He is a medium sized, compactly-built and wiry man, as quick as a cat in his movements. His hair is of a salt and pepper hue and as stiff as bristles; he has a long, waving, milk white goatee which gives him a somewhat patriarchal appearance. A man of pluck, is Brown. You may bet on that. He shows it in his walk, talk and actions. He must be rising sixty and yet we believe he could lick a yard full of wild cats before breakfast and without taking off his coat. Turn him into a ring with nine Border ruffians, four bears, six injuns and a brace of bull pups and we opine that "the eagles of victory would perch on his banner." We don't mean by this that he looks like a professional bruiser, who hits from the shoulder, but he looks like a man of iron and one that few men would like to "sail into."
Kagi appeared to him "like a melancholy brigand, some of whose statements were no doubt false and some shamefully true." A summary of the lecture Brown delivered at Cleveland reads as follows:[356]
Brown's description of his trip to Westport and capture of eleven niggers was refreshingly cool, and it struck us, while he was giving it, that he would make his jolly fortune by letting himself out as an Ice Cream Freezer. He meant this invasion as a direct blow at slavery. He did not disguise it—he wanted the audience to distinctly understand it. With a few picked men, he visited Westport in the night and liberated eleven slaves. He also "liberated" a large number of horses, oxen, mules and furniture at the same time.
In this speech Brown made the only acknowledgment of record, of his relation to the Pottawatomie assassinations. The Leader, which was friendly to Brown, quoted him as saying,[357] that "he had never killed anybody, although on some occasions he had shown his young men with him, how some things might be done as well as others and they had done the business." Brown also impressed Mr. Alcott, who said of him after hearing his lecture at Concord, May 8th:[358]
He tells his story with surprising simplicity and sense, impressing us all deeply with his courage and religious earnestness.... I had a few words with him after his speech, and find him superior to legal traditions and a disciple of the Right in ideality and the affairs of state. A young man named Anderson accompanies him. They go armed, I am told, and will defend themselves if necessary. He does not conceal his hatred of slavery, nor his readiness to strike a blow for freedom at the proper moment. He is of imposing appearance.... I think him about the manliest man I have ever seen.
The principal matter in hand now was to finance the initial movement of the campaign. All the skies were clear. Time and the Kansas diversion had discredited Forbes's truthful statements and eliminated him from the problem. There was to be no further shifting of the scene, or hesitation or faltering. The flood in his affairs was rising, carrying him on its crest, to his fate. To the intelligent and insistent perseverence of Mr. Sanborn belongs the credit, or the discredit, as the reader may elect, for making Brown's operations possible. He stood, or became sponsor for Brown's integrity of purpose in January, 1857, and financed his subsequent career. May 30th, he wrote Colonel Higginson:
Capt. B. has been here for three weeks, and is soon to leave—having got his $2000 secured. He is at the U. S. Hotel; and you ought to see him before he goes, for now he is to begin.[359]
Mr. Sanborn states[360] that in all, a little more than four thousand dollars passed through the hands of the secret committee or was known to it, as having been contributed in aid of the "Virginia enterprise:" and that those who contributed thirty-eight hundred dollars of this sum, did so "with a clear knowledge of the use to which it would be put."
At North Elba, about June 16th, Brown bid his family farewell and went to West Andover where he made arrangements with his son John to take upon himself the combined duties of quartermaster general, and recruiting and mustering officer. From Ohio he went to Pennsylvania, writing to Kagi, from Pittsburgh, under the name of S. Monroe. He was at Bedford on June 26th, and at Chambersburg on the 28th. From Chamberburg, on June 30th, in company with two of his sons, Owen and Oliver, and Jeremiah G. Anderson. Brown left for the "front." On that day he wrote Kagi under the name of "I Smith & Sons" saying that they were leaving for Harper's Ferry and would be looking for "cheap lands near the railroad in all probability." July 3d, they arrived at Sandy Hook, Maryland, and spent the next day reconnoitering the country on the Maryland side of the Potomac above Harper's Ferry.