me a fiery
conviction that God had chosen him to be one of the leaders in the
righteous struggle against slavery. He also came to believe that, if God
had justified violence in defending righteousness in the Old Testament,
it could be used in other places and on a wider scale to topple the
peculiar institution.

Brown spent several weeks in Rochester, New York, at the home of
Frederick Douglass, planning what amounted to a guerrilla campaign
against the South. Despite Brown's urging, Douglass refused to join in
what he believed to be a futile and desperate gesture. However, he wished
Brown the best of luck. The plan was to establish a center of operation
in the Virginia hills. Brown did not expect to defeat the South by force
of arms. Instead, he believed that he could establish a mountain refuge
which would attract ever-increasing numbers of slaves. His hope was that
the drain on the slave system, coupled with the masters' fear of attack,
would so strain the peculiar institution that, bit by bit, the South
would be forced to negotiate some kind of settlement.

However, Brown had to obtain arms and ammunition, and, to keep the
operation going he and his men needed food and other supplies. The result
was the raid on the government arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The
attacking party included five blacks: Lewis Sheridan Leary, Dangerfield
Newly, John Anthony Copeland, Osborn Perry Anderson, and Shields Green.
Two of them were killed in the attack, two more were later executed, and
one escaped. The attack failed, and Brown and several others were
executed. Before his execution Brown said that, while they might dispose
of him quite easily, the Negro question itself could not be easily
dismissed. His prediction proved correct, Brown's execution made him a
martyr and at the end led to the victory for which he had yearned.

CHAPTER 6

From Slavery to Segregation

Blue, Gray, and Black

John Brown's raid convinced the South that Northern harassment of slavery
would continue and that the tactics would become even more desperate. At
the same time, the election of Abraham Lincoln was interpreted by the
South as a swing of the political pendulum in favor of the abolitionists.
This was not true. Both Lincoln and the Republican Party had decided that
the Anti-slave issue was not a broad enough platform on which to win an
election. While Lincoln had made it clear that he himself opposed
slavery, he also insisted tha