At eight o\'clock on Sunday night, the sixteenth of October, 1859, JohnBrown drove his one-horse wagon to the door of the rude log house inwhich he had hidden with his disciples for four months.
It was a damp, chill evening of mid fall. Heavy rain clouds obscured thestars and not a traveler ventured along the wind-swept roads. From theattic were loaded into the wagon crowbars, sledge hammers, iron pikesand oil-soaked faggots.
The crowbars and sledge hammers might be used on the gates or doors.
There could be no doubt about the use to which the leader intended toput the pikes and torches.
When the wagon had been loaded the old man summoned his faithful son,Owen.
"Captain Owen Brown," the steel voice rang, "you will take privateBarclay Coppoc and F.J. Merriam and establish a guard over this houseas the headquarters of our expedition. Hold it at all hazards. You areguarding the written records of our work, the names of associates, thereserves of our arms and ammunition. We will send you reinforcements indue time."Owen saluted his commander and the two privates under his command tooktheir places beside him.
Brown waved to the eighteen men standing around the wagon.
"Get on your arms, and to the Ferry!"They had been ready for hours, eager for the Deed. Not one among them inhis heart believed in the wisdom of this assault, yet so grim was thepower of Brown\'s mind over the wills of his followers, there was not alaggard among them.
Brown drove the wagon and led the procession down the pitch-black roadtoward the town. The men fell in line two abreast and slowly marchedbehind the team.
Cook and Tidd, raised to the rank of Captains, their commissionsduly signed, led the tramping men. There were many captains in thisremarkable army of twenty-one. There were more officers than privates.
The officers were commissioned to recruit their black companies when thefirst blow had been struck.
The enterprise on which these twenty-one veteran rangers had started inthe chill night was by no means so foolhardy as appears on the surface.
The leader was leaving his base of supplies with a rear guard of butthree men. Yet the army on the march consisted of but eighteen. He knewthat the United States Arsenal had but one guarded gate and that theold watchman had not fired a gun in twenty-five years. It would be thesimplest thing to force this gate and the Arsenal was in their hands.
The Rifle Works had but a single guard. They could be taken in fiveminutes. Once inside these enclosures, he had unlimited guns andammunition at his command.
The town would be asleep at ten o\'clock when he arrived at the Marylandend of the covered bridge across the Potomac. Eighteen armed men were anample force to capture the unsuspecting town. Not a single policeman wason duty after ten. The people were not in the habit of locking theirdoors.
The one principle of military law which the leader was apparentlyviolating was the failure to provide a plan of retreat. But retreat wasthe last thing he intended to face.
The one thing on which he had staked his life and the success of hisdaring undertaking was the swarming of the black bees. His theory wasreasonable from the Abolitionist\'s point of view. He believed that negroChattel Slavery as practiced in the South was the sum of all villainies.
And the Southern slave holders were the arch criminals and oppressors ofhuman history. In his Preamble of the new "Constitution" to which hismen had sworn allegiance, he had described this condition as oneof "perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absoluteextermination." If the negroes of the South were held in the chains ofsuch a system, if they were being beaten and exterminated, the blackbees _would_ swarm at the first call of a master leader and deluge thesoil in blood.
John Brown believed this as he believed in the God to whom he prayedbefore he loaded his pikes and torches on the wagon. These black legionswould swarm to-night! He could hear their shouts of joy and revengeas they gripped their pikes and swung into line under his God imposedleadership.
The whole scheme was based on this faith. If Garrison\'s words were true,if the Southern slave holder was a fiend, if Mrs. Stowe\'s arraignment ofSlavery on the grounds of its inhuman cruelty was a true indictment, hisfaith was well grounded.
His thousand pikes in the hands of a thousand determined blacks led bythe trained Captains whom he had commissioned was a force adequate tohold the town of Harper\'s Ferry and invade the Black Belt beyond thePeak.
The moment these black legions swarmed and weapons were placed in theirhands the insurrection would spread with lightning rapidity. The weaponswere in the Arsenal. The massacres would be sweeping through Virginia,North and South Carolina before an adequate force could reach thismountain pass. And when they reached it, he would be at the head of ablack, savage army moving southward with resistless power.
The only question was the swarming of this dark army. Cook, who hadspent nearly a year among the people and knew these slaves best, was theone man who held a doubt. For this reason he had begged Brown a secondtime to let him sound the strongest men among the slaves and try theirspirit. Brown refused. He knew a negro. He was simply a white man in ablack skin by an accident of climate. He knew exactly what he would dowhen put to the test. To discuss the subject was a waste of words. Andso with faith serene in the success of the Deed, he paused but a momentat the entrance of the bridge.
He ordered Captains Kagi and Stevens to advance and take as prisonerWilliam Williams, the watchman. The two rangers captured Williamswithout a struggle.
"A good joke, boys," he laughed.
"You\'ll find it a good one before the night\'s over," Stevens answered.
When he attempted to move, a revolver at his breast still failed toconvince him.
"Go \'way, you boys, with your foolishness. It\'s a dark night, but I\'mused to being scared!"It was not until Kagi gave him a rap over the head with his rifle thathe sat down in amazement and wiped the sweat from his brow. He forgotthe chill of the night air. His brain was suddenly on fire.
Brown waited at the entrance of the bridge until the watchman had beencaptured and Cook and Tidd had cut the line on the Maryland side of theriver.
He then advanced across the covered way to the gate of the Arsenal hut afew yards beyond the Virginia entrance.
He captured Daniel Whelan, the watchman at the Arsenal entrance.
Dumbfounded but stubborn, he refused to betray his trust by surrenderingthe keys.
"Open the gate!" Brown commanded.
"To hell wid yez!"A half dozen rifles were thrust at his head.
He folded his arms and stood his ground.
They pushed a lantern into his face and Brown studied him a moment. Hedidn\'t wish a gun fired yet. The town was asleep and he wanted it tosleep.
"Get a crowbar," he ordered.
They got a crowbar from the wagon, jammed it into the chain which heldthe wagon gate and twisted the chain until it snapped. He drove thewagon inside, closed the gate and the United States Arsenal was in hishands.
Brown placed the two watchmen in charge of his men, Jerry Anderson andDauphin Thompson.
He spoke to the prisoners in sharp command.
"Behave yourselves, now. I\'ve come here to free all the negroes in thisState. If I\'m interfered with I\'ll burn the town and have blood."Every man who passed through the dark streets was accosted, madeprisoner and placed under guard.
Hazlett and Edwin Coppoc were ordered to hold the Armory. Oliver Brownand William Thompson were sent to seize the Shenandoah bridge, thedirect line of march into the slave-thronged lower valley.
Stevens was sent to capture the Rifle Works which was accomplished intwo minutes.
The program had worked exactly as Brown had predicted. Not a shot hadbeen fired and they were masters of the town, its two bridges, theUnited States Arsenal, Armory and Rifle Works.
The men were now despatched through the town for the real work of thenight--the arming of the black legion with pikes and torches.
It was one o\'clock before the first accident happened. Patrick Higgins,the second night watchman, came to relieve Williams on............