What was my connection with John Brown, and what I knew of his
scheme for the capture of Harper's Ferry, I may now proceed
to state. From the time of my visit to him in Springfield, Mass.,
in 1847, our relations were friendly and confidential. I never
passed through Springfield without calling on him, and he never
came to Rochester without calling on me. He often stopped over
night with me, when we talked over the feasibility of his plan
for destroying the value of slave property, and the motive for
holding slaves in the border States. That plan, as already intimated
elsewhere, was to take twenty or twenty five discreet and trustworthy
men into the mountains of Virginia and Maryland, and station
them in squads of five, about five miles apart, on a line of
twenty five miles; each squad to co operate with all, and all
with each. They were to have selected for them, secure and comfortable
retreats in the fastnesses of the mountains, where they could
easily defend themselves in case of attack. They were to subsist
upon the country roundabout. They were to be well armed, but
were to avoid battle or violence, unless compelled by pursuit
or in self defense. In that case, they were to make it as costly
as possible to the assailing party, whether that party should
be soldiers or citizens. He further proposed to have a number
of stations from the line of Pennsylvania to the Canada border,
where such slaves as he might, through his men, induce to run
away, should be supplied with food and shelter and be for¬warded
from one station to another till they should reach a place of
safety either in Canada or the Northern States. He proposed
to add to his force in the mountains any courageous and intelligent
fugitives who might be willing to remain and endure the hardships
and brave the dangers of this mountain life. These, he thought,
if properly selected, on account of their knowledge of the surrounding
country, could be made valuable auxiliaries. The work of going
into the valley of Virginia and persuading the slaves to flee
to the mountains, was to be committed to the most courageous
and judicious man connected with each squad.
Hating
slavery as I did, and making its abolition the object of my
life, I was ready to welcome any new mode of attack upon the
slave system which gave any promise of success. I readily saw
that this plan could be made very effective in rendering slave
property in Maryland and Virginia valueless by rendering it
insecure. Men do not like to buy runaway horses, nor to invest
their money in a species of property likely to take legs and
walk off with itself. In the worse case, too, if the plan should
fail, and John Brown should be driven from the mountains, a
new fact would be developed by which the nation would be kept
awake to the existence of slavery. Hence, I assented to this,
John Brown's scheme or plan for running off slaves.
To
set this plan in operation, money and men, arms and ammunition,
food and clothing, were needed; and these, from the nature of
the enterprise, were not easily obtained, and nothing was immediately
done. Captain Brown, too, notwithstanding his rigid economy,
was poor, and was unable to arm and equip men for the dangerous
life he had mapped out. So the work lingered till after the
Kansas trouble was over, and freedom was a fact accomplished
in that Territory. This left him with arms and men, for the
men who had been with him in Kansas, believed in him, and would
follow him in any humane but dangerous enterprise he might undertake.
After
the close of his Kansas work, Captain Brown came to my house
in Rochester, and said he desired to stop with me several weeks;
"but," he added, "I will not stay unless you
will allow me to pay board." Knowing that he was no trifler
and meant all he said, and desirous of retaining him under my
roof, I charged 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, N. Y., 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 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, to which
each man who came with him should be sworn to honor and support.
I have a copy of this constitution in Captain Brown's own handwriting,
as prepared by himself at my house.
He
called his friends from Chatham (Canada) to come together that
he might lay his constitution before them, for their approval
and adoption. 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 he might do. I paid but little
attention to such remarks, though 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.
It
was his intention to begin this work in '58 instead of '59 .
. . .
