The deed fired Kansas, some say freed Kansas, while others think it opened the Civil War. Withdrawing to the forest, hiding in the cottonwood swamps, John Brown organized his company. A reporter of the _New York Tribune_ finally penetrated the thicket. "Near the edge of the creek a dozen horses were tied, already saddled for a ride for life. A dozen rifles were stacked against the trees. In an open space was a blazing fire with a pot above it. Three or four armed men were lying on red and blue blankets on the grass. John Brown himself stood near the fire with his shirt sleeves rolled up and a piece of pork in his hand. He was poorly clad, and his toes protruded from his boots. The old man received me with great cordiality, and the little band gathered about me. He respectfully, but firmly, forbade conversation on the Pottawatamie affair. After the meal, thanks were returned to the bountiful Giver. Often, I was told, the old man would retire to the densest solitudes to wrestle with his God in prayer. He said he was fighting God's battles for his children's sake: 'Give me men of good principles, God-fearing men, men who respect themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose a hundred such men as these border ruffians.' I remained in the camp about an hour. Never before had I met such a band of men. They were not earnest, but earnestness incarnate." After several years of bloody conflict and political struggles between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties, in 1859 the Constitution prohibiting slavery was passed, and freedom had won in Kansas. In January of that year John Brown returned to the mountains of Virginia, and "The Great Black Way," and the dark shadows of the night following the North Star to liberty. For many years he had been planning an uprising of the slaves, and an attack upon Virginia. Some biographers think he conceived the plan as early as 1849. Away back in 1834 Brown wrote to his brother his determination to war on slavery; but at first only through educating the blacks. As time went on he came into sterner conflict with it. Brown, in fact, became a fanatic who really believed that the millions of slaves would rise at his call, and that he could lead his host as a new Moses, out of the land of bondage. He intended to operate in the Blue Ridge Mountains, because the paths into the black belt of slavery were easily followed. Men like Douglas and other escaped slaves who were living in the North did not see their way clear to join the movement.