r of 1857 he united with Mr. Amos A. Lawrence and others in
paying off the mortgage held by Mr. Gerritt Smith on his house
and farm at North Elba, N. Y., he paying two hundred and sixty
dollars. It would be difficult to state the entire amount of
money Mr. Stearns put into the hands of John Brown for
Anti-Slavery purposes and his own subsistence. He kept no account
of what he gave. In April or May, 1857, he gave him a check for
no less a sum than seven thousand dollars. Early in 1858, Hon.
Henry Wilson wrote to Dr. S. G. Howe that he had learned John
Brown was suspected of the intention of using those arms in other
ways than for the _defense_ of Kansas; and by order of the
committee, Mr. Stearns wrote (under date May 14, 1858) to Brown
not to use them for any other purpose, and to hold them subject
to his order, as chairman of said committee. When the operations
of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee virtually ceased, in
June or July, 1858, it happened that this committee were some
four thousand dollars in debt to Mr. Stearns, for advances of
money from time to time to keep the organization in existence;
and it was voted to make over to the chairman these two hundred
Sharp's rifles as part payment of the committee's indebtedness.
They were of small account to Mr. Stearns. He knew them to be in
good hands, and troubled himself no further about them, either
the rifles or the revolvers; although keeping up from time to
time a correspondence with his friend upon the all-engrossing
subject.

"In February of 1859, John Brown was in Boston, and talked with
some of his friends about the feasibility of entrenching himself,
with a little band of men, in the mountains of Virginia, familiar
to him from having surveyed them as engineer in earlier life. His
plan was to open communication with the slaves of neighboring
plantations, collect them together, and send them off in squads,
as he had done in Missouri, 'without snapping a gun.' Mr. Stearns
had so much more faith in John Brown's opposition to _Slavery_,
than in any theories he advanced of the _modus operandi_, that
they produced much less impression on his mind than upon some
others gifted with more genius for details. _From first to last,
he believed in John Brown._ His plans, or theories, might