dedicated abolitionists. William, 26 years old, was fun-loving and good natured. He had started for Kansas in 1856 but turned back before reaching there. His 20-year-old brother Dauphin had never been away from home before. Handsome, inexperienced, with curly, golden hair and a soft complexion, he seemed “more like a girl than a warrior” and was “diffident and quiet.” Both had come to the Kennedy farm because they were firmly convinced of the justness of John Brown’s cause.

Next came Aaron Stevens and Charles Plummet Tidd, a 25-year-old former Maine woodsman. Tidd was a Kansas veteran. He had been one of the first to join Brown at Tabor, Iowa, in 1857 and had remained one of his closest associates ever since. He was quick-tempered, but according to Annie Brown, “His rages soon passed and then he tried all he could to repair damages. He was a fine singer and of strong family affections.”

Tidd and Stevens were followed by 22-year-old Albert Hazlett, another veteran of the Kansas fighting, Canadian-born Stewart Taylor, and two brothers from Iowa, Edwin and Barclay Coppoc. Hazlett had worked on his brother’s farm in western Pennsylvania before joining Brown at the Kennedy farm. He was totally committed to the overthrow of slavery. “I am willing to die in the cause of liberty,” he said; “if I had ten thousand lives I would willingly lay them all down for the same cause.” Taylor, 23 years old, was once a wagonmaker. He had met Brown in Iowa in 1858 and was “heart and soul in the anti-slavery cause.” Scholarly, a good debater, and “very fond of studying history,” Taylor, like Stevens, was a spiritualist and had a premonition that he would die at Harpers Ferry. The Coppocs were Quakers by birth and training. They were in Kansas during the troubles there but took no part in the fighting. Edwin, at 24, was 4 years older than his brother Barclay. Both had joined Brown initially in 1858 at Springdale, Iowa, where they were living with their mother, shortly before the Chatham Convention.

Twenty-year-old William H. Leeman arrived near the end of August. Born and educated in Maine, he had worked in a Haverhill, Mass., shoe factory before going to Kansas in 1856 where he served in Brown’s “Liberty Guards” militia company. Impulsive, hard to control, the 6-foot-tall Leeman “smoked a good deal and drank sometimes,” but he had “a good intellect with great ingenuity.” Shortly before the raid he wrote his mother that he was “warring with slavery, the greatest curse that ever infected America. We are determined to strike for freedom, incite the slaves to rebellion, and establish a free government. With the help of God we will carry it through.”

After Leeman came Dangerfield Newby, a mulatto born a slave but freed by his Scotch father, and Osborn P. Anderson, a 33-year-old free Negro who had worked as a printer before joining Brown in Canada in 1858. Newby, at 44 the oldest of the group save for Brown himself, had a wife and several children in bondage in the South. He came to the Kennedy farmhouse convinced that the only way to free them was with rifle and bullet. Week after week he would read and reread a worn letter from his wife in which she begged him to “Buy me and the baby, that has just commenced to crawl, as soon as possible, for if you do not get me somebody else will.”

“Emperor” Shields Green, a 23-year-old illiterate escaped slave from Charleston, S.C., joined up at Chambersburg where Brown had gone in mid-August to enlist the aid of the famed Negro abolitionist, orator, and journalist, Frederick Douglass. Brown and Douglass had first met at Springfield, Mass., in 1847. Since then they had become good friends. When the Negro leader learned the details of the planned assault on Harpers Ferry, he refused to participate, arguing that an attack on the Government would “array the whole country” against him and antagonize the very people to whom the abolitionists looked for support. Moreover, Douglass believed that the plan could not succeed, that Brown “was going into a perfect steel-trap, and that once in he would never get out alive.” Before leaving, Douglass asked Shields Green, who had accompanied him to the meeting, what he intended to do. Green replied simply, “I b’lieve I’ll go wid de ole man.”

Life at the Kennedy farm was wearing and tedious. Brown’s most trying task was to keep his slowly increasing force occupied and out of sight. Forced to remain in the two small buildings during the day, the men had little to do. The long summer days were mostly spent reading magazines, telling stories, arguing politics and religion, and playing checkers and cards. They drilled frequently and studied the art of guerrilla warfare from a specially prepared military manual.

Meals were served downstairs in the farmhouse, with Annie and Martha standing guard while the men ate. After breakfast each morning, John Brown would read from the Bible and utter a short prayer. Occasionally he would travel into Harpers Ferry to pick up a Baltimore newspaper to which he subscribed or to purchase flour from the mill on Virginius Island. If a neighbor arrived unexpectedly during mealtime, the men would gather up the food, dishes, and table cloth and carry them to the attic.

Famed Negro abolitionist Frederick Douglass supported Brown’s Kansas activities but warned him against attacking Harpers Ferry. Douglass refused to participate in the raid, but his friend Shields Green decided to go with Brown.