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Rh trip to Philadelphia. There he met a large group of Negroes, and Dorsey the caterer with whom he stayed, at 1221 Locust Street, is said to have given him $300. In some way he was disappointed with the visit. Anderson says he went "on business of great importance. How important, men there and elsewhere now know. How affected by, and affecting the main features of the enterprise, we at the farm knew full after their return, as the old captain, in the fullness of his overflowing, saddened heart, detailed point after point of interest." Perhaps he was still trying to persuade Douglass and the leaders of the Philadelphia and New York groups.

The women left the farm late in September and O. P. Anderson, Copeland and Leary arrived. Merriam joined Brown while he was on the Philadelphia trip and was sent to Baltimore to buy caps for the guns. Others were coming when suddenly Brown fixed on October 17th as the date of the raid. This hurried change was probably because officials and neighbors were getting inquisitive, and arms were being removed from the arsenal to man Southern stations. Yet it was unfortunate, as Anderson says: "Could other parties, waiting for the word, have reached the headquarters in time for the outbreak when it took place, the taking of the armory, engine-house, and rifle factory, would have been quite different. But the men at the farm had been so closely confined, that they went out about the house and farm in the daytime