Kagi, an Ohio lad of 22, was largely self-educated and had taught school in Virginia until his abolitionist views got him into trouble with local officials and he had to flee the State. Traveling to Kansas in 1856, he became a lawyer in Nebraska City. Occasionally he served as a court stenographer or shorthand reporter. He also functioned as a correspondent for several Eastern newspapers and John Brown dubbed him “our Horace Greeley.” While riding with Stevens’ Second Kansas Regiment in 1856, Kagi was taken prisoner by Federal troops and served 4 months in jail before being released on bail. In January 1857 he was shot by a pro-slavery judge during a disagreement and was still suffering from his wounds when he joined Brown. Tall, with angular features, Kagi was usually unkempt, unshaven, and generally unimpressive in appearance; but he was articulate and highly intelligent, of serene temperament, and not easily aroused. “His fertility of resources made him a tower of strength to John Brown,” wrote George B. Gill, an Iowa youth who signed up for the raid but defected before it took place. “He was a logician of more than ordinary ability. He was full of wonderful vitality and all things were fit food for his brain.” [Illustration: Brown’s target was the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, shown here in an 1857 lithograph.] When he enlisted them, Brown told Cook, Stevens, and Kagi only that he was organizing a company of men to resist pro-slavery aggressions. He did not tell them where he planned to take them. When seven more volunteers joined the group at Tabor, Iowa, he informed his recruits that their “ultimate destination was the State of Virginia.” Shortly afterwards the men finally learned that Harpers Ferry was the probable target. Kagi, who had once taught school in the area, gave Brown valuable information about the town. The place fitted Brown’s requirements perfectly. It lay near the mountains he counted upon to afford a hiding place, and it was on the border of Virginia, a slave State, only 40 miles from the free State of Pennsylvania. It also contained an United States armory and arsenal, where much-needed arms were stored.