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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
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