Brown had planned how to prevent being surrounded, and continuing said: "I do not know that I should reveal my plans. I am here a prisoner and wounded because I foolishly allowed myself to be so. You overrate yourself in supposing I could have been taken if I had not allowed it." Nat Turner had shown his followers how to start an insurrection. He personally spilled the first blood, the blood which turned loose the furies in Southampton County, and Brown now saw, too late, that if he and his captains had each led a party of negroes, as Turner had led; and shown them how to kill, as Turner had shown his followers; they too might have turned loose the furies of which Brown and Forbes dreamed, and launched the hurricane of death. Then, with thousands of rioting slaves, brandishing their bloody spears, the occupation of Harper's Ferry would have been but an incident of minor importance in this history. Forbes perceived the weak link in the chain of Brown's forecast, and made the point, that unless the slaves were "already in a state of agitation, there might be no response, or a feeble one." But Brown, carried away by an enthusiasm inspired by a continuous contemplation of the grandeur of his scheme, failed to give the warning the consideration which its importance deserved. He dismissed Forbes's caution with the confident assertion that he "_was sure of a response_" His over-confidence led to his immediate undoing. Upon the rock that Forbes had pointed out foundered the new-born ship of state. The great uprising of the blacks upon which he relied, failed to materialize; the thousands of reënforcements which he looked for, appeared not at all.[437] The plans for the conquest of the Southern States, and for the establishment of the Provisional Government miscarried. Concerning Brown and his plans Mr. Vallandigham said: It is in vain to underestimate the man or the conspiracy. Captain John Brown is as brave and resolute a man as ever headed an insurrection, and, in a good cause, and with a sufficient force, would have been a consummate partisan commander. He has coolness, daring, persistency, the stoic faith and patience, and a firmness of will and purpose unconquerable. He is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic or madman. Certainly it was the best planned and best executed conspiracy that ever failed.[438]