Brown's scout reached the town of Harper's Ferry on June 5, 1858. The
magnificent view which greeted his vision as he stepped from the
train took his breath. The music of trembling waters seemed a grand
accompaniment to an Oratorio of Nature.
The sensitive mind of the young Westerner responded to its soul appeal.
He stood for half an hour enraptured with its grandeur. Two great
rivers, the Potomac and the Shenandoah, rushing through rock-hewn gorges
to the sea, unite here to hurl their tons of foaming waters against the
last granite wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Beyond the gorge, through which the roaring tide has cut its path, lies
the City of Washington on the banks of the Potomac, but sixty miles
away--a day's journey on a swift horse; an hour and a half by rail.
Cook at first had sharply criticized Brown's selection of such a place
for the scene of the Great Deed. As he stood surveying in wonder the
sublimity of its scenery he muttered softly:
"The old man's a wizard!"
The rugged hills and the rush of mighty waters called the soul to great
deeds. There was something electric in the air. The town, the rivers,
the mountains summoned the spirit to adventure. The tall chimneys of the
United States Arsenal and Rifle Works called to war. The lines of hills
were made for the emplacement of guns. The roaring waters challenged the
skill of generals.
The scout felt his heart beat in quick response. The more he studied the
hills that led to High Knob, a peak two thousand four hundred feet in
height, the more canny seemed the choice of Brown. From the top of this
peak stretches the county of Fauquier, the beginning of the Black Belt
of the South. Fauquier County contained more than ten thousand Slaves
and seven hundred freed negroes. There were but nine thousand eight
hundred whites. From this county to the sea lay a series of adjoining
counties in which the blacks outnumbered the whites. These counties
contained more than two hundred and sixty thousand negroes.
The Black Belt of Virginia touched the Black Belts of North 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, twenty-eight years old, blue-eyed,
blond, handsome, affable, genial in manner and a good mixer. Within
twenty-four hours he had made friends with the widow and every boarder
in the house.
They introduced him to their friends and in a week he had won the good
opinion of the leading citizens of the place. A few days later the
widow's pretty daughter arrived from boarding school and the young
adventurer faced the first problem of his mission.
She was a slender, dark-eyed, sensitive creature of eighteen. Shy,
romantic, and all eyes for the great adventure of every Southern girl's
life--the coming of the Prince Charming who would some day ride up to
her door, doff his plumed hat, kiss her hand and kneel at her feet?
Cook read the eagerness in her brown eyes the first hour of their
meeting. And what was more serious he felt the first throb of emotion
that had ever distressed him in the presence of a woman.
He had never made love. He had tried all other adventures. He had never
met the type that appealed to his impulsive mind. He was angry with
himself for the almost resistless impulse that came, to flirt with this
girl.
It could only be a flirtation at best and, it could only end in
bitterness and hatred and tragedy in the end. He had done dark deeds on
the Western plains. But they were man deeds. No delicate woman had been
involved in their tangled ethics.
There was something serious in his nature that said no to a flirtation
of any kind with a lovely girl. He had always intended to take women
seriously. He did take them seriously. He wouldn't hesitate to kill a
man if he were cornered. But a woman--that was different. He tried
to avoid the eyes of Virginia. He couldn't. In spite of all, seated
opposite at the table, he found himself looking into their brown liquid
depths. They were big, soulful eyes, full of tenderness and faith and
wonder and joy. And they kept saying to him:
"Come here, stranger man, and tell me who you are, where you came from,
where you're going, and what's your hurry."
There was nothing immodest or forward in them. They just kept calling
him.
She was exactly the type of girl he had dreamed he would like to marry
some day when life had quieted down. She was of the spirit, not the
flesh. Yet she was beautiful to look upon. Her hair was a dark, curling
brown, full of delicate waves even on the top of her head. Her hands
were dainty. Her body was a slender poem in willowy, graceful lines. Her
voice was the softest Southern drawl.
The Kennedys were not slave holders. The pretty daughter joyfully helped
her mother when she came home from school. Her sentiments were Southern
without the over emphasis sometimes heard among the prouder daughters
of the old regime. These Southern sentiments formed another impassable
barrier. Cook said this a hundred times to himself and sought to make
the barrier more formidable by repeating aloud his own creed when in his
room alone.
The fight was vain. He drifted into seeing her a few minutes alone each
day. She had liked him from the first. He felt it. He knew it. He had
liked her from the first, and she knew it.
Each night he swore he'd go to bed without seeing her and each night he
laughed and said:
"Just this once more and it won't count."
He felt himself drifting into a tragedy. Yet to save his life he
couldn't lay hold of anything that would stand the strain of the sweet
invitation in those brown eyes.
To avoid her he spent days tramping over the hills. And always he came
back more charmed than ever. The spell she was weaving about his heart
was resistless.