98

250 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

as his prisoners at the start, and that holding them as hostages, he should be
able if worse came to worse, to dictate terms of egress from the town. I
looked at him with some astonishment, that he could rest upon a reed so
weak and broken, and told him that Virginia would blow him and his hostages
sky-high, rather than that he should hold Harper's Ferry an hour. Our
talk was long and earnest; we spent the most of Saturday and a part of
Sunday in this debate — Brown for Harper's Ferry, and I against it; he for
striking a blow which should instantly rouse the country, and I for the policy
of gradually and unaccountably drawing off the slaves to the mountains, as
at first suggested and proposed by him. When I found that he had fully made
up his mind and could not be dissuaded, I turned to Shields Green and told
him he heard what Captain Brown had said; his old plan was changed, and
that I should return home, and if he wished to go with me he could do so.
Captain Brown urged us both to go with him, but I could not do so, and could
but feel that he was about to rivet the fetters more firmly than ever on the
limbs of the enslaved. In parting he put his arms around me in a manner more
than friendly, and said: '"Come with me, Douglass, I will defend you with my
life. I want you for a special purpose. When I strike the bees will begin to
swarm, and I shall want you to help hive them." But my discretion or my
cowardice made me proof against the dear old man's eloquence — perhaps it
was something of both which determined my course. When about to leave l
asked Green what he had decided to do, and was surprised by his coolly saying
in his broken way, "I b'leve I'll go wid de ole man." Here we separated;
they to go to Harper's Ferry, I to Rochester. There has been some differencc
of opinion as to the propriety of my course in thus leaving my friend. Some
have thought that I ought to have gone with him, but I have no reproaches
for myself at this point, and since I have been assailed only by colored men
who kept even farther from this brave and heroic man than I did, I shall not
trouble myself much about their criticisms. They compliment me in assuming
that I should perform greater deeds than themselves.

Such then was my connection with John Brown, and it may be asked if
this is all, why should I have objected to being sent to Virginia to be tried for
the offence charged? The explanation is not difricult. I knew if my enemies
could not prove me guilty of the offence of being with John Brown they
could prove that I was Frederick Douglass; they could prove that I was in
correspondence and conspiracy with Brown against slavery; they could
prove that I brought Shields Green, one of the bravest of his soldiers, all the
way from Rochester to him at Chambersburg; they could prove that I
brought money to aid him, and in what was then the state of the public mind