would raise the standard of
revolt and liberation. Enthusiasts would join him from the free
States, and escaped blacks come to his help from Canada. From Virginia
and the neighboring slave-States of North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, fugitive slaves, with their
families, would flock to his camps. He would take his supplies,
provisions, and horses by force from the neighboring plantations.
Money, plate, watches, and jewelry would "constitute a liberal safety
or intelligence fund." For arms, he had 200 Sharps rifles, and 200
revolvers, with which he would arm his best marksmen. His ruder
followers, and even the women and children, he would arm with pikes to
defend the fortifications. He would construct defenses of palisades
and earth-works. He would use natural strongholds; find secret
mountain-passes to connect one with another; retreat from and evade
attacks he could not overcome. He would maintain and indefinitely
prolong a guerrilla war, of which the Seminole Indians in Florida and
the negroes in Hayti afforded examples. With success, he would enlarge
the area of his occupation so as to include arable valleys and
low-lands bordering the Alleghany range in the slave-States; and here
he would colonize, govern, and educate the blacks he had freed, and
maintain their liberty. He would make captures and reprisals,
confiscate property, take, hold, and exchange prisoners and especially
white hostages and exchange them for slaves to liberate. He would
recognize neutrals, make treaties, exercise humanity, prevent crime,
repress immorality, and observe all established laws of war. Success
would render his revolt permanent, and in the end, through "amendment
and repeal," abolish slavery. If, at the worst, he were driven from
the mountains he would retreat with his followers through the free
States to Canada. He had 12 recruits drilling in Iowa, and a
half-executed contract for 1000 pikes in Connecticut; furnish him $800
in money and he would begin operations in May.

[Sidenote] Sanborn in "Atlantic," March, 1875, p. 329.

[Sidenote] Redpath, "Life of John Brown," p. 206.

[Sidenote] Sanborn in "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 52.

This, if we supply continuity and arrangement to his vagaries, must
have been approximately what he felt or dreamily saw, and outlined in
vigorous words to his auditors. His listening friends were dumfounded
at the audacity as well as heart-sick at the hopelessness of