Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/39

Rh the following provisional constitution and ordinances, the better to protect our persons, property, lives and liberties, and govern our actions." On the 10th, after appointing a committee with full power to fill all the executive, legislative, judicial and military offices named in the constitution adopted, this convention adjourned, sine die, and Brown took his Kansas party to Ohio, where he disbanded them subject to call, but sending his Capt. John E. Cook, of Connecticut (who was subsequently executed), to stay at Harper's Ferry, Va., and make himself familiar with the surrounding country and its citizens, and especially with the negro slaves, for the information of his leader.

Brown, under the assumed name of Isaac Smith, appeared in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry about the 1st of July, 1859, and there is evidence to show that he extended his examination of the country for future strategic purposes, as far up the Shenandoah valley as Staunton, concealing his purposes by giving out that he was a farmer from New York, with his two sons and a son-in-law, desiring to rent or purchase land. Soon after his arrival at Harper's Ferry he rented the small Kennedy farm in Maryland, some four and a half miles from Harper's Ferry, where he did some little farming, and, to explain his secret movements, said he was accustomed to mining operations, and expected to find valuable mineral deposits in that mountain region. In the meantime he kept two or three of his party, under assumed names, at Chambersburg, Pa., who there received arms, ammunition and other military stores, which had been collected for use in Kansas, and forwarded them from time to time to Brown's habitation.

On October 10, 1859, from "Headquarters War Department, Provisional Army, Harper's Ferry," John Brown, commander-in-chief, issued his "General Order No. 1," organizing "the divisions of the provisional army and the coalition," providing for company, battalion, regiment, brigade and general staff organization. It is probable that at the time of issuing this order Brown had with him, at the Kennedy farm, his whole band of followers, including his spy, Cook, and there formulated his final plans of invasion; and that soon thereafter he removed to a schoolhouse nearer Harper's Ferry, the hundreds of carbines, pistols, spears or pikes, and a quantity of