Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/282

274 Schubert's Serenade, then a favorite piece,—and the old Puritan, who loved music and sang a good part himself, sat weeping at the air." He chose Harper's Ferry because a United States arsenal was there and the capture of this would give that dramatic climax to the inception of his plan which was so necessary to its success. But both these were minor reasons. The foremost and decisive reason Mas that Harper's Ferry was the safest natural entrance to the Great Black Way. Look at the map (page 274). The shaded portion is "the black belt" of slavery where there were massed in 1859 at least three of the four million slaves. Two paths led southward toward it in the East:—the way by Washington, physically broad and easy, but legally and socially barred to bondsmen; the other way, known to Harriet Tubman and all fugitives, which led to the left toward the crests of the Alleghanies and the gateway of Harper's Ferry. One has but to glance at the mountains and swamps of the South to see the Great Black Way. Here, amid the mighty protection of overwhelming numbers, lay a path from slavery to freedom, and along that path were fastnesses and hiding-places easily capable of becoming permanent fortified refuges for organized bands of determined armed men.

The exact details of Brown's plan will never be fully known. As Realf said: "John Brown was a man who would never state more than it was absolutely necessary for him to do. No one of his