In their dreams of the Provisional Government and in their planning for the Provisional army, they decided to open a school for instruction in the science of war and in the science of civil government, at some point convenient to the scene of the prospective conflict; whereat the persons whom Brown had in view for his subordinate commanders—general officers, division and military district commanders—could be swiftly educated and fitted for their respective duties and responsibilities. Forbes, whose position was that of a chief of staff, was to have charge of the school. November 2d, he took passage from Nebraska City for the East to find a suitable location, in Ashtabula County, Ohio, for the War College which was to be improvised; and Brown, as we have seen, proceeded to Kansas to further finance their venture if local conditions—"disturbances"—became favorable for fiscal operations; and to matriculate the tyros.
He had been in correspondence with Holmes—the "Little Hornet"—and other adventurers whom he thought would engage in his enterprises. Cook agreed to join him and recommended others—Richard Realf, Luke F. Parsons, and Richard J. Hinton.[280] On Sunday, November 8th, Brown met Cook and Parsons, near Lawrence, and came to an understanding with them for organizing a party to steal some horses; or, as Mr. Villard puts it: "To organize a company for the purpose of putting a stop to the aggressions of the pro-slavery forces." A few days later he notified the members of the party to meet at the appointed rendezvous. Cook met him on the 16th, at Mrs. Sheridan's, near Topeka. The next day Aaron D. Stevens, Charles W. Moffet, and John H. Kagi joined them, and the party set out on the contemplated expedition.
In their camp north of Topeka that evening. Brown took the men into his confidence, and disclosed to them his intention to attempt the conquest of the Southern States.[281] "Here," says Cook in his confession, "for the first time I learned that we were to leave Kansas to attend a military school during the winter." It is for the reader to decide for himself whether or not the party stole any horses that night, or what other steps they took, if any, to put "a stop to the aggressions of the pro-slavery forces." Their destination was Tabor, Iowa; they were horse thieves, and were in a secret camp, north of Topeka. Continuing his narrative Cook says: "Next morning I was sent back to Lawrence to get a draft of $80 cashed, and to get Parsons, Realf and Hinton, to go back with me." He relates how he with Realf and Parsons, made the trip to Tabor; but the route traveled by Brown, Stevens, Moffet, and Kagi, and the incidents of their journey, if any, are not given.
December 2d, there were assembled at Tabor, John Brown, Owen Brown, A. D. Stevens, Charles W. Moffett, C. P. Tidd, John H. Kagi, Richard Realf, Luke F. Parsons, John E. Cook, and W. M. Leeman; also Richard Richardson, a runaway slave whom Brown had picked up at Tabor. "Here," Cook says, "we found that Captain Brown's ultimate destination was the State of Virginia"; and these were the men he had selected for his commanders in the Army of the Invasion. They were not a coterie of humanitarians or sentimentalists whom he had picked up, mooning about in Kansas; but a lot of care-free, reckless, ambitious young men who had parted their moorings to an orderly life. Of them Senator Doolittle, speaking for the minority of the Mason Committee said: "It was from such elements [lawless] that John Brown concocted his conspiracy consisting of young men and boys over whom he had entire control, many of them foreigners and none of substance or position in the country."[282] It is not in the "dominating spirit of John Brown himself must be found the true reason for their readiness to join in so desperate a venture as Brown outlined to them or because of their readiness to go any lengths to undermine slavery."[283] Cook knew Brown's career from the Pottawatomie to Osawatomie, and approved of his system for undermining things. Parsons was with him in the Osawatomie cattle raid. Stevens had graduated from a volunteer in the Mexican War, to a private in the First Dragoons, United States army. He was insubordinate, and had been tried for mutiny and for assaulting an officer—Major George A. H. Blake, First Dragoons—and sentenced to death. The sentence had been commuted to confinement, for three years at hard labor, in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, from which he escaped and joined the Free-State forces in Kansas. He became colonel of the Second Regiment in the Free-State army under the name of Charles Whipple. It was not Brown and his magnetism or any insipid nonsense about "philanthropy or love for the slave" that appealed to these adventurers, but the scheme which he unfolded before them. It was the charm of the glittering expanse of opportunity which he pressed upon their mental conceptions, that won, and enlisted them in the venture.
On December 4th, with their plunder, ordnance stores and camp and garrison equipment, Brown and his staff set out from Tabor for Ashtabula. There had been argument, disagreement, and some wrangling at Tabor about the practicability of the undertaking; but yielding to the force of Brown's exposition of it, opposition was silenced and confidence of success supplanted doubt in the minds of all. Of the march across Iowa to Iowa City and Springdale, Mr. Villard, quoting from fragments of Owen Brown's diary, that survived the wreck at Harper's Ferry, says: "Progress was slow, for all of the men walked and the weather was bitter cold. On December 8, the entry reads: 'Cold, wet and snowy; hot discussion about the Bible and war—warm argument about the effects of the abolition of slavery upon the Southern States, Northern States Commerce and manufactures, also upon the British provinces and the civilized world; whence came our civilization and origin? Talk about prejudices against color; question proposed for debate,—greatest general, Washington or Napoleon.'" The party arrived at Springdale, Iowa, on the 28th or 29th of December. Early in January, 1858, Brown changed his plans about going to Ashtabula County, and for opening there the School of Instruction. On January 11th, he located his men for the winter at the home of Mr. William Maxson, the latter agreeing to take the wagons and horses from Brown on account for boarding. The War College was then opened at Springdale, instead of in Ashtabula County; and with Stevens in charge instead of Forbes. Continuing his narrative about the doings of the school, Mr. Villard says:[284] "On the 12th (February) there was 'talk about our adventures and plans.' In the main, discussion ranged from theology and spiritualism to caloric engines, and covered every imaginable subject between them. Much talk of war and fighting there was, and drilling with wooden swords. Stevens, by reason of his service in the Mexican War, and subsequently in the United States Dragoons, was drill-master in default of Forbes. Sometimes they went into the woods to look for natural fortifications; again they discussed dislodging the enemy from a hill-top by means of zig-zag trenches. Forbes manual was diligently perused." Also they organized a "moot legislature and beguiled the long winter evenings, drafting laws for an ideal 'State of Topeka.' It followed the regulation procedure with its bills and debates." The curriculum in this school is evidence of the character of the duties the students therein were being fitted to perform; they were being instructed in the higher strategy of war, in the command of troops and in the science of government. Writing to Mr. Sanborn from Brooklyn, February 26th, Brown said:[285]
I want to put into the hands of my young men, copies of Plutarch's "Lives," Irving's "Life of Washington," the best written Life of Napoleon, and other similar books, together with maps and statistics of States ... I also want to get a quantity of best white cotton drilling—some hundred pieces, if I can get it. The use of this article I will explain hereafter.
About January 1st, the two Soldiers of Fortune—Brown and Forbes—arrived at the parting of their ways. They seem to have been in agreement and in full sympathy with each other when they separated November 2d; for Brown at that time gave Forbes a letter to Mr. Frederick Douglass, commending him to his confidence and asking Douglass to assist him. The letter Forbes lost no time in presenting. He stopped at Rochester, as he went east, and got what money he could. Mr. Douglass says[286] that he was not favorably impressed with Forbes at first, but took him to a hotel and paid his board while he remained, and gave him some money for his family in Europe, then in destitute circumstances. He introduced him to some of his German friends whom Forbes "soon wore out with his endless begging."
Failing to collect money for the cause, as fast as he thought he was entitled to, or as fast as he needed it, Forbes began to try to force contributions from Brown's friends, claiming that he had been employed by him, and that sums of money were due him on account of arrears of salary. Later he threatened to expose Brown's plans of invasion, believing, or assuming to believe, that such plans were a part of a general conspiracy, among the northern Abolitionists, to overthrow slavery. Information relating to his conduct was received by Brown at Springdale, and caused him to halt there until he could ascertain the extent of Forbes's defection. Upon confirmation of his advices, and being unable to pay Forbes's salary, he dropped him; refused to answer his letters, and changed his plans of procedure. Pressed by his necessities, Forbes became aggressive, and, carrying his case to Mr. Charles Sumner and to Mr. Henry Wilson, and to Mr. William H. Seward, denounced Brown as "reckless, unreliable and vicious." He approached Mr. Wilson in the Senate chamber at Washington and demanded that Brown and his men be disarmed.
While Forbes caused Brown no end of trouble, the case was not nearly so serious as it would have been, if his eastern patrons had known what Forbes was talking about. Brown, whose "sincerity of purpose was above suspicion," and who "was so transparent that all men can see him through," had led them, throughout the whole extent of their intercourse, to think and believe that his operations were to be undertaken solely for the defense of the Free-State settlers in Kansas; they knew nothing about his plans for operations in Virginia. In the face of this condition of affairs, Forbes could make no progress, by means of his threats to make exposures, and was immediately discredited; for, as Mr. Douglass said, "Nobody believed him although the scoundrel told the truth." He was discreet however, in his controversy with Brown and in his denunciation of him, in this respect: he was careful not to give his troubles publicity, or to do anything that would otherwise imperil or wreck the general proposition.
Forbes did not, at first, comprehend Brown's autocracy in the scheme—that he had no associates—and, that while he depended upon his generous friends to finance the enterprise, he had not taken them into his confidence, but was in reality practicing a deception upon them. When the facts of the situation finally became apparent to his understanding, he then sought to discredit Brown and his plans, and to ingratiate himself with his clientage, so as to supersede him in leadership, and in control of any general plan of action, in relation to slavery, that might thereafter be agreed upon and undertaken. With this purpose in view, Forbes addressed a letter to Dr. Samuel G. Howe, May 14, 1858, submitting to him a very weak statement of the violent and dangerous things which Brown intended to do, for comparison with a statement of the safe and sane things, that, in his judgment, could be done: claiming that he had urged his plan upon Brown, and that he had, at one time, succeeded in obtaining Brown's consent thereto: and that it had been adopted by them under the name of "The Well-Matured Plan." Extracts from this letter are published by Mr. Villard on pages 313-314. Forbes, setting up a straw man for the purpose of knocking him down, stated that Brown proposed, with from twenty-five to fifty colored and white men, well armed and taking with them a quantity of spare arms, "to beat up a slave quarter in Virginia." To this Forbes offered objections as follows: "No preparatory notice having been given to the slaves [no notice could go or with prudence be given to them] the invitation to rise might, unless they were already in a state of agitation, meet with no response or a feeble one." To this Brown had replied, that he "was sure of a response." He calculated that he could get "on the first night from 200 to 500. Half, or thereabouts, of this first lot, he proposed to keep with him, amounting to a hundred or so of them, and make a dash at the Harper's Ferry manufactory, destroying what he could not carry off. The other men, not of this party, were to be subdivided into three, four, or five distinct parties, each under two or three of the original band, and would beat up other slave quarters whence more men would be sent to join him." "He [Brown] argued that were he pressed by the U. S. Troops, which, after a few weeks, might concentrate, he could easily maintain himself in the Alleghenies and that his New England partisans would in the meantime, call a Northern Convention, restore tranquility and overthrow the pro-slavery administration." This, Forbes contended, could at most be "a mere local explosion. A slave insurrection, being from the very nature of things deficient in men of education and experience, would under such a system as B. proposed, be either a flash in the pan or would leap beyond his control, or any control, when it would become a scene of anarchy and would assuredly be suppressed." On the other hand Brown considered "foreign intervention as not impossible." As to the dream of a Northern convention, Forbes "considered it as a settled fallacy. Brown's New England friends would not have courage to show themselves as long as the issue was doubtful," and added: "see my letter to J. B. dated 23rd February."