Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/3

Rh purposes: it would seem from the testimony that a man named Hugh Forbes, an Englishman, who, it was said, had the reputation of military experience in some of the revolutions in Southern Europe, had been engaged by Brown to take charge of his military school in Iowa. Differences, however, arising between them, Forbes, who had gone to the West with that view, abandoned the project and returned to New York. Whilst the convention was sitting at Chatham, Brown received information which led him to believe that Forbes had betrayed his counsels, and Realf was dispatched to New York with instructions, if practicable, to get possession of such correspondence with Brown as might prove the facts of his intended descent upon some one of the slave States should his plans be divulged—a mission which, for the reasons stated in the testimony of Realf, altogether failed.

In conducting the inquiry, the committee deemed it a matter of importance to have the testimony of Forbes. It appeared, however, that not long after the explosion at Harper's Ferry, Forbes left the country, and the committee were not able to procure his attendance before them.

As to the attack itself at Harper's Ferry, the committee find that Brown first appeared in that neighborhood early in July, 1859. He came there under the assumed name of Isaac Smith, attended by two of his sons and a son-in-law. He gave out in the neighborhood that he was a farmer from New York, who desired to rent or purchase land in that vicinity, with a view to agricultural pursuits, and soon afterwards rented a small farm on the Maryland side of the river, and some four or five miles from Harper's Ferry, having on it convenient houses, and began farming operations in a very small way. He had little or no intercourse with the people of the country; and when questioned through the curiosity of his neighbors, stated further that he was accustomed to mining operations, and expected to find deposits of metal in the adjacent mountains. He lived in an obscure manner, and attracted but little attention, and certainly no suspicion whatever as to his ulterior objects. Whilst there, he kept some two or three of his party, under assumed names, at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, who there received, and from time to time forwarded to him, the arms of different kinds of which he was subsequently found in possession. Cook, one of his men spoken of above, it appears, had resided at Harper's Ferry and its neighborhood for some twelve months before Brown appeared, pursuing various occupations. He left the Ferry a few days before the attack was made, and joined Brown at his country place. The whole number assembled with Brown at the time of the invasion were twenty-one men, making with himself in all twenty-two.

On Sunday night, the 16th of October, 1859, between 11 and 12 o'clock at night, Brown, attended by probably eighteen of his company, crossed the bridge connecting the village of Harper's Ferry with the Maryland shore, and, on reaching the Virginia side, proceeded immediately to take possession of the buildings of the armory and arsenal of the United States. These men were armed, each, with a Sharp's rifled carbine, and with revolving pistols. The inhabitants of the village asleep, the presence of this party was not known until they appeared and demanded admittance at the gate leading to the