The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South

by Jr. Thomas Dixon

"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 Arsenal 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 Knob, 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.