“He observed that I might have noticed the simple manner in which he lived, adding that he had adopted this method in order to save money to carry out his purposes. This was said in no boastful tone, for he felt that he had delayed already too long, and had no room to boast either his zeal or his self-denial. Had some men made such display of rigid virtue, I should have rejected it as affected, false, and hypocritical, but in John Brown, I felt it to be real as iron or granite. From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass., 1847, while I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful of its peaceful abolition. My utterances became more and more tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.”[[70]]
Tremendously impressed as was Douglass in mind and heart with John Brown and his plan, his reason was never convinced even up to the last; and naturally because here two radically opposite characters saw slavery from opposite sides of the shield. Both hated it with all their strength, but one knew its physical degradation, its tremendous power and the strong sympathies and interests that buttressed it the world over; the other felt its moral evil and knowing simply that it was wrong, concluded that John Brown and God could overthrow it. That was all—a plain straightforward path; but to the subtler darker man, more worldly-wise and less religious, the arm of the Lord was not revealed, while the evil of this world had seared his vitals. He uncovered himself if not reverently, certainly respectfully before the Seer; he gave him much help and information; he turned almost imperceptibly but surely toward Brown’s darker view of the blood-sacrifice of slavery, but he could never quite believe that John Brown’s tremendous plan was humanly possible. And this attitude of Douglass was in various degrees and strides the attitude of the leading Negroes of his day. They believed in John Brown but not in his plan. They knew he was right, but they knew that for any failure in his project they, the black men, would probably pay the cost. And the horror of that cost none knew as they.
If John Brown was to carry out his idea as he had now definitely conceived it, he must first find the men who could help him. On this point there seems to have been deliberation and development of plan, particularly as he consulted Douglass and the Negro leaders. His earlier scheme probably looked toward the use of Negro allies almost exclusively outside his own family. This was eminently fitting but impractical, as Douglass and his fellows must have urged. White men could move where they would in the United States, but to introduce an armed band exclusively or mainly of Negroes from the North into the South was difficult, if not impossible. Nevertheless, some Negroes of the right type were needed and to John Brown’s mind the Underground Railroad was bringing North the very material he required. It could not, however, be properly trained in cities whither it drifted both for economic reasons and for self-protection. Brown therefore heard of Gerrit Smith’s offer of August 1, 1846, with great interest. This wealthy leader of the New York Abolition group took occasion at the celebration of the twelfth anniversary of British emancipation to offer free Negroes 100,000 acres of his lands in the Adirondack region on easy terms. It was not a well thought-out scheme: the climate was bleak for Negroes, the methods of culture then suitable, were unknown to them; while the surveyor who laid out these farms cheated them as cheerily as though philanthropy had no concern with the project. The Gerrit Smith offer was not wholly a failure. It turned out some good Negro farmers, gave some of its best Negro citizens of to-day to northern New York, and trained a bishop of the British African Church. But it did far less than it might have done if better planned, and much if not all of its success was due to John Brown. He saw possibilities here both to shelter his family when he turned definitely to what was now his single object in life, and to train men to help him. He went to Gerrit Smith at Peterboro, N. Y., in April, 1848, and said: “I am something of a pioneer; I grew up among the woods and wild Indians of Ohio and am used to the climate and the way of life that your colony find so trying. I will take one of your farms myself, clear it up and plant it, and show my colored neighbors how such work should be done; will give them work as I have occasion, look after them in all needful ways and be a kind of father to them.”[[71]]
His offer was gladly accepted and he moved his family there the following year. It was a wild, lonely place. Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote once: “The Notch seems beyond the world, North Elba and its half-dozen houses are beyond the Notch, and there is a wilder little mountain road which rises beyond North Elba. But the house we seek is not even on that road, but behind it and beyond it; you ride a mile or two, then take down a pair of bars; beyond the bars faith takes you across a half-cleared field, through the most difficult of wood-paths, and after half a mile of forest you come out upon a clearing. There is a little frame house, unpainted, set in a girdle of black stumps, and with all heaven about it for a wider girdle; on a high hillside, forests on north and west,—the glorious line of the Adirondacks on the east, and on the south one slender road leading off to Westport, a road so straight that you could sight a United States marshal for five miles.”[[72]]
To his family John Brown’s word was usually not merely law but wish. They went to North Elba cheerfully and with full knowledge of the import of the change, for the father was frank. The daughter Ruth writes: “While we were living in Springfield, our house was plainly furnished, but very comfortably, all excepting the parlor. Mother and I had often expressed a wish that the parlor might be furnished too, and father encouraged us that it should be; but after he made up his mind to go to North Elba he began to economize in many ways. One day he called us older ones to him and said: ‘I want to plan with you a little; and I want you all to express your minds. I have a little money to spare; and now shall we use it to furnish the parlor, or spend it to buy clothing for the colored people who may need help in North Elba another year?’ We all said, ‘Save the money.’”[[73]]
It was no paradise, even for the enthusiast. Redpath says: “It is too cold to raise corn there; they can scarcely, in the most favorable seasons, obtain a few ears for roasting. Stock must be wintered there nearly six months in every year. I was there on the first of November, the ground was snowy, and winter had apparently begun—and it would last till the middle of May. They never raise anything to sell off that farm, except sometimes a few fleeces. It was well, they said, if they raised their own provisions, and could spin their own wool for clothing.”[[74]]
Meantime the scattered isolated eddies of the anti-slavery battles were swirling to one great current, and more and more John Brown was becoming the man of one idea. Impatiently he neglected his pressing wool business. Instead of keeping his eye on his critical London venture, he hastened across Europe perfecting military observations. He returned to America in time to hear all the feverish discussion of the Fugitive Slave Law and see its final passage. In November, 1850, he writes his wife from Springfield: “It now seems that the Fugitive Slave Law was to be the means of making more Abolitionists than all the lectures we have had for years. It really looks as if God had His hand on this wickedness also. I of course keep encouraging my colored friends to ‘trust in God and keep their powder dry.’ I did so to-day at Thanksgiving meeting publicly.”[[75]]
His Springfield meetings led to the formation of his “League of Gileadites,” the first of his steps toward the armed organization of Negroes. Forty-four Negroes signed the following agreement:
“As citizens of the United States of America, trusting in a just and merciful God, whose spirit and all-powerful aid we humbly implore, we will ever be true to the flag of our beloved country, always acting under it. We, whose names are hereunto affixed, do constitute ourselves a branch of the United States League of Gileadites. That we will provide ourselves at once with suitable implements, and will aid those who do not possess the means, if any such are disposed to join us. We invite every colored person whose heart is engaged in the performance of our business, whether male or female, old or young. The duty of the aged, infirm, and young members of the League shall be to give instant notice to all members in case of an attack upon any of our people. We agree to have no officers except a treasurer and secretary pro tem., until after some trial of courage and talent of able-bodied members shall enable us to elect officers from those who shall have rendered the most important services. Nothing but wisdom and undaunted courage, efficiency, and general good conduct shall in any way influence us in electing officers.”[[76]]
To this was added exhortation and advice by John Brown.