Carolina,
South Carolina and Georgia--an unbroken stretch of overwhelming black
majority. In some counties they outnumbered the whites, five to one.

This mountain gorge, hewn out of the rocks by the waters of the rivers,
was the gateway into the heart of the Slave System of the South. And it
could be made the highroad of escape to the North if once the way were
opened.

Another fact had influenced the mind of Brown. The majority of the
workmen of Harper's Ferry were mechanics from the North. They would not
be enthusiastic defenders of Slavery. They were not slave owners. In a
fight to a finish they would be indifferent. Their indifference would
make the conquest of the few white masters in town a simple matter.

Cook felt again the spell of Brown's imperious will. He had thought the
old man's chief reason for selecting Harper's Ferry as the scene was his
quixotic desire to be dramatic. He knew the history of the village.
It had been named for Robert Harper, an Englishman. Lord Fairfax, the
friend of George Washington, had given the millwright a grant of it in
1748. Washington, himself, had made the first survey of the place and
selected the Ferry, in 1794, as the site of a National Armory.

Colonel Lewis Washington, the great-grandson of Washington's brother,
lived on the lordly plantation of Bellair, four miles in the country.
Brown had learned that the sword which Frederick the Great had given to
Washington, and the pistols which Lafayette had given him hung on the
walls of the Colonel's library.

He had instructed Cook to become acquainted with Colonel Washington,
and locate these treasures. He had determined to lead his negro army of
insurrection with these pistols and sword buckled around his waist.

Cook was an adventurer but he had no trace of eccentricity in his
character. He thought this idea a dangerous absurdity. And he believed
at first that it was the one thing that had led his Chief to select
this spot. He changed his mind in the first thirty minutes, as he stood
studying the mountain peak that stood sentinel at the gateway of the
Black Belt.

With a new sense of the importance of his mission he sought a boarding
house. He was directed by the watchman at the railroad station, a
good-looking freedman, an employee of the Mayor of the town, to the
widow Kennedy's. Her house was situated on a quiet street just outside
the enclosure of the United States Arsenal.

Cook was a man of pleasing address, t