Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/277

Rh March, and consisting of Smith, Parker, Howe, Higginson, Stearns, and Sanborn) held a meeting to consider the situation. It had already been decided to postpone the attack, and the arms had been placed under a temporary interdict, so that they could only be used, for the present, in Kansas. The questions remaining were whether Brown should be required to go to Kansas at once, and what amount of money should be raised for him in the future. Of the six members of the committee only one (Higginson) was absent. . . . It was unanimously resolved that Brown ought to go to Kansas at once."

As soon as possible after this, on May 21st, Brown visited Boston, and while there held a conversation with Higginson, who made a record of it at the time. He states that Brown was full of regret at the decision of the Revere House council to postpone the attack till the winter or spring of 1859, when the secret committee would raise for Brown two or three thousand dollars; he meantime was to blind Forbes by going to Kansas, and to transfer the property so as to relieve the Kansas committee of responsibility, they in future not to know his plans.

"On probing Brown," Higginson goes on, "I found that he . . . considered delay very discouraging to his thirteen men, and to those in Canada. Impossible to begin in autumn; and he would not lose a day (he finally said) if he had three hundred dollars; it would not cost twenty-five dollars apiece to get his men from Ohio, and that was all he needed.