The message that Brown requested Conductor Phelps to communicate to the management of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, interdicting further traffic over the road, was a declaration of war. It was the first and only "Proclamation" issued by the commander-in-chief of the army of the Provisional Government. At the time he gave out this declaration--1:25 A. M., October 17, 1859--he and his captains confidently believed their insurrection to be in the full tide of successful initiation; that the country in the vicinity was then in the throes of a slaughter that spared neither sex nor age; that hordes of black fiends, like furies, were surging over the land in a riot of unimaginable proportions. These adventurers believed that their dreams of conquest were about to be realized; and that the rioting thousands, excited into a frenzy by the bloody deeds which had set them free, were already pressing in bands to join them at the appointed rendezvous to fill the ranks of the "Army of Liberation"; that it was solely a question of time--a few hours at most--until these allies would be arriving, and they would have control of an army sufficiently strong to establish and maintain their authority. That the slaves' sole way to freedom lay over the dead bodies of their masters, was a self-evident proposition. The slaves knew by tradition and by experience, and Brown and his captains knew, that if they--the slaves--ran away from their masters to join his forces, the masters, reënforced by the citizen soldiery, would pursue them immediately, and recover them before they could organize for either defensive or aggressive warfare. The problem of Harper's Ferry had been solved by the philosophy of the Pottawatomie. The same questions were involved in each venture: how to get the "goods" and keep them--how to get the slaves for the Provisional Army and forestall pursuit. It was the Pottawatomie amplified. Brown intended to create the "Provisional Army" in the enemy's country; hence, it was essential for him to commence the undertaking by striking the most crushing blow that it was possible for him to deliver. The success of the movement depended upon his ability to strike a blow so terrible that the survivors of the carnage, dazed and paralyzed by the horrors of the existing conditions, would be incapable of organizing and sending any opposing force to attack him. Therefore the assassinations--the destruction of the persons who, otherwise, would pursue. That was the central feature of the movement, the base of the scheme, the blow which he intended to strike. It was the only blow which he could strike; the only weapon that he could use of which any one stood in awe. The blow which he would have to strike if he would win, was the blow which he had told his Eastern friends he could strike: a blow that would shake the slave system to its foundation--the blow which he had promised Gerrit Smith he would strike, and doubtless, told him how he intended to strike it.