Before the Civil War, the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was constituted of five extensive districts in Virginia, stretching from Alexandria to Lewisburg and two great districts north of the Potomac, including the cities of Washington and Baltimore. The first three years of my ministerial life I spent on Shepherdstown, West Loudon and Hillsboro Circuits, being then all in Virginia. The State of West Virginia, now embracing Harper's Ferry, had not been organized by Congress as a war measure out of the territory of the mother State. Our Methodist Episcopal Church was theoretically an anti-slavery organization; but our Virginia and Maryland members held thousands of inherited and many purchased slaves. These were generally well-cared for and contented. Being close to the free soil of Pennsylvania they could have gotten there in a night had they wished to escape bondage, and then they could have easily reached Canada by that Northern aid, called the "Underground Railroad." On the Sunday night when John Brown and his men invaded Virginia, I slept within a half mile of Harper's Ferry. That day I inaugurated revival services at my westward appointment called "Ebenezer," in Loudon County two miles from Harper's Ferry. I was twenty-two years of age. Three months before this raid Captain John Brown with two of his sons, Owen and Oliver, and Jeremiah G. Anderson, calling themselves "Isaac Smith and Sons" rented a small farm on the Maryland side of the Potomac four miles from Harper's Ferry. It was known as the "Booth-Kennedy Place." They also carried on across the mountains at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a small hardware store managed by John H. Kagi. It was a depot for the munitions of war to be hauled to their Maryland farm. Another of Brown's men, John E. Cook, sold maps in the vicinity. He was a relative of Governor Willard of Indiana who secured the services of Hon. Daniel W. Voorhees, Attorney General of Indiana, to defend Cook at his after trial in Virginia. It was a time of profound national peace. Brown and his men represented themselves as geologists, miners and speculators. They had a mule and wagon with which to haul their boxes from Chambersburg. A wealthy merchant of Boston, Mr. George Luther Stearns, Chairman of the Massachusetts Aid Society had financed Brown's Kansas border warfare work, as well as his approaching Harper's Ferry raid. Other Northern friends assisted. Brown had completed his preparations and collected his twenty-one helpers early in October, 1859. He had hidden in an old log cabin on the place 200 Sharpe's rifles, 13,000 rifle cartridges, 950 long iron pikes, 200 revolving pistols, 100,000 pistol caps, 40,000 percussion caps, 250 pounds of powder, 12 reams of cartridge paper and other warlike materials. He organized his twenty-two men, himself included, into a "=Military Provisional Government=" to superintend the possible uprising of the slaves of Virginia.