favorite maxim taught.  They held them in their hands with listless indifference, remaining themselves, as before, an incumbrance instead of a reenforcement.  He gave his white prisoners notice that he would hold them as hostages, and informed one or two that, after daylight, he would exchange them for slaves.  Before the general fighting began, he endeavored to effect an armistice or compromise with the citizens, to stop bloodshed, on condition that he be permitted to hold the armory and retain the liberated negroes.  All this warrants the inference that he expected to hold the town, first, by the effect of terror; secondly, by the display of leniency and kindness; and supposed that he could remain indefinitely, and dictate terms at his leisure.  The fallacy of this scheme became quickly apparent.

As the day dawned upon the town and the truth upon the citizens, his situation in a military point of view was already hopeless—­eighteen men against perhaps 1000 adults, and these eighteen scattered in four or five different squads, without means of mutual support, communication, or even contingent orders!  Gradually, as the startled citizens became certain of the insignificant numbers of the assailants, an irregular street-firing broke out between Brown’s sentinels and individuals with firearms.  The alarm was carried to neighboring towns, and killed and wounded on both sides augmented the excitement.  Tradition rather than definite record asserts that some of Brown’s lieutenants began to comprehend that they were in a trap, and advised him to retreat.  Nearly all his eulogists have assumed that such was his original plan, and his own subsequent excuses hint at this intention.  But the claim is clearly untenable.  He had no means of defensive retreat—­no provisions, no transportation for his arms and equipage, no supply of ammunition.  The suggestion is an evident afterthought.

Whether from choice or necessity, however, he remained only to find himself more and more closely pressed.  By Monday noon the squad in the rifle-works, distant one mile from the armory, had been driven out, killed, and captured.  The other squads, not so far from their leader, joined him at the armory, minus their losses.  Already he was driven to take refuge with his diminished force in the engine-house, a low, strong brick building in the armory yard, where they barricaded doors and improvised loop-holes, and into which they took with them ten selected prisoners as hostages.  But the expedient was one of desperation.  By this movement Brown literally shut himself up in his own prison, from which escape was impossible.