Gerrit Smith stifled a sigh. _His faith in God and man is sublime!_ he thought a little sadly. Swarthy, bearded Thomas W. Higginson, young Unitarian minister, set out immediately to raise funds on his own. He was hissed at Harvard, his Alma Mater, but he was not swayed from his course. At a meeting at the Astor House in New York the National Kansas Committee voted “in aid of Captain Brown ... 12 boxes of clothing, sufficient for 60 persons, 25 Colt revolvers, five thousand dollars to be used in any defense measures that may become necessary.” But only five hundred dollars was paid out. John Brown was disappointed. He had hoped to obtain the means of arming and thoroughly equipping a regular outfit of minutemen. He had left his men suffering hunger, cold, nakedness, and some of them sickness and wounds. He had engaged the services of one Hugh Forbes, who claimed to have been a lieutenant of Garibaldi. Forbes was to take over the military tactics. He had demanded six hundred dollars for his expenses. John Brown had given it to him. “I am going back,” Brown said to Douglass, when he stopped overnight in Rochester. “You must keep up the work here--solicit funds, keep the issue before them. I have no baggage wagons, tents, camp equipage, tools ... or a sufficient supply of ammunition. I have left my family poorly supplied with common necessaries.” “I do not like what you tell me about this Hugh Forbes,” said Douglass. Brown was a little impatient. “He is a trained man in military affairs. I know nothing about maneuvers. We need him!” * * * * * It was John Brown’s intention to leave the actual training of his men to Forbes, so that he might be free for larger matters. Nor did he want to spend time raising funds. He wanted to organize Negroes for the job ahead. Perhaps better than any other white man of his time John Brown knew what Negroes in every part of North America were doing. He knew their newspapers, their churches and their schools. To most Americans of the time all black men were slaves or fugitives. But from the beginning John Brown sought to know Negroes personally and individually. He went into their homes, sought them out in business, talked to them, listened to the stories of their trials, harkened to their dreams, advised, and took advice from them. He set out to enlist the boldest and most daring spirits for his plan. In March, Brown and his eldest son met with Henry Highland Garnet and William Still, Negro Secretary of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, in the home of Stephen Smith, a Philadelphia Negro lumber merchant. Brown remained in Philadelphia a week or ten days, holding long conferences in Negro churches.