“There’s nothing wild or foolhardy about my plans, except to men who lack courage and principles,” Father began, and here he commenced the recitation with which I and the others hidden back at the attic of the Kennedy farmhouse had become so familiar that we could recite it word by word ourselves. He told Mr. Douglass how the old plan had been modified to such a degree that it amounted now to a new plan, and, just as with us, he brought out and unrolled his maps and went over each step of the raid, until he had got to the end of the raid and our rendez-vous in the wilderness with Frederick Douglass and the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of newly liberated slaves.
Mr. Douglass was silent for a few moments and studied the maps with pursed lips and furrowed brow. At last, he sighed and said, “I love you, John Brown. I do. You’ve been a true hero, and I don’t want you killed. You and those brave young men with you.”
“We may suffer losses” Father said, interrupting. “It’s inevitable in war. But we will triumph over our enemies in the end. We will. I know it, Frederick. The Lord will protect us.”
“The Lord can’t protect you from the nature of that place, Harpers Ferry. It’s a steel trap, John. You’ll get in and not be able to get out. Please, forget this.”
“Our hostages will shield us while we’re down there, and the wilderness and the mountains will preserve us when we’ve left.”
“No, no, no, no! Impossible! Remember, I know these white Southerners; you don’t. These men will cut down every tree from here to Tennessee but one, and when they have caught you, they’ll hang you from it. And along the way, they’ll butcher any slave who even dreams of rebellion in his sleep.”
“We’ll be too many too soon for them to go against us, and we’ll be everywhere across the South, so they’ll never be able to unite against us in any one place. This is no conventional war I’m fomenting here, Frederick.”
“The federal army, John. Remember that.”
“Yes, and remember the Seminoles. The Alleghenies will be my Everglades.”
“And our Negroes, are they to be your Indian warriors?”
“If you will lead them with me. If you are at my side, they will rise up and follow me into battle against their white masters.” Then for a long while Father explained how their army of escaped slaves would be divided into two parts, one to conduct raids on the plantations and towns of the South, the other to provide logistical support for the raiders and safe transportation out of the South for those escaping slaves who, because of age or infirmity or temperament, were unable to join the battle or merely wished to flee into the North. It all seemed so logical and so likely to succeed that Mr. Douglass’s persistent objections and skepticism began to look, to me, like a reflection of his character more than his mind, as if a fearful heart had shut down his brain.
Back and forth they went, first one arguing his case, then the other, like attorneys pleading before a stern, inscrutable judge. Who was right, Father or Frederick Douglass? Not in hindsight, but at the moment of their argument. In hindsight, Mr. Douglass obviously seems to have been right. But back then, before the raid, was not Father right to believe that if Mr. Douglass made the raid on Harpers Ferry the opening act of a slave rebellion led by him and Old John Brown together, then it almost had to be a successful rebellion?
“With you at my side, this enterprise will be larger than any previous event in American history. It will be a true revolution, the revolution we should have fought back in ’76!”
“No, Brown, it won’t. It’ll be suicidal. Worse than Nat Turner. With or without me, it’s destined to fail. We are too few, too poorly armed, too ill-equipped, and too untrained as soldiers to accomplish what you have imagined.”
Father stepped away and stared down at the large, open pit of the quarry below. In a low, sulky voice, he said, “I’m glad you weren’t around to advise our Revolutionary forebears, Frederick. We’d all still be British subjects.”
Mr. Douglass smiled. “Yes, well, given the fact that the British have outlawed slavery for close to a quarter-century now, it might not be a bad thing to be a British subject.”
For many hours, long into the afternoon, the two men went back and forth, first one making his argument, citing precedent and pointing to principle for support, and then the other. Shields Green and I listened first to one, then to the other, and said nothing: we were like children listening to their parents argue over a matter that, for good or evil, would shape all their lives to come and wishing that both parents could be right. Mr. Douglass would speak for a while, marshaling his arguments with care and generosity towards Father, with sympathetic understanding of the Old Man’s objectives and firm disapproval of his means, not on principle but for practical reasons only; and Shields and I would nod, as if thinking, yes, Harpers Ferry is a steel trap, we will get in and never be able to get out, and if by some miracle we do fight our way through the outraged townspeople and avoid being cut to pieces by the local militiamen as we flee the Shenandoah Valley into the wilderness, then, yes, the federal army will be arrayed against us and will in a short while cut us off in our mountain retreat and will lay down a siege from which our only escape will be death by starvation or a bullet, and, yes, our raid and the mere threat of the slave rebellion it poses will bring down upon the head of every Negro in the South untold suffering, lynchings, mutilations, chains, for the worst sort of oppression imaginable would be the inevitable consequence of raising fear of a slave revolt in the hearts of white Southerners, and, yes, the Northern whites will not come to our aid, for they will never go to war against their white brethren in the defense of black people and a handful of white radical abolitionists: it is an absurd plan, absurd, and cruel beyond belief.
Then, as the sun passed overhead and moved towards the western Pennsylvania hills, and the shadows of the rock that surrounded us grew long, Father would commence to answer, and now Shields and I nodded in support of his reasoning, too, saying to ourselves, yes, we can take the town by surprise and hold it by means of hostages long enough to capture sufficient weaponry to arm the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of slaves who will surely seize the opportunity to rise against their masters, once they know they are being led by men they trust as warriors and as men of principle, and, yes, we can flee to safety in the densely forested mountains of the South, and with a hundred bands of disciplined, well-armed, guerilla fighters we can hold off any army for months, even years, during which time our ranks will swell to such numbers that the Southern states, just to restore their economy, will make peace with their workers, for is that not, after all, who has gone to war against them, their workers?
“In the end, Frederick, it’s right principles and simple economics that will settle this thing in our favor,” Father said, and I could not disagree.
Until Mr. Douglass, in his low, melodious, melancholy voice, answered, “No, John. It’s race that will settle it. And it will settle it against us. Race and simple arithmetic. Not principles and not economics. Simply put, there are more of you in this country than of us. This is not Haiti or Jamaica, and the northern United States are not a separate nation than the southern United States. It’s race, John. Skin color and hair and physiognomy. You say us, John, and you mean all Americans willing to go to war to end slavery. But every other American who says us means race, means us white people, or us Negroes. You are a noble, good man. But you are nearly alone in this country. Even me, when I say us, I mean we Negroes.”
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