“Captain Brown was all activity, though I could not help thinking that at times he appeared somewhat puzzled. He ordered Lewis Sherrard Leary and four slaves, and a free man belonging in the neighborhood, to join John Henry Kagi and John Copeland at the rifle factory, which they immediately did.... After the departure of the train, quietness prevailed for a short time; a number of prisoners were already in the engine-house, and of the many colored men living in the neighborhood, who had assembled in the town, a number were armed.”[[236]]
Up to this point everything in John Brown’s plan had worked like clockwork, and there had been but one death. The armory was captured, from twenty-five to fifty slaves had been armed, several masters were in custody and the next move was to get the arms and ammunition from the farm. Cook says that when the party returned from the country at dawn, “I stayed a short while in the engine-house to get warm, as I was chilled through. After I got warm, Captain Brown ordered me to go with C. P. Tidd, who was to take William H. Leeman, and, I think, four slaves [Anderson says fourteen slaves] with him, in Colonel Washington’s large wagon, across the river, and to take Terrence Burns and his brother and their slaves prisoners. My orders were to hold Burns and brother as prisoners at their own house, while Tidd and the slaves who accompanied him were to go to Captain Brown’s house and to load in arms and bring them down to the schoolhouse, stopping for the Burnses and their guard. William H. Leeman remained with me to guard the prisoners. On return of the wagon, in compliance with orders, we all started for the schoolhouse. When we got there, I was to remain, by Captain Brown’s orders, with one of the slaves to guard the arms, while C. P. Tidd, with the other Negroes, was to go back for the rest of the arms, and Burns was to be sent with William H. Leeman to Captain Brown at the armory. It was at this time that William Thompson came up from the Ferry and reported that everything was all right, and then hurried on to overtake William H. Leeman. A short time after the departure of Tidd, I heard a good deal of firing and became anxious to know the cause, but my orders were strict to remain in the schoolhouse and guard the arms, and I obeyed the orders to the letter. About four o’clock in the evening C. P. Tidd came with the second load.”[[237]]
Here, in all probability, was the fatal hitch. The farm was not over three miles from the schoolhouse, and there was a heavy farm-wagon with four large strong horses and a dozen men or more to help. The fact that it took these men eleven hours to move two wagon-loads of material less than three miles is the secret of the extraordinary failure of Brown’s foray at a time when victory was in his grasp. That Cook was needlessly dilatory in the moving is certain. He sat down in Byrnes’s house and made a speech on human equality. Then Tidd went on to the farm with the wagon and brought a load of arms, which he deposited at the point where the Kennedy farm road meets the Potomac almost at right angles, about three miles or less from the Ferry. The schoolhouse stood here and the children were frightened half to death. Cook stopped at this place and unloaded the wagon, and then Leeman went with Byrnes to the guard-house, lingering and actually sitting beside the road. Even then they arrived before ten o’clock. With haste it is certain that, despite the muddy road, the first load of arms could have been at the schoolhouse before eight o’clock in the morning, and the whole of the stores by ten o’clock. That Brown expected this is shown by his sending William Thompson to reassure the men at the farm of his safety and probably to urge haste; yet when the second load of arms appeared, it was four o’clock in the afternoon, at least three hours after Brown had been completely surrounded. Judging from Cook’s narrative, it is likely that Thompson did not see Tidd at all. It was this inexcusable delay on the part of Tidd and Cook and, possibly, William Thompson that undoubtedly made the raid a failure. To be sure, John Brown never said so—never hinted that any one was to blame but himself. But that was John Brown’s way.
Events in the town had moved quickly. After Cook had departed, Brown ordered O. P. Anderson “to take the pikes out of the wagon in which he rode to the Ferry, and to place them in the hands of the colored men who had come with us from the plantations, and others who had come forward without having had communication with any of our party.”[[238]]
The citizens were “wild with fright and excitement.... The prisoners were also terror-stricken. Some wanted to go home to see their families, as if for the last time. The privilege was granted them, under escort, and they were brought back again. Edwin Coppoc, one of the sentinels at the armory gate, was fired at by one of the citizens, but the ball did not reach him, when one of the insurgents close by put up his rifle, and made the enemy bite the dust. Among the arms taken from Colonel Washington was one double-barreled gun. This weapon was loaded by Leeman with buckshot, and placed in the hands of an elderly slave man, early in the morning. After the cowardly charge upon Coppoc, this old man was ordered by Captain Stevens to arrest a citizen. The old man ordered him to halt, which he refused to do, when instantly the terrible load was discharged into him, and he fell, and expired without a struggle.”[[239]]
The next step which John Brown had in mind is unknown, but there were two safe movements at 9 A. M. Monday morning:
(a) The arms could have been brought across the Potomac bridge and then across the Shenandoah, and so up Londoun Heights. The men from the Maryland side could have joined, and Brown and his men covered their retreat by compelling the hostages to march with them. Kagi and his men, by wading the Shenandoah, could have supported them.
(b) The arms could have been taken down to the Potomac from the schoolhouse, ferried across and moved over to Kagi. Brown and his men could have joined the party there and all retreated up Loudoun Heights. From the fact that Brown had the arms stopped at the schoolhouse, this seems probably to have been the thought in his mind.
On the other hand, the plan usually attributed to Brown is unthinkable; viz., that he intended retreating across the Potomac into the Maryland mountains. First, he had just come out of the Maryland mountains and had moved down his arms and ammunition; and second, this manœuvre would have cut his band off from the Great Black Way to the South unless he captured the Ferry a second time. Manifestly this, then, was not Brown’s idea. It has, however, been suggested that the arms had been moved down to the schoolhouse to be placed in the hands of slaves there. But why were they left on the Maryland side? In the whole Maryland country west of the mountains were less than a thousand able-bodied Negroes, of whom not a tenth could have been cognizant of the uprising, while Brown had arms for 1,200 men or more. No, Brown intended to move the arms in bulk. He had perhaps a ton, or a ton and a half of baggage. He wished it moved first to the schoolhouse, and then if all was well to the Ferry, or straight across to the mountains. Cook started before five o’clock in the morning, and Brown no doubt expected to hear that the arms were at the schoolhouse by ten. At eleven o’clock he dispatched William Thompson to Kennedy farm. Anderson thinks that Thompson’s message made the farm party even more leisurely because it told of success so far. This is surely impossible. The veriest tyro must have known that minutes were golden despite the tremendous fortune of the expedition. Did Thompson misapprehend his message? Was the delay Tidd’s and what was Owen Brown thinking and doing? It is a curious puzzle, but it is the puzzle of the foray. If the party with the arms had arrived at the bridge any time before noon, the raid would have been successful. Even as it was, Brown still had three courses open to him, all of which promised a measure of success:
(a) He could have gotten his band and crossed back to Maryland,—although this meant the abandonment of the main features of his whole plan. As time waned Stevens and Kagi urged this but Brown refused.