Nat Turner had shown his followers how to start an insurrection. He personally spilled the first blood, the blood which turned loose the furies in Southampton County, and Brown now saw, too late, that if he and his captains had each led a party of negroes, as Turner had led; and shown them how to kill, as Turner had shown his followers; they too might have turned loose the furies of which Brown and Forbes dreamed, and launched the hurricane of death. Then, with thousands of rioting slaves, brandishing their bloody spears, the occupation of Harper's Ferry would have been but an incident of minor importance in this history.
Forbes perceived the weak link in the chain of Brown's forecast, and made the point, that unless the slaves were "already in a state of agitation, there might be no response, or a feeble one." But Brown, carried away by an enthusiasm inspired by a continuous contemplation of the grandeur of his scheme, failed to give the warning the consideration which its importance deserved. He dismissed Forbes's caution with the confident assertion that he "was sure of a response" His over-confidence led to his immediate undoing. Upon the rock that Forbes had pointed out foundered the new-born ship of state. The great uprising of the blacks upon which he relied, failed to materialize; the thousands of reënforcements which he looked for, appeared not at all.[437] The plans for the conquest of the Southern States, and for the establishment of the Provisional Government miscarried.
Concerning Brown and his plans Mr. Vallandigham said:
It is in vain to underestimate the man or the conspiracy. Captain John Brown is as brave and resolute a man as ever headed an insurrection, and, in a good cause, and with a sufficient force, would have been a consummate partisan commander. He has coolness, daring, persistency, the stoic faith and patience, and a firmness of will and purpose unconquerable. He is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic or madman. Certainly it was the best planned and best executed conspiracy that ever failed.[438]
John Brown was not a pioneer in the slave insurrection business, nor does his plan of procedure at Harper's Ferry suggest any novelties or anything original in the way of such insurrections. He had before him a long line of precedents and examples which he studied; and ideals, written in blood, which he sought to emulate. His heroes were Toussaint L'Ouverture and Nat Turner, their hands red with the blood of innocence. Turner had killed between fifty and sixty white people, mostly women and children, and Mr. Redpath tells us that Brown "admired this negro patriot equally with George Washington." Turner was his most recent and most direct example. It was from what Turner had done, that Brown and Forbes formed their estimates of what they could do. From the example furnished by this ideal patriot, they framed the Maryland-Virgina equation. They reasoned in this way: If an ignorant slave, with a score of poorly armed negro followers, who were also slaves, could kill sixty white people in a day, how many white people could a thousand negroes, who are well equipped for midnight slaughter, kill in a single night? Their solution of that problem found expression in the order which they placed, in March, 1857, with the Collinsville blacksmith. It was Brown's answer to this question, expanded as Brown sought to expand it at Harper's Ferry, that was to "make slavery totter from its foundations."
Upon several occasions—notably, once in South Carolina, and twice in Virginia—the slaves of this country had engaged in conspiracies against their masters. In each instance the men who promoted the revolt were themselves slaves. In two instances the insurgents planned to seize the arsenals, and public arms and ammunition, as Brown planned to do, and did, at Harper's Ferry. In each instance the revolt was to be accomplished by a general massacre of the white inhabitants. Brown and Forbes, in 1857, studied the trails that had been blazed on these occasions, and planned with reference to the experiences of the men who had directed the efforts.
The first attempt at insurrection in this country was led by "General" Gabriel in September, 1800. The date agreed upon was Saturday [Monday], September 1st. The place of rendezvous was on a brook six miles from Richmond, Virginia. The force was to comprise eleven hundred men, divided into three divisions. The attack was to have been made upon Richmond, then a town of eight thousand population, under cover of the night.[439]
The plan for the occupation of Richmond was similar in some respects to Brown's plans at Harper's Ferry. One of the divisions of the army was to take the penitentiary, which had been improvised into an arsenal. Another division was to seize the powder-house. A statement of the trouble was published in the United States Gazette of Philadelphia, September 8, 1800:
The penitentiary held several thousand stand of arms; the powder-house was well stocked; the capitol contained the State Treasury; the mills would give them bread; the control of the bridge across the James river would keep off enemies from beyond. Thus secured and provided, they planned to issue proclamations, summoning to their standard "their fellow negroes and the friends of humanity throughout the continent." In a week they estimated they would have 50,000 men on their side, when they would possess themselves of other towns.[440]
A formidable insurrection was attempted in 1822 by Denmark Vesey. The slaves involved in this plot were distributed over a territory of forty-five to fifty miles in extent around Charleston, South Carolina. Vesey's plan of revolt contemplated the wholesale slaughter of the white population and the occupation of the country by the blacks.