re to provide a plan of retreat. But retreat was
the last thing he intended to face.

The one thing on which he had staked his life and the success of his
daring undertaking was the swarming of the black bees. His theory was
reasonable from the Abolitionist's point of view. He believed that negro
Chattel Slavery as practiced in the South was the sum of all villainies.
And the Southern slave holders were the arch criminals and oppressors of
human history. In his Preamble of the new "Constitution" to which his
men had sworn allegiance, he had described this condition as one
of "perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute
extermination." If the negroes of the South were held in the chains of
such a system, if they were being beaten and exterminated, the black
bees _would_ swarm at the first call of a master leader and deluge the
soil in blood.

John Brown believed this as he believed in the God to whom he prayed
before he loaded his pikes and torches on the wagon. These black legions
would swarm to-night! He could hear their shouts of joy and revenge
as they gripped their pikes and swung into line under his God imposed
leadership.

The whole scheme was based on this faith. If Garrison's words were true,
if the Southern slave holder was a fiend, if Mrs. Stowe's arraignment of
Slavery on the grounds of its inhuman cruelty was a true indictment, his
faith was well grounded.

His thousand pikes in the hands of a thousand determined blacks led by
the trained Captains whom he had commissioned was a force adequate to
hold the town of Harper's Ferry and invade the Black Belt beyond the
Peak.

The moment these black legions swarmed and weapons were placed in their
hands the insurrection would spread with lightning rapidity. The weapons
were in the Arsenal. The massacres would be sweeping through Virginia,
North and South Carolina before an adequate force could reach this
mountain pass. And when they reached it, he would be at the head of a
black, savage army moving southward with resistless power.

The only question was the swarming of this dark army. Cook, who had
spent nearly a year among the people and knew these slaves best, was the
one man who held a doubt. For this reason he had begged Brown a second
time to let him sound the strongest men among the slaves and try their
spirit. Brown refused. He knew a negro. He was simply a white man in a
black skin by an accident of climate. He knew exactly what he wou