From his earliest interest in Negroes, John Brown sought to know individuals among them intimately and personally. He invited them to his home and he went to theirs. He talked to them, and listened to the history of their trials, advised them and took advice from them. His dream was to enlist the boldest and most daring spirits among them in his great plan.
When, therefore, John Brown came East in January, 1858, his object was not simply to further his campaign for funds, but more especially definitely to organize the Negroes for his work. Already he had disclosed his intentions to Thomas Thomas of Springfield and to Frederick Douglass. He now determined to enlist a larger number and he particularly had in mind the Negroes of New York and Philadelphia, and those in Canada. At no time, however, did John Brown plan to begin his foray with many Negroes. He knew that he must gain the confidence of black men first by a successful stroke, and that after initial success he could count on large numbers. His object then was to interest a few leaders like Douglass, organize societies with wide ramifications, and after the first raid to depend on these societies for aid and recruits.
During his stay with Douglass in February, 1858, he wrote to many colored leaders: Henry Highland Garnet and James N. Gloucester in New York; John Jones in Chicago, and J. W. Loguen of the Zion Church. The addresses of Downing of Rhode Island, and Martin R. Delaney were also noted. On February 23d, after he had been in Boston and Peterboro he notes writing to Loguen, one of the closest of his Negro friends: “Think I shall be ready to go with him [to Canada] by the first of March or about that time.”[[176]]
On March 10th, John Brown and his eldest son, Henry Highland Garnet, William Still and others met at the house of Stephen Smith, the rich Negro lumber merchant, of 921 Lombard Street, Philadelphia. Brown seems to have stayed nearly a week in that city, and probably had long conferences with all the chief Philadelphia Negro leaders. On March 18th, he was in New Haven where he wrote Frederick Douglass and J. W. Loguen, saying: “I expect to be on the way by the 28th or 30th inst.” After a flying visit home, involving a long walk to save expense, he appeared again at Douglass’s in April. Gloucester collected a little money for him in New York and he probably received some in Philadelphia; at last he turned his face toward Canada.
He had long wished to see Canada, and had planned a visit as far back as 1846. Hither he had sent one of the earliest of his North Elba refugees, Walter Hawkins, who became Bishop of the British African Church. On April 8th, John Brown writes his son: “I came on here direct with J. W. Loguen the day after you left Rochester. I am succeeding, to all appearance, beyond my expectations. Harriet Tubman hooked on his whole team at once. He (Harriet) is the most of a man, naturally, that I ever met with. There is the most abundant material, and of the right quality, in this quarter, beyond all doubt. Do not forget to write Mr. Case (near Rochester) at once about hunting up every person and family of the reliable kind about, at, or near Bedford, Chambersburg, Gettysburg, and Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, and also Hagerstown and vicinity, Maryland, and Harper’s Ferry, Va.”[[177]]
He stayed at St. Catherines until the 14th or 15th, chiefly in consultation with that wonderful woman, Harriet Tubman, and sheltered in her home. Harriet Tubman was a full-blooded African, born a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1820. When a girl she was injured by having an iron weight thrown on her head by an overseer, an injury that gave her wild, half-mystic ways with dreams, rhapsodies and trances. In her early womanhood she did the rudest and hardest man’s work, driving, carting and plowing. Finally the slave family was broken up in 1849, when she ran away. Then began her wonderful career as a rescuer of fugitive slaves. Back and forth she traveled like some dark ghost until she had personally led over three hundred blacks to freedom, no one of whom was ever lost while in her charge. A reward of $10,000 for her, alive or dead, was offered, but she was never taken. A dreamer of dreams as she was, she ever “laid great stress on a dream which she had had just before she met Captain Brown in Canada. She thought she was in ‘a wilderness sort of place, all full of rocks, and bushes,’ when she saw a serpent raise its head among the rocks, and as it did so, it became the head of an old man with a long white beard, gazing at her, ‘wishful like, jes as ef he war gwine to speak to me,’ and then two other heads rose up beside him, younger than he,—and as she stood looking at them, and wondering what they could want with her, a great crowd of men rushed in and struck down the younger heads, and then the head of the old man, still looking at her so ‘wishful!’ This dream she had again and again, and could not interpret it; but when she met Captain Brown, shortly after, behold he was the very image of the head she had seen. But still she could not make out what her dream signified, till the news came to her of the tragedy of Harper’s Ferry, and then she knew the two other heads were his two sons.”[[178]]
In this woman John Brown placed the utmost confidence. Wendell Phillips says: “The last time I ever saw John Brown was under my own roof, as he brought Harriet Tubman to me, saying: ‘Mr. Phillips, I bring you one of the best and bravest persons on this continent—General Tubman, as we call her.’ He then went on to recount her labors and sacrifices in behalf of her race.”[[179]]
Only sickness, brought on by her toil and exposure, prevented Harriet Tubman from being present at Harper’s Ferry.
From St. Catherines John Brown went to Ingersoll, Hamilton and Chatham. He also visited Toronto, holding meetings with Negroes in Temperance Hall, and at the house of the “late Mr. Holland, a colored man, on Queen Street West. On one occasion Captain Brown remained as a guest with his friend, Dr. A. M. Ross, who is distinguished as a naturalist, as well as an intrepid Abolitionist, who risked his life on several occasions in excursions into the South to enable slaves to flee to Canada!”[[180]]
Having finally perfected plans for a convention, Brown hurried back to Iowa for his men. During his three months’ absence they had been working and drilling in the Quaker settlement of Springdale, Ia., as most persons supposed, for future troubles in “bleeding Kansas.” On John Brown’s arrival they all hurriedly packed up—Owen Brown, Realf, Kagi, Cook, Stevens, Tidd, Leeman, Moffett, Parsons, and the colored man Richardson, together with their recruits, Gill and Taylor. The Coppocs were to come later. “The leave-taking between them and the people of Springdale was one of tears. Ties which had been knitting through many weeks were sundered, and not only so, but the natural sorrow at parting was intensified by the consciousness of all that the future was full of hazard for Brown and his followers. Before quitting the house and home of Mr. Maxon, where they had spent so long a time, each of Brown’s band wrote his name in pencil on the wall of the parlor, where the writing still can be seen by the interested traveler.” They all immediately started for Canada by way of Chicago and Detroit. At Chicago they had to wait twelve hours, and the first hotel refused to accommodate Richardson at the breakfast table. John Brown immediately sought another place. The company arrived shortly in Chatham and stopped at a hotel kept by Mr. Barber, a colored man. While at Chatham, John Brown, as Anderson relates, “made a profound impression upon those who saw or became acquainted with him. Some supposed him to be a staid but modernized ‘Quaker’; others a solid business man, from ‘somewhere,’ and without question a philanthropist. His long white beard, thoughtful and reverent brow and physiognomy, his sturdy, measured tread, as he circulated about with hands, portrayed in the best lithograph, under the pendant coat-skirt of plain brown tweed, with other garments to match, revived to those honored with his acquaintance and knowing his history the memory of a Puritan of the most exalted type.”[[181]]