“The Abolitionists! Get the Abolitionists! They are behind John Brown!”
Amelia read of letters and papers found in the farmhouse near Harper’s Ferry. “Many people are implicated! Indictments being drawn up!” She looked at Jack, her face white.
“Do you suppose—could it be—would he be among them?” She bit her trembling lips.
Jack Haley frowned. He had heard talk at the office. He knew they were looking for Frederick Douglass. He knew they would hang this Negro whom they hated and feared more than a dozen white men—if they got him. He patted Amelia on the shoulder.
“I wouldn’t worry,” he comforted her. “Your Frederick is a smart man.”
“He might be needed to testify—he may have something to say.” Amelia was certain Frederick Douglass would not turn aside from his duty.
“He is not a fool,” Jack said, shaking his head. “The Dred Scott decision renders his word useless. No word of his can help John Brown.”
Amelia heard the bitterness in Jack’s voice and she sighed. Time had dealt kindly with Amelia. At sixty her step was more elastic, her skin smoother and her shoulders straighter than the day, fifteen years before, when she had walked away from Covey’s place. Mrs. Royall, intrepid journalist, was dead. Amelia had stayed on in the house, assumed the mortgage, and took in as roomers a score of clerks and secretaries who labored in the government buildings a few blocks away. “Miss Amelia’s” house was popular, and her rooms were in demand.
Jack had married and talked of going away, of starting his own paper, of becoming a power in one of the new publishing houses—Then suddenly, during a sleeting winter, an epidemic had struck Washington. Afterward, there had been quite a stir about “cleaning up the city.” Certain sections had got new sewers and rubbish was collected. But Jack’s wife was dead. So a grim-faced, older Jack had moved in with Amelia. He had stayed on with the paper, contemptuous of much he saw and heard. For Jack Haley, as for many people in the United States the fall of 1859, John Brown cleared the air. Somebody’s doing something, thank God!
Amelia continued to scan the papers, dreading to see Frederick Douglass’ name. And one day she did, but as she read farther a smile lit up her face. The story was an angry denunciation of “this Frederick Douglass” by Governor Wise of Virginia. Douglass, he announced, had slipped through their fingers. He was known to have boarded a British steamer bound for England. “Could I overtake that vessel,” the Governor was quoted as saying, “I would take him from her deck at any cost.”