The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 46

On entering the Territory, now as peaceful as any State in the Union, Brown gathered his disciples, Oliver, Kagi, Stevens, and Cook and despatched them to Tabor, Iowa. Here they were informed for the first time of the real purpose of their organization--the invasion of Virginia and the raising of a servile insurrection in which her soil would be drenched in blood within sight of the Capitol at Washington. With Stevens, as drill master, they began the study of military tactics. They moved to Springdale and established their camp for the winter.

CHAPTER XXIV

Suddenly the old man left Springdale. He ordered his disciples to continue their drill until he should instruct them as to their next march.

Two weeks later he was in Rochester, New York, with Frederick Douglas.

In a room in this negro's house Brown composed a remarkable doc.u.ment as a subst.i.tute for the Declaration of Independence and the Const.i.tution of the United States.

He hurried with his finished ma.n.u.script to the home of Gerrit Smith at Peterboro for a consultation with Smith, Sanborn, Higginson and Stearns.

Only Sanborn and Smith appeared. Brown outlined to them in brief his plan of precipitating a conflict by the invasion of the Black Belt of the South and the establishment of a negro empire. Its details were as yet locked in his own breast.

Smith and Sanborn discussed his plans and his Const.i.tution for the Government of the new power. In spite of its absurdities they agreed to support him in the venture. Smith gave the first contribution which enabled him to call the convention of negroes and radicals at Chatham, Canada, to adopt the "Const.i.tution."

Brown went all the way to Springdale, Iowa, to escort the entire body of his disciples to this convention. And they came across a continent with him--Stevens, Kagi, Cook, Owen Brown, and six new men whom he had added--Leeman, Tidd, Gill, Taylor, Parsons, Moffit and Realf.

Thirty-four negroes gathered with them. Among the negroes were Richard O. P. Anderson and James H. Harris of North Carolina.

The presiding officer was William C. Monroe, pastor of a negro church in Detroit. Kagi, the stenographer, was made Secretary of the Convention.

Brown addressed the gathering in an unique speech:

"For thirty years, my friends, a single pa.s.sion has pursued my soul--to set at liberty the slaves of the South. I went to Europe in 1851 to inspect fortifications and study the methods of guerrilla warfare which have been successfully used in the old world. I have pondered the uprisings of the slaves of Rome, the deeds of Spartacus, the successes of Schamyl, the Circa.s.sian Chief, of Touissant L'Overture in Haiti, of the negro Nat Turner who cut the throats of sixty Virginians in a single night in 1831.

"I have developed a plan of my own to sweep the South. You must trust me with its details. I shall depend on the blacks for the body of my soldiers. And I expect every freedman in the North to flock to my standard when the blow has fallen. I know that every slave in the South will answer my call. The slaveholders we will not ma.s.sacre unless we must. We will hold them as hostages for our protection and the protection of any prisoners who may fall into their hands."

The men listened in rapt attention and when he read his "Const.i.tution and Preamble," it was unanimously adopted.

The Const.i.tution which they adopted was a piece of insanity in the literal sense of the word, a confused medley of absurd, inapplicable forms.

The Preamble, however, which contained the keynote of Brown's philosophy of life, was expressed in clear-cut, logical ideas.

He read it in a cold, vibrant voice:

"Whereas, Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion: the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence: _Therefore_, we CITIZENS OF the UNITED STATES, and the OPPRESSED PEOPLE who by a RECENT DECISION of the SUPREME COURT ARE DECLARED to have NO RIGHTS WHICH the WHITE MAN is BOUND to RESPECT; TOGETHER WITH ALL OTHER PEOPLE DEGRADED by the LAWS THEREOF, DO, for the TIME BEING ORDAIN and ESTABLISH for OURSELVES, the FOLLOWING PROVISIONAL CONSt.i.tUTION and ORDINANCES the BETTER to protect, our PERSONS, PROPERTY, LIVES and LIBERTIES: and to GOVERN our ACTION."

The first result of his Radical Convention was the exhaustion of his treasury. He had used his last dollar to bring his men on from the West and no money had been collected to pay even their return fares.

They were compelled to go to work at various trades to earn their bread.

Brown determined to return to Kansas and create a sensation that would again stir the East and bring the money into his treasury. He would at the same time test the first principle of his plan by an actual raid into a neighboring Southern State. In the meantime, he issued his first order of the Great Deed. He selected John E. Cook as his scout and spy and dispatched him to Harper's Ferry, Virginia, to map its roads, study its people and reconnoiter the surrounding territory.

He raised the money to pay Cook's fare and saw him on the train for Virginia before he started for Kansas to spring his second national sensation.

CHAPTER XXV

Brown's scout reached the town of Harper's Ferry on June 5, 1858. The magnificent view which greeted his vision as he stepped from the train took his breath. The music of trembling waters seemed a grand accompaniment to an Oratorio of Nature.

The sensitive mind of the young Westerner responded to its soul appeal.

He stood for half an hour enraptured with its grandeur. Two great rivers, the Potomac and the Shenandoah, rushing through rock-hewn gorges to the sea, unite here to hurl their tons of foaming waters against the last granite wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Beyond the gorge, through which the roaring tide has cut its path, lies the City of Washington on the banks of the Potomac, but sixty miles away--a day's journey on a swift horse; an hour and a half by rail.

Cook at first had sharply criticized Brown's selection of such a place for the scene of the Great Deed. As he stood surveying in wonder the sublimity of its scenery he muttered softly:

"The old man's a wizard!"

The rugged hills and the rush of mighty waters called the soul to great deeds. There was something electric in the air. The town, the rivers, the mountains summoned the spirit to adventure. The tall chimneys of the United States a.r.s.enal and Rifle Works called to war. The lines of hills were made for the emplacement of guns. The roaring waters challenged the skill of generals.

The scout felt his heart beat in quick response. The more he studied the hills that led to High k.n.o.b, a peak two thousand four hundred feet in height, the more canny seemed the choice of Brown. From the top of this peak stretches the county of Fauquier, the beginning of the Black Belt of the South. Fauquier County contained more than ten thousand Slaves and seven hundred freed negroes. There were but nine thousand eight hundred whites. From this county to the sea lay a series of adjoining counties in which the blacks outnumbered the whites. These counties contained more than two hundred and sixty thousand negroes.

The Black Belt of Virginia touched the Black Belts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia--an unbroken stretch of overwhelming black majority. In some counties they outnumbered the whites, five to one.

This mountain gorge, hewn out of the rocks by the waters of the rivers, was the gateway into the heart of the Slave System of the South. And it could be made the highroad of escape to the North if once the way were opened.

Another fact had influenced the mind of Brown. The majority of the workmen of Harper's Ferry were mechanics from the North. They would not be enthusiastic defenders of Slavery. They were not slave owners. In a fight to a finish they would be indifferent. Their indifference would make the conquest of the few white masters in town a simple matter.

Cook felt again the spell of Brown's imperious will. He had thought the old man's chief reason for selecting Harper's Ferry as the scene was his quixotic desire to be dramatic. He knew the history of the village.

It had been named for Robert Harper, an Englishman. Lord Fairfax, the friend of George Washington, had given the millwright a grant of it in 1748. Washington, himself, had made the first survey of the place and selected the Ferry, in 1794, as the site of a National Armory.

Colonel Lewis Washington, the great-grandson of Washington's brother, lived on the lordly plantation of Bellair, four miles in the country.

Brown had learned that the sword which Frederick the Great had given to Washington, and the pistols which Lafayette had given him hung on the walls of the Colonel's library.

He had instructed Cook to become acquainted with Colonel Washington, and locate these treasures. He had determined to lead his negro army of insurrection with these pistols and sword buckled around his waist.

Cook was an adventurer but he had no trace of eccentricity in his character. He thought this idea a dangerous absurdity. And he believed at first that it was the one thing that had led his Chief to select this spot. He changed his mind in the first thirty minutes, as he stood studying the mountain peak that stood sentinel at the gateway of the Black Belt.

With a new sense of the importance of his mission he sought a boarding house. He was directed by the watchman at the railroad station, a good-looking freedman, an employee of the Mayor of the town, to the widow Kennedy's. Her house was situated on a quiet street just outside the enclosure of the United States a.r.s.enal.

Cook was a man of pleasing address, twenty-eight years old, blue-eyed, blond, handsome, affable, genial in manner and a good mixer. Within twenty-four hours he had made friends with the widow and every boarder in the house.

They introduced him to their friends and in a week he had won the good opinion of the leading citizens of the place. A few days later the widow's pretty daughter arrived from boarding school and the young adventurer faced the first problem of his mission.

She was a slender, dark-eyed, sensitive creature of eighteen. Shy, romantic, and all eyes for the great adventure of every Southern girl's life--the coming of the Prince Charming who would some day ride up to her door, doff his plumed hat, kiss her hand and kneel at her feet?

Cook read the eagerness in her brown eyes the first hour of their meeting. And what was more serious he felt the first throb of emotion that had ever distressed him in the presence of a woman.

He had never made love. He had tried all other adventures. He had never met the type that appealed to his impulsive mind. He was angry with himself for the almost resistless impulse that came, to flirt with this girl.

It could only be a flirtation at best and, it could only end in bitterness and hatred and tragedy in the end. He had done dark deeds on the Western plains. But they were man deeds. No delicate woman had been involved in their tangled ethics.

There was something serious in his nature that said no to a flirtation of any kind with a lovely girl. He had always intended to take women seriously. He did take them seriously. He wouldn't hesitate to kill a man if he were cornered. But a woman--that was different. He tried to avoid the eyes of Virginia. He couldn't. In spite of all, seated opposite at the table, he found himself looking into their brown liquid depths. They were big, soulful eyes, full of tenderness and faith and wonder and joy. And they kept saying to him: