One year before he went to Harper's Ferry, a friend met Brown in Kansas [in June, 1858], and learned that during the previous month he had brought almost all of his plans to perfection; and that the day and hour were fixed to strike the blow. One year before, a convention had met, on the 8th of May, 1858, at Chatham, Canada. At this convention a provisional constitution and ordinances were drafted and adopted, with the following officers: Commander-in-Chief, John Brown; Secretary of War, J. H. Kagi; Members of Congress, Alfred M. Ellsworth, Osborn Anderson; Treasurer, Owen Brown; Secretary of the Treasury, Geo. B. Gill; Secretary of State, Richard Realf. John Brown made his appearance in Ohio and Canada in the spring of 1859. He wrote letters, made speeches, collected funds for his little army, and made final arrangements with his Northern allies, etc. He purchased a small farm, about six miles from Harper's Ferry, on the Maryland side, and made it his ordnance depot. He had 102 Sharp's rifles, 68 pistols, 55 bayonets, 12 artillery swords, 483 pikes, 150 broken handles of pikes, 16 picks, 40 shovels, besides quite a number of other appurtenances of war. This was in July. He intended to make all of his arrangements during the summer of 1859, and meet his men in the Alleghanies in the fall of the same year. The apparent rashness of the John Brown movement may be mitigated somewhat by the fact that he failed to carry out his original plan. During the summer of 1859 he instructed his Northern soldiers and sympathizers to be ready for the attack on the night of the 24th of October, 1859. But while at Baltimore, in September, he got the impression that there was conspiracy in his camp, and in order to preclude its consummation, suddenly, without sending the news to his friends at the North, determined to strike the first blow on the night of the 17th of October. The news of his battle and his bold stand against the united forces of Virginia and Maryland swept across the country as the wild storm comes down the mountain side. Friend and foe were alike astonished and alarmed. The enemies of the cause he represented, when they recovered from their surprise, laughed their little laugh of scorn, and eased their feelings by referring to him as the "madman." Friends faltered, and, while they did not question his earnestness, doubted his judgment. "Why," they asked, "should he act with such palpable rashness, and thereby render more difficult and impossible the emancipation of the slaves?" They claimed that the blow he struck, instead of severing, only the more tightly riveted, the chains upon the helpless and hapless Blacks. But in the face of subsequent history we think his surviving friends will change their views. There is no proof that his fears were not well grounded; that a conspiracy was in progress. And who can tell whether a larger force would have been more effective, or the night of the 24th more