eing organizing a secret
association to liberate the slaves of the South by a general
insurrection was too absurd for belief--too puerile for attention. The
letter was tossed aside.

If this were not enough, his friend and benefactor, Gerrit Smith, had
made an unfortunate speech before a negro audience in which he had
broadly hinted of his hope of an early slave insurrection.

It was the last straw. He was awaiting recruits but he dare not delay.
He summoned his friend, Frederick Douglas, from Rochester to meet him at
Chambersburg. If he could persuade Douglas to take his place by his side
on the night the blow would be struck, he would need no other recruits.
Brown knew this negro to be the foremost leader of his race and that the
freedmen of the North would follow him.

The old man arranged through his agent in Chambersburg that the meeting
should take place in an abandoned stone quarry just outside of town.

The watcher on the hill over Harper's Ferry was disguised as a
fisherman. His slouch hat, and also rod and reel, rough clothes, made
him a typical farmer fisherman of the neighborhood. He reached the stone
quarry unchallenged.

With eager eloquence he begged for the negro's help.

Douglas asked the details of his attack.

Brown bared it, in all its daring. He did not omit the Armory or the
Rifle Works.

Douglas was shocked.

With his vivid eloquence as a negro orator, he possessed far more common
sense than the old Puritan before whom he stood. He opposed his plea
as the acme of absurdity. The attack on the Federal Arsenal would be
treason. It would array the whole Nation against him. It would hurl the
army of the United States with the militia of Virginia on his back in an
instant.

Brown; boldly faced this possibility and declared that with it he could
still triumph, if once he crossed the line of Farquier county and thrust
his pikes into the heart of the Black Belt.

All day Saturday and half the day on Sunday the argument between the two
men continued. At noon on Sunday the old man slipped his arm around the
negro and pressed it close. His voice was softer than Douglas had ever
heard it and it sent the cold chills down his spine in spite of his firm
determination never to yield.

"Come with me, Douglas, for God's sake," he begged. "I'll defend you
with my life. I want you for a special purpose. I'll capture Harper's
Ferry in two hours. They'll be asleep. When I cross the line on the
mountain t