to Kansas and await a more favorable opportunity.  He yielded assent, and that fall and winter performed the exploit of leading an armed foray into Missouri, and carrying away eleven slaves to Canada—­an achievement which, while to a certain degree it placed him in the attitude of a public outlaw, nevertheless greatly increased his own and his followers’ confidence in the success of his general plan.  Gradually the various obstacles melted away.  Kansas became pacified.  The adventurer Forbes faded out of sight and importance.  The disputed Sharps rifles and revolvers were transferred from committee to committee, and finally turned over to a private individual to satisfy a debt.  He in turn delivered them to Brown without any hampering conditions.  The Connecticut blacksmith finished and shipped the thousand pikes.  The contributions from the Boston committee swelled from one to several thousands of dollars.  The recruits, with a few changes, though scattered in various parts of the country, were generally held to their organization and promise, and slightly increased in number.  The provisional constitution and sundry blank commissions were surreptitiously printed, and captains and lieutenants appointed by the signature of John Brown “Commander-in-Chief,” countersigned by the “Secretary of War.”

Gradually, also, the commander-in-chief resolved on an important modification of his plan:  that, instead of plunging at once into the Virginia mountains, he would begin by the capture of the United States armory and arsenal at Harper’s Ferry.  Two advantages seem to have vaguely suggested themselves to his mind as likely to arise from this course:  the possession of a large quantity of Government arms, and the widespread panic and moral influence of so bold an attempt.  But it nowhere appears that he had any conception of the increased risk and danger it involved, or that he adopted the slightest precaution to meet them.

Harper’s Ferry was a town of five thousand inhabitants, lying between the slave-States of Maryland and Virginia, at the confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers, where the united streams flow through a picturesque gap in the single mountain-range called the Blue Ridge.  The situation possesses none of the elements which would make it a defensible fastness for protracted guerrilla warfare, such as was contemplated in Brown’s plan.  The mountains are everywhere approachable without difficulty; are pierced by roads and farms in all directions; contain few natural resources for sustenance, defense, or concealment; are easily observed or controlled from the plain by superior forces.  The town is irregular, compact, and hilly; a bridge across each stream connects it with the opposite shores, and the Government factory and buildings, which utilized the water-power of the Potomac, lay in the lowest part of the point of land between the streams.  The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses the Potomac bridge.