h it be like the last victory of Samson."

[Sidenote] Realf, Testimony, Mason Report, p. 99.

Nine days later Brown went to Boston, where the conspiracy was
enlarged and strengthened by the promises and encouragements of a
little coterie of radical abolitionists.[3] Within the next two months
the funds he desired were contributed and sent him. Meanwhile Brown
returned West, and moved his company of recruits from Iowa, by way of
Chicago and Detroit, to the town of Chatham, in Canada West, arriving
there about the 1st of May. By written invitations, Brown here called
together what is described as "a quiet convention of the friends of
freedom," to perfect his organization. On the 8th of May, 1858, they
held a meeting with closed doors, there being present the original
company of ten or eleven white members and one colored, whom Brown had
brought with him, and a somewhat miscellaneous gathering of negro
residents of Canada. Some sort of promise of secrecy was mutually
made; then John Brown, in a speech, laid his plan before the meeting.
One Delany, a colored doctor, in a response, promised the assistance
of all the colored people in Canada. The provisional constitution
drafted by Brown at Rochester was read and adopted by articles, and
about forty-five persons signed their names to the "Constitution," for
the "proscribed and oppressed races of the United States." Two days
afterwards, the meeting again convened for the election of officers;
John Brown was elected commander-in-chief by acclamation; other
members were by the same summary method appointed secretary of war,
secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, and two of them members
of congress. The election of a president was prudently postponed.

This Chatham Convention cannot claim consideration as a serious
deliberative proceeding. John Brown was its sole life and voice. The
colored Canadians were nothing but spectators. The ten white recruits
were mere Kansas adventurers, mostly boys in years and waifs in
society, perhaps depending largely for livelihood on the employment or
bounty, precarious as it was, of their leader. Upon this reckless,
drifting material the strong despotic will, emotional enthusiasm, and
mysterious rhapsodical talk of John Brown exercised an irresistible
fascination; he drew them by easy gradations into his confidence and
conspiracy. The remaining element, John Brown's son in the Chatham
meeting, and other sons and relatives in the Harpe