He wrote letters in a similar vein to Gerrit Smith, to Mr. Stearns, to Mr. Sanborn, and to Mr. Higginson, and sought to have a meeting with these gentlemen at Mr. Smith's home on February 23d, at which he intended to submit to them as much of his plans as he thought it advisable for them to know, for their consideration and approval. Mr. Sanborn alone responded to his call; he arrived at Peterboro on Monday evening, February 22d. Brown had arrived there on the preceding Thursday, and had gone over the scheme with Mr. Smith. During the night of the 22d, Mr. Sanborn says, the whole outline of the campaign in Virginia was laid before the little council. "In astonishment and almost in dismay," they listened to the reading of the constitution that he had prepared for the government of the territory which he proposed to conquer; and to a recital of the details of the hazardous adventure. In the discussion, he explained his "plan of organization, of fortification, of occupation, and of settlement in the South" and of his "retreat through the North," if retreat became necessary. He had foreseen every difficulty they could suggest, and had provided for it "in some manner." And then he had "God on his side." "If God be for us who can be against us." All he asked for, in addition to the equipment which he then had, was "but eight hundred dollars, and would think himself rich with a thousand." With that he would open his campaign in the spring, and he had no doubt that the enterprise "would _pay_" as he said.[290] The next day Mr. Smith and Mr. Sanborn took up Brown's proposition for final consideration and agreed to sustain him in it. They reasoned in this way: To withhold aid would only delay, not prevent him; nothing short of betraying him to the enemy would do that. Mr. Smith restated in his eloquent way the daring propositions of Brown, the import of which he understood fully; and then said in substance: "You see how it is; our dear old friend has made up his mind to this course and cannot be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must support him. I will raise so many hundred dollars for him; you must lay the case before your friends in Massachusetts, and perhaps they will do the same. I see no other way."[291] For myself I had reached the same conclusion, and engaged to bring the scheme at once to the attention of the three Massachusetts men to whom Brown had written, and also to Dr. S. G. Howe, who had sometimes favored action almost as extreme as this proposed by Brown.