The Insurrectionist

by Herb Karl

  Douglass obviously was unfamiliar with Brown’s theories of guerrilla warfare, particularly his belief that high ground wasn’t always a strong position. “If necessary, I can cut my way out,” the old man said. “Besides, I shall have hostages.”

  A look of astonishment spread across Douglass’s face.

  “I shall take a number of the best citizens in the neighborhood as prisoners,” Brown asserted. “If worse comes to worst, I shall use them to dictate terms of egress.”

  Though he must have sensed the futility of arguing with the old man, Douglass refused to give up. He cited plans Brown had spoken of during their ten-year friendship. “I recall you telling me that if you could drive slavery out of one county in a Southern state, it would be a great gain; it would weaken the slave system throughout the entire region. By making the slaveholder’s investment insecure, you would be destroying its value.” Brown’s new plan, Douglass lamented, bore little resemblance to the one described by the Kansas warrior who came to Rochester to draw up documents for a provisional government to be established in the Appalachian Mountains.

  They wrangled until the sun dipped below the rim of the quarry, the high walls casting the basin in shadows.

  Douglass stood. “I’ve agreed to speak to the citizens of Chambersburg this evening,” he said. “My train doesn’t leave until noon tomorrow. We’ll meet again in the morning. Perhaps, after a night’s rest, we’ll both see things differently.”

  Brown’s lips were pressed tightly together. He nodded, avoided Douglass’s eyes, grasped the outstretched hand, then Green’s—the latter having remained silent throughout the lengthy debate.

  Kagi escorted Douglass and Green back to town and the home of the barber, Henry Watson. Kagi would stay at the boardinghouse Brown was using as his mailing address. He’d return in the morning with Douglass and Green.

  Having chosen to remain at the quarry, Brown opened his rucksack and pulled out a chunk of dried beef, muttered a few words of gratitude to his God, then ate, waiting for the darkness.

  Lying on his blanket under the stars, the rucksack as his pillow, the old man thought about Mary and the evening they had spent together before he and Jerry Anderson departed for Massachusetts. He’d been suffering from his chronic illness and couldn’t sleep. Yet he felt a need to talk, and Mary was his sounding board as he spoke of his purposes and his plan for invading the South.

  Long before he’d sent John Cook to reconnoiter Harpers Ferry, Brown had expressed a desire to secure a cache of arms for what he hoped would be an ever-expanding army of freedom fighters. From his time in the wool business, he’d observed firsthand the lax security at the federal armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. He expected the armory at Harpers Ferry to be no different. But now that he possessed two hundred Sharps carbines and an equal number of revolvers, and intended to acquire a thousand pikes very soon, his need for weapons wasn’t as crucial as it had been.

  Still, he believed the mountains of northern Virginia were ideally suited for an initial thrust into the South. He was aware that a principal route of the Underground Railroad had its origin near Harpers Ferry, which meant shuttling liberated women and children to the North wouldn’t be a formidable task. And he also felt he knew the character of the inhabitants of the region, both in southern Pennsylvania and northern Virginia; among them there had to be willing accomplices.

  Mary listened as her husband railed against a nation asleep, a nation that had gone numb to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence. The armory at Harpers Ferry, he told her, operated under the authority of a federal government that sanctioned slavery. And since the government had become an accessory to a crime that violated the principles on which the nation was founded, he felt perfectly justified in attacking it. It was his duty to do what was necessary to awaken a nation that had lost its moral compass.

  Brown spoke of his most powerful collaborators—the journalists. He saw what they had done for him in Kansas, whether favorable to his actions or opposed. If he could capture a federal armory—a victory greater than anything he’d accomplished in Kansas—the newspapers would do the rest. The nation will have been awakened, and the trumpet will have sounded for the slaves; they would know their friends had come and were ready to lead them to freedom.

  When he and Anderson departed the Adirondack homestead, Brown hadn’t fully recovered from his illness. But he could stay no longer. There were matters demanding his attention—the most important being the money promised by George Stearns, chief spokesman for the secret committee. The old man told Mary he’d return to say good-bye after he’d taken care of his obligations.

  En route to Boston, Brown and Anderson stopped in Concord, where they met Franklin Sanborn. Sanborn had arranged a celebration for Brown’s fifty-ninth birthday—a dinner hosted by Henry David Thoreau. Later in the evening Brown spoke at the Concord town hall to an audience that included Ralph Waldo Emerson.

  Accompanied by Sanborn, the old man conducted another fundraising campaign in and around Boston. He met with his abolitionist supporters, among them secret committee member Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe. Brown was introduced to Howe’s wife, Julia, and made a favorable impression. But the old man was never at ease with the formality and polite conversation expected in the parlors of his prospective donors. When told by one of his hosts that “firmness at the ballot box by the North and West” would solve the slavery issue, Brown retorted, “Nothing but bayonets and bullets can settle it now.”

  At the Boston hotel where he and Jerry Anderson were staying, Brown met Stearns, who told him that he and Gerrit Smith had raised $2,000. That evening Brown and Stearns enjoyed a relaxed dinner in the hotel dining room. They talked freely about a variety of subjects—from the unrealized potential of Samuel Morse’s telegraph to the steam locomotive and its role in the nation’s westward expansion, to their support for the advancement of women’s rights. Out of respect for the wishes of Stearns and the other secret benefactors, Brown was careful to avoid naming the exact target of his invasion.

  The next morning he and Anderson headed for Collinsville, Connecticut, home of Charles Blair, the toolmaker Brown had contracted to fabricate the pikes. Two years had passed since the old man placed the order and handed over a deposit. Blair admitted he had quit working on the pikes some time ago. They were to be used, after all, in Kansas, and the troubles in Kansas had all but disappeared.

  “You finish them,” Brown snapped. “I’ll put them to good use.” Blair said he’d do his best but couldn’t promise a completion date.

  As the fundraising campaign came to a close, Brown added the money from Stearns to what he and Sanborn collected. The old man figured he had enough to go forward with his plan. If he were to strike the blow on the Fourth of July—a date suggested by Sanborn as symbolically appropriate—he’d have to move quickly.

  By the end of the first week in June, he’d completed his business in New England and—as he promised Mary—he and Anderson paid a final visit to North Elba. It was a time for farewells—perhaps the last days he’d spend with family and neighbors at the Adirondack homestead. As soon as he arrived, however, he was stricken with yet another attack of his malarial illness. But he wouldn’t allow it to interfere with his work. He needed to assess the recruiting efforts of John Jr. and to make preparations for the shipment south of guns and supplies. Though he was barely able to travel, he headed for Ohio in the company of Jerry Anderson and youngest son Oliver. Brown’s son Watson would have gone along had his wife, Isabella, not given birth a few weeks earlier. Watson promised that he and Isabella’s brothers—Will and Dauphin Thompson—would join the company as soon as Brown announced he was prepared to launch the invasion.

  When Brown arrived at the Ohio farm of John Jr., he found his eldest son still plagued by the physical and emotional stress suffered in Kansas. He’d become paranoid about the weapons stored in his barn and was convinced that federal marshals were on the verge of discovering them. Though Brown was s
addened by his son’s condition, he promised that the guns would be transferred to another hiding place. Then he gave him money to make a trip to Canada—to inform those who attended the Chatham convention that the invasion date was drawing near.

  Brown’s next stop was Cleveland, where John Kagi still worked as a part-time journalist for Horace Greeley. Kagi had kept in touch with the steadfast few who remained committed to the mission; they were ready to muster, he told Brown, just as soon as he gave the order. After asking Kagi to see to the transfer of the guns from John Jr.’s barn to a secure location, Brown announced he’d be calling for them, along with the men, as soon as he found a temporary receiving depot somewhere in southern Pennsylvania.

  By the time Brown picked up Owen at Jason’s farm in Akron, the end of June was near, and it would be impossible to strike a blow by the Fourth of July. But at least Brown was ready to head south. With Owen as the new addition to his party, Brown set out for Chambersburg, a town close to the borders of Maryland and Virginia. The four men—Brown, Owen, Oliver, and Jerry Anderson—henceforth would be known to strangers as Isaac Smith and sons.

  The choice of Chambersburg—fifty miles north of Harpers Ferry—was no accident. It was once the home of Martin Delaney, a free black who had migrated to Canada and was instrumental in organizing the Chatham convention. Delaney assured Brown there were people in Chambersburg who would assist him—among them Mary Ritner, the widow of the son of a former Pennsylvania governor who also happened to be an abolitionist. Mrs. Ritner had converted her home into a boardinghouse. Delaney also mentioned a conductor on the Underground Railroad, the barber Henry Watson. When Brown and his three “sons” reached Chambersburg, Mrs. Ritner offered her house as a destination for freight and volunteers. The barber said he, too, was willing to help.

  The old man’s next task was to find a location that could be used as a staging area capable of housing men and arms until he was ready to launch the invasion. On July 5, he found such a place, a small farm in the Maryland hills five miles northeast of Harpers Ferry. The farm belonged to the heirs of a local physician, Dr. Booth Kennedy. Brown was able to rent the property until March of the following year. Included in the price of thirty-five dollars were a two-story split-log farmhouse and a log outbuilding across the road. As soon as he signed the lease for the Kennedy farm, Brown sent Oliver back to North Elba with a letter asking Mary and daughter Annie to join him. He needed to create an illusion of normalcy at the farm, and he believed the presence of women would divert attention from the men and arms arriving from Chambersburg. Mary wasn’t willing to leave her young daughters, but fifteen-year-old Annie was eager to go. And it didn’t take much persuasion from Oliver to get his new wife, Martha, just turned seventeen, to take Mary’s place. The couple had been married a little over a year, and Martha welcomed the opportunity to be with her twenty-year-old husband right up to the time of the invasion.

  The two young women arrived at the farm in mid-July. Shortly thereafter the men and freight began trickling in from Brown’s Chambersburg headquarters. Meanwhile, he busied himself creating alliances in the neighboring rural communities. He met with black ministers, conductors on the Underground Railroad, and members of secret antislavery societies. He also walked the streets of Harpers Ferry with John Cook, who had been gathering intelligence for more than a year. Brown wanted to personally observe the armory’s security measures and view the locations of the various government facilities.

  By mid-August, however, the process of gearing up for the invasion had slowed to a crawl. Brown was disappointed he didn’t get the response he expected from those who attended the Chatham convention. He was particularly disheartened when Richard Realf, a young Englishman, failed to come. Realf had been with him during the trek across Iowa in the winter of 1857. A journalist and poet with a deep commitment to the abolition of slavery, Realf was inspired by Brown’s idea of forming a provisional government for the slaves he intended to liberate. Brown had told Realf, “If a third party doesn’t step between the slaveholder and the slaves, the slaves will one day rise up against their masters, and the result will be a bloody war of extermination,” then added that he—John Brown—would act as the third party. And the provisional government with its constitution, Brown said, would bring order to the influx of slaves and keep bloody excesses to a minimum.

  Aside from the lack of volunteers, the old man had other concerns. The men at the farm were getting restless; they’d made unauthorized jaunts into town when he was away. They wrote letters disclosing information that should have remained confidential. And Cook, who was obliged to marry a young girl he’d gotten pregnant, was spending too much time talking to strangers. Brown worried the whole operation would be betrayed by an indiscreet comment.

  To compound difficulties, he was running short of cash. It embarrassed him that he had to beg for more money. So he wrote John Jr., who had just completed a recruiting trip to Canada, to do it for him. “It will cost no more for you to solicit for me a little more assistance while attending to your business,” he wrote his son.

  John Jr. immediately went to Boston, where George Stearns presented him with a draft for $200 along with a message: “Tell your father we have the fullest confidence in his endeavor, whatever may be the result.” Brown was relieved to receive the money. It arrived just as he was preparing to meet with Frederick Douglass at the quarry outside Chambersburg.

  Now, as he lay in the stillness of the dark quarry with his head resting on his rucksack, Brown fretted over his meeting with Douglass. Maybe Douglass was right. They both might think differently in the morning. He looked up and saw the stars shimmering in the night sky. At times like this he felt closest to his God. Slowly he drifted into sleep.

  Brown had been awake for some time when the doleful cry of a mourning dove prompted him to sit up and pull on his boots. In the gray dawn he picked up his canteen and walked up the gravel ramp. He stopped at a stream that flowed through a wooded area. He washed himself, filled his canteen, and returned to the quarry floor.

  It was a little after eight o’clock when Kagi arrived with Douglass and Green. Kagi went back to patrolling the rim of the quarry. Douglass and Green made their way down the ramp.

  Brown opened the conversation by asking Douglass about his speaking engagement at the Chambersburg town hall. “I was received very well,” Douglass said, adding that he was forced to pause several times because of outbursts of applause.

  As their conversation turned to the invasion, it became clear that Brown hadn’t altered his position. His mind was made up. “My men are ready,” he said. “And I am ready to lead them.” He was as immovable as the block of stone on which Douglass and Green were sitting.

  “If you fail,” Douglass said, “it will be fatal to all engaged. But it will be worse for those you liberate. For them, death will be a welcome deliverance from the wrath of their masters.”

  Though he was resigned to the inevitable, Brown made another plea. As if he were a father about to leave home on a perilous journey, Brown took hold of Douglass’s arm. “Come with me, my friend. I shall defend you with my life. I want you for a special purpose. When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I shall want you to help me hive them.”

  As expected, Douglass declined. He’d continue to fight slavery—but not alongside John Brown. The old man would have to hive the bees without him.

  Meanwhile, the fugitive Shields Green—who had listened patiently for several hours while uttering hardly a word—declared that he wanted to go with Brown. An illiterate slave who had tasted freedom, Green had come to respect and admire the old man and his cause. Later, as Douglass boarded a train in Chambersburg, Green was already at Henry Watson’s waiting to be shuttled to the Maryland farm.

  Three days after Douglass’s departure, Brown was sitting at a table in Kagi’s room in Mary Ritner’s boardinghouse. He was writing a letter when Kagi walked in and laid a newspaper on the table. It was the most recent edition of a Chambersburg
weekly, the Valley Spirit.

  “You’ll be interested in this, Captain,” Kagi said. He tapped his finger on a headline that bore Douglass’s name. Brown put his pencil aside and began reading:

  Frederick Douglass, a gentleman of color, paid our town a visit on Saturday last to brighten the prospects of his Republican friends who are now so hopelessly in the “dark.” There is no calling into question the extraordinary ability of Mr. Douglass as an orator. He is an elegant and powerful speaker, and he possesses a clear well modulated voice and a style of elocution unaffected and impressive. His discourse was well received by a large and attentive audience and was interrupted by occasional demonstrations of applause from those who seemed disposed to favor his peculiar doctrine. His aim is to place the negro on an equality with the white man—to have him eat at the same table, sit in the same pew, and vote at the same ballot box. He would appear to forget altogether that the Creator Himself has made a distinction when He established the great and immovable barrier of color between the races . . .

  Brown finished reading, laid the newspaper on the table, folded his arms across his chest, and lowered his head. Kagi remained standing, waiting for Brown to say something.

  When the old man finally spoke, the rasping metallic voice seemed to be weighed down by a great sadness. “I am afraid, Kagi, we hardly grasp the magnitude of this nation’s illness. If we succeed in our efforts to help the slaves achieve freedom, it shall be only a first step. Those who come after us will have more miseries to face. I have no doubt the time of healing will be long and painful.”

  The newspaper story left Brown dejected, but he couldn’t dwell on it. There were more immediate and practical matters on his mind. He’d hoped to have at least fifty soldiers, all trained and under arms, before launching the invasion. It was now apparent he’d have to make do with fewer than half that number. And though he was encouraged by the responses he’d gotten from slaves and free blacks from neighboring plantations and settlements, he wasn’t sure how many would show up. Perhaps they would come in greater numbers after he’d taken the armory. But if something went wrong, it would be like Douglass said—the runaways would suffer greater consequences than his regular soldiers.