Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/4

4 public works, which was locked. The watchman in charge states that on his refusal to admit them, the gate was opened by violence and the party entered, made him prisoner, and established themselves immediately in a strong brick building used as an engine-house, with a room for the watchmen adjoining it. They brought with them a wagon, with one horse, containing arms and some prepared torches.

The invasion thus silently commenced, was as silently conducted, none of the inhabitants having been aroused. Armed parties were then stationed at corners of the streets. Their next movement was to take possession, by detached parties of three or four, of the arsenal of the United States, where the public arms were chiefly deposited, a building not far from the engine-house; and by another party, of the workshops and other buildings of the armory, about half a mile off, on the Shenandoah river, called "Hall's rifle works." These dispositions made, an armed party was sent into the adjoining country, with a view to the seizure of two or three of the principal inhabitants, with such of their slaves as might be found, and to bring them to Harper's Ferry (in the language of Brown) as "hostages;" Cook, who had become well acquainted with the country around Harper's Ferry, acting as their guide. They thus seized Colonel Lewis W. Washington, with several of his slaves, (negro men,) at his residence, some five or six miles distant; and in like manner a gentleman named Allstadt, who lived near the road leading from Colonel Washington's to the Ferry, two or three miles distant from the latter, with some five or six of his slaves, (also negro men.) They brought off also from Colonel Washington's such arms as they found in his house, with a wagon and four horses, for subsequent use, as will be shown. This party with their prisoners arrived at the Ferry a little before day, and the latter were carried at once to the room adjoining the engine-house, where they were kept in custody.

Having thus far apparently perfected his plans, a party was sent, taking Washington's wagon and horses, and five or six of the captured slaves, into Maryland to bring the arms deposited at Brown's house there to a point nearer the Ferry and more accessible. On their way, they seized a gentleman named Byrne, who lived in Maryland, three or four miles from Harper's Ferry, and whom they afterwards sent to the Ferry and placed amongst the other prisoners at the engine-house. It is shown that their design was to have taken at the same time as many of the slaves of Byrne as might be found, but in this they did not succeed. During Monday, a large portion of the arms, consisting of carbines, pistols, in boxes, and pikes, were brought off in the wagon and deposited in a school-house about a mile from the village of Harper's Ferry, on the Maryland side.

The first alarm that was given, indicating the presence of the hostile party, appears to have been on the arrival there of the mail train of cars on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, on its way from Wheeling to Baltimore, and which arrived at Harper's Ferry at its usual hour, about half past one o'clock in the morning. On the arrival of Brown's party, he had stationed two men, well armed, on the bridge, with directions to permit none to pass. This bridge is a viaduct for the railroad to cross the river, having connected with it a bridge for