Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/110

 He soon came on to Gerrit Smith's house at Peterboro, New York; and to that place on Feb. 22, 1858, F. B. Sanborn and Thomas Wentworth Higginson went, at Brown's urgent invitation. There, to Gerrit Smith, to Higginson, to Sanborn, and to Smith's secretary, Edwin Morton, Brown unfolded a scheme for a raid in Virginia. He read a long "constitution" which he had drawn up for the government he was to establish. It was a wordy, boyish document, and seems to have special reference and adaptation to the negro character. It somewhat paradoxically asserted devotion to the Constitution and flag of the United States. Brown, for that matter, thought of his war as one against the slaveholders, not against the government. He wanted eight hundred dollars to begin the work of his revolution with!

Brown's hearers were thunder-struck, and used every argument they could