Chapter Twelve
An Avenging Angel brings the fury of the storm
“Did you go out under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society?” they asked John Brown at the trial four years after.
“No, sir,” he answered grimly, “I went out under the auspices of John Brown, directed by God.”
The settlement was a romantic place. Red men gliding by in their swift canoes had seen stately birds in the reedy lowlands of eastern Kansas and called the marsh the “swamp of the swan.” Here, on the good lands that rose up from the dark sluggish rivers, John Brown and his youngest son, Oliver, drove into the Brown colony.
“We found our folks in a most uncomfortable situation, with no houses to shelter one of them, no hay or corn fodder of any account secured, shivering over their little fires, all exposed to the dreadful cutting winds, morning, evening and stormy days.”
On November 23, 1855, Brown wrote to his wife:
“We have got both families so sheltered that they need not suffer hereafter; have got part of the hay secured, made some progress in preparation to build a house for John and Owen; and Salmon has caught a prairie wolf in a steel trap. We continue to have a good deal of stormy weather—rains with severe winds, and forming into ice as they fall, together with cold nights that freeze the ground considerably. Still God has not forsaken us.”[15]He did not tell her he had been down with fever.
Thus it was that John Brown came to Kansas and stood ready to fight for freedom. But no sooner had he arrived than it was plain to him that the cause for which he was fighting was far different fromthat for which most of the settlers were willing to risk life and property. John Brown publicly protested the resolution already drawn up, excluding all Negroes—slave or free! His words were coldly received.
From Frederick Douglass came more money and a letter.
“We are directing the eyes of the country toward Kansas,” Douglass wrote. “Charles Sumner in the Senate is speaking as no man ever spoke there before; Henry Ward Beecher has turned his pulpit into an auction block from which he sells slaves to freedom; Gerrit Smith and George L. Sterns have pledged their money; Lewis Tappan and Garrison have laid aside all former differences. Garrison is no longer bitter about my politics. He can see that we are accomplishing something. Free Soilers, Whigs, Liberals and antislavery Democrats are uniting. The state-wide party which we initiated some time ago has grown into a national movement.... We have adopted the name Republican, which was, you may recall, the original name of Thomas Jefferson’s party. Our candidate is John C. Frémont. His enemies say he is a dreamer who knows nothing of politics. If the people gather round in full strength we will show them.”
John Brown folded the letter. There was an unusual flush on his seared face.
“What is it, father?” Owen asked.
“From Douglass,” Brown replied. “God moves in mysterious ways!” That was all he said, but the sound of prairie winds was in his voice.
It was in December when rumor that the governor and his pro-slavery followers planned to surround Lawrence came to the Browns. On getting this news, they at once agreed to break camp and go to Lawrence. The band, approaching the town at sunset, loomed strangely on the horizon: an old horse, a homely wagon, and seven stalwart men armed with pikes, swords, pistols and guns. John Brown was immediately put in command of a company. Negotiations had commenced between Governor Shannon and the principal leaders of the free-state men. They had a force of some five hundred men to defend Lawrence. Night and day they were busy fortifying the town with embankments and circular earthworks. On Sunday Governor Shannon entered the town, and after some parley a treaty was announced. The terms of the treaty were kept secret, but Brown wrote jubilantly to New York that the Kansas invasion was over. The Missourians had been sent home without fighting any battles, burning any infant towns, or smashing a single Abolitionist press. “Free-statemen,” he said, “have only hereafter to retain the footing they have gained, and Kansas is free.”
Developments in Kansas did not please the powerful slavocracy. Furious representatives hurried to Washington. And President Pierce, who had once sent a battleship to Boston to bring back one trembling, manacled slave, denounced the free-state men of Kansas as lawless revolutionists, deprived them of all support from the Federal government, and threatened them with the penalty for “treasonable insurrection.” Regular troops were put into the hands of the Kansas slave power, and armed bands from the South appeared, one from Georgia encamping on the “swamp of the swan” near the Brown settlement.
Surveying instruments in hand and followed by his “helpers”—chain carriers, axman and marker—John Brown sauntered into their camp one May morning. He was taken for a government surveyor and consequently “sound.” The Georgians talked freely.
“We’ve come to stay,” they said. “We won’t make no war on them as minds their own business. But all the Abolitionists, such as them damned Browns over there, we’re going to whip, drive out, or kill—any way to get shut of them, by God!”[16]
They mentioned their intended victims by name, and John Brown calmly wrote down every word they said in his surveyor’s book.
On May 21 the pro-slavery forces swooped down on Lawrence, burned and sacked it. Its citizens stood by trembling and raised no hand in defense.
The gutted, burning town sent a wave of anger across the country. It struck the Senate with full force. Only an aisle separated men whose eyes blazed with hate. Charles Sumner lifted his huge frame and in a voice that resounded like thunder denounced “a crime without example in the history of the past.” He did not hesitate to name names—calling Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois, and Matthew Butler from South Carolina murderers of the men of Lawrence. The next day, while Sumner sat writing at his seat, young Preston Brooks, representative from South Carolina, came up behind the Massachusetts legislator and beat him over the head with a heavy walking stick. Charles Sumner, lying bleeding and unconscious in the aisle, reduced the whole vast struggle to simple terms.
Out West, John Brown hurried to Lawrence. He sat down by the smoldering ashes in tight-lipped anger. He was indignant that there had been no resistance.
“What were they doing?” he raged.
Someone mentioned the word “caution.”
“Caution, caution, sir!” he sneered. “I am eternally tired of hearing the word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice.”
Yet there seemed to be nothing to do now; and he was about to leave, when a boy came riding up. The gang at Dutch Henry’s, he said, had told the women in Brown settlement that all free-state folks must get out by Saturday or Sunday, else they would be driven out. Two houses and a store in the nearby German settlement had been burned.
Then John Brown arose.
“I will attend to those fellows.” He spoke quietly. Here was something to do. He called four of his sons—Watson, Frederick, Owen and Oliver—and a neighbor with a wagon and horses offered to carry the band. They began carefully sharpening cutlasses. An uneasy feeling crept over the onlookers. They all knew that John Brown was going to strike a blow for freedom in Kansas, but they did not understand just what that blow would be. As the wagon moved off, a cheer arose from the company left behind.
He loosed a civil war. Everything that came after was only powder for the hungry cannon. Freedom is a hard-bought thing! John Brown knew. He already knew on that terrible night when he rode down with his sons into “the shadows of the Swamp of the Swan—that long, low-winding and somber stream fringed everywhere with woods and dark with bloody memory. Forty-eight hours they lingered there, and then of a pale May morning rode up to the world again. Behind them lay five twisted, red and mangled corpses. Behind them rose the stifled wailing of widows and little children. Behind them the fearful driver gazed and shuddered. But before them rode a man, tall, dark, grim-faced and awful. His hands were red and his name was John Brown. Such was the cost of freedom.”[17]
John Brown became a hunted outlaw.
They burned his house, destroyed everything he and his sons had garnered. But he had only begun his war upon the slavers. Out of the night he came, time after time, and always he left death behind.
“He’s mad! Mad!” they said, but pro-slavery men began to leave Kansas.
“Da freedom’s comin’!” Black men lifted their hands in silent ecstasy. They slipped across the borders and looked for John Brown.Tabor, a tiny prairie Iowa town of thirty homesteads, became the most important Underground Railroad station on the western frontier. For here John Brown set up camp, and began to organize for his “march.” Strength had come up in the old man, charging his whole being with power.
“We should not have given him money!” the folks back East were saying.
Douglass, moving back and forth from Rochester to Boston—to New York, Syracuse and Cleveland—grew thin and haggard. He had stood like a bulwark of strength, even when the Supreme Court had handed down its Dred Scott decision. People found clarion words in theNorth Star.
“The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world,” Douglass wrote. “We, the Abolitionists and colored people, should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the complete overthrow of the whole slave system.”
Months passed, and all he heard from Kansas were the awful reports of John Brown’s riding abroad. He could not argue the right or wrong of this thing. Condemnation of John Brown left him cold. But was John Brown destroying all they had built up? This was war! Was John Brown’s way the only way? They had lost the election. The new party’s fine words fell back upon them like chilling drops of rain. Then out in Kansas the Governor declared the state free! There was peace in Kansas.
One night in January, 1858, Douglass was working late in the shop. The house was still, locked in the hard fastness of a winter night. Outside, great slow white flakes were falling, erasing the contours of the street beneath a blanket that rounded every eave, leveled fences and walks, and muffled every sound. But he heard the light tapping on the window pane and instantly put out the light. There must be no light to throw shadows when he opened the door upon one of his fugitives. But even without a light he recognized the muffled figure.
“John Brown!” Douglass’ low voice sang a welcome.
He drew him in and brushed the snowflakes off. He lit the lamp with hands that trembled. Then he turned and looked at this man whohad proved that he hated slavery more than he loved his life, his good name, or his sons. Even the little flesh he used to have was burned away. Yet one could see that all his bones were granite, and bright within the chalice of his mortal frame his spirit shone, unquenchable.
“You’re safe, John Brown!” It was a ridiculous thing to say, and John Brown rewarded him with one of his rare smiles—the smile few people knew he had, with which he always won a child.
“Yes, Douglass, now I am free to carry out my mission.”
Douglass’ heart missed a beat. John Brown had not sought him out as a fugitive, he had not come to his house to hide away—not John Brown!
“Frederick is dead.”
The words came with blunt finality, but a spasm of pain distorted the old man’s face.
“Oh, John! John!”
Douglass gently pushed him into the armchair, knelt at his feet, pulled off the heavy boots, then hurried away to bring him food. He ate as one does whose body is starving, gulping down unchewed mouthfuls with the warm milk.
“I come direct from the National Kansas Committee in Chicago. They will perhaps equip a company. I have letters from Governor Chase and Governor Robinson. They endorse my plan.”
Douglass expressed his pleased surprise. Brown wiped his shaggy beard. Something like a grin flickered on his face.
“Kansas is free and the good people are glad to be rid of me,” he said dryly.
Douglass understood: they dared not jail the man.
Brown’s plan was now complete. He spread out maps and papers and, as he talked, traced the lines of his march with a blunt pencil.
“God has established the Allegheny Mountains from the foundation of the world that they might one day be a refuge for the slaves. We march into these mountains, set up our stations about five miles apart, send out our call; and, as the slaves flock to us, we sustain them in this natural fortress.”
Douglass followed the line of his pencil.
“Each group will be well armed,” the old man continued, “but will avoid violence except in self-defense. In that case, they will make it as costly as possible to the assailing parties—whether they be citizens or soldiers. We will break the backbone of slavery by rendering slave property insecure. Men will not invest their money in a speciesof property likely to take legs and walk off with itself!” His eyes were shining.
“I do not grudge the money or energy I have spent in Kansas,” he went on, “but now my funds are gone. We must have arms, ammunition, food and clothing. Later we will subsist upon the country roundabout. I now have the nucleus of my band.” Shadows crossed his face. “Already they have gone to hell and back with me.”
He talked on—three military schools to be set up, one in Iowa, one in northern Ohio and one in Canada. It would be a permanent community in Canada. “Finally the escaped slaves will pass on to Canada, each doing his share to strengthen the route,” he explained.
“But won’t it take years to free the slaves this way?” his friend asked.
“Indeed not! Each month our line of fortresses will extend farther south.” His pencil moved across Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, to Mississippi. “To the delta itself! The slaves will free themselves.”
Pale dawn showed in the sky before they went upstairs.
“You must sleep now, John Brown.”
But before lying down, the old man looked hard into the broad, dark face. Douglass nodded his head.
“I’m with you, John Brown. Rest a little. Then we’ll talk,” Douglass said and tiptoed from the room.
When John Brown left the house in Alexander Street several days later, he was expected in many quarters. He went first to Boston, George L. Sterns, the Massachusetts antislavery leader, paying his expenses. Sterns, who had never met “Osawatomie Brown,” had written to Rochester offering to introduce him to friends of freedom in Boston. They met on the street outside the committee rooms in Nilis’ Block, with a Kansas man doing the honors; and Brown went along to Sterns’ home.
Coming into the parlor to greet the man who had become a household word during the summer of 1856, Mrs. Sterns heard her guest saying, “Gentlemen, I consider the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence one and inseparable.”
“I felt,” she said later, writing about the profound impression of moral magnetism Brown made on everybody who saw him in those days, “that some old Cromwellian hero had dropped down among us.”
Emerson, she remembered, called him “the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into action.” Yet Mrs. Sterns was struckby his modest estimate of the work he had in hand. After several efforts to bring together their friends to meet Captain Brown in his home, Sterns found that Sunday was the only day that would serve everybody’s convenience. Being a little uncertain how this might strike their guest’s ideas of religious propriety, Sterns prefaced his invitation with something like an apology.
“Mr. Sterns,” came the prompt reply, “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.”
Over in Concord he went to see Henry David Thoreau. They sat at a table covered with lichens, ferns, birds’ nests and arrowheads. They dipped their fingers into a large trencher of nuts, cracked the shells between their teeth, and talked as kindred souls. Thoreau, lean and narrow-chested, thrust his big ugly nose forward and, with his searching gray eyes, probed the twisted steel of John Brown. The hermit believed then what he said afterward, when he served his term in jail:
“When one-sixth of a people who are come to the land of liberty are enslaved, it is time for free men to rebel.”
The secretary of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee received Captain Brown with cautious respect. Half an hour later he was saying, “By God, I’llmakethem give him money!” But the Committee warned, “We must know how he will use the money.”
Kind-hearted, genial Gerrit Smith was glad to have his old friend with him for a few days.
“Be sure of your men,” he advised.
“My men need not be questioned, sir.” John Brown spoke a little stiffly.
Gerrit Smith stifled a sigh.His faith in God and man is sublime!he thought a little sadly.
Swarthy, bearded Thomas W. Higginson, young Unitarian minister, set out immediately to raise funds on his own. He was hissed at Harvard, his Alma Mater, but he was not swayed from his course.
At a meeting at the Astor House in New York the National Kansas Committee voted “in aid of Captain Brown ... 12 boxes of clothing, sufficient for 60 persons, 25 Colt revolvers, five thousand dollars to be used in any defense measures that may become necessary.” But only five hundred dollars was paid out.
John Brown was disappointed. He had hoped to obtain the means of arming and thoroughly equipping a regular outfit of minutemen.He had left his men suffering hunger, cold, nakedness, and some of them sickness and wounds. He had engaged the services of one Hugh Forbes, who claimed to have been a lieutenant of Garibaldi. Forbes was to take over the military tactics. He had demanded six hundred dollars for his expenses. John Brown had given it to him.
“I am going back,” Brown said to Douglass, when he stopped overnight in Rochester. “You must keep up the work here—solicit funds, keep the issue before them. I have no baggage wagons, tents, camp equipage, tools ... or a sufficient supply of ammunition. I have left my family poorly supplied with common necessaries.”
“I do not like what you tell me about this Hugh Forbes,” said Douglass.
Brown was a little impatient.
“He is a trained man in military affairs. I know nothing about maneuvers. We need him!”
It was John Brown’s intention to leave the actual training of his men to Forbes, so that he might be free for larger matters. Nor did he want to spend time raising funds. He wanted to organize Negroes for the job ahead.
Perhaps better than any other white man of his time John Brown knew what Negroes in every part of North America were doing. He knew their newspapers, their churches and their schools. To most Americans of the time all black men were slaves or fugitives. But from the beginning John Brown sought to know Negroes personally and individually. He went into their homes, sought them out in business, talked to them, listened to the stories of their trials, harkened to their dreams, advised, and took advice from them. He set out to enlist the boldest and most daring spirits for his plan.
In March, Brown and his eldest son met with Henry Highland Garnet and William Still, Negro Secretary of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, in the home of Stephen Smith, a Philadelphia Negro lumber merchant. Brown remained in Philadelphia a week or ten days, holding long conferences in Negro churches.
Meanwhile, his black lieutenant, Kagi, ragged, stooped, insignificant-looking, shrewd and cunning, was traveling over the Allegheny Mountains, surveying the land, marking sites and making useful contacts. Kagi had some schooling and, when he desired, could speak clearly and to the point. He knew in detail the vast extent of Brown’s plan. He lived and breathed it. He had been wounded with JohnBrown in Kansas, and unswerving he walked to his death with him. For Kagi believed that John Brown was making a mistake to attack Harper’s Ferry when he did, but the little black man held the bridge until his riddled body plunged into the icy waters below.
In the spring of 1858 Brown went to Canada to set up personal contacts with the nearly fifty thousand Negroes there. Chatham, chief town of Kent County, had a large Negro population with several churches, a newspaper and a private school. Here on May 10 the Captain addressed a convention called together on the pretext of organizing a Masonic lodge. And at this convention they drew up and adopted the constitution of forty-eight articles that stunned the authorities when they found it in the hide-away farmhouse near Harper’s Ferry.
Up to this time Frederick Douglass was fully cognizant of all John Brown’s plans. The Douglass home in Rochester was his headquarters. (He had insisted that he pay board, and Douglass charged him three dollars a week.)
“While here, he spent most of his time in correspondence,” Douglass wrote later. “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 into 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. 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 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. 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 ... in his mind as a thing he might do. I paid 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 theother, 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 to the end, and was giving his best thought to the work he was about to take in hand.”[18]
The month of May, 1859, John Brown spent in Boston collecting funds, and in New York consulting his Negro friends, with a trip to Connecticut to hurry the making of his thousand pikes. Sickness intervened, but at last on June 20, the advance guard of five—Brown and two of his sons, Jerry Anderson and Kagi—started southward.
Many times during these months Frederick Douglass wondered whether or not John Brown did not have the only possible plan for freeing the black man. The antislavery fight had worn very thin. The North knew of the moral and physical horror of slavery. The South knew also, but cotton prices continued to rise. Logic would not separate cotton growers from their slaves. Many of the old, staunch Abolitionists were gone. Theodore Parker had burned himself out in the cause. Down with tuberculosis, he was on a ship bound for southern Italy where, in spite of the warm sunshine, he was to die.
Daily the South grew more defiant. When the doctrine of popular sovereignty failed to make Kansas a slave state, Southern statesmen abandoned it for firmer ground. They had lost faith in the rights, powers and wisdom of the people and took refuge in the Constitution. Henceforth the favorite doctrine of the South was that the people of a territory had no voice in the matter of slavery. The Constitution of the United States, they claimed, of its own force and effect, carried slavery safely into any territory of the United States and protected the system there until it should cease to be a territory and became a state. In practical operation, this doctrine would make all future new states slaveholding states; for slavery, once planted and nursed for years, could easily strengthen itself against the evil day of eradication.
In a rage, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the Constitution denouncing it as a “covenant with Satan.” Douglass went away heartsick.
In the heart of the Alleghenies, halfway between Maine and Florida, opens a mighty gateway. From the south comes the Shenandoah, a restless silver thread gleaming in the sun; from the west the Potomac moves placidly between wide banks. But at their junction they are cramped. The two rivers rush together against the mountains, rend it asunder and tear a passage to the sea. And here is Harper’s Ferry.
Why did John Brown choose this particular point for his attack upon American slavery? Was it the act of a madman? A visionary fool? What was his crime?
John Brown did not tell them at the trial. His lieutenant, Kagi, was dead. Green, Coppoc, Stevens, Copeland, Cook and Hazlett followed their captain to the gallows without a word. Perhaps only one man went on living who knew the full answers. His name was Frederick Douglass.
Douglass has been attacked because he did not go with John Brown to Harper’s Ferry, because he did not testify in Brown’s defense, because he put himself outside the reach of pursuers who would drag him to the trial. He could not have saved John Brown and his brave followers. Every word of the truth would have drawn the noose tighter about their necks. It would have hanged Douglass!
It was on a pleasant day in September when the letter came from John Brown. It was very short.
“I am forced to move sooner than I had planned. Before going forward I want to see you.”
Brown, under the guise of a farmer interested only in developing a recently purchased piece of land, was living under an assumed name with his two “daughters”—actually a daughter and young Oliver’s wife. His men were keeping under cover. They made every effort to keep the farm normal-looking. Brown asked Douglass to come to Chambersburg. There he would find a Negro barber named Watson, who would conduct him to the place of meeting. A last line was added: “Bring along the Emperor. Tell him the time has come.”
Douglass knew that he referred to Shields Green, a fugitive slave, whom the old man had met in his house. Green, a powerful black, had escaped from South Carolina. He was nicknamed “the Emperor” because of his size and majestic carriage. Brown had seized upon him immediately, confiding to him his plan, and Green had promised to go with him when Brown was ready to move.
They set out together, stopping over in New York City with a Reverend James Glocester. Upon hearing where they were going, Mrs. Glocester pressed ten dollars into Douglass’ hand.
“Give it to Captain Brown, with my best wishes,” she said.
They sped southward past the waving, green fields and big, white farms of prosperous Dutch farmers. Douglass sat by the window with his massive head sunk forward, not looking out. Then the train curved into the Blue Ridge Mountains where the pine-covered hills begin, and stopped at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The first man at the depot whom they asked directed them to Watson, the barber.
He stood looking after the two Negroes as they strode down the platform.
“Damned if they don’t walk like they own the earth!” he grunted.
Watson called to his boy when they stepped into his shop. He took them to his house, where his wife greeted the great Frederick Douglass and his friend with much fluttering.
“Make yourselves at home,” said the barber. “As soon as it is dark I will drive you out to the old stone quarry. That’s the place, but we must wait until dark.”
They left the wagon and its driver on the road and climbed up to the quarry. All about them the rocks loomed like great stone faces in the moonlight. And when John Brown stepped out of the shadows, it was as if a rock had moved toward them. His old clothes, covered with dust; his white hair and hard-cut face, like granite in the moonlight; his strained, worn face with the two burning coals that were his eyes. Douglass’ heart missed a beat. Something was very wrong.
“What is it, John Brown? What has happened?”
The old man looked at him without speaking. He studied the brown face almost as if he had not seen it before. Then he spoke briefly.
“Come!”
He led them between the rocks and stooped to enter a cave. Inside was Kagi and in a niche in the wall was a lighted torch. There were boulders about, and at a sign from the old man they sat down—John Brown, Kagi, Shields Green and Frederick Douglass. They waited for Brown to speak. He did so, leaning forward and putting a thin, gnarled hand on Douglass’ knee.
“Douglass, we can wait no longer. Our move now must be a decisive one.”
Douglass was bitterly chiding himself. He should have comesooner. These last months had drained the old man’s strength. He needed help here. The dark man spoke gently.
“But you said the time to begin calling in the slaves would come after the crops are gathered, as the Christmas approaches. Then many can get away without being missed right away. Is your ammunition distributed? Are your stations ready to receive and defend the fugitives?”
John Brown shook his head.
“No. We are not ready with all that.” He drew a long breath, and it was obvious it caused him pain. “You were right about Hugh Forbes,” he said then. “He has deserted us and,” Brown hesitated, hating to say it, “I fear he has talked.”
Douglass’ face expressed his shock. Why had he not strangled the tinseled fool with his own hands?
“We are being watched: my men are certain of it. At any moment we may be arrested. Don’t forget, I’m still an outlaw in Kansas.” He added the last dryly, almost indifferently. Then suddenly the flame flared. John Brown was on his feet, his head lifted. He shook back his white hair.
“But God is with us! He has delivered the gates into our hands! We hold the key to the Allegheny Mountains. They stand here, our sure and safe defense!”
Douglass stared at him. Was it the torchlight that so transfigured his old friend? He stood like an avenging angel, illumined by the force that rose up in him. It charged his whole being with power—his eyes, his frame, the leashed, metallic voice.
“I am ready!”
Douglass looked at Kagi. Kagi’s eyes fixed on the lifted face. He turned and looked at Green, and on that black giant’s countenance he saw the same imprint. He wet his trembling lips. An icy hand had closed about his heart. He was afraid.
“The map, Kagi!” John Brown spoke sharply.
Kagi was ready. Brown knelt on the ground, and Kagi spread a wide sheet in front of him. He brought the torch near and knelt holding it, while Brown traced the lines with his finger.
“Here is the long line of our mountain fortress,” he said tersely. “Right here east of the Shenandoah, the mountains rise to a height of two thousand feet or more. This natural defense is right at the entrance to the mountain passage. See! An hour’s climb from this point and a hundred men could be inside an inaccessible fastness.Here attacks could be repelled with little difficulty. Here are Loudon Heights—then beyond the passage plunges straight into the heart of the thickest slave districts. The slaves can get to us without difficulty, after we have made our way through here.”
His finger had stopped. Douglass leaned forward. He was holding his breath. He could feel Brown’s eyes upon him.
“But that—that is Harper’s Ferry!” Douglass said, and his voice faltered.
He could feel the surge of strength in the other man.
“Yes,” he said, “Harper’s Ferry is the safest natural entrance to our mountain passage. We shall go through Harper’s Ferry, and there we’ll take whatever arms we need.”
So little children speak, and fools, and gods!
For a moment there was silence in the cave. Then Douglass got up, striking his head against the low wall. He did not heed the blow, but took John Brown by the arm.
“Come outside, Captain Brown,” he said. “Let’s talk outside. I—I can’t breathe in here!”
And so they faced each other in the open. Night in the mountains, stars over their heads, and stark, jagged rocks white in the shadows.
“You can’t do it, John Brown!” Douglass’ voice was strained. “You would be attacking an arsenal of the United States—This is war against the federal government. The whole country would be arrayed against us!”
“You do not understand, Douglass. We’re not going to kill anybody. There are only a handful of soldiers guarding that ferry. We’ll merely make them prisoners, hold them until we take the arms and get up into the mountains. Of course, there’ll be a great outcry. But all the better. The slaves will hear of it. They’ll know we’re in the mountains, and they’ll flock to us.”
“Do you really believe this, John Brown? Do you really believe you can take a fort so easily?”
A hard note had come again into the old man’s voice.
“Am I concerned with ease, Frederick Douglass? What is this you are saying? Our mission is to free the slaves! This is the plan!”
“There was no such plan,” Douglass interposed hotly. “You said that fighting would only be in self-defense. This is an attack!”
John Brown’s passion matched his.
“And when I rode down into the marshes of Kansas it was anattack! You did not condemn then! Here we merely force our way through a passage!”
“This is treason! This is insurrection! This is war! I am not with you!”
The old man’s voice cut like a whip.
“So! You have escaped so far from slavery that you do not care! You have carried the scars upon your back into high places, so you have forgotten. You prate of treason! You are afraid to face a gun!”
Douglass cried out in anguish. “John! John! For God’s sake, stop!”
He stumbled away, sank down on a rock and buried his face in his hands. Some time later he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and Brown’s voice, softened and subdued, came to him.
“Forgive an old man, son.”
Douglass took the hand in his and pressed it against his face. The old man’s hand was rough and knotty, but it was very firm.
“This is no time for soft words or for oratory,” he said. “We have a job to do. Years ago I swore it—that I would do my part. God has called me to lift his crushed and suffering dark children. Twenty-five years have gone by making plans. Now unless I move quickly all of these years will have been spent in vain. I will take this fort. I will hold this pass. I will free the slaves!”
The stars faded and went out one by one, the gray sky blended through purple and rose to blue, and still they talked. Kagi brought them food.
At last Douglass lay down inside the cave. His eyes were closed, but his mind feverishly leaped from one possibility to another.
Then Brown was laying other maps before him. He had gone over it all so carefully. Now he showed each step of the way—where the men would stand, how they would hold the bridge, where they would cut the telegraph wires, how the engine-house in the arsenal would be occupied.
“Without a shot being fired, Douglass. I tell you we can take it without a shot!”
Douglass brought all the pressure of his persuasive power against him. He threw reason, logic, common sense at the old man.
“You’ll destroy all we’ve done!”
John Brown looked at him and his voice and face were cold.
“Whathave you done?” The question bit like steel.
Another day passed. That night a storm came up. They sat huddledin the cave, while outside the rain beat down upon the rocks and tore up twisted roots. The mountains groaned and rumbled and the winds howled. During the storm the old man slept serenely.
When the rain stopped Douglass went out into the dripping morning. Puddles of water splashed beneath his feet, shreds of clouds lingered in the pine tops and broke against the side of the hills; the sky was clearing and soon the sun would come through. The fresh-washed earth gave off a clean, new smell. The morning mocked him with its promise of a bright, new day.
He heard John Brown behind him and stopped. He knew that strong, elastic step. He heard the voice—full, clear and renewed with rest.
“Douglass,” Brown asked, “have you reached your decision?”
Without turning, Douglass answered. And his voice was weary and beaten.
“I am going back.”
The old man made no sound. Douglass turned and saw him standing straight and slender in the morning light, a gentle breeze lifting his soft white hair, his wrinkled face carved against the sky. With a cry of utter woe Douglass threw himself upon the ground, encircling the slight frame in his arms.
“Oh, John—John Brown—don’t go! You’ll be killed! It’s a trap! You’ll never get out alive—I beg you, don’t go! Don’t go!”
Terrible sobs shook him; he could not stop.
“Douglass! Douglass!”
Brown took him by the shoulders, pressed his face against him, spoke as to a child.
“For shame, Douglass! Everything will be all right.” Then, when he saw the big man was still, he added, “Come and go with me. You shall see that everything will be all right.”
Douglass shook his head. He clung to the rough, gnarled hands.
“This is the hardest part of all. I cannot throw my life away with you! Years ago in Maryland I knew I had to live. That’smytask, John—that I live.”
“You shall have a trusted bodyguard!” The old man looked down at him with a twisted smile. Douglass made a gesture of resignation. He raised his eyes once more.
“Will nothing change you from this course?” he asked.
“Nothing,” answered John Brown. He gently pulled himself away and walked to the edge of the cliff, looking out into the morning. Douglass sagged upon the ground.
“You may be right, Frederick Douglass.” His words came slowly now. “Perhaps I’ll not succeed at Harper’s Ferry. Maybe—I’ll never leave there alive. Yet I must go! Until this moment I had never faced that possibility, and I could not give you up. Now that I do, I see that only through your living can my dying be made clear. So, let us have an end of all this talk. Perhaps this is God’s way.”
Douglass pulled himself up. He was very tired.
“I must tell Green,” he said.
John Brown turned. His face was untroubled, his voice alert.
“Yes. I had forgotten. Get him.”
They came upon Shields Green and Kagi leaving the cave. Over their shoulders were fishing poles. Douglass spoke.
“Shields, I am leaving. Are you going back with me?”
John Brown spoke, the words coming easily, a simple explanation.
“Both of you know that Douglass disagrees with my plan. He says we’ll fail at Harper’s Ferry—that none of us will come out alive.” He paused a moment and then said, “Maybe he is right.”
Douglass waited, but still Shields Green only looked at him. At last he asked, “Well, Shields?”
“The Emperor” shifted the fishing rod in his hand. Then his eyes turned toward John Brown. Douglass knew even before he spoke. Shields looked him full in the face and said, “Ah t’ink Ah goes wid tha old man!”
And he and Kagi turned away and went off down to the stream.
Brown held his hand a moment before speaking.
“Go quickly now, and go without regrets. You have your job to do and I have mine.”
Douglass did not look back as he stumbled over the wet, slippery rocks. Never in his life had he felt so desolate, never had a day seemed so bleak and empty, as alone he went down the mountainto livefor freedom. He had left John Brown and Shields Green to die for freedom. Whose was the better part?