The comments of the press of the country, upon the occurrences herein, however interesting they may be, are not especially valuable. The writers of the time had but little correct information upon which to base their opinion as to the scope of the undertaking. Even at the present time, after the lapse of more than fifty years, opinion is divided as to whether this incident in our history was just an altruistic "_Foray into Virginia_"; or whether it was, practically, a harmless and utterly senseless "_raid_," or whether it was an organized reality--an invasion of the State of Virginia by Brown and his captains, having for their object, the conquest of the Southern States. CHAPTER XIV A PERVERSION OF HISTORY _But many a man has committed his greatest blunder when attempting to write a book._ --JOHN BROWN, JR. Concerning the things which Brown intended to do, and the plans which he made in pursuance thereof Mr. Redpath says:[396] It was the original intention of Captain Brown to seize the Arsenal at Harpers Ferry on the night of the 24th of October, and to take the arms there deposited to the neighboring mountains, with a number of the wealthier citizens of the vicinity, as hostages, until they should redeem themselves by liberating an equal number of their slaves. When at Baltimore, for satisfactory reasons, he determined to strike the blow that was to shake the Slave System to its foundations, on the night of the 17th. ... Harper's Ferry, by the admission of military men, was admirably chosen as the spot at which to begin a war of liberation. The neighboring mountains, with their inaccessible fastnesses, with every one of which, and every turning of their valleys, John Brown had been familiar for seventeen years, would afford to guerrilla forces a protection the most favorable, and a thousand opportunities for a desperate defense or rapid retreats before overwhelming numbers of an enemy. This is the conception of the Harper's Ferry episode that Brown's family, and his partisans, decided should be put forth concerning an incident which was to have been written in streams of blood, such as never flowed upon the continent. That anything so irrational should have been published, or should have been seriously considered by any one, is beyond the comprehension of thoughtful persons; and yet, the foolish fictions therein suggested were accepted as the truth in the Northern States, and, with some modifications of the more grotesque absurdities therein contained, have been approved by subsequent writers and biographers and have been incorporated with the history of our country.