MOBILIZING THE PROVISIONAL ARMY

Confusion on thy banners wait!
Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing.—Gray

Released from further responsibility for his fugitive wards, and wearing the laurels of his recent adventures, Brown began the reorganization of his forces for the final hazard. Arriving at Cleveland March 15th, he proceeded to sell, publicly, what remained of his share of the Kansas-Missouri plunder which had been forwarded to that point from Springdale: two horses and a mule. Brown announced that, notwithstanding the Missouri origin of the stock, they were now "Abolition" animals; explaining his metaphor by the statement that he had "converted" them. A pen picture of Brown by Artemus Ward, reads as follows:[355]

Kagi appeared to him "like a melancholy brigand, some of whose statements were no doubt false and some shamefully true." A summary of the lecture Brown delivered at Cleveland reads as follows:[356]

In this speech Brown made the only acknowledgment of record, of his relation to the Pottawatomie assassinations. The Leader, which was friendly to Brown, quoted him as saying,[357] that "he had never killed anybody, although on some occasions he had shown his young men with him, how some things might be done as well as others and they had done the business." Brown also impressed Mr. Alcott, who said of him after hearing his lecture at Concord, May 8th:[358]

The principal matter in hand now was to finance the initial movement of the campaign. All the skies were clear. Time and the Kansas diversion had discredited Forbes's truthful statements and eliminated him from the problem. There was to be no further shifting of the scene, or hesitation or faltering. The flood in his affairs was rising, carrying him on its crest, to his fate. To the intelligent and insistent perseverence of Mr. Sanborn belongs the credit, or the discredit, as the reader may elect, for making Brown's operations possible. He stood, or became sponsor for Brown's integrity of purpose in January, 1857, and financed his subsequent career. May 30th, he wrote Colonel Higginson:

Mr. Sanborn states[360] that in all, a little more than four thousand dollars passed through the hands of the secret committee or was known to it, as having been contributed in aid of the "Virginia enterprise:" and that those who contributed thirty-eight hundred dollars of this sum, did so "with a clear knowledge of the use to which it would be put."

At North Elba, about June 16th, Brown bid his family farewell and went to West Andover where he made arrangements with his son John to take upon himself the combined duties of quartermaster general, and recruiting and mustering officer. From Ohio he went to Pennsylvania, writing to Kagi, from Pittsburgh, under the name of S. Monroe. He was at Bedford on June 26th, and at Chambersburg on the 28th. From Chamberburg, on June 30th, in company with two of his sons, Owen and Oliver, and Jeremiah G. Anderson. Brown left for the "front." On that day he wrote Kagi under the name of "I Smith & Sons" saying that they were leaving for Harper's Ferry and would be looking for "cheap lands near the railroad in all probability." July 3d, they arrived at Sandy Hook, Maryland, and spent the next day reconnoitering the country on the Maryland side of the Potomac above Harper's Ferry.

To a Mr. Unseld, whom they met during the morning, Brown stated that they were farmers from northern New York and because of late frosts and other disadvantages, they had decided to seek a new location; that they had a little money and intended to buy a farm, but would prefer to rent a place until they became better acquainted with farm values in the neighborhood. He also told him that his business would be buying fat cattle for the New York market. Unseld suggested to them a farm belonging to the heirs of a Dr. Kennedy, recently deceased, which was then for sale. This farm was located about five miles from Harpers Ferry on the Boonsboro road. It had probably been selected for headquarters for the "Provisional Army" by Cook, who had been stationed at Harper's Ferry for more than a year.

The Kennedy farm suited Brown "exactly." He went to Sharpsburg immediately and leased two houses that were on the place, with firewood, and pasture for a horse and a cow, until March 1, 1860; the total consideration being thirty-five dollars. The main house stands about three hundred yards from the road on the south side. "There was a basement, kitchen and a storeroom, a living room and bed rooms on the second story, and an attic." The "cabin" stood about the same distance from the road on the north side of it. Notwithstanding the distance from the road. Brown was constantly in danger of being brought under suspicion by the friendly but inquisitive neighbors, who were constantly dropping in to see the newcomers; but who were never invited to come into the house. To further disarm suspicion Brown, on July 5th, sent for his wife and daughter Anne, to report at headquarters. Mrs. "Smith," however, seemed to think she could not so readily abandon her home and her young children. But Oliver Brown's young wife came instead: she and "Annie" arrived about the middle of July. On the 10th of this month, Brown wrote to Kagi, who was at Chambersburg, that it would be "distressing in many ways, to have a lot of hands for many days, out of employ. We must make up our lot of hands as nearly at one & the same time as possible."[361]

August 11th, there was a panic on the bourse of the Provisional Government. Kagi reported the arrival of fifteen boxes of arms with freight charges amounting to $85.00, which caused Brown to ask his son John to solicit for him "a little more assistance, say two or three hundred dollars." Continuing he said:

In due time his requisition for funds was honored from the never-failing purse of Gerrit Smith. Brown's means of transportation consisted of a horse and a wagon, but a contract for moving the arms from Chambersburg to the Kennedy farm was awarded to a "Pennsylvania Dutchman" who had a large freight wagon.[363]

Meanwhile the movement progressed in a systematic and orderly manner. There was grave danger, however, that the secret of the contemplated insurrection would transpire through the loquacity of the many persons, estimated by Mr. Villard at possibly, eighty, who had more or less knowledge of the enterprise. Brown seems to have feared that Cook, especially, might give up information that would work disaster. It was not that he held his loyalty in doubt, but he had been reported to the commander-in-chief on a previous occasion, by the honorable secretary of state, Mr. Realf, for "cacoethes loquendi," and Brown feared a recrudescence of the malady. In a letter to Kagi at Chambersburg, August 11th, he severely reproved those who had made their business in Maryland a subject for general correspondence. But his expressions of displeasure, did not prevent Leeman from writing to his mother, a month and a half later, as follows:[364]

A warning, which was received by the Honorable Secretary of War, August 25th, notifying the department that Brown was then promoting a general insurrection among the slaves, probably had its origin in Cook's indiscreet volubility. The letter, addressed to "J. B. Floyd, Sec'y of War," "Private" is as follows:[365]

This letter, which should have led to the immediate overthrow and wreck of the Provisional Government of the United States, had been enclosed in an envelope addressed to the postmaster at Cincinnati, and mailed at Big Rock, Iowa. At Cincinnati, August 23d, it was remailed to the Honorable Secretary. Mr. Floyd received it at Red Sweet Springs, Virginia, August 25th, and while not attaching sufficient importance to the subject of the communication to read it a second time, he preserved the letter, and, after the denouement, published it. In explanation of his indifference to the contents of this letter, he stated to the Mason Committee, that the reference to the arsenal in Maryland misled him, there being no armory in that state. He therefore, supposed the whole thing was a hoax, and gave it no further attention. The history of the letter was revealed in later years by its author, David J. Gue, of Scott County, Iowa, who obtained his information from Mr. Moses Varney, of Springdale.[366]

As the days passed, the men, who were to form the nucleus of the army of invasion, straggled into Harper's Ferry and reported at headquarters for duty. August 6th, Watson Brown arrived, and with him came the Thompson brothers, William and Dauphin. They were brothers to Henry Thompson, who had been with Brown in Kansas in 1856. Then came Tidd and Stevens, et al., and last of all, but one of the most welcome of all the recruits, came Francis J. Merriam. He arrived at the Kenneday farm October 15th, with six hundred dollars in gold in his pockets, which he covered into the Provisional Treasury. The arrival of Merriam with his gold relieved the strain upon Brown's exchequer. The commander-in-chief had been compelled to negotiate a loan of forty dollars from Lieutenant Coppoc, upon the credit of the Provisional Government, to meet the current expenses of the expedition. That deficit was now made good, leaving a handsome surplus on hand. When Brown was taken into custody three days later, he had with him two hundred and fifty or sixty dollars in gold and silver. Mrs. Anne Brown Adams said:[367] "The good Father in Heaven who furnishes daily bread sent Francis J. Merriam down there with his money to help them just at the moment it was needed." But it may also be said that in the varying vicissitudes of Brown's fortunes, almost any moment was just such a moment as this. "His money," Mr. Villard states, was Merriam's "only contribution of value to the cause.... In addition to his other physical frailties he had lost the sight of one of his eyes." After looking him over, Stevens assigned him to duty as guard over the arms which were to be left at the Kennedy farm.

On the 29th of September, the two young women left army headquarters to return to their homes. They had rendered faithful and valuable services during the months of their stay. If the Provisional Government had succeeded, these two women would have taken rank with the immortals—Betsy Ross and Mollie Stark. Mrs. Adams relates[368] that one day, while "we were alone in the yard Owen remarked, as he looked up at the house: 'If we succeed, some day there will be a United States flag over this house. If we do not, it will be considered a den of land pirates and thieves.'" In the division of their labors Anne, and not "Martha," seems to have "chosen the better part"; the latter did the cooking for the company, and was the general head of the department of domestic economy; while Anne, from the watch towers of the rude farm house, kept vigils over all the approaches thereto. She was the faithful sentinel that sounded the alarm at every sign of danger—the vestal virgin, keeping alive the sacred fires upon their altar of liberty. The approach of any human being was cause for alarm, lest the presence of the invading army might be discovered and divulged. An interesting account of the daily life at headquarters, by Mrs. Anne Brown Adams is published by Mr. Villard.[369] Of the personnel of the field and staff, she says:

It is claimed by many that they were a wild, ignorant, fanatical or adventurous lot of rough men. This is not so, they were sons from good families, well trained by orthodox religious parents, too young to have settled views on many subjects, impulsive, generous, too good themselves to believe that God could possibly be the harsh unforgiving being He was at that day usually represented to be. Judging them by the rules laid down by Christ, I think they were uncommonly good and sincere Christians, if the term Christian means follower of Christ's example, and too great lovers of freedom to endure to be trammeled by church or creed.