Part III

_THE STORM_

When the measure of their tears shall be full--when their groans shall

have involved heaven itself in darkness--doubtless a God of justice

will awaken to their distress, and by his exterminating thunder

manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are

not left to the guidance of a blind fatality.

--THOMAS JEFFERSON

CHAPTER ELEVEN

_The storm came up in the West and birds flew North_

There never had been such a time for cotton. All over the South the

cotton foamed in great white flakes under the sun. Black workers

staggered beneath its weight. Up and down the roads straining mules

pulled wagons loaded with bubbling masses of whiteness. The gins spat

flames and smoke; the presses creaked and groaned, as closer and closer

they packed the quivering mass until, dead and still, it lay in hard,

square bundles on river wharves, beside steel rails and on rotting

piers. Shiploads were on their way to the hungry looms of England and

the crawling harbors of China. Prosperity lay like a fragrant mist upon

the Southland in 1854.

William Freeland rode over his acres with satisfaction. True, they

had diminished in number; but if cotton prices continued to rise, the

master of Freelands could see years of ease stretching ahead. Since

his mother’s death Freeland had left the running of the plantation

pretty much to hired overseers. He had not interfered. He spent a lot

of time in Baltimore, Washington and Richmond. With his dark brooding

face and wavy, gray-streaked hair, the master of Freelands enjoyed much

popularity with the ladies. He remained a bachelor.

It was Sunday morning, and the slight chill in the air was stimulating.

Dead leaves rustled beneath his horse’s hoofs as he pulled up just

inside the wrought-iron gates, where the graveled drive was guarded

by the old sycamore. Time was beginning to tell on the big house far

up the drive, but it still stood firm and substantial, though the Old

Missus no longer tapped her cane through its halls. William Freeland

sighed. He wished his mother had lived to see the last two good years

at Freelands. For things falling to piece had made her unhappy. “A

strong hand was lacking,” she said. The Mistress had grieved when old

Caleb died and Aunt Lou, crippled with rheumatism and wheezing with

asthma had to be sent away to a cabin at the edge of the fields. Henry

had taken Caleb’s place, of course. But in this, she had acknowledged,

her son had been right: Henry was stupid and incompetent. It was

evident he would never master the job of being a good butler. On the

other hand she used to remind William of the “bad-blood rascal” he had

brought in to plant wicked seeds of rebellion at Freelands. Grumbling

and sullen faces multiplied. In the old days, she had said, Freeland

slaves never tried to run away.

The overseers came, had tightened up on things. The last runaway had

been a young filly with her baby. The dogs had caught her down by

the river and torn her to pieces. Freeland had gone away for a while

afterward.

He went on up the drive slowly, chuckling when he spied the queer

figure bent double under the hedge, scooping at the dirt with his

bare hands. The inevitable butterfly net and mesh bag lay close by

on the ground, though everybody knew that fall was no time to chase

butterflies. William Freeland shook his head. What some men did to get

famous! For that funny little figure under his hedge was Dr. Alexander

Ross, entomologist, ornithologist, and ichthyologist, whose discoveries

of rare specimen of bugs were spread out on beautifully colored plates

in expensive books! He had met the scientist at the home of Colonel

Drake in Richmond. The daughter of the house, who had been sent

North to school, had simply babbled about him. She had displayed an

autographed copy of one of those books, as if it were worth its weight

in gold. When the funny little man had murmured he might be able to

find a _Croton Alabameses_ on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the master

of Freelands had invited him to his plantation where, he had said

with a laugh, there were sure to be some very rare bugs indeed. Later

Freeland learned that a _Croton Alabameses_ was not a bug, but a plant.

It was the first evening when they were sitting on the veranda, and

Dr. Ross had remarked on the charm of the old garden with its sweeping

mosses, overgrown walks and thick hedges.

“It is lovely!” The little man had screwed up his eyes behind his thick

glasses and blinked with delight.

After that he had been up before dawn and out all day, net and bag in

hand. He tramped great distances through woods and river mud. He talked

with the slaves, who, his host was certain, thought the little man was

crazy. Freeland thought it well to warn him about lonely, unused lanes

and river lowlands.

“Time was,” he added, “when I’d never think of cautioning a visitor

at Freelands. Crime used to be unknown in these parts. But now there

are many bad blacks about. It’s dangerous!” The little man was not

listening. He was measuring the wing spread of a moth. Freeland became

more insistent.

“Just a few weeks ago,” he said, “a poor farmer named Covey was found

in his own back yard with his head crushed in. Most of the slaves were

caught before they got away, but the authorities are still looking for

his housekeeper, whom they really suspect of the crime. It’s horrible!”

The scientist was frowning, a puzzled expression on his round face.

“But why--Why should they think his housekeeper did this awful thing?”

William Freeland shrugged his shoulders. “It seems a dealer in the

village told how this woman carried on like mad when Covey sold some

girl off the place. I don’t know the details. But the man says he heard

the woman say she’d kill her master.”

“Tck! Tck!” The little man shook his head.

“So you see, Doctor,” continued his host, judiciously, “that woman is

at large and _you’d_ never be able to cope with her.”

“Why, is she in the neighborhood?” Now Dr. Ross seemed interested.

“It would be very hard for her to get through the cordon they’ve laid

around that neck of land. In your long tramps you might easily wander

into the section without knowing it. So I wouldn’t get too far off the

place if I were you.”

The little man nodded his head. Next evening, however, he did not

return to the house until long after dark. He was bespattered with mud.

He said he had stumbled and lost his specimens for the day. The mesh

bag hung limp at his side.

But no harm had befallen him. There he was, looking like one of his own

bugs, under the hedge. William Freeland swung off his horse and went

into the house.

“Tell the Doctor breakfast is ready,” he said to Henry, who came

forward.

“Dat dirty old man!” grumbled Henry, as he shuffled away on his errand.

The master had to laugh.

No yellow canary sang in the alcove, but breakfast hour in the

high-ceiled, paneled room passed very pleasantly. In the rare

intervals when Dr. Ross was not squinting through his microscope or

chasing through the woods, he was an interesting talker. This morning

he compared the plant and insect life of this section of the Eastern

Shore to a little strip of land in southern France on the Mediterranean.

“Nature has scattered her bounties lavishly here in the South,” he

said. And because it was a happy subject William Freeland began to tell

the scientist about cotton.

“The new state of Texas added thousands of acres. They’re starting to

raise cotton in California, and now,” his voice showed excitement,

“they find cotton can be raised in the Nebraska Territory.”

“A marvelous plant!” Dr. Ross was really interested.

A shadow crossed Freeland’s face.

“There is just one drawback. There aren’t enough slaves to raise cotton

on all this land. The Yankees fear our cotton. They know that, if they

let us alone, cotton will become the deciding factor throughout the

country. Because they have no cotton lands, they try to throttle us.

They tie our hands by trying to limit slavery. They know that cotton

and slavery expand together.”

“But if slavery becomes illegal--as it did in Great Britain--in

the West Indies?” The little man leaned forward. William smiled

indulgently. He took a long draw on his pipe before answering.

“The United States is only a federation of states--nothing more. Where

slavery was not needed it was abolished. But we need slaves here in

the South, now more than ever. So”--and he waved his pipe--“we’ll keep

them!”

“I’m reversing my schedule today,” Dr. Ross said as they rose from

the table. “This afternoon I shall take a nap, because tonight I’m

going out after _Lepidoptera_. I saw signs of him down by the creek

yesterday, but they only fly after dark. I may be out all night.”

His host frowned.

“I’d better send one of the boys with you.” The little man shook his

head.

“No need at all, sir. I doubt if I go off your grounds. I’ll trap one

down in the bottoms below the meadow.”

William Freeland thought about the doctor that night when he went to

bed--out chasing moths in the dark. Freeland took another sip of brandy

before he put out his light.

Nine young men met Alexander Ross that night in the woods. To all of

them, through devious channels, had come the word that “riders” on the

Underground Railroad could be accommodated.

Dr. Ross sorted them into three groups and gave each one a set of

directions. At such and such a place in the woods, the first trio

would find a man waiting. Half a mile up the river bank, the second

contingent were to look for an empty skiff tied to a willow: it wasn’t

empty. The others had a wagon waiting for them on a nearby back road.

They had come supplied with as much food as they could conveniently

carry. Ross handed each slave a few dollars, a pocket compass, a knife

and pistol.

Then they scattered. Ross went a few miles with the group heading

inland through the woods and then doubled back toward Freelands. He

even caught a rare moth, which he carefully placed in his mesh bag.

A few days later the quiet little scientist shook hands with his host

and took his departure.

Such was Alexander Ross before he was knighted by several kings for

his scientific discoveries and honored by the French Academy. Wherever

he went in Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama or

Mississippi, he talked of birds and plants. Equipped with shotgun and

preservatives, he roamed nonchalantly into field and wood. The slave

disappearances were never related to him.

Along the Underground Railroad they called him “the Birdman.” Through

him, Jeb, the boy Frederick had left behind in Baltimore, got away

to freedom. And there were others along the Eastern Shore to whom

Frederick had said, “I’ll not be forgetting!” Douglass sent Alexander

Ross back along the way he had come and made good his promises.

* * * * *

Cotton and slavery--by 1854 the two words became synonymous. The Cotton

Empire was straining its borders. More land was needed for the “silver

fleece,” and slaves must break the land and plant the seed and pick the

delicate soft pods. There was no other way.

Then a shrewd bidder for the presidency made an offer to the

South--western territory for their votes--and they sprang at the bribe.

Passage of the Nebraska Bill stacked the ammunition for civil war

dangerously high.

This scrapping of the Missouri Compromise struck antislavery men all

in a heap. The line against slavery had been so clear--no slaves above

the line. It should have run to the Pacific, stretching west with the

course of empire. But now, by means of the clever wording of the

Nebraska (Territory) Bill--“to leave the people ... free to form and

regulate their domestic institutions in their own way”--a vast tract

embracing upward of four hundred thousand square miles was being thrown

open to slavery. Stephen Douglas drove the Bill through Congress. It

was his moment of triumph.

The North reacted. Harriet Beecher Stowe led eleven hundred women

marching through the streets in protest. Great mass meetings assembled.

They hanged Stephen Douglas in effigy. State legislatures met in

special sessions and sent manifests to Congress. William Lloyd

Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Henry Highland Garnet,

and Henry Ward Beecher raised their voices like mighty trumpets; they

filled the air with oratory.

* * * * *

The five sons of John Brown set out for Kansas.

They were among the less important people who saw that if “the domestic

institutions” were to be left to those who lived there to decide, it

was going to be necessary for antislavery men to settle on the land.

The brothers’ combined property consisted of eleven head of cattle and

three horses. Ten of this number were fine breeds. Thinking of their

value in a new country, Owen, Frederick and Salmon took them by way of

the Lakes to Chicago and thence to Meridosia where they were wintered.

When spring came, they drove them into Kansas to a place about eight

miles west of the town of Osawatomie, which the brothers had selected

as a likely spot to settle.

Seven hundred and fifty men set out that summer under the auspices of

the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society. Some traveled by wagon over

lonely trails. Others sailed down the Ohio River, their farm implements

lashed to the decks of the boats.

They found a lovely land--wide open spaces, rolling prairies and wooded

streams under a great blue dome. They set up their tents and went about

breaking soil. They dreamed of cattle herds, waving fields of corn and

wheat, orchards and vineyards. There was so much of the good, rich

earth in Kansas.

Election Day--when members for the first territorial legislature were

chosen--came on March 30, 1855. Horace Greeley himself went out to

Kansas to cover the election for his paper, the _New York Tribune_.

Slaveholders poured into the territory from Missouri by the thousands

and took over the polls.

“On the evening before and the day of the election,” Greeley wrote,

“nearly a thousand Missourians arrived in Lawrence in wagons and on

horseback, well armed with rifles, pistols and bowie-knives.” According

to his account, they made no pretense of legality, one contingent

bringing up two pieces of cannon loaded with musket balls. It was the

same everywhere in the territory: the invaders elected all the members

of the legislature, with a single exception in either house. These

were two Free Soilers from a remote district which the Missourians

overlooked. “Although only 831 legal electors in the territory voted,

there were no less than 6,320 votes polled.”

The people of Kansas repudiated this election and refused to obey the

laws passed. Ruffians were called in “to aid in enforcing laws.” Then

it was that the sons of John Brown wrote their father asking him to

procure and send them arms and ammunition to defend themselves and

their neighbors.

John Brown had given up his store in Springfield, Massachusetts, and

moved to a small farm in the hills of North Elba, New York. Just before

the trek West, he had written his son John: “If you or any of my family

are disposed to go to Kansas or Nebraska with a view to help defeat

Satan and his legions in that direction, I have not a word to say; but

I feel committed to operate in another part of the field.”[13]

He had not heard from Kansas for many months, when he got the request

for arms.

John Brown held his sons’ letter in his hands. He went outside and

stood looking up at the Adirondacks, his hacked-out frame and wrinkled,

yellow face hard against the sky. Then he strode to the barn and

saddled his horse.

“I’m going to Rochester,” he told his wife. “I want to talk this over

with Douglass.”

She stood in the narrow door and watched him riding down the trail. He

did not look back. John Brown never looked back.

* * * * *

In Rochester people had already begun pointing out Frederick Douglass’

house to strangers. Until Douglass came and moved his family into the

unpretentious two-story frame dwelling, Alexander Street had been

one of many shady side-streets in a quiet section of the city. The

dark-skinned new arrivals caused a lot of talk, but no open antagonism.

Famous folk from Boston and New York and Philadelphia began appearing

on Alexander Street. Somebody said he’d recognized Horace Greeley,

editor of a newspaper in New York; and somebody else was sure he saw

the great preacher, Wendell Phillips. The neighbors grew accustomed

to seeing Mr. Daniel Anthony’s huge carryall drive up of a Sunday

afternoon and stop in front of the house, while all the Douglass family

piled in. Mr. Anthony’s big place with its rows of fruit trees was

several miles out in the country. Evidently that was where they went.

Then they talked about Mr. Anthony’s daughter, Susan B. Anthony. She

was pretty famous herself--what with going around the country and

getting her name in all the papers. Some of the men shook their heads

over this. But the women bit off the threads of their sewing cotton

with a snap and eyed each other significantly. They reminded their men

folks that the Woman’s State Temperance Convention had been a pretty

important affair.

“Temperance conventions is one thing,” said the men, “but this talk

about women voting is something else!”

Then one lady spoke up and said she’d heard their neighbor Frederick

Douglass make a speech about women voting. “And it was wonderful!” she

added.

“Seems like he’d have enough on his hands trying to free slaves!”

grumbled one man, snapping his suspenders.

Douglass did have a lot on his hands. The _North Star_ was a large

sheet, published weekly, and it cost eighty dollars a week to issue.

Everybody rejoiced when the circulation hit three thousand. There

were many times when Douglass was hard pressed for money, and the

mechanical work of getting out the paper was arduous. The entire family

was drafted. Lewis and Frederick learned typesetting, and both boys

delivered papers. The two little fellows soon became a familiar sight

on Rochester streets, papers under their arms and school books strapped

to their backs.

But the paper was only part of Douglass’ work. One whole winter he

lectured evenings at Corinthian Hall. Other seasons he would take an

evening train to Victor, Farmington, Canandaigua, Geneva, Waterloo,

Buffalo, Syracuse or elsewhere. He would speak in some hall or church,

returning home the same night. In the morning Martin Delaney would find

him at his desk, writing or mailing papers.

Sleep in his house was an irregular business. At any hour of the day

or night Underground “passengers” arrived. They came sometimes in

carriages, with Quaker capes thrown about their shoulders; or they came

under loads of wheat or lumber or sacks of flour. Some of them rode in

boldly on the train, and more than once a packing-box arrived, marked

_Open with Care_.

Every agent of the Underground Railroad risked fine and imprisonment.

They realized they were bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon, yet the

joy of freeing one more slave was recompense enough. One time Douglass

had eleven fugitives under his roof. And there they had to remain until

Douglass could collect enough money to send them on to Canada. His wife

cooked numerous pots of food which quickly vanished. “Passengers” slept

in the attic and barn loft.

Many people in Rochester became involved. One evening after dark a

well-dressed, middle-aged man knocked at Douglass’ door and introduced

himself as the law partner of the United States commissioner of that

city. He would not sit down.

“I have come to tell you,” he said, “that an hour ago the owner of

three slaves who have escaped from Maryland was in our office. He says

he has traced them to Rochester. He has papers for their arrest, and he

is coming to your house!”

Douglass stared at the man in amazement. He had recognized his name as

that of a distinguished Democrat, perhaps the last person in Rochester

from whom he would have expected assistance. He tried to say something,

but the gentleman waved him aside.

“I bid you good evening, Mr. Douglass. There is not a moment to lose!”

And he disappeared down Alexander Street.

One of the fugitives was at that moment in the hayloft, the other

two were on the farm of Asa Anthony, just outside the city limits.

That night two black horses rode swiftly through the night. Then Asa

Anthony’s farm wagon rumbled down to the docks, and in the morning

the three young men were on the free waves of Lake Ontario, bound for

Canada.

Douglass and the _North Star_ formed the pivot about which revolved

much of the work of other Negro Abolitionists, whom Douglass now met

for the first time. Henry Highland Garnet, well-educated grandson of

an African chief, had never been closely associated with William Lloyd

Garrison. From the first he had gravitated toward political action.

There were Dr. James McCune Smith, who had studied medicine at Glasgow;

James W. Pennington, with his degree from Heidelberg; Henry Bibb,

Charles L. Redmond, and Samuel Ringgold Ward, Garnet’s cousin, who

attracted Douglass in a very special manner. Ward was very black and

of magnificent physique. They were all older than Douglass. But they

strengthened his hand; and he, in his turn, was proud of them.

Then in 1850 the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, and no Negro,

regardless of his education, ability, or means, was safe anywhere in

the United States. Douglass had his manumission papers. His freedom had

been bought. But Henry Highland Garnet and Samuel Ringgold Ward knew it

was best that they leave the country.

Until Ward died the two men traveled in Europe, where Henry Highland

Garnet came to be called the “Negro Tom Paine.” Douglass felt most

deeply the loss of Ringgold Ward, whom he considered vastly superior to

any of them, both as an orator and a thinker.

“In depth of thought,” he wrote, “fluency of speech, readiness of wit,

logical exactness, and general intelligence, Samuel Ringgold Ward has

left no successor among colored men amongst us.”

Meanwhile Douglass squared his shoulders and took on more

responsibility. He saw former slaves who had lived for years safely

and securely in western New York and elsewhere--who had worked hard,

saved money and acquired homes--now forced to flee to Canada. Many died

during the first harsh winter. Bishop Daniel A. Payne of the African

Methodist Episcopal Church consulted Douglass as to the advisability of

both of them fleeing.

“We are whipped, we are whipped,” moaned Payne, “and we might as well

retreat in order.”

Douglass shook his head. “We must stand!”

* * * * *

It was the spring of 1855, and never had the huge mills and factories

and tanneries of Rochester been busier. Great logs of Allegheny pine

rode down the Genesee River and lay in clean, shining tiers of lumber

in the yards. Up and down the Erie Canal went the flatboats, mules

straining at the heavy loads; and on the docks of Rochester Port the

goods lay piled waiting for lake steamers to go westward. Rochester

boasted that it was the most important station on the newly completed

New York Central Railroad.

The vigorous young city waxed fat. Sleek, trim “city fathers” began

considering the “cultural aspects” of their town. Rochester’s Gallery

of Fine Arts was established; plans were drawn up for an Academy of

Music. “Causes” became less popular than they had been. There were

those who gave an embarrassed laugh when Susan B. Anthony’s name came

up, and some wondered if so much antislavery agitation was good for

their city.

Slaveholders, vacationing in Saratoga Springs, dropped in on Rochester.

They admired its wide, clean streets and fine buildings, but they

shuddered at the sight of well-dressed Negroes in the streets. The

Southerners spent money freely and talked about new cotton mills; and

more than one wondered aloud why Frederick Douglass was allowed to

remain in such a fine city.

But the hardy, true strain of the people ran deep. When Frederick

Douglass was prevented from speaking in nearby Homer by a barrage of

missiles, Oren Carvath resigned as deacon of the Congregational Church,

sold his farm and moved to Oberlin. His son, Erastus, made Negro

education the work of his life and became the first president of Fisk

University.

* * * * *

There was scarcely any moon the night Douglass rode his horse homeward

along Ridge Road. He had spoken in Genesee on the Nebraska Bill and

politics for Abolitionists.

He enjoyed these solitary rides. They cleared his brain. But tonight

he kept thinking about an angry letter he had received that day--a

letter in which the writer had accused Douglass of having deserted his

friend Garrison “in the time of his greatest need.” Douglass loved

William Lloyd Garrison and the complete unselfish sincerity of the New

Englander’s every utterance.

“If there is a _good_ man walking on this earth today, that man is

Garrison!” Douglass spoke the words aloud and then he sighed.

For he knew that the _North Star_ was diverging more and more from

Garrison’s _Liberator_. Douglass took a different stand on the

Constitution of the United States.

Garrison had come to consider the Constitution as a slaveholding

instrument. Now as the clashes were becoming more bitter in Boston and

New York, he was raising the slogan “No Union with Slaveholders.”

Douglass, with the Abolitionists in western New York, accepted the fact

that the Constitution of the United States was inaugurated to “form a

more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,

provide for common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the

blessings of liberty.” They therefore repudiated the idea that it could

at the same time support human slavery. Douglass held the Constitution

as the surest warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state in

the Union. He urged the people to implement the Constitution through

political action.

And so the former teacher and pupil were being pushed farther and

farther apart. Douglass knew that Garrison’s health was poor. He

thought, _I must go to Boston, I must see him_. And then his mind

reverted to the low state of his funds. He rode along sunk in dejection.

He did not heed the horses’ hoofs beating the road until they came

close behind him. He looked back--three riders were just topping the

hill. They slowed up there and seemed to draw together. And suddenly

Douglass felt that familiar stiffening of his spine. At the moment

he was in the shadow of a grove; but just ahead the road lifted and

he would be completely exposed. He walked his horse. Perhaps he was

mistaken. They were coming forward at a slower pace and would most

certainly see him any moment now. As he left the shadow of the trees he

touched his horse and shot forward. He heard a shout and bent over as a

bullet whizzed by!

It was to be a chase, but they were armed and he could not outrun their

bullets. The road was a winding ribbon now, and he was gaining. He saw

a clump of trees ahead. Yes, there was a little lane. As he turned off

sharply, he felt a sear of pain across his head. He leaned forward and

let his horse find its own way through the trees. Once a low hanging

branch nearly swept him off, and several times the animal stumbled.

Then they came out into a field, and ahead on a slight knoll was a big

house. He could hear them behind him, and that open field meant more

exposure; but the house was his only hope. He thought of the unfinished

editorial lying on his desk.

“I’ve got to finish it!” he thought desperately, and gritted his teeth

to keep from fainting.

Horse and rider were panting when they pulled up at the steps of the

wide porch. No lights showed anywhere. Naturally, Douglass thought,

everybody was sound asleep. His head felt very queer. He wanted to

giggle--_What on earth am I doing pounding at this heavy door in the

middle of the night?_

Gideon Pitts heard the pounding. He got up and started down in his bare

feet.

“You’ll catch your death of cold, Gideon!” his wife called after him.

But she herself was fumbling for her wrapper. She lit the lamp and

holding it in her hand followed her husband to the head of the stairs.

Down below in the dark he was fumbling with the heavy bolt. It shot

back at last and the great door swung in. A big man filled the doorway.

He was gasping for breath. He took one step inside and said, “I’m--I’m

Frederick Douglass.” Then he collapsed on the floor at Gideon Pitts’s

bare feet.

Gideon stood staring out. Through the open door he was sure he saw a

couple of horsemen down at the edge of the field. He slammed the door.

Mrs. Pitts was hurrying down, the lamp casting grotesque shadows on the

wall.

“What is it, Gideon? What is it? Did he say--?”

“Hush! It’s Frederick Douglass. He’s been hurt. Somebody’s after him!”

Her husband’s words were hurried and low. He was bending over the man

on the floor.

“I’ll call--” Mrs. Pitts began. Her husband caught her robe.

“Don’t call anyone. Pray God the servants heard nothing. He’s coming

to!”

Mrs. Pitts was suddenly the efficient housewife.

“Some warm water,” she said, setting the lamp down, “and then we’ll get

him upstairs.” She disappeared in the shadows of the hall.

There was a patter of feet on the stairway.

“What’s the matter, papa?” a child’s voice asked. “Oh!”

“Go back to bed, Helen! Mr. Douglass, are you all right?” Gideon Pitts

bent over his unexpected visitor anxiously. Douglass sat up and put his

hand to his head. It came away sticky. He looked around him and knew he

was safe.

“I’m fine, thank you!” he smiled.

“Lie quiet, Mr. Douglass. Your head is hurt. My wife’s gone for warm

water.”

“You are very kind, sir.” Douglass’ head was clearing now. “I’ve been

shot.”

He heard a gasp and both men looked up. The little girl in her trailing

white nightgown was leaning over the banister just above them, her blue

eyes wide with excitement.

“Helen,” her father spoke sharply. “I told you to go back to bed!”

“Oh, father, can’t I help? The poor man is hurt!”

“Don’t worry, honey,” Douglass smiled up at her.

Now Mrs. Pitts was back with bowl and towels. She wiped away the blood,

and Gideon Pitts declared that Douglass’ head had only been grazed.

Douglass told what had happened, while they bandaged and fussed over

him. Then Mrs. Pitts hurried away to get the guest-room ready.

“We’ll be honored if you’d stay the night!” Pitts said. There was

nothing else to do. “I’ll drive you in town first thing in the

morning,” his host assured him, helping him upstairs and into a great

four-poster bed.

Everybody got up to see him off. Mrs. Pitts insisted that he have a

“bite of breakfast.” The hired man had rubbed down and fed his horse.

Holding the bridle reins in his hand Douglass climbed into the buggy

with Mr. Pitts.

“Better that I go in with you,” said his host. “Those ruffians might be

lingering somewhere along the road.”

It was a fresh, sweet morning in May. The Pitts’ orchard was in bloom.

Everywhere was peace and growing things. Douglass smiled at the little

girl standing on the wide porch, and Helen Pitts waved her hand.

“Goodbye, Mr. Douglass. Do come back again!”

She felt important, waving at the great Frederick Douglass.

* * * * *

So it happened that the next day John Brown found Douglass with a

bandage fastened about his head.

“It’s Captain John Brown!” called Charles, ushering the visitor in.

Anna Douglass came in from the kitchen and greeted him warmly.

“We’re just sitting down to breakfast, Captain Brown. You are just in

time.”

Little Annie set another plate, smiling shyly at the old man. His hand

smoothed her soft hair.

“We’ll take a ride,” he promised and Annie’s eyes shone.

“They’ve attacked you!” John Brown exclaimed when Douglass came in with

the bandage on his head.

“It was nothing, a mere scratch.” Douglass shrugged away the incident.

“And how are you, my good friend? Something important brings you here.”

“Let him eat his breakfast first,” begged the wife.

Afterward Douglass read the letter from Kansas.

“Perhaps God directs me to Kansas,” said Brown earnestly. “Perhaps my

path to Virginia lies through Kansas. What do you think?” Douglass

shook his head.

“I do not know.” He was silent a moment, then his eyes lighted. “I’m

leaving tomorrow for our convention in Syracuse. Come with me. Lay this

letter from Kansas before all the Abolitionists. You’ll need money.

Kansas is our concern.”

A few days later John Brown wrote his wife:

DEAR WIFE AND CHILDREN:

I reached here on the first day of the

convention, and I have reason to bless God that I came; for I have met

with a most warm reception from all, so far as I know, and--except by

a few sincere, honest, peace Friends--a most hearty approval of my

intention of arming my sons and other friends in Kansas. I received

today donations amounting to a little over sixty dollars--twenty

from Gerrit Smith, five from an old British officer; others giving

smaller sums with such earnest and affectionate expression of their

good wishes as did me more good than money even. John’s two letters

were introduced, and read with such effect by Gerrit Smith as to draw

tears from numerous eyes in the great collection of people present.

The convention has been one of the most interesting meetings I ever

attended in my life; and I made a great addition to the number of

warm-hearted and honest friends.

The die was cast: John Brown left for Kansas. Instead of sending the

money and arms, says his son John, “he came on with them himself,

accompanied by his brother-in-law, Henry Thompson, and my brother

Oliver. In Iowa he bought a horse and covered wagon; concealing the

arms in this and conspicuously displaying his surveying implements, he

crossed into Missouri near Waverly, and at that place disinterred the

body of his grandson, and brought all safely through to our settlement,

arriving there about the 6th of October, 1855.[14]”

CHAPTER TWELVE

_An Avenging Angel brings the fury of the storm_

“Did you go out under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society?” they

asked John Brown at the trial four years after.

“No, sir,” he answered grimly, “I went out under the auspices of John

Brown, directed by God.”

* * * * *

The settlement was a romantic place. Red men gliding by in their swift

canoes had seen stately birds in the reedy lowlands of eastern Kansas

and called the marsh the “swamp of the swan.” Here, on the good lands

that rose up from the dark sluggish rivers, John Brown and his youngest

son, Oliver, drove into the Brown colony.

“We found our folks in a most uncomfortable situation, with no houses

to shelter one of them, no hay or corn fodder of any account secured,

shivering over their little fires, all exposed to the dreadful cutting

winds, morning, evening and stormy days.”

On November 23, 1855, Brown wrote to his wife:

“We have got both families so sheltered that they need not suffer

hereafter; have got part of the hay secured, made some progress in

preparation to build a house for John and Owen; and Salmon has caught a

prairie wolf in a steel trap. We continue to have a good deal of stormy

weather--rains with severe winds, and forming into ice as they fall,

together with cold nights that freeze the ground considerably. Still

God has not forsaken us.”[15] He did not tell her he had been down with

fever.

Thus it was that John Brown came to Kansas and stood ready to fight for

freedom. But no sooner had he arrived than it was plain to him that

the cause for which he was fighting was far different from that for

which most of the settlers were willing to risk life and property. John

Brown publicly protested the resolution already drawn up, excluding all

Negroes--slave or free! His words were coldly received.

From Frederick Douglass came more money and a letter.

“We are directing the eyes of the country toward Kansas,” Douglass

wrote. “Charles Sumner in the Senate is speaking as no man ever spoke

there before; Henry Ward Beecher has turned his pulpit into an auction

block from which he sells slaves to freedom; Gerrit Smith and George L.

Sterns have pledged their money; Lewis Tappan and Garrison have laid

aside all former differences. Garrison is no longer bitter about my

politics. He can see that we are accomplishing something. Free Soilers,

Whigs, Liberals and antislavery Democrats are uniting. The state-wide

party which we initiated some time ago has grown into a national

movement.... We have adopted the name Republican, which was, you may

recall, the original name of Thomas Jefferson’s party. Our candidate

is John C. Frémont. His enemies say he is a dreamer who knows nothing

of politics. If the people gather round in full strength we will show

them.”

John Brown folded the letter. There was an unusual flush on his seared

face.

“What is it, father?” Owen asked.

“From Douglass,” Brown replied. “God moves in mysterious ways!” That

was all he said, but the sound of prairie winds was in his voice.

It was in December when rumor that the governor and his pro-slavery

followers planned to surround Lawrence came to the Browns. On getting

this news, they at once agreed to break camp and go to Lawrence. The

band, approaching the town at sunset, loomed strangely on the horizon:

an old horse, a homely wagon, and seven stalwart men armed with pikes,

swords, pistols and guns. John Brown was immediately put in command of

a company. Negotiations had commenced between Governor Shannon and the

principal leaders of the free-state men. They had a force of some five

hundred men to defend Lawrence. Night and day they were busy fortifying

the town with embankments and circular earthworks. On Sunday Governor

Shannon entered the town, and after some parley a treaty was announced.

The terms of the treaty were kept secret, but Brown wrote jubilantly to

New York that the Kansas invasion was over. The Missourians had been

sent home without fighting any battles, burning any infant towns, or

smashing a single Abolitionist press. “Free-state men,” he said, “have

only hereafter to retain the footing they have gained, and Kansas is

free.”

Developments in Kansas did not please the powerful slavocracy. Furious

representatives hurried to Washington. And President Pierce, who

had once sent a battleship to Boston to bring back one trembling,

manacled slave, denounced the free-state men of Kansas as lawless

revolutionists, deprived them of all support from the Federal

government, and threatened them with the penalty for “treasonable

insurrection.” Regular troops were put into the hands of the Kansas

slave power, and armed bands from the South appeared, one from Georgia

encamping on the “swamp of the swan” near the Brown settlement.

Surveying instruments in hand and followed by his “helpers”--chain

carriers, axman and marker--John Brown sauntered into their camp one

May morning. He was taken for a government surveyor and consequently

“sound.” The Georgians talked freely.

“We’ve come to stay,” they said. “We won’t make no war on them as minds

their own business. But all the Abolitionists, such as them damned

Browns over there, we’re going to whip, drive out, or kill--any way to

get shut of them, by God!”[16]

They mentioned their intended victims by name, and John Brown calmly

wrote down every word they said in his surveyor’s book.

On May 21 the pro-slavery forces swooped down on Lawrence, burned

and sacked it. Its citizens stood by trembling and raised no hand in

defense.

The gutted, burning town sent a wave of anger across the country. It

struck the Senate with full force. Only an aisle separated men whose

eyes blazed with hate. Charles Sumner lifted his huge frame and in a

voice that resounded like thunder denounced “a crime without example in

the history of the past.” He did not hesitate to name names--calling

Stephen Douglas, Senator from Illinois, and Matthew Butler from South

Carolina murderers of the men of Lawrence. The next day, while Sumner

sat writing at his seat, young Preston Brooks, representative from

South Carolina, came up behind the Massachusetts legislator and beat

him over the head with a heavy walking stick. Charles Sumner, lying

bleeding and unconscious in the aisle, reduced the whole vast struggle

to simple terms.

Out West, John Brown hurried to Lawrence. He sat down by the smoldering

ashes in tight-lipped anger. He was indignant that there had been no

resistance.

“What were they doing?” he raged.

Someone mentioned the word “caution.”

“Caution, caution, sir!” he sneered. “I am eternally tired of hearing

the word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice.”

Yet there seemed to be nothing to do now; and he was about to leave,

when a boy came riding up. The gang at Dutch Henry’s, he said, had told

the women in Brown settlement that all free-state folks must get out

by Saturday or Sunday, else they would be driven out. Two houses and a

store in the nearby German settlement had been burned.

Then John Brown arose.

“I will attend to those fellows.” He spoke quietly. Here was something

to do. He called four of his sons--Watson, Frederick, Owen and

Oliver--and a neighbor with a wagon and horses offered to carry the

band. They began carefully sharpening cutlasses. An uneasy feeling

crept over the onlookers. They all knew that John Brown was going to

strike a blow for freedom in Kansas, but they did not understand just

what that blow would be. As the wagon moved off, a cheer arose from the

company left behind.

He loosed a civil war. Everything that came after was only powder for

the hungry cannon. Freedom is a hard-bought thing! John Brown knew. He

already knew on that terrible night when he rode down with his sons

into “the shadows of the Swamp of the Swan--that long, low-winding

and somber stream fringed everywhere with woods and dark with bloody

memory. Forty-eight hours they lingered there, and then of a pale May

morning rode up to the world again. Behind them lay five twisted, red

and mangled corpses. Behind them rose the stifled wailing of widows and

little children. Behind them the fearful driver gazed and shuddered.

But before them rode a man, tall, dark, grim-faced and awful. His hands

were red and his name was John Brown. Such was the cost of freedom.”[17]

John Brown became a hunted outlaw.

They burned his house, destroyed everything he and his sons had

garnered. But he had only begun his war upon the slavers. Out of the

night he came, time after time, and always he left death behind.

“He’s mad! Mad!” they said, but pro-slavery men began to leave Kansas.

“Da freedom’s comin’!” Black men lifted their hands in silent ecstasy.

They slipped across the borders and looked for John Brown. Tabor, a

tiny prairie Iowa town of thirty homesteads, became the most important

Underground Railroad station on the western frontier. For here John

Brown set up camp, and began to organize for his “march.” Strength had

come up in the old man, charging his whole being with power.

“We should not have given him money!” the folks back East were saying.

Douglass, moving back and forth from Rochester to Boston--to New York,

Syracuse and Cleveland--grew thin and haggard. He had stood like a

bulwark of strength, even when the Supreme Court had handed down its

Dred Scott decision. People found clarion words in the _North Star_.

“The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this

world,” Douglass wrote. “We, the Abolitionists and colored people,

should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears,

in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes

of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events

preparatory to the complete overthrow of the whole slave system.”

Months passed, and all he heard from Kansas were the awful reports of

John Brown’s riding abroad. He could not argue the right or wrong of

this thing. Condemnation of John Brown left him cold. But was John

Brown destroying all they had built up? This was war! Was John Brown’s

way the only way? They had lost the election. The new party’s fine

words fell back upon them like chilling drops of rain. Then out in

Kansas the Governor declared the state free! There was peace in Kansas.

* * * * *

One night in January, 1858, Douglass was working late in the shop.

The house was still, locked in the hard fastness of a winter night.

Outside, great slow white flakes were falling, erasing the contours of

the street beneath a blanket that rounded every eave, leveled fences

and walks, and muffled every sound. But he heard the light tapping on

the window pane and instantly put out the light. There must be no light

to throw shadows when he opened the door upon one of his fugitives. But

even without a light he recognized the muffled figure.

“John Brown!” Douglass’ low voice sang a welcome.

He drew him in and brushed the snowflakes off. He lit the lamp with

hands that trembled. Then he turned and looked at this man who had

proved that he hated slavery more than he loved his life, his good

name, or his sons. Even the little flesh he used to have was burned

away. Yet one could see that all his bones were granite, and bright

within the chalice of his mortal frame his spirit shone, unquenchable.

“You’re safe, John Brown!” It was a ridiculous thing to say, and John

Brown rewarded him with one of his rare smiles--the smile few people

knew he had, with which he always won a child.

“Yes, Douglass, now I am free to carry out my mission.”

Douglass’ heart missed a beat. John Brown had not sought him out as a

fugitive, he had not come to his house to hide away--not John Brown!

“Frederick is dead.”

The words came with blunt finality, but a spasm of pain distorted the

old man’s face.

“Oh, John! John!”

Douglass gently pushed him into the armchair, knelt at his feet, pulled

off the heavy boots, then hurried away to bring him food. He ate as one

does whose body is starving, gulping down unchewed mouthfuls with the

warm milk.

“I come direct from the National Kansas Committee in Chicago. They

will perhaps equip a company. I have letters from Governor Chase and

Governor Robinson. They endorse my plan.”

Douglass expressed his pleased surprise. Brown wiped his shaggy beard.

Something like a grin flickered on his face.

“Kansas is free and the good people are glad to be rid of me,” he said

dryly.

Douglass understood: they dared not jail the man.

Brown’s plan was now complete. He spread out maps and papers and, as he

talked, traced the lines of his march with a blunt pencil.

“God has established the Allegheny Mountains from the foundation of

the world that they might one day be a refuge for the slaves. We march

into these mountains, set up our stations about five miles apart, send

out our call; and, as the slaves flock to us, we sustain them in this

natural fortress.”

Douglass followed the line of his pencil.

“Each group will be well armed,” the old man continued, “but will avoid

violence except in self-defense. In that case, they will make it as

costly as possible to the assailing parties--whether they be citizens

or soldiers. We will break the backbone of slavery by rendering slave

property insecure. Men will not invest their money in a species of

property likely to take legs and walk off with itself!” His eyes were

shining.

“I do not grudge the money or energy I have spent in Kansas,” he went

on, “but now my funds are gone. We must have arms, ammunition, food and

clothing. Later we will subsist upon the country roundabout. I now have

the nucleus of my band.” Shadows crossed his face. “Already they have

gone to hell and back with me.”

He talked on--three military schools to be set up, one in Iowa, one in

northern Ohio and one in Canada. It would be a permanent community in

Canada. “Finally the escaped slaves will pass on to Canada, each doing

his share to strengthen the route,” he explained.

“But won’t it take years to free the slaves this way?” his friend asked.

“Indeed not! Each month our line of fortresses will extend farther

south.” His pencil moved across Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, to

Mississippi. “To the delta itself! The slaves will free themselves.”

Pale dawn showed in the sky before they went upstairs.

“You must sleep now, John Brown.”

But before lying down, the old man looked hard into the broad, dark

face. Douglass nodded his head.

“I’m with you, John Brown. Rest a little. Then we’ll talk,” Douglass

said and tiptoed from the room.

* * * * *

When John Brown left the house in Alexander Street several days later,

he was expected in many quarters. He went first to Boston, George L.

Sterns, the Massachusetts antislavery leader, paying his expenses.

Sterns, who had never met “Osawatomie Brown,” had written to Rochester

offering to introduce him to friends of freedom in Boston. They met on

the street outside the committee rooms in Nilis’ Block, with a Kansas

man doing the honors; and Brown went along to Sterns’ home.

Coming into the parlor to greet the man who had become a household

word during the summer of 1856, Mrs. Sterns heard her guest saying,

“Gentlemen, I consider the Golden Rule and the Declaration of

Independence one and inseparable.”

“I felt,” she said later, writing about the profound impression of

moral magnetism Brown made on everybody who saw him in those days,

“that some old Cromwellian hero had dropped down among us.”

Emerson, she remembered, called him “the most ideal of men, for he

wanted to put all his ideas into action.” Yet Mrs. Sterns was struck

by his modest estimate of the work he had in hand. After several

efforts to bring together their friends to meet Captain Brown in his

home, Sterns found that Sunday was the only day that would serve

everybody’s convenience. Being a little uncertain how this might

strike their guest’s ideas of religious propriety, Sterns prefaced his

invitation with something like an apology.

“Mr. Sterns,” came the prompt reply, “I have a little ewe-lamb that I

want to pull out of the ditch, and the Sabbath will be as good a day as

any to do it.”

Over in Concord he went to see Henry David Thoreau. They sat at a

table covered with lichens, ferns, birds’ nests and arrowheads. They

dipped their fingers into a large trencher of nuts, cracked the shells

between their teeth, and talked as kindred souls. Thoreau, lean

and narrow-chested, thrust his big ugly nose forward and, with his

searching gray eyes, probed the twisted steel of John Brown. The hermit

believed then what he said afterward, when he served his term in jail:

“When one-sixth of a people who are come to the land of liberty are

enslaved, it is time for free men to rebel.”

The secretary of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee received

Captain Brown with cautious respect. Half an hour later he was saying,

“By God, I’ll _make_ them give him money!” But the Committee warned,

“We must know how he will use the money.”

Kind-hearted, genial Gerrit Smith was glad to have his old friend with

him for a few days.

“Be sure of your men,” he advised.

“My men need not be questioned, sir.” John Brown spoke a little stiffly.

Gerrit Smith stifled a sigh. _His faith in God and man is sublime!_ he

thought a little sadly.

Swarthy, bearded Thomas W. Higginson, young Unitarian minister, set out

immediately to raise funds on his own. He was hissed at Harvard, his

Alma Mater, but he was not swayed from his course.

At a meeting at the Astor House in New York the National Kansas

Committee voted “in aid of Captain Brown ... 12 boxes of clothing,

sufficient for 60 persons, 25 Colt revolvers, five thousand dollars to

be used in any defense measures that may become necessary.” But only

five hundred dollars was paid out.

John Brown was disappointed. He had hoped to obtain the means of arming

and thoroughly equipping a regular outfit of minutemen. He had left

his men suffering hunger, cold, nakedness, and some of them sickness

and wounds. He had engaged the services of one Hugh Forbes, who claimed

to have been a lieutenant of Garibaldi. Forbes was to take over the

military tactics. He had demanded six hundred dollars for his expenses.

John Brown had given it to him.

“I am going back,” Brown said to Douglass, when he stopped overnight

in Rochester. “You must keep up the work here--solicit funds, keep the

issue before them. I have no baggage wagons, tents, camp equipage,

tools ... or a sufficient supply of ammunition. I have left my family

poorly supplied with common necessaries.”

“I do not like what you tell me about this Hugh Forbes,” said Douglass.

Brown was a little impatient.

“He is a trained man in military affairs. I know nothing about

maneuvers. We need him!”

* * * * *

It was John Brown’s intention to leave the actual training of his men

to Forbes, so that he might be free for larger matters. Nor did he want

to spend time raising funds. He wanted to organize Negroes for the job

ahead.

Perhaps better than any other white man of his time John Brown knew

what Negroes in every part of North America were doing. He knew their

newspapers, their churches and their schools. To most Americans of the

time all black men were slaves or fugitives. But from the beginning

John Brown sought to know Negroes personally and individually. He went

into their homes, sought them out in business, talked to them, listened

to the stories of their trials, harkened to their dreams, advised, and

took advice from them. He set out to enlist the boldest and most daring

spirits for his plan.

In March, Brown and his eldest son met with Henry Highland Garnet

and William Still, Negro Secretary of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery

Society, in the home of Stephen Smith, a Philadelphia Negro lumber

merchant. Brown remained in Philadelphia a week or ten days, holding

long conferences in Negro churches.

Meanwhile, his black lieutenant, Kagi, ragged, stooped,

insignificant-looking, shrewd and cunning, was traveling over the

Allegheny Mountains, surveying the land, marking sites and making

useful contacts. Kagi had some schooling and, when he desired, could

speak clearly and to the point. He knew in detail the vast extent of

Brown’s plan. He lived and breathed it. He had been wounded with John

Brown in Kansas, and unswerving he walked to his death with him. For

Kagi believed that John Brown was making a mistake to attack Harper’s

Ferry when he did, but the little black man held the bridge until his

riddled body plunged into the icy waters below.

In the spring of 1858 Brown went to Canada to set up personal contacts

with the nearly fifty thousand Negroes there. Chatham, chief town of

Kent County, had a large Negro population with several churches, a

newspaper and a private school. Here on May 10 the Captain addressed

a convention called together on the pretext of organizing a Masonic

lodge. And at this convention they drew up and adopted the constitution

of forty-eight articles that stunned the authorities when they found it

in the hide-away farmhouse near Harper’s Ferry.

Up to this time Frederick Douglass was fully cognizant of all John

Brown’s plans. The Douglass home in Rochester was his headquarters. (He

had insisted that he pay board, and Douglass charged him three dollars

a week.)

“While here, he spent most of his time in correspondence,” Douglass

wrote later. “When he was not writing letters, he was writing and

revising a constitution which he meant to put in operation by means of

the men who should go with him into the mountains. He said that, to

avoid anarchy and confusion, there should be a regularly-constituted

government, which each man who came with him should be sworn to honor

and support. I have a copy of this constitution in Captain Brown’s own

handwriting, as prepared by himself at my house.

“He called his friends from Chatham to come together, that he might lay

his constitution before them for their approval and adoption. His whole

time and thought were given to this subject. It was the first thing in

the morning and the last thing at night. Once in a while he would say

he could, with a few resolute men, capture Harper’s Ferry, and supply

himself with arms belonging to the government at that place; but he

never announced his intention to do so. It was, however ... in his mind

as a thing he might do. I paid little attention to such remarks, though

I never doubted that he thought just what he said. Soon after his

coming to me, he asked me to get for him two smoothly planed boards,

upon which he could illustrate, with a pair of dividers, by a drawing,

the plan of fortification which he meant to adopt in the mountains.

“These forts were to be so arranged as to connect one with the other,

by secret passages, so that if one was carried another could easily

be fallen back upon, and be the means of dealing death to the enemy

at the very moment when he might think himself victorious. I was less

interested in these drawings than my children were, but they showed

that the old man had an eye to the means as to the end, and was giving

his best thought to the work he was about to take in hand.”[18]

* * * * *

The month of May, 1859, John Brown spent in Boston collecting

funds, and in New York consulting his Negro friends, with a trip

to Connecticut to hurry the making of his thousand pikes. Sickness

intervened, but at last on June 20, the advance guard of five--Brown

and two of his sons, Jerry Anderson and Kagi--started southward.

Many times during these months Frederick Douglass wondered whether or

not John Brown did not have the only possible plan for freeing the

black man. The antislavery fight had worn very thin. The North knew

of the moral and physical horror of slavery. The South knew also,

but cotton prices continued to rise. Logic would not separate cotton

growers from their slaves. Many of the old, staunch Abolitionists were

gone. Theodore Parker had burned himself out in the cause. Down with

tuberculosis, he was on a ship bound for southern Italy where, in spite

of the warm sunshine, he was to die.

Daily the South grew more defiant. When the doctrine of popular

sovereignty failed to make Kansas a slave state, Southern statesmen

abandoned it for firmer ground. They had lost faith in the rights,

powers and wisdom of the people and took refuge in the Constitution.

Henceforth the favorite doctrine of the South was that the people of a

territory had no voice in the matter of slavery. The Constitution of

the United States, they claimed, of its own force and effect, carried

slavery safely into any territory of the United States and protected

the system there until it should cease to be a territory and became

a state. In practical operation, this doctrine would make all future

new states slaveholding states; for slavery, once planted and nursed

for years, could easily strengthen itself against the evil day of

eradication.

In a rage, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the Constitution

denouncing it as a “covenant with Satan.” Douglass went away heartsick.

In the heart of the Alleghenies, halfway between Maine and Florida,

opens a mighty gateway. From the south comes the Shenandoah, a restless

silver thread gleaming in the sun; from the west the Potomac moves

placidly between wide banks. But at their junction they are cramped.

The two rivers rush together against the mountains, rend it asunder and

tear a passage to the sea. And here is Harper’s Ferry.

Why did John Brown choose this particular point for his attack upon

American slavery? Was it the act of a madman? A visionary fool? What

was his crime?

John Brown did not tell them at the trial. His lieutenant, Kagi, was

dead. Green, Coppoc, Stevens, Copeland, Cook and Hazlett followed their

captain to the gallows without a word. Perhaps only one man went on

living who knew the full answers. His name was Frederick Douglass.

Douglass has been attacked because he did not go with John Brown to

Harper’s Ferry, because he did not testify in Brown’s defense, because

he put himself outside the reach of pursuers who would drag him to the

trial. He could not have saved John Brown and his brave followers.

Every word of the truth would have drawn the noose tighter about their

necks. It would have hanged Douglass!

* * * * *

It was on a pleasant day in September when the letter came from John

Brown. It was very short.

“I am forced to move sooner than I had planned. Before going forward I

want to see you.”

Brown, under the guise of a farmer interested only in developing a

recently purchased piece of land, was living under an assumed name with

his two “daughters”--actually a daughter and young Oliver’s wife. His

men were keeping under cover. They made every effort to keep the farm

normal-looking. Brown asked Douglass to come to Chambersburg. There he

would find a Negro barber named Watson, who would conduct him to the

place of meeting. A last line was added: “Bring along the Emperor. Tell

him the time has come.”

Douglass knew that he referred to Shields Green, a fugitive slave, whom

the old man had met in his house. Green, a powerful black, had escaped

from South Carolina. He was nicknamed “the Emperor” because of his size

and majestic carriage. Brown had seized upon him immediately, confiding

to him his plan, and Green had promised to go with him when Brown was

ready to move.

They set out together, stopping over in New York City with a Reverend

James Glocester. Upon hearing where they were going, Mrs. Glocester

pressed ten dollars into Douglass’ hand.

“Give it to Captain Brown, with my best wishes,” she said.

They sped southward past the waving, green fields and big, white

farms of prosperous Dutch farmers. Douglass sat by the window with

his massive head sunk forward, not looking out. Then the train curved

into the Blue Ridge Mountains where the pine-covered hills begin, and

stopped at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The first man at the depot whom

they asked directed them to Watson, the barber.

He stood looking after the two Negroes as they strode down the platform.

“Damned if they don’t walk like they own the earth!” he grunted.

Watson called to his boy when they stepped into his shop. He took them

to his house, where his wife greeted the great Frederick Douglass and

his friend with much fluttering.

“Make yourselves at home,” said the barber. “As soon as it is dark I

will drive you out to the old stone quarry. That’s the place, but we

must wait until dark.”

They left the wagon and its driver on the road and climbed up to the

quarry. All about them the rocks loomed like great stone faces in the

moonlight. And when John Brown stepped out of the shadows, it was as

if a rock had moved toward them. His old clothes, covered with dust;

his white hair and hard-cut face, like granite in the moonlight; his

strained, worn face with the two burning coals that were his eyes.

Douglass’ heart missed a beat. Something was very wrong.

“What is it, John Brown? What has happened?”

The old man looked at him without speaking. He studied the brown face

almost as if he had not seen it before. Then he spoke briefly.

“Come!”

He led them between the rocks and stooped to enter a cave. Inside

was Kagi and in a niche in the wall was a lighted torch. There were

boulders about, and at a sign from the old man they sat down--John

Brown, Kagi, Shields Green and Frederick Douglass. They waited for

Brown to speak. He did so, leaning forward and putting a thin, gnarled

hand on Douglass’ knee.

“Douglass, we can wait no longer. Our move now must be a decisive one.”

Douglass was bitterly chiding himself. He should have come sooner.

These last months had drained the old man’s strength. He needed help

here. The dark man spoke gently.

“But you said the time to begin calling in the slaves would come after

the crops are gathered, as the Christmas approaches. Then many can get

away without being missed right away. Is your ammunition distributed?

Are your stations ready to receive and defend the fugitives?”

John Brown shook his head.

“No. We are not ready with all that.” He drew a long breath, and it was

obvious it caused him pain. “You were right about Hugh Forbes,” he said

then. “He has deserted us and,” Brown hesitated, hating to say it, “I

fear he has talked.”

Douglass’ face expressed his shock. Why had he not strangled the

tinseled fool with his own hands?

“We are being watched: my men are certain of it. At any moment we may

be arrested. Don’t forget, I’m still an outlaw in Kansas.” He added the

last dryly, almost indifferently. Then suddenly the flame flared. John

Brown was on his feet, his head lifted. He shook back his white hair.

“But God is with us! He has delivered the gates into our hands! We hold

the key to the Allegheny Mountains. They stand here, our sure and safe

defense!”

Douglass stared at him. Was it the torchlight that so transfigured his

old friend? He stood like an avenging angel, illumined by the force

that rose up in him. It charged his whole being with power--his eyes,

his frame, the leashed, metallic voice.

“I am ready!”

Douglass looked at Kagi. Kagi’s eyes fixed on the lifted face. He

turned and looked at Green, and on that black giant’s countenance he

saw the same imprint. He wet his trembling lips. An icy hand had closed

about his heart. He was afraid.

“The map, Kagi!” John Brown spoke sharply.

Kagi was ready. Brown knelt on the ground, and Kagi spread a wide sheet

in front of him. He brought the torch near and knelt holding it, while

Brown traced the lines with his finger.

“Here is the long line of our mountain fortress,” he said tersely.

“Right here east of the Shenandoah, the mountains rise to a height

of two thousand feet or more. This natural defense is right at the

entrance to the mountain passage. See! An hour’s climb from this point

and a hundred men could be inside an inaccessible fastness. Here

attacks could be repelled with little difficulty. Here are Loudon

Heights--then beyond the passage plunges straight into the heart of the

thickest slave districts. The slaves can get to us without difficulty,

after we have made our way through here.”

His finger had stopped. Douglass leaned forward. He was holding his

breath. He could feel Brown’s eyes upon him.

“But that--that is Harper’s Ferry!” Douglass said, and his voice

faltered.

He could feel the surge of strength in the other man.

“Yes,” he said, “Harper’s Ferry is the safest natural entrance to our

mountain passage. We shall go through Harper’s Ferry, and there we’ll

take whatever arms we need.”

So little children speak, and fools, and gods!

For a moment there was silence in the cave. Then Douglass got up,

striking his head against the low wall. He did not heed the blow, but

took John Brown by the arm.

“Come outside, Captain Brown,” he said. “Let’s talk outside. I--I can’t

breathe in here!”

And so they faced each other in the open. Night in the mountains, stars

over their heads, and stark, jagged rocks white in the shadows.

“You can’t do it, John Brown!” Douglass’ voice was strained. “You would

be attacking an arsenal of the United States--This is war against the

federal government. The whole country would be arrayed against us!”

“You do not understand, Douglass. We’re not going to kill anybody.

There are only a handful of soldiers guarding that ferry. We’ll merely

make them prisoners, hold them until we take the arms and get up

into the mountains. Of course, there’ll be a great outcry. But all

the better. The slaves will hear of it. They’ll know we’re in the

mountains, and they’ll flock to us.”

“Do you really believe this, John Brown? Do you really believe you can

take a fort so easily?”

A hard note had come again into the old man’s voice.

“Am I concerned with ease, Frederick Douglass? What is this you are

saying? Our mission is to free the slaves! This is the plan!”

“There was no such plan,” Douglass interposed hotly. “You said that

fighting would only be in self-defense. This is an attack!”

John Brown’s passion matched his.

“And when I rode down into the marshes of Kansas it was an attack! You

did not condemn then! Here we merely force our way through a passage!”

“This is treason! This is insurrection! This is war! I am not with you!”

The old man’s voice cut like a whip.

“So! You have escaped so far from slavery that you do not care! You

have carried the scars upon your back into high places, so you have

forgotten. You prate of treason! You are afraid to face a gun!”

Douglass cried out in anguish. “John! John! For God’s sake, stop!”

He stumbled away, sank down on a rock and buried his face in his hands.

Some time later he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and Brown’s voice,

softened and subdued, came to him.

“Forgive an old man, son.”

Douglass took the hand in his and pressed it against his face. The old

man’s hand was rough and knotty, but it was very firm.

“This is no time for soft words or for oratory,” he said. “We have

a job to do. Years ago I swore it--that I would do my part. God has

called me to lift his crushed and suffering dark children. Twenty-five

years have gone by making plans. Now unless I move quickly all of these

years will have been spent in vain. I will take this fort. I will hold

this pass. I will free the slaves!”

The stars faded and went out one by one, the gray sky blended through

purple and rose to blue, and still they talked. Kagi brought them food.

At last Douglass lay down inside the cave. His eyes were closed, but

his mind feverishly leaped from one possibility to another.

Then Brown was laying other maps before him. He had gone over it

all so carefully. Now he showed each step of the way--where the men

would stand, how they would hold the bridge, where they would cut the

telegraph wires, how the engine-house in the arsenal would be occupied.

“Without a shot being fired, Douglass. I tell you we can take it

without a shot!”

Douglass brought all the pressure of his persuasive power against him.

He threw reason, logic, common sense at the old man.

“You’ll destroy all we’ve done!”

John Brown looked at him and his voice and face were cold.

“_What_ have you done?” The question bit like steel.

Another day passed. That night a storm came up. They sat huddled in

the cave, while outside the rain beat down upon the rocks and tore up

twisted roots. The mountains groaned and rumbled and the winds howled.

During the storm the old man slept serenely.

When the rain stopped Douglass went out into the dripping morning.

Puddles of water splashed beneath his feet, shreds of clouds lingered

in the pine tops and broke against the side of the hills; the sky was

clearing and soon the sun would come through. The fresh-washed earth

gave off a clean, new smell. The morning mocked him with its promise of

a bright, new day.

He heard John Brown behind him and stopped. He knew that strong,

elastic step. He heard the voice--full, clear and renewed with rest.

“Douglass,” Brown asked, “have you reached your decision?”

Without turning, Douglass answered. And his voice was weary and beaten.

“I am going back.”

The old man made no sound. Douglass turned and saw him standing

straight and slender in the morning light, a gentle breeze lifting his

soft white hair, his wrinkled face carved against the sky. With a cry

of utter woe Douglass threw himself upon the ground, encircling the

slight frame in his arms.

“Oh, John--John Brown--don’t go! You’ll be killed! It’s a trap! You’ll

never get out alive--I beg you, don’t go! Don’t go!”

Terrible sobs shook him; he could not stop.

“Douglass! Douglass!”

Brown took him by the shoulders, pressed his face against him, spoke as

to a child.

“For shame, Douglass! Everything will be all right.” Then, when he saw

the big man was still, he added, “Come and go with me. You shall see

that everything will be all right.”

Douglass shook his head. He clung to the rough, gnarled hands.

“This is the hardest part of all. I cannot throw my life away with

you! Years ago in Maryland I knew I had to live. That’s _my_ task,

John--that I live.”

“You shall have a trusted bodyguard!” The old man looked down at him

with a twisted smile. Douglass made a gesture of resignation. He raised

his eyes once more.

“Will nothing change you from this course?” he asked.

“Nothing,” answered John Brown. He gently pulled himself away and

walked to the edge of the cliff, looking out into the morning. Douglass

sagged upon the ground.

“You may be right, Frederick Douglass.” His words came slowly now.

“Perhaps I’ll not succeed at Harper’s Ferry. Maybe--I’ll never leave

there alive. Yet I must go! Until this moment I had never faced that

possibility, and I could not give you up. Now that I do, I see that

only through your living can my dying be made clear. So, let us have an

end of all this talk. Perhaps this is God’s way.”

Douglass pulled himself up. He was very tired.

“I must tell Green,” he said.

John Brown turned. His face was untroubled, his voice alert.

“Yes. I had forgotten. Get him.”

They came upon Shields Green and Kagi leaving the cave. Over their

shoulders were fishing poles. Douglass spoke.

“Shields, I am leaving. Are you going back with me?”

John Brown spoke, the words coming easily, a simple explanation.

“Both of you know that Douglass disagrees with my plan. He says we’ll

fail at Harper’s Ferry--that none of us will come out alive.” He paused

a moment and then said, “Maybe he is right.”

Douglass waited, but still Shields Green only looked at him. At last he

asked, “Well, Shields?”

“The Emperor” shifted the fishing rod in his hand. Then his eyes turned

toward John Brown. Douglass knew even before he spoke. Shields looked

him full in the face and said, “Ah t’ink Ah goes wid tha old man!”

And he and Kagi turned away and went off down to the stream.

Brown held his hand a moment before speaking.

“Go quickly now, and go without regrets. You have your job to do and I

have mine.”

Douglass did not look back as he stumbled over the wet, slippery rocks.

Never in his life had he felt so desolate, never had a day seemed so

bleak and empty, as alone he went down the mountain _to live_ for

freedom. He had left John Brown and Shields Green to die for freedom.

Whose was the better part?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“_Give them arms, Mr. Lincoln!_”

The news of Harper’s Ferry stunned Washington. “_A United States

arsenal attacked--Slaves stampeding!_” “_The madman from Kansas run

amuck!_” “_The slaves are armed!_” Panic seized the South, and Capitol

Hill rocked and reeled with the shock.

Jack brought home copies of the _New York Herald_, and Amelia read how

the old man lay bleeding on a pallet with his two sons cold and still

at his side. Governor Wise, leaning over to condemn, had drawn back

before a courage, fortitude and simple faith which silenced him.

“There is an eternity behind and an eternity before,” John Brown

had said, and his voice did not falter. “This little speck in the

center, however long, is comparatively but a minute. The difference

between your tenure and mine is trifling, and I therefore tell you

to be prepared. I am prepared. You have a heavy responsibility, and

it behooves you to meet it. You may dispose of me easily, but this

question is still to be settled ... the end is not yet.”

“Why did he let the train through?” people asked. “_Is_ he crazy?”

“I came here to liberate slaves.” All his explanations were so simple.

“I have acted from a sense of duty, and am content to await my fate;

but I think the crowd have treated me badly.... Yesterday I could have

killed whom I chose; but I had no desire to kill any person, and would

not have killed a man had they not tried to kill me and my men. I

could have sacked and burned the town, but did not; I have treated the

persons whom I took as hostages kindly. If I had succeeded in running

off slaves this time, I could have raised twenty times as many men as I

have now, for a similar expedition. But I have failed.”

An old man had been stopped--a crazy old man, whose equally crazy

followers were killed or captured. It was over and very little harm

done. An unpleasant incident to be soon forgotten.

But no one would have done with it. Papers throughout the country sowed

John Brown’s words into every town and hamlet; preachers repeated them

in their pulpits; people gathered in small knots on the roadside and

shouted them defiantly or whispered them cautiously; black men and

women everywhere bowed their heads and wept hot, scalding tears. And

William Lloyd Garrison, the man of peace, the “non-resister,” said,

“How marvelous has been the change in public opinion during thirty

years of moral agitation. Ten years ago there were thousands who could

not endure the slightest word of rebuke of the South; now they can

swallow John Brown whole and his rifle in the bargain.”

The old man never lost his calm. Frenzy shook every slave state in the

Union. Rumors spread and multiplied. Black and white men were seized,

beaten, and killed. Slaves disappeared. A hue and cry arose.

“The Abolitionists! Get the Abolitionists! They are behind John Brown!”

Amelia read of letters and papers found in the farmhouse near Harper’s

Ferry. “_Many people are implicated! Indictments being drawn up!_” She

looked at Jack, her face white.

“Do you suppose--could it be--would _he_ be among them?” She bit her

trembling lips.

Jack Haley frowned. He had heard talk at the office. He knew they were

looking for Frederick Douglass. He knew they would hang this Negro whom

they hated and feared more than a dozen white men--_if_ they got him.

He patted Amelia on the shoulder.

“I wouldn’t worry,” he comforted her. “Your Frederick is a smart man.”

“He might be needed to testify--he may have something to say.” Amelia

was certain Frederick Douglass would not turn aside from his duty.

“He is not a fool,” Jack said, shaking his head. “The Dred Scott

decision renders his word useless. No word of his can help John Brown.”

Amelia heard the bitterness in Jack’s voice and she sighed. Time had

dealt kindly with Amelia. At sixty her step was more elastic, her skin

smoother and her shoulders straighter than the day, fifteen years

before, when she had walked away from Covey’s place. Mrs. Royall,

intrepid journalist, was dead. Amelia had stayed on in the house,

assumed the mortgage, and took in as roomers a score of clerks and

secretaries who labored in the government buildings a few blocks away.

“Miss Amelia’s” house was popular, and her rooms were in demand.

Jack had married and talked of going away, of starting his own paper,

of becoming a power in one of the new publishing houses--Then suddenly,

during a sleeting winter, an epidemic had struck Washington. Afterward,

there had been quite a stir about “cleaning up the city.” Certain

sections had got new sewers and rubbish was collected. But Jack’s wife

was dead. So a grim-faced, older Jack had moved in with Amelia. He had

stayed on with the paper, contemptuous of much he saw and heard. For

Jack Haley, as for many people in the United States the fall of 1859,

John Brown cleared the air. _Somebody’s doing something, thank God!_

Amelia continued to scan the papers, dreading to see Frederick

Douglass’ name. And one day she did, but as she read farther a smile

lit up her face. The story was an angry denunciation of “this Frederick

Douglass” by Governor Wise of Virginia. Douglass, he announced, had

slipped through their fingers. He was known to have boarded a British

steamer bound for England. “Could I overtake that vessel,” the Governor

was quoted as saying, “I would take him from her deck at any cost.”

* * * * *

Off the coast of Labrador, in weather four degrees below zero, the

_Scotia_ strained and groaned. There was something fiercely satisfying

to one passenger in the struggle with the elements. Frederick Douglass,

pacing the icy deck or tossing in his cabin, felt that the sky _should_

be black. The waters _should_ foam and dash, the winds _should_ howl;

for John Brown lay in prison and his brave sons were dead!

Back in Concord, the gentle Thoreau was ringing the town bell and

crying in the streets, “Old John Brown is dead--John Brown the immortal

lives!”

By the time Douglass docked at Liverpool, England was as much alive to

what had happened at Harper’s Ferry as the United States. Once more

Douglass was called to Scotland and Ireland--this time to give an

account of the men who had thus flung away their lives in a desperate

effort to free the slaves.

Having accepted an invitation to speak in Paris, he wrote for a

passport. A suspicion current at the time, that a conspiracy against

the life of Napoleon III was afoot in England, had stiffened the French

passport system. Douglass, wishing to avoid any delay, wrote directly

to the Honorable George Dallas, United States Minister in London. That

gentleman refused to grant the passport at all on the ground that

Frederick Douglass was not a citizen of the United States. Douglass’

English friends gaped at the Ministry letter. The “man without a

country,” however, merely shrugged his shoulders.

“I forget too easily,” he said. “Now I’ll write to the French minister.”

Within a few days he had his answer--a “special permit” for Frederick

Douglass to visit “indefinitely” in any part of France. He was packed

to go when a cable from home arrived.

Little Annie was dead. The sudden loss of his baby daughter seemed to

climax all the pain and heartbreak of these months.

Heedless now of peril to himself, he took the first outgoing steamer

for Portland, Maine.

During the seventeen dragging days of his voyage, Douglass resolved

to make one stop even before going home. He had two graves now to

visit--Annie’s and John Brown’s. Annie too had loved the old man.

She would not mind if her father went directly to the house in the

Adirondacks.

No one was expecting the haggard dark man who descended from the train

at North Elba. He could not find a driver to take him up to John

Brown’s house. But from the livery stable he secured a horse. And so

he rode up through the Indian Pass gorge, between two overhanging

black walls, and came out under tall, white clouds above wine-colored

mountains rising in a blue mist. And there beside a still, green pool,

reflecting a white summit in its depths, he saw the house, with its

abandoned sawmill.

Mrs. Brown exhibited no surprise when he stood before her. Her

husband’s strength sustained her now. John Brown and the sons that she

had borne were no longer hers. They belonged to all the peoples of the

world. She greeted Frederick Douglass with a smile.

“I’ve been expecting you. Come in, my friend.” She talked quietly,

transmitting to him John Brown’s final words and admonitions. Then she

rose. “He left something for you.”

“Oh--John!” Until that moment he had listened without interrupting, his

eyes on the woman’s expressive face. The words broke from him unbidden.

At her gesture, he followed her up the bare stairs and into the

bedroom that had been hers and John Brown’s. The roof sloped down; he

had to stoop a little, standing beside her before the faded, furled

flag and rusty musket in the corner. She nodded her head, but could not

speak.

“For me?” Douglass’ words came in a whisper.

“He wanted you to have them.” She had turned to the chest of drawers

and handed him an envelope.

“He sent this in one of my letters. I was to give it to you when you

came.”

His hands were trembling as he drew forth the single white sheet on

which were written two lines.

“I know I have not failed because you live. Go forward, and some

day unfurl my flag in the land of the free. Farewell.” And then was

sprawled, “John Brown.”

He left the farmhouse with the musket in his hands. They had wrapped

the flag carefully, and he laid it across his shoulders. So many times

she had stood in the narrow doorway and watched John Brown ride away.

He had never looked back. But on this evening the rider paused when he

came to the top of the hill. He paused and looked back down into the

valley. His eyes found the spot where John Brown lay beside his sons.

She could not see his lips move, nor could she hear his words--words

the winds of the Adirondacks carried away:

“I promise you, John Brown. As I live, I promise you.”

Then he waved his hand to John Brown’s widow and was gone.

* * * * *

Douglass’ homecoming was weighted with sorrow. But in the mountains of

North Elba he had drawn strength. He was able to comfort the grieving

mother and the older children. For the first time in years he sat

quietly with his three fine sons. He told Rosetta how pretty she

was--like her mother in the days of the plum-colored wedding dress. The

family closed its ranks, coming very close together. Douglass managed

to remain in his house nearly a month before knowledge got around that

he was back in the country. Then a letter from William Lloyd Garrison

summoned him:

The investigating committee appointed by Congress is being called off.

The net thrown out over the country yielded very little. As you know,

Captain Brown implicated nobody. To the end he insisted that he and he

alone was responsible for all that happened, that he had many friends,

but no instigators. In their efforts this committee has signally

failed. Now they have asked to be discharged. It is my opinion that

the men engaged in this investigation expect soon to be in rebellion

themselves, and not a rebellion for liberty, like that of John Brown,

but a rebellion for slavery. It is possible that they see that by

using their Senatorial power in search of rebels they may be whetting

a knife for their own throats. At any rate the country will soon be

relieved of the Congressional drag-net, so your liberty is no longer

threatened. We are planning a memorial to the grand old man here at

Tremont Temple and want you to speak. I know you’ll come.

Douglass hastened to Boston. The great mass meeting was more than

a memorial. It was a political and social conclave. Arguments and

differences of opinions were laid aside. They had a line of action.

Douglass saw that he had returned to the United States in time for

vital service.

“It enabled me to participate in the most important and memorable

presidential canvass ever witnesses in the United States,” he wrote,

looking back on it later, “and to labor for the election of a man who

in the order of events was destined to do a greater service to his

country and to mankind than any man who had gone before him in the

presidential office. It was a great thing to me to be permitted to bear

some humble part in this. It was a great thing to achieve American

independence when we numbered three millions, but it was a greater

thing to save this country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered

thirty millions. He alone of all our presidents was to have the

opportunity to destroy slavery, and to lift into manhood millions of

his countrymen hitherto held as chattels and numbered with the beasts

of the field.”[19]

Not for nearly a hundred years was the country to see such a

presidential campaign as the one waged in 1860.

Garrison was drawn into the fray early. He mocked the Democrats when

they tore themselves apart at their convention in Charleston and

cheered “an independent Southern republic.” With the Democrats divided,

the Republicans would win; and into the Republican party now came the

Abolitionists--including William Lloyd Garrison. Douglass was very

happy.

A few weeks before the Republicans met in convention at Chicago,

Frederick Douglass at his home in Rochester had a caller. The man

identified himself as a tradesman from Springfield, Illinois.

“I’m here, lookin’ over the shippin’ of some goods, and I took the

liberty to come see you, Mr. Douglass,” he said, resting his hands on

his knotty knees.

“I’m very glad you did, sir.” Douglass waited for the man to reveal his

errand. He leaned forward.

“I ain’t a talkin’ man, Mr. Douglass. I’m much more for doin’.”

Douglass smiled his approval. The man lowered his tone. “More than once

I took on goods for Reverend Rankin.”

Douglass knew instantly what he meant. John Rankin was one of Ohio’s

most daring Underground Railroad agents. Douglass’ face lit up, and for

the second time he grasped his visitor’s rough hand.

“Any Rankin man is a hundredfold welcome in my house! What can I do for

you?”

“Jus’ listen and think on what I’m sayin’. We got a man out our way

we’re namin’ for president!”

The unexpected announcement caught Douglass up short.

“But I thought--” The man waved him to silence.

“Yep! I know. You Easterners got your man all picked out. I ain’t

sayin’ nothin’ ’bout Mr. Seward. I donno him. But the boys out West

_do_ know Abe Lincoln--and we’re gonna back him!”

“Abe Lincoln?” Douglass was puzzled. “I never heard of him.”

“Nope? Well, it don’t matter. You will!”

* * * * *

He was gone then, leaving Frederick Douglass very thoughtful. The

Westerner was right. Senator William Seward, a tried and true

antislavery man, had been picked. The only question had been whether or

not the entire party would accept such a known radical.

Douglass reached Chicago the evening before the nominations were taken

up. He found the city decked out with fence rails which they said

“Honest Abe” had split. Evidently the people in the streets knew him,

the cab drivers and farmers in from the surrounding country. They stood

on street corners, buttonholed workmen hurrying home from work, and

they talked about “our man.”

Something was in the air. The convention was a bedlam. Even while the

thunder of applause that had greeted the nomination of William Seward

still hung in the far corners of the hall, Norman B. Judd, standing on

a high chair, nominated the man who habitually referred to himself as

a “jackleg lawyer.” The roar that greeted Lincoln’s name spread to the

packed street outside and kept up until the Seward men were silenced.

The cheering died away in the hall, as they began taking the third

ballot; but the steady roar in the street found an echo in the chamber,

when it was found that Lincoln had received two hundred thirty-one and

a half votes, lacking just one and a half votes for nomination. Then

Ohio gave its four votes to the “rail-splitter,” and Abraham Lincoln

became the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

Three candidates were in the field. Stephen A. Douglas, absolute leader

of the Democratic party in the West, had been nominated at Baltimore

after a bitter and barren fight at Charleston. The “seceding” Southern

wing of the party had nominated John C. Breckinridge. Three candidates

and one issue, _slavery_.

Stephen Douglas’ position was: Slavery or no slavery in any territory

is entirely the affair of the white inhabitants of such territory. If

they choose to have it, it is their right; if they choose not to have

it, they have a right to exclude or prohibit it. Neither Congress nor

the people of the Union, outside of said territory, have any right to

meddle with or trouble themselves about the matter.

The Democrats of Illinois laughed at the others for hailing forth the

Kentuckian. But Breckinridge represented the powerful slavocracy which

said: The citizen of any state has a right to migrate to any territory,

taking with him anything which is property by the law of his own

sure, and hold, enjoy, and be protected in the use of, such property

in said territory. And Congress is bound to furnish him protection

wherever necessary, with or without the co-operation of the territorial

legislature.

Abraham Lincoln’s voice had never been heard by the nation. Easterners

waited with misgivings to hear what the gangling backwoods lawyer

would say. He did not mince words: Slavery can exist only by virtue of

municipal law; and there is no law for it in the territories and no

power to enact one. Congress can establish or legalize slavery nowhere

but is bound to prohibit it in, or exclude it from, any and every

Federal territory, whenever and wherever there shall be necessity for

such exclusion or prohibition.

Frederick Douglass was convinced not only by his words but by the

fact that Abraham Lincoln was so clearly the choice of the people who

knew him. He threw his pen and voice into the contest. Many of the

Abolitionists hung back; many an “old guard” politician sulked. Wendell

Phillips dug up evidence that Lincoln had supported enforcement of the

hated Fugitive Slave Law in Illinois.

But Douglass shook his leonine mane and campaigned throughout New York

State and in Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago--wherever Negroes

could vote.

“Here is a man who knows your weariness,” he told them. “This is your

opportunity to make your voice heard. Send Lincoln to the White House!

Strengthen his hand that he may fight for you!”

Fear gripped the South. They called Lincoln the “Black Republican.”

No longer was the North divided. Young Republicans organized marching

clubs and tramped through the city streets; torchlight processions

turned night into day: _John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the

grave_.... A new singing could be heard in the remotest pine woods of

the South:

“Oh, freedom

Oh, freedom!

Oh, freedom ovah me--

An’ befo’ I’d be a slave

I’d be buried in mah grave

An’ go home to my Lawd

An’ be free.”

On November 6, Wendell Phillips congratulated Frederick Douglass: “For

the first time in our history, the slave has chosen a President of the

United States.”

* * * * *

Garrison and Douglass decided to attend the inauguration together.

“I want to show you the White House, Douglass. You must see the Capitol

to which you have sent Lincoln.”

Douglass smiled. He had never been in Washington, and he was glad they

were together again.

Garrison was far from well. The winter months had tried his failing

strength. After electing Lincoln, the North drew back, in large part

disclaiming all participation in the “insult” to their “sister states”

in the South. The press took on a conciliatory tone toward slavery

and a corresponding bitterness toward antislavery men and measures.

From Massachusetts to Missouri, antislavery meetings were ruthlessly

stoned. The second John Brown Memorial at Tremont Temple was broken

up by a mob, some of the wealthiest citizens of Boston taking part in

the assault on Douglass and the other speakers. Howling gangs followed

Wendell Phillips for three days wherever he appeared on the pavements

of his native city, and hoodlums broke the windowpanes in Douglass’

Rochester printing shop.

These things weighed heavily on Garrison’s spirits. For a while he had

been uplifted by the belief that moral persuasion was winning over

large sections of the country. Now he saw them fearfully grasping their

possessions--repudiating everything except their “God-given” right to

pile up dollars.

But across the country stalked one more grim man. His face was turned

to the east--to the rising sun; his lanky, bony body rose endless on a

prop of worn, out-size shoes.

And deep in the hollows of the South, behind the lonesome pine trees

draped with moss, down in the corners of the cotton fields, in the

middle of the night--the slaves were whispering. And their words

rumbled like drums along the ground: “_Mistah Linkum is a-comin’!

Praise da Lawd!_”

Washington was an armed city. “The new President of the United States

will be inaugurated--” General Scott was as good as his word. But the

crowds did not cheer when Abraham Lincoln appeared. There was a hush,

as if all the world knew it was a solemn moment.

Douglass looked on the gaunt, strange beauty of that thin face--the

resemblance to John Brown was startling--and as he bared his head,

Douglass whispered, “He’s our man, John Brown. He’s our man!”

Amelia saw Frederick Douglass in the crowd. She tugged frantically at

Jack Haley’s arm.

“Look! Look!” she said. “It’s him!”

Jack, turning his head, recognized the man he had heard speak years ago

in Providence, Rhode Island. Older, yes, broader and grown in stature,

but undoubtedly it was the same head, the same wild, sweeping mane.

As the crowd began to disperse and Douglass turned, he felt a light

pull on his sleeve and looked down on a slight, white-haired woman

whose piquant upturned face and bright blue eyes were vaguely familiar.

“Mr. Douglass?” Her voice fluttered in her throat.

“At your service, ma’am.” Douglass managed to make a little bow, though

the crowd pressed upon them. Her eyes widened.

“Still the same lovely manners!” she said. At this the tall man at her

elbow spoke.

“Mr. Douglass, you will pardon us. I am Jack Haley, and this is Mrs.

Amelia Kemp.”

“Don’t you remember me--Frederick?” She smiled wistfully as she said

his name, and the years dissolved. He remembered the dahlias.

“Miss Amelia!” He took her hand, and his somber face lit up with

delight.

“Could you come with us? Have you a little time?” Her words were

bubbling over.

Douglass turned to Garrison, who was regarding the scene with some

misgiving. They two were far from safe in Washington.

“I think we’d better leave at once,” he said with a frown.

Douglass’ face showed his disappointment. He said, and it was clear he

meant it, “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Amelia.”

Jack Haley turned to Garrison. His voice was low.

“I understand the situation, sir. But if I drove you directly to our

house, I assure you we shall encounter no difficulties. We would be

honored.”

Once more Douglass looked hopefully at Garrison. The older man shrugged

his shoulders.

The fringed-top carryall stood at the curb. Garrison helped Amelia into

the back seat and sat down beside her. Douglass climbed into the front

seat with Jack. As Jack picked up the reins, Douglass grinned and said,

“I could drive, you know.”

Jack gave a short laugh. “I realize, Mr. Douglass, that we’re

uncivilized down here. But stranger things than this are seen on

Pennsylvania Avenue. Relax, we’ll get home all right.”

So they drove down the avenue past soldiers and visitors and

legislators, all intent upon their own affairs. Louisiana Avenue with

its wide greensward and early violets was loveliest of all.

For two days in the short period before the guns opened fire at Fort

Sumter, Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison rested from their

labors on a shaded side-street off Louisiana Avenue.

Up North the countryside was still locked in the hard rigors of winter,

but here spring was in the air. He walked out in the yard, and told

Miss Amelia about his big sons who kept the paper going during his many

absences.

Succulent odors rose like incense from Amelia’s kitchen--Maryland

fried chicken, served with snowy mounds of rice, popovers and cherry

pie--their fragrance hung in the air and brought her lodgers tumbling

down from their rooms to inquire, “What’s going on here?”

Amelia told them about her guests, swearing them to secrecy. They

tiptoed out into the hall and peeped into the living room. On the

second evening Miss Amelia gave in to their urgent requests.

“A few of my young friends to meet you, Frederick. You won’t mind?”

After supper they gathered round. Far into the night they asked

questions and talked together, the ex-slave and young Americans who

sorted mail, ran errands and wrote the letters of the legislators on

Capitol Hill.

They were the boys who would have to drag their broken bodies across

stubble fields, who would lie like filthy, grotesque rag dolls in the

mud. They were the girls who would be childless or widowed or old

before their lives had bloomed.

“It’s been wonderful here, Miss Amelia.” Douglas held her hand in

parting.

“I’ve been proud to have you, Frederick.” Her blue eyes looked up into

his, and Douglass saw her tears.

He stooped and kissed her on the soft, withered cheek.

* * * * *

They said the war was inevitable. Madmen cannot hear words of reason.

On only one thing was Lincoln unswerving--to preserve the Union. As

concession after concession was made, it became more and more evident

that this was what the slaveholders did not want. They were sick to

death of the Union! In Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia

white men struggled against the octopus of slavery. They did all they

could to prevent the break. But the slavers had control--they had the

power, they had the money, and they had the slaves.

So there was war, and slaves were set to digging ditches and building

barricades.

From the beginning Frederick Douglass saw in the war the end of

slavery. Much happened the first two years to shake his faith.

Secretary of State William Seward instructed United States ministers

to say to the governments where they were stationed that “terminate

however it might, the status of no class of the people of the United

States would be changed by the rebellion; slaves will be slaves still,

and masters will be masters still.” General McClellan and General

Butler warned the slaves in advance that “if any attempt was made by

them to gain their freedom it would be suppressed with an iron hand.”

Douglass grew sick with despair when President Lincoln quickly withdrew

the emancipation proclamation made by General John C. Frémont in

Missouri. Union soldiers were even stationed about the farmhouses of

Virginia to guard the masters and help them hold their slaves.

The war was not going well. In the _North Star_ and from the platform,

Douglass reminded the North that it was fighting with one hand only,

when it might strike effectually with two. The Northern states fought

with their soft white hand, while they kept their black iron hand

chained and helpless behind them. They fought the effect while they

protected the cause. The Union would never prosper in the war until the

Negro was enlisted, Douglass said.

On every side they howled him down.

“Give the blacks arms, and loyal men of the North will throw down their

guns and go home!”

“This is the white man’s country and the white man’s war!”

“It would inflict an intolerable wound upon the pride and spirit of

white soldiers to see niggers in the United States uniform.”

“Anyhow, niggers won’t fight--the crack of his old master’s whip will

send him scampering in terror from the field.”

They made jokes about it.

White men died at Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, Big Bethel, and

Fredericksburg. The Union Army needed more soldiers. They began

drafting men--white men. In blind rage the whites turned on the

helpless blacks.

“Why should we fight for you?” they screamed. On the streets of New

York, black men and women were beaten, their workshops and stores

destroyed, their homes burned. They burned the Colored Orphan Asylum

in New York. Not all the children could be dragged from the blazing

building.

Douglass wrote letters to Congress and got up petitions. “Let us

fight!” he pleaded. “Give us arms!”

He pointed out that the South was sustaining itself and its army with

Negro labor. At last General Butler at Fort Monroe announced the policy

of treating the slaves as “contrabands” to be made useful to the Union

cause. General Phelps, in command at Carrollton, Louisiana, advocated

the same plan. The story of how the slaves flocked into these camps,

how they worked, how they were glad to sustain their half-starved

bodies on scraps left over by the soldiers, how they endured any and

all hardships for this opportunity to do something to “hep Massa Linkum

win da war” cannot be told here. But it convinced the administration

that the Negro could be useful.

The second step was to give Negroes a peculiar costume which should

distinguish them from soldiers and yet mark them as part of the loyal

force. Finally so many Negroes presented themselves that it was

proposed to give the laborers something better than spades and shovels

with which to defend themselves in case of emergency.

“Still later it was proposed to make them soldiers,” Douglass wrote,

“but soldiers without blue uniform, soldiers with a mark upon them to

show that they were inferior to other soldiers; soldiers with a badge

of degradation upon them. However, once in the army as a laborer, once

there with a red shirt on his back and a pistol in his belt, the Negro

was not long in appearing on the field as a soldier. But still, he was

not to be a soldier in the sense, and on an equal footing, with white

soldiers. It was given out that he was not to be employed in the open

field with white troops ... doing battle and winning victories for the

Union cause ... in the teeth of his old masters; but that he should

be made to garrison forts in yellow-fever and otherwise unhealthy

localities of the South, to save the health of the white soldiers;

and, in order to keep up the distinction further, the black soldiers

were to have only half the wages of the white soldiers, and were to be

commanded entirely by white commissioned officers.”

Negroes all over the North looked at each other with drawn faces.

Almost the cup was too bitter. But up from the South came stories of

how black fugitives were offering themselves as slaves to the Union

armies--of the terrible retaliation meted out to them if caught--of how

the Northern armies were falling back.

Then President Lincoln gave Governor Andrew of Massachusetts permission

to raise two colored regiments. The day the news broke, Douglass came

home waving his paper in the air. Anna’s face blanched. Up from the

table rose her two sons, Lewis and Charles.

“We’ll be the first!” They dashed off to sign up. Young Frederic was in

Buffalo that morning. When he got back, he heard where they had gone,

and turned to follow them.

“Wait! Wait!” The mother’s cry was heartbroken.

His father too said, “Wait.” Then Douglass explained.

“This is only the first, my son. We’ll have other regiments. There will

be many regiments before the war is won. We must recruit black men from

every state in our country--South as well as North.” He looked at his

tall son and sighed. “Unfortunately, I am known. I would be stopped

before I could reach them in the South. Here is a job for some brave

man.”

They faced each other calmly, father and son, and neither was afraid.

“I understand, sir. I will go!”

A few evenings later, before an overflow audience at Corinthian Hall

in Rochester, Frederick Douglass delivered an address which may be

placed beside Patrick Henry’s in Virginia. It appeared later in leading

journals throughout the North and West under the caption “Men of Color,

to Arms!”

“Action! Action, not criticism, is the plain duty of this hour. Words

are now useful only as they stimulate to blows. The office of speech

now is only to point out when, where, and how to strike to the best

advantage.” This was Douglass the spellbinder, Douglass, who had lifted

thousands cheering to their feet in England, Ireland, and Scotland.

“From East to West, from North to South, the sky is written all over

‘Now or Never.’ Liberty won by white men alone would lose half its

luster.... Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”

The applause swept across the country. White men read these words and

were shamed in their prejudices; poor men read them and thanked God

for Frederick Douglass; black men read them and hurried to recruiting

offices.

They were in the crowd on Boston Common the morning the Fifty-fourth

Massachusetts marched away--a father and a mother come to see their two

sons off to war. Douglass was not thinking of the credit due him for

the formation of the first Negro regiment. He was remembering how Lewis

had always wanted a pony and the way Charlie always left his shoes in

the middle of the floor, to be stumbled over. He tried to stay the

trembling in Anna’s arm by pressing it close to his side. He wished he

had somehow managed to get that pony.

The soldiers were standing at ease in the street when Charlie saw her.

He waved his hand, and though he did not yell, she saw his lips form

the words, “Hi, Mom!” She saw him nudge his brother and then--

They were marching, holding their colors high, the sun glinting on

polished bayonets and reflected in their eyes. They marched away behind

their gallant Captain Shaw, and as they went they sang a song:

“John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave

But his soul goes marching on.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

_Came January 1, 1863_

The tall man’s footsteps made no sound upon the thick rug. Muffled and

hushed, his weary pacing left no mark upon the warp and woof underneath

his feet. No sign at all of all the hours he had been walking back and

forth, no sound.

To save the Union--this was the aim and purpose of everything he did.

He had offered concession after concession--he had sent men out to die

to hold the Union together and he had seen the horror of their dying.

And yet no end in sight. Could it be that God had turned his face away?

Was He revolted by the stench of slavery? Was this the measure He

required?

The President had sought to reason with them. In his last annual

message to Congress he had proposed a constitutional amendment by which

any state abolishing slavery by or before the year 1900 should be

entitled to full compensation from the Federal government. So far he

had postponed the day when a slave owner must take a loss. Nothing had

come of the proposal--nothing.

To save the Union! Would emancipation drive the border states into

revolt? Would it let loose a terror in the night that would destroy and

rape and pillage all the land? He had been amply warned. Or were the

Abolitionists right? George Thompson, the Englishman, had been very

convincing; the President had talked with William Lloyd Garrison, who

all these years had never wavered from his stand; and in this very room

he had received the Negro, Frederick Douglass.

Douglass had stated his case so well, so completely, so wrapped in

logic that the President had found himself defending his position to

the ex-slave. He had sat quietly, listened patiently, and then spoken.

“It is the only way, Mr. Lincoln, the only way to save the Union,”

Douglass said.

* * * * *

Outside, the day was dark and lowering. The sun hid behind banks of

muddy clouds; dirty snow lay heaped against the Capitol. The tall

man dropped to his knees and buried his haggard face in his hands.

“Thy will be done, oh God, Thy will!” He, Abraham Lincoln, fourteenth

president of the United States, would stake his honor, his good name,

all that he had to give, to preserve the Union. And down through the

ages men would judge him by one day’s deed. He rose from his knees,

turned and pulled the cord that summoned his secretary.

In Boston they were waiting. This was the day when the government

was to set its face against slavery. Though the conditions on which

the President had promised to withhold the proclamation had not been

complied with, there was room for doubt and fear. Mr. Lincoln was a

man of tender heart and boundless patience; no man could tell to what

lengths he might go for peace and reconciliation. An emancipation

proclamation would end all compromises with slavery, change the entire

conduct of the war, give it a new aim.

They held watch-meetings in all the colored churches on New Year’s Eve

and went on to a great mass meeting in Tremont Temple, which extended

through the day and evening. A grand jubilee concert in Music Hall was

scheduled for the afternoon. They expected the President’s proclamation

to reach the city by noon. But the day wore on, and fears arose that it

might not, after all, be forthcoming.

The orchestra played Beethoven’s _Fifth Symphony_, the chorus sang

Handel’s _Hallelujah Chorus_, Ralph Waldo Emerson read his “_Boston

Hymn_,” written for the occasion--but still no word. A line of

messengers was set up between the telegraph office and the platform of

Tremont Temple. William Wells Brown, the Reverend Mr. Grimes, Miss Anna

Dickinson, Frederick Douglass--all had said their lines. But speaking

or listening to speeches was not the thing for which people had come

together today. They were waiting.

Eight, nine, ten o’clock came and went, and still no word. Frederick

Douglass walked to the edge of the platform. He stood there without

saying a word, and before the awful stillness of his helplessness the

stirrings of the crowd quieted. His voice was hoarse.

“Ladies and gentlemen--I know the time for argument has passed. Our

ears are not attuned to logic or the sound of many words. It is the

trumpet of jubilee which we await.”

“Amen, God of our fathers, hear!” The fervent prayer had come from a

black man who had dropped to his knees on the platform behind Douglass.

There was a responding murmur from the crowd. Douglass stood a moment

with his head bowed. Then he continued:

“We are watching for the dawn of a new day. We are waiting for the

answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries. We--” His eyes were

caught by a movement in the crowd packed around the doors. He held his

breath. A man ran down the aisle.

“It’s coming--It’s coming over the wires! Now!” he shouted.

The shout that went up from the crowd carried the glad tidings to

the streets. Men and women screamed--they tossed their hats into the

air--strangers embraced one another, weeping. Garrison, standing in

the gallery, was cheered madly; Harriet Beecher Stowe, her bonnet

awry, tears streaming down her cheeks, was lifted to a bench. After a

while they quieted down to hear the reading of the text ... “are, and

henceforward shall be, free.” Then the Reverend Charles Rue, the black

man behind Douglass, lifted his magnificent voice and led them as they

sang,

“Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea,

Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free.”

Cables carried the news across the Atlantic. Crowds thronged the

streets of London and Liverpool. Three thousand workmen of Manchester,

many of them present sufferers from the cotton famine, adopted by

acclamation an address to President Lincoln congratulating him on the

Proclamation. George Thompson led a similar meeting in Lancashire, and

in Exeter Hall a great demonstration meeting was addressed by John

Stuart Mill.

But it was from the deep, deep South that the sweetest music came.

It was an old song--old as the first man, lifting himself from the

mire and slime of some dark river bed and feeling the warm sun upon

his face, old as the song they sang crossing the Red Sea, old as the

throbbing of drums deep in the jungles, old as the song of all men

everywhere who would be free. It was a new song, the loveliest thing

born this side of the seas, fresh and verdant and young, full as the

promise of this new America--the Delta’s rich, black earth; the tall,

thick trees upon a thousand hills; the fairy, jeweled beauty of the

bayous; the rolling plains of the Mississippi. Black folks made a song

that day.

They crouched in their cabins, hushed and still. Old men and women

who had prayed so long--broken, close to the end, they waited for

this glorious thing. Young men and women, leashed in their strength,

twisted in bondage--they waited. Mothers grasped their babies in their

arms--waiting.

Some of them listened for a clap of thunder that would rend the world

apart. Some strained their eyes toward the sky, waiting for God upon

a cloud to bring them freedom. Anything was possible, they whispered,

waiting.

They recognized His shining angels when they came: a tired and dirty

soldier, in a torn and tattered uniform; a grizzled old man hobbling

out from town; a breathless woman, finding her way through the swamp to

tell them; a gaunt, white “cracker” risking his life to let them know;

a fleet-footed black boy, running, running down the road. These were

the messengers who brought them word.

And the song of joy went up. Free! Free! Free! Black men and women

lifted their quivering hands and shouted across the fields. The rocks

and trees, the rivers and the mountains echoed their voices--the

universe was glad the morning freedom’s song rang in the South.