Part III

THE STORM

When the measure of their tears shall be full—when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness—doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by his exterminating thunder manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality.

—Thomas Jefferson

Chapter Eleven

The storm came up in the West and birds flew North

There never had been such a time for cotton. All over the South the cotton foamed in great white flakes under the sun. Black workers staggered beneath its weight. Up and down the roads straining mules pulled wagons loaded with bubbling masses of whiteness. The gins spat flames and smoke; the presses creaked and groaned, as closer and closer they packed the quivering mass until, dead and still, it lay in hard, square bundles on river wharves, beside steel rails and on rotting piers. Shiploads were on their way to the hungry looms of England and the crawling harbors of China. Prosperity lay like a fragrant mist upon the Southland in 1854.

William Freeland rode over his acres with satisfaction. True, they had diminished in number; but if cotton prices continued to rise, the master of Freelands could see years of ease stretching ahead. Since his mother’s death Freeland had left the running of the plantation pretty much to hired overseers. He had not interfered. He spent a lot of time in Baltimore, Washington and Richmond. With his dark brooding face and wavy, gray-streaked hair, the master of Freelands enjoyed much popularity with the ladies. He remained a bachelor.

It was Sunday morning, and the slight chill in the air was stimulating. Dead leaves rustled beneath his horse’s hoofs as he pulled up just inside the wrought-iron gates, where the graveled drive was guarded by the old sycamore. Time was beginning to tell on the big house far up the drive, but it still stood firm and substantial, though the Old Missus no longer tapped her cane through its halls. William Freeland sighed. He wished his mother had lived to see the last two good years at Freelands. For things falling to piece had made her unhappy. “A strong hand was lacking,” she said. The Mistress had grieved when old Caleb died and Aunt Lou, crippled with rheumatism and wheezing with asthma had to be sent away to a cabin at the edge of the fields. Henry had taken Caleb’s place, of course. But in this, she had acknowledged, her son had been right: Henry was stupid and incompetent. It was evident he would never master the job of being a good butler. On the other hand she used to remind William of the “bad-blood rascal” he had brought in to plant wicked seeds of rebellion at Freelands. Grumbling and sullen faces multiplied. In the old days, she had said, Freeland slaves never tried to run away.

The overseers came, had tightened up on things. The last runaway had been a young filly with her baby. The dogs had caught her down by the river and torn her to pieces. Freeland had gone away for a while afterward.

He went on up the drive slowly, chuckling when he spied the queer figure bent double under the hedge, scooping at the dirt with his bare hands. The inevitable butterfly net and mesh bag lay close by on the ground, though everybody knew that fall was no time to chase butterflies. William Freeland shook his head. What some men did to get famous! For that funny little figure under his hedge was Dr. Alexander Ross, entomologist, ornithologist, and ichthyologist, whose discoveries of rare specimen of bugs were spread out on beautifully colored plates in expensive books! He had met the scientist at the home of Colonel Drake in Richmond. The daughter of the house, who had been sent North to school, had simply babbled about him. She had displayed an autographed copy of one of those books, as if it were worth its weight in gold. When the funny little man had murmured he might be able to find a Croton Alabameses on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the master of Freelands had invited him to his plantation where, he had said with a laugh, there were sure to be some very rare bugs indeed. Later Freeland learned that a Croton Alabameses was not a bug, but a plant. It was the first evening when they were sitting on the veranda, and Dr. Ross had remarked on the charm of the old garden with its sweeping mosses, overgrown walks and thick hedges.

“It is lovely!” The little man had screwed up his eyes behind his thick glasses and blinked with delight.

After that he had been up before dawn and out all day, net and bag in hand. He tramped great distances through woods and river mud. He talked with the slaves, who, his host was certain, thought the little man was crazy. Freeland thought it well to warn him about lonely, unused lanes and river lowlands.

“Time was,” he added, “when I’d never think of cautioning a visitor at Freelands. Crime used to be unknown in these parts. But now there are many bad blacks about. It’s dangerous!” The little man was not listening. He was measuring the wing spread of a moth. Freeland became more insistent.

“Just a few weeks ago,” he said, “a poor farmer named Covey was found in his own back yard with his head crushed in. Most of the slaves were caught before they got away, but the authorities are still looking for his housekeeper, whom they really suspect of the crime. It’s horrible!”

The scientist was frowning, a puzzled expression on his round face.

“But why—Why should they think his housekeeper did this awful thing?”

William Freeland shrugged his shoulders. “It seems a dealer in the village told how this woman carried on like mad when Covey sold some girl off the place. I don’t know the details. But the man says he heard the woman say she’d kill her master.”

“Tck! Tck!” The little man shook his head.

“So you see, Doctor,” continued his host, judiciously, “that woman is at large and you’d never be able to cope with her.”

“Why, is she in the neighborhood?” Now Dr. Ross seemed interested.

“It would be very hard for her to get through the cordon they’ve laid around that neck of land. In your long tramps you might easily wander into the section without knowing it. So I wouldn’t get too far off the place if I were you.”

The little man nodded his head. Next evening, however, he did not return to the house until long after dark. He was bespattered with mud. He said he had stumbled and lost his specimens for the day. The mesh bag hung limp at his side.

But no harm had befallen him. There he was, looking like one of his own bugs, under the hedge. William Freeland swung off his horse and went into the house.

“Tell the Doctor breakfast is ready,” he said to Henry, who came forward.

“Dat dirty old man!” grumbled Henry, as he shuffled away on his errand. The master had to laugh.

No yellow canary sang in the alcove, but breakfast hour in the high-ceiled, paneled room passed very pleasantly. In the rare intervals when Dr. Ross was not squinting through his microscope or chasing through the woods, he was an interesting talker. This morning he compared the plant and insect life of this section of the Eastern Shore to a little strip of land in southern France on the Mediterranean.

“Nature has scattered her bounties lavishly here in the South,” he said. And because it was a happy subject William Freeland began to tell the scientist about cotton.

“The new state of Texas added thousands of acres. They’re starting to raise cotton in California, and now,” his voice showed excitement, “they find cotton can be raised in the Nebraska Territory.”

“A marvelous plant!” Dr. Ross was really interested.

A shadow crossed Freeland’s face.

“There is just one drawback. There aren’t enough slaves to raise cotton on all this land. The Yankees fear our cotton. They know that, if they let us alone, cotton will become the deciding factor throughout the country. Because they have no cotton lands, they try to throttle us. They tie our hands by trying to limit slavery. They know that cotton and slavery expand together.”

“But if slavery becomes illegal—as it did in Great Britain—in the West Indies?” The little man leaned forward. William smiled indulgently. He took a long draw on his pipe before answering.

“The United States is only a federation of states—nothing more. Where slavery was not needed it was abolished. But we need slaves here in the South, now more than ever. So”—and he waved his pipe—“we’ll keep them!”

“I’m reversing my schedule today,” Dr. Ross said as they rose from the table. “This afternoon I shall take a nap, because tonight I’m going out after Lepidoptera. I saw signs of him down by the creek yesterday, but they only fly after dark. I may be out all night.”

His host frowned.

“I’d better send one of the boys with you.” The little man shook his head.

“No need at all, sir. I doubt if I go off your grounds. I’ll trap one down in the bottoms below the meadow.”

William Freeland thought about the doctor that night when he went to bed—out chasing moths in the dark. Freeland took another sip of brandy before he put out his light.

Nine young men met Alexander Ross that night in the woods. To all of them, through devious channels, had come the word that “riders” on the Underground Railroad could be accommodated.

Dr. Ross sorted them into three groups and gave each one a set of directions. At such and such a place in the woods, the first trio would find a man waiting. Half a mile up the river bank, the second contingent were to look for an empty skiff tied to a willow: it wasn’t empty. The others had a wagon waiting for them on a nearby back road.

They had come supplied with as much food as they could conveniently carry. Ross handed each slave a few dollars, a pocket compass, a knife and pistol.

Then they scattered. Ross went a few miles with the group heading inland through the woods and then doubled back toward Freelands. He even caught a rare moth, which he carefully placed in his mesh bag.

A few days later the quiet little scientist shook hands with his host and took his departure.

Such was Alexander Ross before he was knighted by several kings for his scientific discoveries and honored by the French Academy. Wherever he went in Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi, he talked of birds and plants. Equipped with shotgun and preservatives, he roamed nonchalantly into field and wood. The slave disappearances were never related to him.

Along the Underground Railroad they called him “the Birdman.” Through him, Jeb, the boy Frederick had left behind in Baltimore, got away to freedom. And there were others along the Eastern Shore to whom Frederick had said, “I’ll not be forgetting!” Douglass sent Alexander Ross back along the way he had come and made good his promises.

Cotton and slavery—by 1854 the two words became synonymous. The Cotton Empire was straining its borders. More land was needed for the “silver fleece,” and slaves must break the land and plant the seed and pick the delicate soft pods. There was no other way.

Then a shrewd bidder for the presidency made an offer to the South—western territory for their votes—and they sprang at the bribe. Passage of the Nebraska Bill stacked the ammunition for civil war dangerously high.

This scrapping of the Missouri Compromise struck antislavery men all in a heap. The line against slavery had been so clear—no slaves above the line. It should have run to the Pacific, stretching west with the course of empire. But now, by means of the clever wording of the Nebraska (Territory) Bill—“to leave the people ... free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way”—a vast tract embracing upward of four hundred thousand square miles was being thrown open to slavery. Stephen Douglas drove the Bill through Congress. It was his moment of triumph.

The North reacted. Harriet Beecher Stowe led eleven hundred women marching through the streets in protest. Great mass meetings assembled. They hanged Stephen Douglas in effigy. State legislatures met in special sessions and sent manifests to Congress. William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Henry Highland Garnet, and Henry Ward Beecher raised their voices like mighty trumpets; they filled the air with oratory.

The five sons of John Brown set out for Kansas.

They were among the less important people who saw that if “the domestic institutions” were to be left to those who lived there to decide, it was going to be necessary for antislavery men to settle on the land. The brothers’ combined property consisted of eleven head of cattle and three horses. Ten of this number were fine breeds. Thinking of their value in a new country, Owen, Frederick and Salmon took them by way of the Lakes to Chicago and thence to Meridosia where they were wintered. When spring came, they drove them into Kansas to a place about eight miles west of the town of Osawatomie, which the brothers had selected as a likely spot to settle.

Seven hundred and fifty men set out that summer under the auspices of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society. Some traveled by wagon over lonely trails. Others sailed down the Ohio River, their farm implements lashed to the decks of the boats.

They found a lovely land—wide open spaces, rolling prairies and wooded streams under a great blue dome. They set up their tents and went about breaking soil. They dreamed of cattle herds, waving fields of corn and wheat, orchards and vineyards. There was so much of the good, rich earth in Kansas.

Election Day—when members for the first territorial legislature were chosen—came on March 30, 1855. Horace Greeley himself went out to Kansas to cover the election for his paper, the New York Tribune.

Slaveholders poured into the territory from Missouri by the thousands and took over the polls.

“On the evening before and the day of the election,” Greeley wrote, “nearly a thousand Missourians arrived in Lawrence in wagons and on horseback, well armed with rifles, pistols and bowie-knives.” According to his account, they made no pretense of legality, one contingent bringing up two pieces of cannon loaded with musket balls. It was the same everywhere in the territory: the invaders elected all the members of the legislature, with a single exception in either house. These were two Free Soilers from a remote district which the Missourians overlooked. “Although only 831 legal electors in the territory voted, there were no less than 6,320 votes polled.”

The people of Kansas repudiated this election and refused to obey the laws passed. Ruffians were called in “to aid in enforcing laws.” Then it was that the sons of John Brown wrote their father asking him to procure and send them arms and ammunition to defend themselves and their neighbors.

John Brown had given up his store in Springfield, Massachusetts, and moved to a small farm in the hills of North Elba, New York. Just before the trek West, he had written his son John: “If you or any of my family are disposed to go to Kansas or Nebraska with a view to help defeat Satan and his legions in that direction, I have not a word to say; but I feel committed to operate in another part of the field.”[13]

He had not heard from Kansas for many months, when he got the request for arms.

John Brown held his sons’ letter in his hands. He went outside and stood looking up at the Adirondacks, his hacked-out frame and wrinkled, yellow face hard against the sky. Then he strode to the barn and saddled his horse.

“I’m going to Rochester,” he told his wife. “I want to talk this over with Douglass.”

She stood in the narrow door and watched him riding down the trail. He did not look back. John Brown never looked back.

In Rochester people had already begun pointing out Frederick Douglass’ house to strangers. Until Douglass came and moved his family into the unpretentious two-story frame dwelling, Alexander Street had been one of many shady side-streets in a quiet section of the city. The dark-skinned new arrivals caused a lot of talk, but no open antagonism.

Famous folk from Boston and New York and Philadelphia began appearing on Alexander Street. Somebody said he’d recognized Horace Greeley, editor of a newspaper in New York; and somebody else was sure he saw the great preacher, Wendell Phillips. The neighbors grew accustomed to seeing Mr. Daniel Anthony’s huge carryall drive up of a Sunday afternoon and stop in front of the house, while all the Douglass family piled in. Mr. Anthony’s big place with its rows of fruit trees was several miles out in the country. Evidently that was where they went. Then they talked about Mr. Anthony’s daughter, Susan B. Anthony. She was pretty famous herself—what with going around the country and getting her name in all the papers. Some of the men shook their heads over this. But the women bit off the threads of their sewing cotton with a snap and eyed each other significantly. They reminded their men folks that the Woman’s State Temperance Convention had been a pretty important affair.

“Temperance conventions is one thing,” said the men, “but this talk about women voting is something else!”

Then one lady spoke up and said she’d heard their neighbor Frederick Douglass make a speech about women voting. “And it was wonderful!” she added.

“Seems like he’d have enough on his hands trying to free slaves!” grumbled one man, snapping his suspenders.

Douglass did have a lot on his hands. The North Star was a large sheet, published weekly, and it cost eighty dollars a week to issue. Everybody rejoiced when the circulation hit three thousand. There were many times when Douglass was hard pressed for money, and the mechanical work of getting out the paper was arduous. The entire family was drafted. Lewis and Frederick learned typesetting, and both boys delivered papers. The two little fellows soon became a familiar sight on Rochester streets, papers under their arms and school books strapped to their backs.

But the paper was only part of Douglass’ work. One whole winter he lectured evenings at Corinthian Hall. Other seasons he would take an evening train to Victor, Farmington, Canandaigua, Geneva, Waterloo, Buffalo, Syracuse or elsewhere. He would speak in some hall or church, returning home the same night. In the morning Martin Delaney would find him at his desk, writing or mailing papers.

Sleep in his house was an irregular business. At any hour of the day or night Underground “passengers” arrived. They came sometimes in carriages, with Quaker capes thrown about their shoulders; or they came under loads of wheat or lumber or sacks of flour. Some of them rode in boldly on the train, and more than once a packing-box arrived, marked Open with Care.

Every agent of the Underground Railroad risked fine and imprisonment. They realized they were bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon, yet the joy of freeing one more slave was recompense enough. One time Douglass had eleven fugitives under his roof. And there they had to remain until Douglass could collect enough money to send them on to Canada. His wife cooked numerous pots of food which quickly vanished. “Passengers” slept in the attic and barn loft.

Many people in Rochester became involved. One evening after dark a well-dressed, middle-aged man knocked at Douglass’ door and introduced himself as the law partner of the United States commissioner of that city. He would not sit down.

“I have come to tell you,” he said, “that an hour ago the owner of three slaves who have escaped from Maryland was in our office. He says he has traced them to Rochester. He has papers for their arrest, and he is coming to your house!”

Douglass stared at the man in amazement. He had recognized his name as that of a distinguished Democrat, perhaps the last person in Rochester from whom he would have expected assistance. He tried to say something, but the gentleman waved him aside.

“I bid you good evening, Mr. Douglass. There is not a moment to lose!” And he disappeared down Alexander Street.

One of the fugitives was at that moment in the hayloft, the other two were on the farm of Asa Anthony, just outside the city limits. That night two black horses rode swiftly through the night. Then Asa Anthony’s farm wagon rumbled down to the docks, and in the morning the three young men were on the free waves of Lake Ontario, bound for Canada.

Douglass and the North Star formed the pivot about which revolved much of the work of other Negro Abolitionists, whom Douglass now met for the first time. Henry Highland Garnet, well-educated grandson of an African chief, had never been closely associated with William Lloyd Garrison. From the first he had gravitated toward political action. There were Dr. James McCune Smith, who had studied medicine at Glasgow; James W. Pennington, with his degree from Heidelberg; Henry Bibb, Charles L. Redmond, and Samuel Ringgold Ward, Garnet’s cousin, who attracted Douglass in a very special manner. Ward was very black and of magnificent physique. They were all older than Douglass. But they strengthened his hand; and he, in his turn, was proud of them.

Then in 1850 the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, and no Negro, regardless of his education, ability, or means, was safe anywhere in the United States. Douglass had his manumission papers. His freedom had been bought. But Henry Highland Garnet and Samuel Ringgold Ward knew it was best that they leave the country.

Until Ward died the two men traveled in Europe, where Henry Highland Garnet came to be called the “Negro Tom Paine.” Douglass felt most deeply the loss of Ringgold Ward, whom he considered vastly superior to any of them, both as an orator and a thinker.

“In depth of thought,” he wrote, “fluency of speech, readiness of wit, logical exactness, and general intelligence, Samuel Ringgold Ward has left no successor among colored men amongst us.”

Meanwhile Douglass squared his shoulders and took on more responsibility. He saw former slaves who had lived for years safely and securely in western New York and elsewhere—who had worked hard, saved money and acquired homes—now forced to flee to Canada. Many died during the first harsh winter. Bishop Daniel A. Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal Church consulted Douglass as to the advisability of both of them fleeing.

“We are whipped, we are whipped,” moaned Payne, “and we might as well retreat in order.”

Douglass shook his head. “We must stand!”

It was the spring of 1855, and never had the huge mills and factories and tanneries of Rochester been busier. Great logs of Allegheny pine rode down the Genesee River and lay in clean, shining tiers of lumber in the yards. Up and down the Erie Canal went the flatboats, mules straining at the heavy loads; and on the docks of Rochester Port the goods lay piled waiting for lake steamers to go westward. Rochester boasted that it was the most important station on the newly completed New York Central Railroad.

The vigorous young city waxed fat. Sleek, trim “city fathers” began considering the “cultural aspects” of their town. Rochester’s Gallery of Fine Arts was established; plans were drawn up for an Academy of Music. “Causes” became less popular than they had been. There were those who gave an embarrassed laugh when Susan B. Anthony’s name came up, and some wondered if so much antislavery agitation was good for their city.

Slaveholders, vacationing in Saratoga Springs, dropped in on Rochester. They admired its wide, clean streets and fine buildings, but they shuddered at the sight of well-dressed Negroes in the streets. The Southerners spent money freely and talked about new cotton mills; and more than one wondered aloud why Frederick Douglass was allowed to remain in such a fine city.

But the hardy, true strain of the people ran deep. When Frederick Douglass was prevented from speaking in nearby Homer by a barrage of missiles, Oren Carvath resigned as deacon of the Congregational Church, sold his farm and moved to Oberlin. His son, Erastus, made Negro education the work of his life and became the first president of Fisk University.

There was scarcely any moon the night Douglass rode his horse homeward along Ridge Road. He had spoken in Genesee on the Nebraska Bill and politics for Abolitionists.

He enjoyed these solitary rides. They cleared his brain. But tonight he kept thinking about an angry letter he had received that day—a letter in which the writer had accused Douglass of having deserted his friend Garrison “in the time of his greatest need.” Douglass loved William Lloyd Garrison and the complete unselfish sincerity of the New Englander’s every utterance.

“If there is a good man walking on this earth today, that man is Garrison!” Douglass spoke the words aloud and then he sighed.

For he knew that the North Star was diverging more and more from Garrison’s Liberator. Douglass took a different stand on the Constitution of the United States.

Garrison had come to consider the Constitution as a slaveholding instrument. Now as the clashes were becoming more bitter in Boston and New York, he was raising the slogan “No Union with Slaveholders.”

Douglass, with the Abolitionists in western New York, accepted the fact that the Constitution of the United States was inaugurated to “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.” They therefore repudiated the idea that it could at the same time support human slavery. Douglass held the Constitution as the surest warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state in the Union. He urged the people to implement the Constitution through political action.

And so the former teacher and pupil were being pushed farther and farther apart. Douglass knew that Garrison’s health was poor. He thought, I must go to Boston, I must see him. And then his mind reverted to the low state of his funds. He rode along sunk in dejection.

He did not heed the horses’ hoofs beating the road until they came close behind him. He looked back—three riders were just topping the hill. They slowed up there and seemed to draw together. And suddenly Douglass felt that familiar stiffening of his spine. At the moment he was in the shadow of a grove; but just ahead the road lifted and he would be completely exposed. He walked his horse. Perhaps he was mistaken. They were coming forward at a slower pace and would most certainly see him any moment now. As he left the shadow of the trees he touched his horse and shot forward. He heard a shout and bent over as a bullet whizzed by!

It was to be a chase, but they were armed and he could not outrun their bullets. The road was a winding ribbon now, and he was gaining. He saw a clump of trees ahead. Yes, there was a little lane. As he turned off sharply, he felt a sear of pain across his head. He leaned forward and let his horse find its own way through the trees. Once a low hanging branch nearly swept him off, and several times the animal stumbled. Then they came out into a field, and ahead on a slight knoll was a big house. He could hear them behind him, and that open field meant more exposure; but the house was his only hope. He thought of the unfinished editorial lying on his desk.

“I’ve got to finish it!” he thought desperately, and gritted his teeth to keep from fainting.

Horse and rider were panting when they pulled up at the steps of the wide porch. No lights showed anywhere. Naturally, Douglass thought, everybody was sound asleep. His head felt very queer. He wanted to giggle—What on earth am I doing pounding at this heavy door in the middle of the night?

Gideon Pitts heard the pounding. He got up and started down in his bare feet.

“You’ll catch your death of cold, Gideon!” his wife called after him. But she herself was fumbling for her wrapper. She lit the lamp and holding it in her hand followed her husband to the head of the stairs. Down below in the dark he was fumbling with the heavy bolt. It shot back at last and the great door swung in. A big man filled the doorway. He was gasping for breath. He took one step inside and said, “I’m—I’m Frederick Douglass.” Then he collapsed on the floor at Gideon Pitts’s bare feet.

Gideon stood staring out. Through the open door he was sure he saw a couple of horsemen down at the edge of the field. He slammed the door.

Mrs. Pitts was hurrying down, the lamp casting grotesque shadows on the wall.

“What is it, Gideon? What is it? Did he say—?”

“Hush! It’s Frederick Douglass. He’s been hurt. Somebody’s after him!” Her husband’s words were hurried and low. He was bending over the man on the floor.

“I’ll call—” Mrs. Pitts began. Her husband caught her robe.

“Don’t call anyone. Pray God the servants heard nothing. He’s coming to!”

Mrs. Pitts was suddenly the efficient housewife.

“Some warm water,” she said, setting the lamp down, “and then we’ll get him upstairs.” She disappeared in the shadows of the hall.

There was a patter of feet on the stairway.

“What’s the matter, papa?” a child’s voice asked. “Oh!”

“Go back to bed, Helen! Mr. Douglass, are you all right?” Gideon Pitts bent over his unexpected visitor anxiously. Douglass sat up and put his hand to his head. It came away sticky. He looked around him and knew he was safe.

“I’m fine, thank you!” he smiled.

“Lie quiet, Mr. Douglass. Your head is hurt. My wife’s gone for warm water.”

“You are very kind, sir.” Douglass’ head was clearing now. “I’ve been shot.”

He heard a gasp and both men looked up. The little girl in her trailing white nightgown was leaning over the banister just above them, her blue eyes wide with excitement.

“Helen,” her father spoke sharply. “I told you to go back to bed!”

“Oh, father, can’t I help? The poor man is hurt!”

“Don’t worry, honey,” Douglass smiled up at her.

Now Mrs. Pitts was back with bowl and towels. She wiped away the blood, and Gideon Pitts declared that Douglass’ head had only been grazed. Douglass told what had happened, while they bandaged and fussed over him. Then Mrs. Pitts hurried away to get the guest-room ready.

“We’ll be honored if you’d stay the night!” Pitts said. There was nothing else to do. “I’ll drive you in town first thing in the morning,” his host assured him, helping him upstairs and into a great four-poster bed.

Everybody got up to see him off. Mrs. Pitts insisted that he have a “bite of breakfast.” The hired man had rubbed down and fed his horse.

Holding the bridle reins in his hand Douglass climbed into the buggy with Mr. Pitts.

“Better that I go in with you,” said his host. “Those ruffians might be lingering somewhere along the road.”

It was a fresh, sweet morning in May. The Pitts’ orchard was in bloom. Everywhere was peace and growing things. Douglass smiled at the little girl standing on the wide porch, and Helen Pitts waved her hand.

“Goodbye, Mr. Douglass. Do come back again!”

She felt important, waving at the great Frederick Douglass.

So it happened that the next day John Brown found Douglass with a bandage fastened about his head.

“It’s Captain John Brown!” called Charles, ushering the visitor in. Anna Douglass came in from the kitchen and greeted him warmly.

“We’re just sitting down to breakfast, Captain Brown. You are just in time.”

Little Annie set another plate, smiling shyly at the old man. His hand smoothed her soft hair.

“We’ll take a ride,” he promised and Annie’s eyes shone.

“They’ve attacked you!” John Brown exclaimed when Douglass came in with the bandage on his head.

“It was nothing, a mere scratch.” Douglass shrugged away the incident. “And how are you, my good friend? Something important brings you here.”

“Let him eat his breakfast first,” begged the wife.

Afterward Douglass read the letter from Kansas.

“Perhaps God directs me to Kansas,” said Brown earnestly. “Perhaps my path to Virginia lies through Kansas. What do you think?” Douglass shook his head.

“I do not know.” He was silent a moment, then his eyes lighted. “I’m leaving tomorrow for our convention in Syracuse. Come with me. Lay this letter from Kansas before all the Abolitionists. You’ll need money. Kansas is our concern.”

A few days later John Brown wrote his wife:

Dear wife and children:

I reached here on the first day of the convention, and I have reason to bless God that I came; for I have met with a most warm reception from all, so far as I know, and—except by a few sincere, honest, peace Friends—a most hearty approval of my intention of arming my sons and other friends in Kansas. I received today donations amounting to a little over sixty dollars—twenty from Gerrit Smith, five from an old British officer; others giving smaller sums with such earnest and affectionate expression of their good wishes as did me more good than money even. John’s two letters were introduced, and read with such effect by Gerrit Smith as to draw tears from numerous eyes in the great collection of people present. The convention has been one of the most interesting meetings I ever attended in my life; and I made a great addition to the number of warm-hearted and honest friends.

The die was cast: John Brown left for Kansas. Instead of sending the money and arms, says his son John, “he came on with them himself, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Henry Thompson, and my brother Oliver. In Iowa he bought a horse and covered wagon; concealing the arms in this and conspicuously displaying his surveying implements, he crossed into Missouri near Waverly, and at that place disinterred the body of his grandson, and brought all safely through to our settlement, arriving there about the 6th of October, 1855.[14]”

Chapter Twelve

An Avenging Angel brings the fury of the storm

“Did you go out under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society?” they asked John Brown at the trial four years after.

“No, sir,” he answered grimly, “I went out under the auspices of John Brown, directed by God.”

The settlement was a romantic place. Red men gliding by in their swift canoes had seen stately birds in the reedy lowlands of eastern Kansas and called the marsh the “swamp of the swan.” Here, on the good lands that rose up from the dark sluggish rivers, John Brown and his youngest son, Oliver, drove into the Brown colony.

“We found our folks in a most uncomfortable situation, with no houses to shelter one of them, no hay or corn fodder of any account secured, shivering over their little fires, all exposed to the dreadful cutting winds, morning, evening and stormy days.”

On November 23, 1855, Brown wrote to his wife:

“We have got both families so sheltered that they need not suffer hereafter; have got part of the hay secured, made some progress in preparation to build a house for John and Owen; and Salmon has caught a prairie wolf in a steel trap. We continue to have a good deal of stormy weather—rains with severe winds, and forming into ice as they fall, together with cold nights that freeze the ground considerably. Still God has not forsaken us.”[15] He did not tell her he had been down with fever.

Thus it was that John Brown came to Kansas and stood ready to fight for freedom. But no sooner had he arrived than it was plain to him that the cause for which he was fighting was far different from that for which most of the settlers were willing to risk life and property. John Brown publicly protested the resolution already drawn up, excluding all Negroes—slave or free! His words were coldly received.

From Frederick Douglass came more money and a letter.

“We are directing the eyes of the country toward Kansas,” Douglass wrote. “Charles Sumner in the Senate is speaking as no man ever spoke there before; Henry Ward Beecher has turned his pulpit into an auction block from which he sells slaves to freedom; Gerrit Smith and George L. Sterns have pledged their money; Lewis Tappan and Garrison have laid aside all former differences. Garrison is no longer bitter about my politics. He can see that we are accomplishing something. Free Soilers, Whigs, Liberals and antislavery Democrats are uniting. The state-wide party which we initiated some time ago has grown into a national movement.... We have adopted the name Republican, which was, you may recall, the original name of Thomas Jefferson’s party. Our candidate is John C. Frémont. His enemies say he is a dreamer who knows nothing of politics. If the people gather round in full strength we will show them.”

John Brown folded the letter. There was an unusual flush on his seared face.

“What is it, father?” Owen asked.

“From Douglass,” Brown replied. “God moves in mysterious ways!” That was all he said, but the sound of prairie winds was in his voice.

It was in December when rumor that the governor and his pro-slavery followers planned to surround Lawrence came to the Browns. On getting this news, they at once agreed to break camp and go to Lawrence. The band, approaching the town at sunset, loomed strangely on the horizon: an old horse, a homely wagon, and seven stalwart men armed with pikes, swords, pistols and guns. John Brown was immediately put in command of a company. Negotiations had commenced between Governor Shannon and the principal leaders of the free-state men. They had a force of some five hundred men to defend Lawrence. Night and day they were busy fortifying the town with embankments and circular earthworks. On Sunday Governor Shannon entered the town, and after some parley a treaty was announced. The terms of the treaty were kept secret, but Brown wrote jubilantly to New York that the Kansas invasion was over. The Missourians had been sent home without fighting any battles, burning any infant towns, or smashing a single Abolitionist press. “Free-state men,” he said, “have only hereafter to retain the footing they have gained, and Kansas is free.”

Developments in Kansas did not please the powerful slavocracy. Furious representatives hurried to Washington. And President Pierce, who had once sent a battleship to Boston to bring back one trembling, manacled slave, denounced the free-state men of Kansas as lawless revolutionists, deprived them of all support from the Federal government, and threatened them with the penalty for “treasonable insurrection.” Regular troops were put into the hands of the Kansas slave power, and armed bands from the South appeared, one from Georgia encamping on the “swamp of the swan” near the Brown settlement.

Surveying instruments in hand and followed by his “helpers”—chain carriers, axman and marker—John Brown sauntered into their camp one May morning. He was taken for a government surveyor and consequently “sound.” The Georgians talked freely.

“We’ve come to stay,” they said. “We won’t make no war on them as minds their own business. But all the Abolitionists, such as them damned Browns over there, we’re going to whip, drive out, or kill—any way to get shut of them, by God!”[16]

They mentioned their intended victims by name, and John Brown calmly wrote down every word they said in his surveyor’s book.

On May 21 the pro-slavery forces swooped down on Lawrence, burned and sacked it. Its citizens stood by trembling and raised no hand in defense.

The gutted, burning town sent a wave of anger across the country. It struck the Senate with full force. Only an aisle separated men whose eyes blazed with hate. Charles Sumner lifted his huge frame and in a voice that resounded like thunder denounced “a crime without example in the history of the past.” He did not hesitate to name names—calling Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois, and Matthew Butler from South Carolina murderers of the men of Lawrence. The next day, while Sumner sat writing at his seat, young Preston Brooks, representative from South Carolina, came up behind the Massachusetts legislator and beat him over the head with a heavy walking stick. Charles Sumner, lying bleeding and unconscious in the aisle, reduced the whole vast struggle to simple terms.

Out West, John Brown hurried to Lawrence. He sat down by the smoldering ashes in tight-lipped anger. He was indignant that there had been no resistance.

“What were they doing?” he raged.

Someone mentioned the word “caution.”

“Caution, caution, sir!” he sneered. “I am eternally tired of hearing the word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice.”

Yet there seemed to be nothing to do now; and he was about to leave, when a boy came riding up. The gang at Dutch Henry’s, he said, had told the women in Brown settlement that all free-state folks must get out by Saturday or Sunday, else they would be driven out. Two houses and a store in the nearby German settlement had been burned.

Then John Brown arose.

“I will attend to those fellows.” He spoke quietly. Here was something to do. He called four of his sons—Watson, Frederick, Owen and Oliver—and a neighbor with a wagon and horses offered to carry the band. They began carefully sharpening cutlasses. An uneasy feeling crept over the onlookers. They all knew that John Brown was going to strike a blow for freedom in Kansas, but they did not understand just what that blow would be. As the wagon moved off, a cheer arose from the company left behind.

He loosed a civil war. Everything that came after was only powder for the hungry cannon. Freedom is a hard-bought thing! John Brown knew. He already knew on that terrible night when he rode down with his sons into “the shadows of the Swamp of the Swan—that long, low-winding and somber stream fringed everywhere with woods and dark with bloody memory. Forty-eight hours they lingered there, and then of a pale May morning rode up to the world again. Behind them lay five twisted, red and mangled corpses. Behind them rose the stifled wailing of widows and little children. Behind them the fearful driver gazed and shuddered. But before them rode a man, tall, dark, grim-faced and awful. His hands were red and his name was John Brown. Such was the cost of freedom.”[17]

John Brown became a hunted outlaw.

They burned his house, destroyed everything he and his sons had garnered. But he had only begun his war upon the slavers. Out of the night he came, time after time, and always he left death behind.

“He’s mad! Mad!” they said, but pro-slavery men began to leave Kansas.

“Da freedom’s comin’!” Black men lifted their hands in silent ecstasy. They slipped across the borders and looked for John Brown. Tabor, a tiny prairie Iowa town of thirty homesteads, became the most important Underground Railroad station on the western frontier. For here John Brown set up camp, and began to organize for his “march.” Strength had come up in the old man, charging his whole being with power.

“We should not have given him money!” the folks back East were saying.

Douglass, moving back and forth from Rochester to Boston—to New York, Syracuse and Cleveland—grew thin and haggard. He had stood like a bulwark of strength, even when the Supreme Court had handed down its Dred Scott decision. People found clarion words in the North Star.

“The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world,” Douglass wrote. “We, the Abolitionists and colored people, should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the complete overthrow of the whole slave system.”

Months passed, and all he heard from Kansas were the awful reports of John Brown’s riding abroad. He could not argue the right or wrong of this thing. Condemnation of John Brown left him cold. But was John Brown destroying all they had built up? This was war! Was John Brown’s way the only way? They had lost the election. The new party’s fine words fell back upon them like chilling drops of rain. Then out in Kansas the Governor declared the state free! There was peace in Kansas.

One night in January, 1858, Douglass was working late in the shop. The house was still, locked in the hard fastness of a winter night. Outside, great slow white flakes were falling, erasing the contours of the street beneath a blanket that rounded every eave, leveled fences and walks, and muffled every sound. But he heard the light tapping on the window pane and instantly put out the light. There must be no light to throw shadows when he opened the door upon one of his fugitives. But even without a light he recognized the muffled figure.

“John Brown!” Douglass’ low voice sang a welcome.

He drew him in and brushed the snowflakes off. He lit the lamp with hands that trembled. Then he turned and looked at this man who had proved that he hated slavery more than he loved his life, his good name, or his sons. Even the little flesh he used to have was burned away. Yet one could see that all his bones were granite, and bright within the chalice of his mortal frame his spirit shone, unquenchable.

“You’re safe, John Brown!” It was a ridiculous thing to say, and John Brown rewarded him with one of his rare smiles—the smile few people knew he had, with which he always won a child.

“Yes, Douglass, now I am free to carry out my mission.”

Douglass’ heart missed a beat. John Brown had not sought him out as a fugitive, he had not come to his house to hide away—not John Brown!

“Frederick is dead.”

The words came with blunt finality, but a spasm of pain distorted the old man’s face.

“Oh, John! John!”

Douglass gently pushed him into the armchair, knelt at his feet, pulled off the heavy boots, then hurried away to bring him food. He ate as one does whose body is starving, gulping down unchewed mouthfuls with the warm milk.

“I come direct from the National Kansas Committee in Chicago. They will perhaps equip a company. I have letters from Governor Chase and Governor Robinson. They endorse my plan.”

Douglass expressed his pleased surprise. Brown wiped his shaggy beard. Something like a grin flickered on his face.

“Kansas is free and the good people are glad to be rid of me,” he said dryly.

Douglass understood: they dared not jail the man.

Brown’s plan was now complete. He spread out maps and papers and, as he talked, traced the lines of his march with a blunt pencil.

“God has established the Allegheny Mountains from the foundation of the world that they might one day be a refuge for the slaves. We march into these mountains, set up our stations about five miles apart, send out our call; and, as the slaves flock to us, we sustain them in this natural fortress.”

Douglass followed the line of his pencil.

“Each group will be well armed,” the old man continued, “but will avoid violence except in self-defense. In that case, they will make it as costly as possible to the assailing parties—whether they be citizens or soldiers. We will break the backbone of slavery by rendering slave property insecure. Men will not invest their money in a species of property likely to take legs and walk off with itself!” His eyes were shining.

“I do not grudge the money or energy I have spent in Kansas,” he went on, “but now my funds are gone. We must have arms, ammunition, food and clothing. Later we will subsist upon the country roundabout. I now have the nucleus of my band.” Shadows crossed his face. “Already they have gone to hell and back with me.”

He talked on—three military schools to be set up, one in Iowa, one in northern Ohio and one in Canada. It would be a permanent community in Canada. “Finally the escaped slaves will pass on to Canada, each doing his share to strengthen the route,” he explained.

“But won’t it take years to free the slaves this way?” his friend asked.

“Indeed not! Each month our line of fortresses will extend farther south.” His pencil moved across Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, to Mississippi. “To the delta itself! The slaves will free themselves.”

Pale dawn showed in the sky before they went upstairs.

“You must sleep now, John Brown.”

But before lying down, the old man looked hard into the broad, dark face. Douglass nodded his head.

“I’m with you, John Brown. Rest a little. Then we’ll talk,” Douglass said and tiptoed from the room.

When John Brown left the house in Alexander Street several days later, he was expected in many quarters. He went first to Boston, George L. Sterns, the Massachusetts antislavery leader, paying his expenses. Sterns, who had never met “Osawatomie Brown,” had written to Rochester offering to introduce him to friends of freedom in Boston. They met on the street outside the committee rooms in Nilis’ Block, with a Kansas man doing the honors; and Brown went along to Sterns’ home.

Coming into the parlor to greet the man who had become a household word during the summer of 1856, Mrs. Sterns heard her guest saying, “Gentlemen, I consider the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence one and inseparable.”

“I felt,” she said later, writing about the profound impression of moral magnetism Brown made on everybody who saw him in those days, “that some old Cromwellian hero had dropped down among us.”

Emerson, she remembered, called him “the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into action.” Yet Mrs. Sterns was struck by his modest estimate of the work he had in hand. After several efforts to bring together their friends to meet Captain Brown in his home, Sterns found that Sunday was the only day that would serve everybody’s convenience. Being a little uncertain how this might strike their guest’s ideas of religious propriety, Sterns prefaced his invitation with something like an apology.

“Mr. Sterns,” came the prompt reply, “I have a little ewe-lamb that I want to pull out of the ditch, and the Sabbath will be as good a day as any to do it.”

Over in Concord he went to see Henry David Thoreau. They sat at a table covered with lichens, ferns, birds’ nests and arrowheads. They dipped their fingers into a large trencher of nuts, cracked the shells between their teeth, and talked as kindred souls. Thoreau, lean and narrow-chested, thrust his big ugly nose forward and, with his searching gray eyes, probed the twisted steel of John Brown. The hermit believed then what he said afterward, when he served his term in jail:

“When one-sixth of a people who are come to the land of liberty are enslaved, it is time for free men to rebel.”

The secretary of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee received Captain Brown with cautious respect. Half an hour later he was saying, “By God, I’ll make them give him money!” But the Committee warned, “We must know how he will use the money.”

Kind-hearted, genial Gerrit Smith was glad to have his old friend with him for a few days.

“Be sure of your men,” he advised.

“My men need not be questioned, sir.” John Brown spoke a little stiffly.

Gerrit Smith stifled a sigh. His faith in God and man is sublime! he thought a little sadly.

Swarthy, bearded Thomas W. Higginson, young Unitarian minister, set out immediately to raise funds on his own. He was hissed at Harvard, his Alma Mater, but he was not swayed from his course.

At a meeting at the Astor House in New York the National Kansas Committee voted “in aid of Captain Brown ... 12 boxes of clothing, sufficient for 60 persons, 25 Colt revolvers, five thousand dollars to be used in any defense measures that may become necessary.” But only five hundred dollars was paid out.

John Brown was disappointed. He had hoped to obtain the means of arming and thoroughly equipping a regular outfit of minutemen. He had left his men suffering hunger, cold, nakedness, and some of them sickness and wounds. He had engaged the services of one Hugh Forbes, who claimed to have been a lieutenant of Garibaldi. Forbes was to take over the military tactics. He had demanded six hundred dollars for his expenses. John Brown had given it to him.

“I am going back,” Brown said to Douglass, when he stopped overnight in Rochester. “You must keep up the work here—solicit funds, keep the issue before them. I have no baggage wagons, tents, camp equipage, tools ... or a sufficient supply of ammunition. I have left my family poorly supplied with common necessaries.”

“I do not like what you tell me about this Hugh Forbes,” said Douglass.

Brown was a little impatient.

“He is a trained man in military affairs. I know nothing about maneuvers. We need him!”

It was John Brown’s intention to leave the actual training of his men to Forbes, so that he might be free for larger matters. Nor did he want to spend time raising funds. He wanted to organize Negroes for the job ahead.

Perhaps better than any other white man of his time John Brown knew what Negroes in every part of North America were doing. He knew their newspapers, their churches and their schools. To most Americans of the time all black men were slaves or fugitives. But from the beginning John Brown sought to know Negroes personally and individually. He went into their homes, sought them out in business, talked to them, listened to the stories of their trials, harkened to their dreams, advised, and took advice from them. He set out to enlist the boldest and most daring spirits for his plan.

In March, Brown and his eldest son met with Henry Highland Garnet and William Still, Negro Secretary of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, in the home of Stephen Smith, a Philadelphia Negro lumber merchant. Brown remained in Philadelphia a week or ten days, holding long conferences in Negro churches.

Meanwhile, his black lieutenant, Kagi, ragged, stooped, insignificant-looking, shrewd and cunning, was traveling over the Allegheny Mountains, surveying the land, marking sites and making useful contacts. Kagi had some schooling and, when he desired, could speak clearly and to the point. He knew in detail the vast extent of Brown’s plan. He lived and breathed it. He had been wounded with John Brown in Kansas, and unswerving he walked to his death with him. For Kagi believed that John Brown was making a mistake to attack Harper’s Ferry when he did, but the little black man held the bridge until his riddled body plunged into the icy waters below.

In the spring of 1858 Brown went to Canada to set up personal contacts with the nearly fifty thousand Negroes there. Chatham, chief town of Kent County, had a large Negro population with several churches, a newspaper and a private school. Here on May 10 the Captain addressed a convention called together on the pretext of organizing a Masonic lodge. And at this convention they drew up and adopted the constitution of forty-eight articles that stunned the authorities when they found it in the hide-away farmhouse near Harper’s Ferry.

Up to this time Frederick Douglass was fully cognizant of all John Brown’s plans. The Douglass home in Rochester was his headquarters. (He had insisted that he pay board, and Douglass charged him three dollars a week.)

“While here, he spent most of his time in correspondence,” Douglass wrote later. “When he was not writing letters, he was writing and revising a constitution which he meant to put in operation by means of the men who should go with him into the mountains. He said that, to avoid anarchy and confusion, there should be a regularly-constituted government, which each man who came with him should be sworn to honor and support. I have a copy of this constitution in Captain Brown’s own handwriting, as prepared by himself at my house.

“He called his friends from Chatham to come together, that he might lay his constitution before them for their approval and adoption. His whole time and thought were given to this subject. It was the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. Once in a while he would say he could, with a few resolute men, capture Harper’s Ferry, and supply himself with arms belonging to the government at that place; but he never announced his intention to do so. It was, however ... in his mind as a thing he might do. I paid little attention to such remarks, though I never doubted that he thought just what he said. Soon after his coming to me, he asked me to get for him two smoothly planed boards, upon which he could illustrate, with a pair of dividers, by a drawing, the plan of fortification which he meant to adopt in the mountains.

“These forts were to be so arranged as to connect one with the other, by secret passages, so that if one was carried another could easily be fallen back upon, and be the means of dealing death to the enemy at the very moment when he might think himself victorious. I was less interested in these drawings than my children were, but they showed that the old man had an eye to the means as to the end, and was giving his best thought to the work he was about to take in hand.”[18]

The month of May, 1859, John Brown spent in Boston collecting funds, and in New York consulting his Negro friends, with a trip to Connecticut to hurry the making of his thousand pikes. Sickness intervened, but at last on June 20, the advance guard of five—Brown and two of his sons, Jerry Anderson and Kagi—started southward.

Many times during these months Frederick Douglass wondered whether or not John Brown did not have the only possible plan for freeing the black man. The antislavery fight had worn very thin. The North knew of the moral and physical horror of slavery. The South knew also, but cotton prices continued to rise. Logic would not separate cotton growers from their slaves. Many of the old, staunch Abolitionists were gone. Theodore Parker had burned himself out in the cause. Down with tuberculosis, he was on a ship bound for southern Italy where, in spite of the warm sunshine, he was to die.

Daily the South grew more defiant. When the doctrine of popular sovereignty failed to make Kansas a slave state, Southern statesmen abandoned it for firmer ground. They had lost faith in the rights, powers and wisdom of the people and took refuge in the Constitution. Henceforth the favorite doctrine of the South was that the people of a territory had no voice in the matter of slavery. The Constitution of the United States, they claimed, of its own force and effect, carried slavery safely into any territory of the United States and protected the system there until it should cease to be a territory and became a state. In practical operation, this doctrine would make all future new states slaveholding states; for slavery, once planted and nursed for years, could easily strengthen itself against the evil day of eradication.

In a rage, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the Constitution denouncing it as a “covenant with Satan.” Douglass went away heartsick.

In the heart of the Alleghenies, halfway between Maine and Florida, opens a mighty gateway. From the south comes the Shenandoah, a restless silver thread gleaming in the sun; from the west the Potomac moves placidly between wide banks. But at their junction they are cramped. The two rivers rush together against the mountains, rend it asunder and tear a passage to the sea. And here is Harper’s Ferry.

Why did John Brown choose this particular point for his attack upon American slavery? Was it the act of a madman? A visionary fool? What was his crime?

John Brown did not tell them at the trial. His lieutenant, Kagi, was dead. Green, Coppoc, Stevens, Copeland, Cook and Hazlett followed their captain to the gallows without a word. Perhaps only one man went on living who knew the full answers. His name was Frederick Douglass.

Douglass has been attacked because he did not go with John Brown to Harper’s Ferry, because he did not testify in Brown’s defense, because he put himself outside the reach of pursuers who would drag him to the trial. He could not have saved John Brown and his brave followers. Every word of the truth would have drawn the noose tighter about their necks. It would have hanged Douglass!

It was on a pleasant day in September when the letter came from John Brown. It was very short.

“I am forced to move sooner than I had planned. Before going forward I want to see you.”

Brown, under the guise of a farmer interested only in developing a recently purchased piece of land, was living under an assumed name with his two “daughters”—actually a daughter and young Oliver’s wife. His men were keeping under cover. They made every effort to keep the farm normal-looking. Brown asked Douglass to come to Chambersburg. There he would find a Negro barber named Watson, who would conduct him to the place of meeting. A last line was added: “Bring along the Emperor. Tell him the time has come.”

Douglass knew that he referred to Shields Green, a fugitive slave, whom the old man had met in his house. Green, a powerful black, had escaped from South Carolina. He was nicknamed “the Emperor” because of his size and majestic carriage. Brown had seized upon him immediately, confiding to him his plan, and Green had promised to go with him when Brown was ready to move.

They set out together, stopping over in New York City with a Reverend James Glocester. Upon hearing where they were going, Mrs. Glocester pressed ten dollars into Douglass’ hand.

“Give it to Captain Brown, with my best wishes,” she said.

They sped southward past the waving, green fields and big, white farms of prosperous Dutch farmers. Douglass sat by the window with his massive head sunk forward, not looking out. Then the train curved into the Blue Ridge Mountains where the pine-covered hills begin, and stopped at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The first man at the depot whom they asked directed them to Watson, the barber.

He stood looking after the two Negroes as they strode down the platform.

“Damned if they don’t walk like they own the earth!” he grunted.

Watson called to his boy when they stepped into his shop. He took them to his house, where his wife greeted the great Frederick Douglass and his friend with much fluttering.

“Make yourselves at home,” said the barber. “As soon as it is dark I will drive you out to the old stone quarry. That’s the place, but we must wait until dark.”

They left the wagon and its driver on the road and climbed up to the quarry. All about them the rocks loomed like great stone faces in the moonlight. And when John Brown stepped out of the shadows, it was as if a rock had moved toward them. His old clothes, covered with dust; his white hair and hard-cut face, like granite in the moonlight; his strained, worn face with the two burning coals that were his eyes. Douglass’ heart missed a beat. Something was very wrong.

“What is it, John Brown? What has happened?”

The old man looked at him without speaking. He studied the brown face almost as if he had not seen it before. Then he spoke briefly.

“Come!”

He led them between the rocks and stooped to enter a cave. Inside was Kagi and in a niche in the wall was a lighted torch. There were boulders about, and at a sign from the old man they sat down—John Brown, Kagi, Shields Green and Frederick Douglass. They waited for Brown to speak. He did so, leaning forward and putting a thin, gnarled hand on Douglass’ knee.

“Douglass, we can wait no longer. Our move now must be a decisive one.”

Douglass was bitterly chiding himself. He should have come sooner. These last months had drained the old man’s strength. He needed help here. The dark man spoke gently.

“But you said the time to begin calling in the slaves would come after the crops are gathered, as the Christmas approaches. Then many can get away without being missed right away. Is your ammunition distributed? Are your stations ready to receive and defend the fugitives?”

John Brown shook his head.

“No. We are not ready with all that.” He drew a long breath, and it was obvious it caused him pain. “You were right about Hugh Forbes,” he said then. “He has deserted us and,” Brown hesitated, hating to say it, “I fear he has talked.”

Douglass’ face expressed his shock. Why had he not strangled the tinseled fool with his own hands?

“We are being watched: my men are certain of it. At any moment we may be arrested. Don’t forget, I’m still an outlaw in Kansas.” He added the last dryly, almost indifferently. Then suddenly the flame flared. John Brown was on his feet, his head lifted. He shook back his white hair.

“But God is with us! He has delivered the gates into our hands! We hold the key to the Allegheny Mountains. They stand here, our sure and safe defense!”

Douglass stared at him. Was it the torchlight that so transfigured his old friend? He stood like an avenging angel, illumined by the force that rose up in him. It charged his whole being with power—his eyes, his frame, the leashed, metallic voice.

“I am ready!”

Douglass looked at Kagi. Kagi’s eyes fixed on the lifted face. He turned and looked at Green, and on that black giant’s countenance he saw the same imprint. He wet his trembling lips. An icy hand had closed about his heart. He was afraid.

“The map, Kagi!” John Brown spoke sharply.

Kagi was ready. Brown knelt on the ground, and Kagi spread a wide sheet in front of him. He brought the torch near and knelt holding it, while Brown traced the lines with his finger.

“Here is the long line of our mountain fortress,” he said tersely. “Right here east of the Shenandoah, the mountains rise to a height of two thousand feet or more. This natural defense is right at the entrance to the mountain passage. See! An hour’s climb from this point and a hundred men could be inside an inaccessible fastness. Here attacks could be repelled with little difficulty. Here are Loudon Heights—then beyond the passage plunges straight into the heart of the thickest slave districts. The slaves can get to us without difficulty, after we have made our way through here.”

His finger had stopped. Douglass leaned forward. He was holding his breath. He could feel Brown’s eyes upon him.

“But that—that is Harper’s Ferry!” Douglass said, and his voice faltered.

He could feel the surge of strength in the other man.

“Yes,” he said, “Harper’s Ferry is the safest natural entrance to our mountain passage. We shall go through Harper’s Ferry, and there we’ll take whatever arms we need.”

So little children speak, and fools, and gods!

For a moment there was silence in the cave. Then Douglass got up, striking his head against the low wall. He did not heed the blow, but took John Brown by the arm.

“Come outside, Captain Brown,” he said. “Let’s talk outside. I—I can’t breathe in here!”

And so they faced each other in the open. Night in the mountains, stars over their heads, and stark, jagged rocks white in the shadows.

“You can’t do it, John Brown!” Douglass’ voice was strained. “You would be attacking an arsenal of the United States—This is war against the federal government. The whole country would be arrayed against us!”

“You do not understand, Douglass. We’re not going to kill anybody. There are only a handful of soldiers guarding that ferry. We’ll merely make them prisoners, hold them until we take the arms and get up into the mountains. Of course, there’ll be a great outcry. But all the better. The slaves will hear of it. They’ll know we’re in the mountains, and they’ll flock to us.”

“Do you really believe this, John Brown? Do you really believe you can take a fort so easily?”

A hard note had come again into the old man’s voice.

“Am I concerned with ease, Frederick Douglass? What is this you are saying? Our mission is to free the slaves! This is the plan!”

“There was no such plan,” Douglass interposed hotly. “You said that fighting would only be in self-defense. This is an attack!”

John Brown’s passion matched his.

“And when I rode down into the marshes of Kansas it was an attack! You did not condemn then! Here we merely force our way through a passage!”

“This is treason! This is insurrection! This is war! I am not with you!”

The old man’s voice cut like a whip.

“So! You have escaped so far from slavery that you do not care! You have carried the scars upon your back into high places, so you have forgotten. You prate of treason! You are afraid to face a gun!”

Douglass cried out in anguish. “John! John! For God’s sake, stop!”

He stumbled away, sank down on a rock and buried his face in his hands. Some time later he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and Brown’s voice, softened and subdued, came to him.

“Forgive an old man, son.”

Douglass took the hand in his and pressed it against his face. The old man’s hand was rough and knotty, but it was very firm.

“This is no time for soft words or for oratory,” he said. “We have a job to do. Years ago I swore it—that I would do my part. God has called me to lift his crushed and suffering dark children. Twenty-five years have gone by making plans. Now unless I move quickly all of these years will have been spent in vain. I will take this fort. I will hold this pass. I will free the slaves!”

The stars faded and went out one by one, the gray sky blended through purple and rose to blue, and still they talked. Kagi brought them food.

At last Douglass lay down inside the cave. His eyes were closed, but his mind feverishly leaped from one possibility to another.

Then Brown was laying other maps before him. He had gone over it all so carefully. Now he showed each step of the way—where the men would stand, how they would hold the bridge, where they would cut the telegraph wires, how the engine-house in the arsenal would be occupied.

“Without a shot being fired, Douglass. I tell you we can take it without a shot!”

Douglass brought all the pressure of his persuasive power against him. He threw reason, logic, common sense at the old man.

“You’ll destroy all we’ve done!”

John Brown looked at him and his voice and face were cold.

“What have you done?” The question bit like steel.

Another day passed. That night a storm came up. They sat huddled in the cave, while outside the rain beat down upon the rocks and tore up twisted roots. The mountains groaned and rumbled and the winds howled. During the storm the old man slept serenely.

When the rain stopped Douglass went out into the dripping morning. Puddles of water splashed beneath his feet, shreds of clouds lingered in the pine tops and broke against the side of the hills; the sky was clearing and soon the sun would come through. The fresh-washed earth gave off a clean, new smell. The morning mocked him with its promise of a bright, new day.

He heard John Brown behind him and stopped. He knew that strong, elastic step. He heard the voice—full, clear and renewed with rest.

“Douglass,” Brown asked, “have you reached your decision?”

Without turning, Douglass answered. And his voice was weary and beaten.

“I am going back.”

The old man made no sound. Douglass turned and saw him standing straight and slender in the morning light, a gentle breeze lifting his soft white hair, his wrinkled face carved against the sky. With a cry of utter woe Douglass threw himself upon the ground, encircling the slight frame in his arms.

“Oh, John—John Brown—don’t go! You’ll be killed! It’s a trap! You’ll never get out alive—I beg you, don’t go! Don’t go!”

Terrible sobs shook him; he could not stop.

“Douglass! Douglass!”

Brown took him by the shoulders, pressed his face against him, spoke as to a child.

“For shame, Douglass! Everything will be all right.” Then, when he saw the big man was still, he added, “Come and go with me. You shall see that everything will be all right.”

Douglass shook his head. He clung to the rough, gnarled hands.

“This is the hardest part of all. I cannot throw my life away with you! Years ago in Maryland I knew I had to live. That’s my task, John—that I live.”

“You shall have a trusted bodyguard!” The old man looked down at him with a twisted smile. Douglass made a gesture of resignation. He raised his eyes once more.

“Will nothing change you from this course?” he asked.

“Nothing,” answered John Brown. He gently pulled himself away and walked to the edge of the cliff, looking out into the morning. Douglass sagged upon the ground.

“You may be right, Frederick Douglass.” His words came slowly now. “Perhaps I’ll not succeed at Harper’s Ferry. Maybe—I’ll never leave there alive. Yet I must go! Until this moment I had never faced that possibility, and I could not give you up. Now that I do, I see that only through your living can my dying be made clear. So, let us have an end of all this talk. Perhaps this is God’s way.”

Douglass pulled himself up. He was very tired.

“I must tell Green,” he said.

John Brown turned. His face was untroubled, his voice alert.

“Yes. I had forgotten. Get him.”

They came upon Shields Green and Kagi leaving the cave. Over their shoulders were fishing poles. Douglass spoke.

“Shields, I am leaving. Are you going back with me?”

John Brown spoke, the words coming easily, a simple explanation.

“Both of you know that Douglass disagrees with my plan. He says we’ll fail at Harper’s Ferry—that none of us will come out alive.” He paused a moment and then said, “Maybe he is right.”

Douglass waited, but still Shields Green only looked at him. At last he asked, “Well, Shields?”

“The Emperor” shifted the fishing rod in his hand. Then his eyes turned toward John Brown. Douglass knew even before he spoke. Shields looked him full in the face and said, “Ah t’ink Ah goes wid tha old man!”

And he and Kagi turned away and went off down to the stream.

Brown held his hand a moment before speaking.

“Go quickly now, and go without regrets. You have your job to do and I have mine.”

Douglass did not look back as he stumbled over the wet, slippery rocks. Never in his life had he felt so desolate, never had a day seemed so bleak and empty, as alone he went down the mountain to live for freedom. He had left John Brown and Shields Green to die for freedom. Whose was the better part?

Chapter Thirteen

“Give them arms, Mr. Lincoln!”

The news of Harper’s Ferry stunned Washington. “A United States arsenal attacked—Slaves stampeding!” “The madman from Kansas run amuck!” “The slaves are armed!” Panic seized the South, and Capitol Hill rocked and reeled with the shock.

Jack brought home copies of the New York Herald, and Amelia read how the old man lay bleeding on a pallet with his two sons cold and still at his side. Governor Wise, leaning over to condemn, had drawn back before a courage, fortitude and simple faith which silenced him.

“There is an eternity behind and an eternity before,” John Brown had said, and his voice did not falter. “This little speck in the center, however long, is comparatively but a minute. The difference between your tenure and mine is trifling, and I therefore tell you to be prepared. I am prepared. You have a heavy responsibility, and it behooves you to meet it. You may dispose of me easily, but this question is still to be settled ... the end is not yet.”

“Why did he let the train through?” people asked. “Is he crazy?”

“I came here to liberate slaves.” All his explanations were so simple. “I have acted from a sense of duty, and am content to await my fate; but I think the crowd have treated me badly.... Yesterday I could have killed whom I chose; but I had no desire to kill any person, and would not have killed a man had they not tried to kill me and my men. I could have sacked and burned the town, but did not; I have treated the persons whom I took as hostages kindly. If I had succeeded in running off slaves this time, I could have raised twenty times as many men as I have now, for a similar expedition. But I have failed.”

An old man had been stopped—a crazy old man, whose equally crazy followers were killed or captured. It was over and very little harm done. An unpleasant incident to be soon forgotten.

But no one would have done with it. Papers throughout the country sowed John Brown’s words into every town and hamlet; preachers repeated them in their pulpits; people gathered in small knots on the roadside and shouted them defiantly or whispered them cautiously; black men and women everywhere bowed their heads and wept hot, scalding tears. And William Lloyd Garrison, the man of peace, the “non-resister,” said, “How marvelous has been the change in public opinion during thirty years of moral agitation. Ten years ago there were thousands who could not endure the slightest word of rebuke of the South; now they can swallow John Brown whole and his rifle in the bargain.”

The old man never lost his calm. Frenzy shook every slave state in the Union. Rumors spread and multiplied. Black and white men were seized, beaten, and killed. Slaves disappeared. A hue and cry arose.

“The Abolitionists! Get the Abolitionists! They are behind John Brown!”

Amelia read of letters and papers found in the farmhouse near Harper’s Ferry. “Many people are implicated! Indictments being drawn up!” She looked at Jack, her face white.

“Do you suppose—could it be—would he be among them?” She bit her trembling lips.

Jack Haley frowned. He had heard talk at the office. He knew they were looking for Frederick Douglass. He knew they would hang this Negro whom they hated and feared more than a dozen white men—if they got him. He patted Amelia on the shoulder.

“I wouldn’t worry,” he comforted her. “Your Frederick is a smart man.”

“He might be needed to testify—he may have something to say.” Amelia was certain Frederick Douglass would not turn aside from his duty.

“He is not a fool,” Jack said, shaking his head. “The Dred Scott decision renders his word useless. No word of his can help John Brown.”

Amelia heard the bitterness in Jack’s voice and she sighed. Time had dealt kindly with Amelia. At sixty her step was more elastic, her skin smoother and her shoulders straighter than the day, fifteen years before, when she had walked away from Covey’s place. Mrs. Royall, intrepid journalist, was dead. Amelia had stayed on in the house, assumed the mortgage, and took in as roomers a score of clerks and secretaries who labored in the government buildings a few blocks away. “Miss Amelia’s” house was popular, and her rooms were in demand.

Jack had married and talked of going away, of starting his own paper, of becoming a power in one of the new publishing houses—Then suddenly, during a sleeting winter, an epidemic had struck Washington. Afterward, there had been quite a stir about “cleaning up the city.” Certain sections had got new sewers and rubbish was collected. But Jack’s wife was dead. So a grim-faced, older Jack had moved in with Amelia. He had stayed on with the paper, contemptuous of much he saw and heard. For Jack Haley, as for many people in the United States the fall of 1859, John Brown cleared the air. Somebody’s doing something, thank God!

Amelia continued to scan the papers, dreading to see Frederick Douglass’ name. And one day she did, but as she read farther a smile lit up her face. The story was an angry denunciation of “this Frederick Douglass” by Governor Wise of Virginia. Douglass, he announced, had slipped through their fingers. He was known to have boarded a British steamer bound for England. “Could I overtake that vessel,” the Governor was quoted as saying, “I would take him from her deck at any cost.”

Off the coast of Labrador, in weather four degrees below zero, the Scotia strained and groaned. There was something fiercely satisfying to one passenger in the struggle with the elements. Frederick Douglass, pacing the icy deck or tossing in his cabin, felt that the sky should be black. The waters should foam and dash, the winds should howl; for John Brown lay in prison and his brave sons were dead!

Back in Concord, the gentle Thoreau was ringing the town bell and crying in the streets, “Old John Brown is dead—John Brown the immortal lives!”

By the time Douglass docked at Liverpool, England was as much alive to what had happened at Harper’s Ferry as the United States. Once more Douglass was called to Scotland and Ireland—this time to give an account of the men who had thus flung away their lives in a desperate effort to free the slaves.

Having accepted an invitation to speak in Paris, he wrote for a passport. A suspicion current at the time, that a conspiracy against the life of Napoleon III was afoot in England, had stiffened the French passport system. Douglass, wishing to avoid any delay, wrote directly to the Honorable George Dallas, United States Minister in London. That gentleman refused to grant the passport at all on the ground that Frederick Douglass was not a citizen of the United States. Douglass’ English friends gaped at the Ministry letter. The “man without a country,” however, merely shrugged his shoulders.

“I forget too easily,” he said. “Now I’ll write to the French minister.”

Within a few days he had his answer—a “special permit” for Frederick Douglass to visit “indefinitely” in any part of France. He was packed to go when a cable from home arrived.

Little Annie was dead. The sudden loss of his baby daughter seemed to climax all the pain and heartbreak of these months.

Heedless now of peril to himself, he took the first outgoing steamer for Portland, Maine.

During the seventeen dragging days of his voyage, Douglass resolved to make one stop even before going home. He had two graves now to visit—Annie’s and John Brown’s. Annie too had loved the old man. She would not mind if her father went directly to the house in the Adirondacks.

No one was expecting the haggard dark man who descended from the train at North Elba. He could not find a driver to take him up to John Brown’s house. But from the livery stable he secured a horse. And so he rode up through the Indian Pass gorge, between two overhanging black walls, and came out under tall, white clouds above wine-colored mountains rising in a blue mist. And there beside a still, green pool, reflecting a white summit in its depths, he saw the house, with its abandoned sawmill.

Mrs. Brown exhibited no surprise when he stood before her. Her husband’s strength sustained her now. John Brown and the sons that she had borne were no longer hers. They belonged to all the peoples of the world. She greeted Frederick Douglass with a smile.

“I’ve been expecting you. Come in, my friend.” She talked quietly, transmitting to him John Brown’s final words and admonitions. Then she rose. “He left something for you.”

“Oh—John!” Until that moment he had listened without interrupting, his eyes on the woman’s expressive face. The words broke from him unbidden.

At her gesture, he followed her up the bare stairs and into the bedroom that had been hers and John Brown’s. The roof sloped down; he had to stoop a little, standing beside her before the faded, furled flag and rusty musket in the corner. She nodded her head, but could not speak.

“For me?” Douglass’ words came in a whisper.

“He wanted you to have them.” She had turned to the chest of drawers and handed him an envelope.

“He sent this in one of my letters. I was to give it to you when you came.”

His hands were trembling as he drew forth the single white sheet on which were written two lines.

“I know I have not failed because you live. Go forward, and some day unfurl my flag in the land of the free. Farewell.” And then was sprawled, “John Brown.”

He left the farmhouse with the musket in his hands. They had wrapped the flag carefully, and he laid it across his shoulders. So many times she had stood in the narrow doorway and watched John Brown ride away. He had never looked back. But on this evening the rider paused when he came to the top of the hill. He paused and looked back down into the valley. His eyes found the spot where John Brown lay beside his sons. She could not see his lips move, nor could she hear his words—words the winds of the Adirondacks carried away:

“I promise you, John Brown. As I live, I promise you.”

Then he waved his hand to John Brown’s widow and was gone.

Douglass’ homecoming was weighted with sorrow. But in the mountains of North Elba he had drawn strength. He was able to comfort the grieving mother and the older children. For the first time in years he sat quietly with his three fine sons. He told Rosetta how pretty she was—like her mother in the days of the plum-colored wedding dress. The family closed its ranks, coming very close together. Douglass managed to remain in his house nearly a month before knowledge got around that he was back in the country. Then a letter from William Lloyd Garrison summoned him:

The investigating committee appointed by Congress is being called off. The net thrown out over the country yielded very little. As you know, Captain Brown implicated nobody. To the end he insisted that he and he alone was responsible for all that happened, that he had many friends, but no instigators. In their efforts this committee has signally failed. Now they have asked to be discharged. It is my opinion that the men engaged in this investigation expect soon to be in rebellion themselves, and not a rebellion for liberty, like that of John Brown, but a rebellion for slavery. It is possible that they see that by using their Senatorial power in search of rebels they may be whetting a knife for their own throats. At any rate the country will soon be relieved of the Congressional drag-net, so your liberty is no longer threatened. We are planning a memorial to the grand old man here at Tremont Temple and want you to speak. I know you’ll come.

Douglass hastened to Boston. The great mass meeting was more than a memorial. It was a political and social conclave. Arguments and differences of opinions were laid aside. They had a line of action. Douglass saw that he had returned to the United States in time for vital service.

“It enabled me to participate in the most important and memorable presidential canvass ever witnesses in the United States,” he wrote, looking back on it later, “and to labor for the election of a man who in the order of events was destined to do a greater service to his country and to mankind than any man who had gone before him in the presidential office. It was a great thing to me to be permitted to bear some humble part in this. It was a great thing to achieve American independence when we numbered three millions, but it was a greater thing to save this country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered thirty millions. He alone of all our presidents was to have the opportunity to destroy slavery, and to lift into manhood millions of his countrymen hitherto held as chattels and numbered with the beasts of the field.”[19]

Not for nearly a hundred years was the country to see such a presidential campaign as the one waged in 1860.

Garrison was drawn into the fray early. He mocked the Democrats when they tore themselves apart at their convention in Charleston and cheered “an independent Southern republic.” With the Democrats divided, the Republicans would win; and into the Republican party now came the Abolitionists—including William Lloyd Garrison. Douglass was very happy.

A few weeks before the Republicans met in convention at Chicago, Frederick Douglass at his home in Rochester had a caller. The man identified himself as a tradesman from Springfield, Illinois.

“I’m here, lookin’ over the shippin’ of some goods, and I took the liberty to come see you, Mr. Douglass,” he said, resting his hands on his knotty knees.

“I’m very glad you did, sir.” Douglass waited for the man to reveal his errand. He leaned forward.

“I ain’t a talkin’ man, Mr. Douglass. I’m much more for doin’.” Douglass smiled his approval. The man lowered his tone. “More than once I took on goods for Reverend Rankin.”

Douglass knew instantly what he meant. John Rankin was one of Ohio’s most daring Underground Railroad agents. Douglass’ face lit up, and for the second time he grasped his visitor’s rough hand.

“Any Rankin man is a hundredfold welcome in my house! What can I do for you?”

“Jus’ listen and think on what I’m sayin’. We got a man out our way we’re namin’ for president!”

The unexpected announcement caught Douglass up short.

“But I thought—” The man waved him to silence.

“Yep! I know. You Easterners got your man all picked out. I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ ’bout Mr. Seward. I donno him. But the boys out West do know Abe Lincoln—and we’re gonna back him!”

“Abe Lincoln?” Douglass was puzzled. “I never heard of him.”

“Nope? Well, it don’t matter. You will!”

He was gone then, leaving Frederick Douglass very thoughtful. The Westerner was right. Senator William Seward, a tried and true antislavery man, had been picked. The only question had been whether or not the entire party would accept such a known radical.

Douglass reached Chicago the evening before the nominations were taken up. He found the city decked out with fence rails which they said “Honest Abe” had split. Evidently the people in the streets knew him, the cab drivers and farmers in from the surrounding country. They stood on street corners, buttonholed workmen hurrying home from work, and they talked about “our man.”

Something was in the air. The convention was a bedlam. Even while the thunder of applause that had greeted the nomination of William Seward still hung in the far corners of the hall, Norman B. Judd, standing on a high chair, nominated the man who habitually referred to himself as a “jackleg lawyer.” The roar that greeted Lincoln’s name spread to the packed street outside and kept up until the Seward men were silenced. The cheering died away in the hall, as they began taking the third ballot; but the steady roar in the street found an echo in the chamber, when it was found that Lincoln had received two hundred thirty-one and a half votes, lacking just one and a half votes for nomination. Then Ohio gave its four votes to the “rail-splitter,” and Abraham Lincoln became the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

Three candidates were in the field. Stephen A. Douglas, absolute leader of the Democratic party in the West, had been nominated at Baltimore after a bitter and barren fight at Charleston. The “seceding” Southern wing of the party had nominated John C. Breckinridge. Three candidates and one issue, slavery.

Stephen Douglas’ position was: Slavery or no slavery in any territory is entirely the affair of the white inhabitants of such territory. If they choose to have it, it is their right; if they choose not to have it, they have a right to exclude or prohibit it. Neither Congress nor the people of the Union, outside of said territory, have any right to meddle with or trouble themselves about the matter.

The Democrats of Illinois laughed at the others for hailing forth the Kentuckian. But Breckinridge represented the powerful slavocracy which said: The citizen of any state has a right to migrate to any territory, taking with him anything which is property by the law of his own sure, and hold, enjoy, and be protected in the use of, such property in said territory. And Congress is bound to furnish him protection wherever necessary, with or without the co-operation of the territorial legislature.

Abraham Lincoln’s voice had never been heard by the nation. Easterners waited with misgivings to hear what the gangling backwoods lawyer would say. He did not mince words: Slavery can exist only by virtue of municipal law; and there is no law for it in the territories and no power to enact one. Congress can establish or legalize slavery nowhere but is bound to prohibit it in, or exclude it from, any and every Federal territory, whenever and wherever there shall be necessity for such exclusion or prohibition.

Frederick Douglass was convinced not only by his words but by the fact that Abraham Lincoln was so clearly the choice of the people who knew him. He threw his pen and voice into the contest. Many of the Abolitionists hung back; many an “old guard” politician sulked. Wendell Phillips dug up evidence that Lincoln had supported enforcement of the hated Fugitive Slave Law in Illinois.