It was the last straw. He was awaiting recruits but he dare not delay. He summoned his friend, Frederick Douglas, from Rochester to meet him at Chambersburg. If he could persuade Douglas to take his place by his side on the night the blow would be struck, he would need no other recruits. Brown knew this negro to be the foremost leader of his race and that the freedmen of the North would follow him.
The old man arranged through his agent in Chambersburg that the meeting should take place in an abandoned stone quarry just outside of town.
The watcher on the hill over Harper's Ferry was disguised as a fisherman. His slouch hat, and also rod and reel, rough clothes, made him a typical farmer fisherman of the neighborhood. He reached the stone quarry unchallenged.
With eager eloquence he begged for the negro's help.
Douglas asked the details of his attack.
Brown bared it, in all its daring. He did not omit the Armory or the
Rifle Works.
Douglas was shocked.
With his vivid eloquence as a negro orator, he possessed far more common sense than the old Puritan before whom he stood. He opposed his plea as the acme of absurdity. The attack on the Federal Arsenal would be treason. It would array the whole Nation against him. It would hurl the army of the United States with the militia of Virginia on his back in an instant.
Brown; boldly faced this possibility and declared that with it he could still triumph, if once he crossed the line of Farquier county and thrust his pikes into the heart of the Black Belt.
All day Saturday and half the day on Sunday the argument between the two men continued. At noon on Sunday the old man slipped his arm around the negro and pressed it close. His voice was softer than Douglas had ever heard it and it sent the cold chills down his spine in spite of his firm determination never to yield.