If these two are a fair sample, thinks I, we’ll have a quiet summer of it – but there was a third man in Ohio, whom I didn’t meet until J.B. returned from up north, and as soon as I shook his hand and met his eye I scented two qualities we could have done without: brains and bravery.
He was a Switzer, though American-born, named Kagi, and he was to prove to be the only man in Brown’s conspiracy who knew what he was about. He was in his middle twenties, dapper, sharp, well-read, and keen, and if there had been half a dozen like him … well, American history books might have a chapter today about the great Virginia slave uprising. He’d been a teacher and had fought in Kansas, where he’d distinguished himself by shooting a judge – who in turn had put three slugs into Kagi, which gives you some notion of what life at the American bar was like in those days.
“My Gideon,” says J.B. in high good humour, putting one hand on Kagi’s shoulder and the other on mine, “and my Joshua, who together shall be a scourge of Midian, yea, and of Canaan,” and from Kagi’s quick, cool smile I knew that this smart, clean-shaven youngster (who was styled “Secretary for War”, by the way) was itching to steer his chief into action. He lost no time in drawing me aside and showing me a map of Harper’s Ferry (hand-drawn, but far better than Messervy’s) and asking if I had formed any plan for taking it, and for the campaign that must follow. I said J.B. hadn’t asked for one yet, but as I understood it, taking the place was the least of it.
“You’re right,” says he briskly, and tapped the map. “See here: armoury, rifle works, arsenal, all within a half-mile. No troops on guard, only watchmen. I know the place well, ’twill be easy as pie –”
“Given the men, the arms, and secrecy,” says I, and decided to impress him. “Then, strip the arsenal and armoury; have wagons and mules to carry the stuff to a prearranged rendezvous in the hills; food, bedding, clothes and boots for the slaves when they come in; despatch scouts to watch for the nearest militia companies and bring word of their movements; cut the wires; blow the railroads …” I paused for breath. “But that, of course, is just for a beginning.”
I’d expected his face to fall, but he was beaming. “Thank God!” cries he. “A man who knows his business!”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here,” says I, the grim professional. Then I grinned, to show him I was human. “See here, though … John Henry, isn’t it? Aye, well, answer me this, John: these slaves J.B. is counting on to run away and join us. How many? How soon? How does he intend to bring ’em in to us? We’re going to need ’em quick – but they mustn’t know too soon that we’re coming, or the whole South will know it, too. Then they’ll have to be fed, clothed, armed, and trained. I can plan for all of that – given the assurance of men and equipment. But getting ’em moving in the first place – that’s the key to this whole affair, my boy. That’s where we stand or fall!”
D’ye know, it was only while I was talking that the sheer lunatic impossibility of the whole ridiculous business rose up and hit me a facer for the first time. You see, until now, I hadn’t thought beyond J.B.’s intended capture of Harper’s Ferry – why should I, when I didn’t believe it would ever happen? But now, in showing off for this bright spark, I found myself considering the sequel – a slave uprising, followed by a guerrilla campaign – and when I did, I wanted to burst out laughing. To put it plainly, J.B. was hoping that thousands of slaves would rise up spontaneously, which seemed unlikely – and suppose they did, how in God’s name did he hope to feed, clothe, equip, house, doctor, and train the poor buggers – probably the worst raw material on earth – to fight the American Army?
J.B., of course, had the answer: the Lord would provide. Kagi, being blessed with common sense, could see that the Lord would need considerable help, but being an optimistic disciple of J.B., and no soldier, he probably hoped that all would come right on the night – after all, this brilliant fellow Comber was taking the thing seriously, so it must be feasible. I knew it wasn’t, not for the Duke himself, let alone these rustic dung-slingers.
But it wasn’t for me to say so – my task must be to let the impossibles appear, slowly but surely, until Kagi saw the thing was hopeless. It would take time, and delicate handling, but from the respect that J.B. showed him, I realised that he was the one to convince; if Kagi cried quits, that would be the end of it. I found myself revising my view of him: far from being a dangerous nuisance, he should be a godsend who unwittingly would help me to kill J.B.’s plan stone dead. I didn’t know, then, how reckless a canny Swiss can be when he hears the bugles.
To my question about stirring up the slaves, he frowned, and said we had a man in Harper’s Ferry already who was looking into it. I asked him about arms, and he showed me the cases of carbines which the Brown brothers had hidden in a warehouse, under a pile of coffins. They were good weapons, but I doubted whether there would ever be men to use them; Junior was in despair because the fellows who’d been ready to march the year before weren’t turning up as expected. Left to him, the whole scheme would have been abandoned, but he daren’t say so for fear of the old man, and when Kagi reminded him that there were hosts of free niggers up in Canada just waiting to answer the call, he pretended to perk up, saying he’d see to them when he’d collected all the weapons and shipped them down closer to the border.
It was the unlikeliest beginning to a desperate venture that I can remember in a lifetime of lost causes – I think of doddering old Elphy Bey before the Kabul retreat, changing his mind by the minute; Custer twitching and unshaven in his tent on the Rosebud, determined to have his way; Raglan imperturbable in his refusal to admit that he didn’t know what the devil he was doing; Wheeler grey with fatigue and old age, tying his britches up with string as he prepared to surrender at Cawnpore. Each going to hell in his own way, torn between hope and despair, but at least they understood warfare and had good advisers about them. J.B. didn’t have the understanding or the men; and for all his iron purpose he was no James Brooke or Fred Ward or Charlie Gordon.
I have a memory of a room somewhere, in Akron or Youngstown perhaps, with J.B. haranguing us about how well things were going, what with arms to hand, money in the bank, everyone back East cheering us on, and God letting the light of his countenance shine on our enterprise – and Owen Brown, bearded and massive, hanging on Pa’s every word; Junior looking glum and running his hand through his hair; young Oliver Brown, who had joined us, staring before him in his dreamy, soulful way; Kagi twitching with impatience; Jerry Anderson yawning and picking threads from his ragged sleeve; Black Joe watching J.B. with an intent, puzzled scowl that I couldn’t read … all told, it was a damned uninspiring sight, and I found myself wondering what Guy Fawkes and the boys must have looked like on November the Fourth.
When J.B. wasn’t lecturing us about troubling Israel and letting the foxes loose in the Philistine corn, he was on the go in the towns around the Ohio-Pennsylvania line, which was strong abolitionist country, assuring the people that the dawn was nigh, and he was girding his loins to invade Virginia – he made no secret of that, although I don’t recall that he mentioned the Ferry by name, and he certainly glossed over the fact that his great slave insurrection would be in effect a rebellion against the U.S.A. and its Constitution. If the good folk who cheered, and pressed round to shake his hand, and sent Jenny scurrying home to fetch the ten dollars in the cookie jar for the good cause, had realised that he was ready to shoot the Stars and Stripes to ribbons, I reckon they’d have thought twice.
All this aimless jaunting about the country was fine by me. It wasn’t the Grand Tour, what with passable food, middling accommodation, and no hope of vicious amusement, but I tolerated it in the knowledge that I’d be homeward bound presently having earned the gratitude of next-President Seward and the approval of Her Majesty. In the meantime I conferred endlessly with J.B. and Kagi, listening straight-faced to the old idiot’s fierce enthusiasms, conscious that Kagi was watching to see how I took them, and I had to be on my guard not to approve
anything too half-witted. For example, J.B. had a great bee in his bonnet about building forts in the hills from which his vast army of liberated darkies would sally forth like Boer commandos; I didn’t remark that such forts would have taken a battalion of sappers weeks to build (give me the men and I’ll do it, was my line), but when he said the forts must have underground tunnels of communication between them, I had to point out that liberated slaves might not take too kindly to hacking their way through several hundred feet of granite, and anyway there wouldn’t be time to spare from their military training (God forgive me). J.B. glowered like a spoilt child, for Kagi backed me up, and our discussion was pretty strained until he got his way on another ridiculous point – the establishment of a school in the hills for piccaninnies. Then he was happy again.
We had four or five of these staff meetings as we travelled about, and while I took care to hide my disgust, I could see Kagi’s frown deepening by the day. J.B. talked interminably and vaguely, as though he didn’t know what to do next, there was no sign of more recruits, and I’d made it plain that our operations must depend on numbers, black or white; I acted as though I expected them to roll up in troops at any time, but meanwhile, I said privately to Kagi, I could only plan in theory, and wait for J.B. to give his orders.
It was after the last of these talks, at a place called Chambersburg, that Kagi asked me to come for a walk. It was a lovely summer afternoon, and we strolled along the dusty road out of town – with Joe, I noticed to my amusement, dogging us at a distance. Kagi sat down under a finger-post and asked me straight out:
“Joshua – can we do this thing?”
Time to start sowing the good seed, so I answered right back.
“Take the Ferry? Given the men, certainly. Fight a campaign in the hills? If the blacks rise in sufficient numbers …” I shrugged.
“Sure … if they rise,” says he, and started pulling petals off a flower. “Oh! … truth to tell, there ain’t all that many blacks around the Ferry – and they ain’t like the plantation nigras down south. They’re farmhands, mostly, and house slaves – not much cotton thereaway, you see – and pretty much part of their masters’ families. I don’t know whether they’ll want to rise!” He pitched the flower away irritably. “Maybe after the harvest … that’s when they’re at their orneriest, and the suicides happen –”
“Suicides, for heaven’s sake?”
“Yes, sir – see, when the harvest’s in, that’s when they’re liable to be sold. South, maybe, with cotton-picking time coming on. So families are parted, and they get depressed and mean. But that’s not till fall.” He kicked absently at the dust. “I wish J.B. would make up his mind.”
“Hasn’t he?”
“Oh, sure, I guess so. I ought to know him by now, I s’pose … how he talks, and moons around, and then – bang! he’s raiding Missouri! It’ll be the same this time – when the Canadian blacks come in, and the other fellows who’ve promised.” He turned his clever, troubled face to me, hoping to be reassured. “I just hate waiting … and I wondered what you thought, d’you see?”
It was no time to cheer him up, so I brooded a bit and said the five most depressing words in the language: “We are in God’s hands.” But so he’d never be able to say I’d discouraged him, I added sternly, with a hand on his arm:
“Never forget, John, that ’tis not the beginning, but the continuing until it be thoroughly finished, that yieldeth the true glory.” And six feet of cemetery, as often as not. Arnold had made me write it out a thousand times for loafing in a pot-house when I should have been chasing ’cross country at Hare and Hounds.44 Kagi said it was a fine sentiment, and he’d remember it.
As we rose to walk back, I chanced to look up at the signpost, and he followed my glance and said it was a pretty place, but quite a piece down the road, and much too far to walk. The name stayed in my mind, for no reason, as such things sometimes do. Gettysburg.
Chapter 15
I should have jumped the train the moment the conductor took Joe’s ticket, glowered suspiciously, and asked him to account for himself. Better still, I should never have boarded the train at all – and might not have done, if I hadn’t mislaid my map. I’d bought it in Boston, to keep track of our random jauntings back and forth, and had traced our progress from New England to Ohio most satisfactorily, but after I lost it (in Pittsburgh, I think), why, like a careless ass I was content to roll along in happy ignorance of where we were. At Chambersburg, I knew we were in Pennsylvania, which was fine, and when J.B. said we were going to Hagerstown, I never thought twice; I’d never heard of the place, and had no notion where it lay.
There were six of us on the train: J.B., his sons Owen and Oliver, Jerry Anderson, myself, and Joe; Kagi had gone off north somewhere, and John junior had been left brooding in Ohio. It was a baking hot journey, with the sun turning the car into an oven, and even playing cards was too much of a fag. J.B. prowled up and down, accosting strangers to hector them, Owen was snoring like the great ox he was, Jerry was trying to get off with a girl across the aisle, and Oliver was boring me to blazes. He was the baby of the Brown family, a stalwart young Adonis of twenty, shy and given to books, but a chance remark had brought him out of his shell to tell me about his wife, Martha, who was up north, and by his account was a cross between Portia and Helen of Troy. I was dozing off when the conductor’s harsh question roused me: “Whut’s yore name, boy?”, and I saw he was regarding Joe with a mistrustful eye. Joe told him.
“Joe Simmons, eh? An’ just where are you from, Joe?”
J.B. was on the scene at once, beard bristling. “Some trouble, mister conductor?”
“You know this nigger?” says the conductor.
“I know this free coloured man,” says J.B. sternly. “He is in my employ.”
In his travelling duds, with their frayed sleeves and air of having been slept in, he didn’t look like an employer, and the conductor sniffed.
“He is, is he? An’ who might you be, mister?”
“My name is Isaac Smith,” says J.B. “This is my servant, and these –” he indicated the rest of us “– are my sons, Owen, Oliver, Joshua, and Jeremiah.” Well, if he chose to adopt me, I didn’t mind. “Mrs Smith is not travelling with us,” he added, with fine ponderous sarcasm, “or I’d be kindly proud to present her to you, too.”
The conductor blinked uncertainly; J.B. tended to have that effect on folk, and the four of us were sufficiently large and ugly to daunt the stoutest ticket-walloper. “No offence, Mr Smith,” says he hastily. “On’y there’s been a couple o’ runaways from Frederick lately, an’ me seein’ yore boy here … well, I thought maybe …”
“That he might be one of them … taking the train south?” says J.B., mighty droll. The conductor scratched his head, and laughed apologetically, and said come to think of it, that wasn’t likely, was it, ha-ha? J.B. said, no, it wasn’t, and if the conductor was now satisfied that we weren’t slave-stealers going in the wrong direction, perhaps he’d care to go about his business. The fellow cried, sure, certainly, no offence, mister, and went off like a scared rabbit, with J.B. glaring after him. I asked Oliver what the row was about, and he looked grim and said that was Dixie for you, all over.
“Dixie?”
“Sure – we crossed the line into Maryland a while back, didn’t you know? If they’re looking for runaway slaves, why, they think they can stop and question any black man they like!”
That gave me a start. I’d assumed, you see, that my charade with J.B. would be played out in the nice, safe, abolitionist North – and here we were, in the slave South, and I’d never known it. Not that there had ever been warrants out for me in Maryland, and we were still a long way from the scene of my exploits of ten years ago, but it was enough to start me sweating, and I took the first chance that came to ask J.B., casual-like, what there was to interest us in Hagerstown. His reply, in a confidential undertone, but with an alarming glint in his eye, didn’t quiet my fears a bit.
�
��You smell the battle afar off, Joshua?” He glanced round to make sure he wasn’t overheard. “Have patience, my boy. The time is drawing nigh when we’ll be done with talk and waiting at the doors of timid men! Yes, sir, we’re approaching the scene of the great war from which there’ll be no discharge. We’re going to spy out the land,” says he, with a grin that froze my marrow. “What did Moses say to his Joshua, eh? ‘Get you up this way southward, and get you up into the mountain, and see the land what it is, and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many.’ And Joshua and his eleven spies did just that, remember?”
I didn’t, in fact; the only thing I recollected about Joshua and spying was two chaps being sent to a harlot’s house … but this was appalling news I was hearing. I asked him what he meant.
“Why, we’ll lie up a day or two at Hagerstown,” says he, “and then it’s just a few miles down the river to where we want to be at.”
“Where’s that?” says I, trying not to croak.
“Why, Harper’s Ferry, to be sure! We’ll take a good look at the country along the way, and – what’s that? Restrain your language, sir! And keep your voice down!” He was glaring disapproval, and darting nervous glances at the nearest passengers. “There’s no call for excitement,” he whispered angrily, “or that kind of foul Navy talk! I won’t have it!” Then he patted my knee, like a forgiving uncle. “I know you’re eager – I’ve watched you chafing these past weeks, and I promise you won’t have to wait much longer. Once we’ve seen how the land lies, we’re going to find ourselves a nice out of the way place between Hagerstown and the Ferry, and there we’ll make our final plans. And when the men have come in, and the arms …” He sat back, nodding his great bearded head, eyes gleaming, while I fought manfully to retain my breakfast. To find myself in Maryland had been bad enough, but the news that we weren’t a kick in the arse from Harper’s Ferry was shocking. Oh, I’d seen it on the map, often, but it had always seemed a safe distance away – America’s such a big place, you get into the habit of thinking you’re miles from anywhere – and I hadn’t realised, in Chambersburg, how close we were getting. Now, without warning, we were almost there.
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