209

HISTORICAL ANNOTATION 837

as a lock tender, married a local woman, and surreptitiously gathered information
about the armory and its watch patrols. Part of the rearguard during the raid, he man-
aged to escape as far north as Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, before being captured.
While in jail, he wrote a public confession that implicated several of Brown's aboli-
tionist supporters, including Douglass, whom Cook accused of failing to bring prom-
ised reinforcements for the raid. At his trial, Cook pleaded for mercy on the grounds
that he had not been informed of Brown's true intentions until the time of the attack.
After an unsuccessful escape attempt, he was executed on 16 December 1859. Hinton,
John Brown and His Men, 78-79, 110, 329, 561-64; Oates, To Purge This Land,
218-19, 251-52, 275, 286, 298, 315-16, 328; Villard, John Brown, 307-08, 338, 344,
408, 446-47, 570-73.

243.10-12 The lightning. . .of liars] In the nineteenth century electricity was com-
monly referred to as "lightning;" the "electric telegraph" was referred to as the "light-
ning telegraph," and "telegraph wires" were called "lightning wires." Thus, the term
"lightning" became a colloquial reference to the telegraph, which was patented in
1837. David Paull Nickles, Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy
Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 116; Kenneth Silverman, Lightning Man: The Accursed
Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (New York, 2003), 240, 243; Richard B. Du Boff, "The
Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century America: Technology and Monopoly," Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 26:4:572, 582 (October 1984).

245.9-10 All know. . .in November] As early as August 1859, Douglass had pub-
licly announced his intentions to lecture in Great Britain. The newspaper notice states
that he intended to depart near the beginning of September, which corroborates
Douglass's claim that the Harpers Ferry insurrection had "rather delayed than has-
tened" his departure. Rochester Union and Advertiser, 23 August 1859; McFeely,
Frederick Douglass, 202.

246.39-247.2 I have. . .my house] John Brown's Provisional Constitution and
Ordinances for the People of the United States mirrored the original Constitution of
the United States but expanded citizenship to the "Proscribed and oppressed races of
the United States." It also contained a number of moral provisions, such as the outlaw-
ing of "profane swearing, filthy conversation, indecent exposure of the person, or
intoxication of the sexes," the obligation of all citizens to "labor in some way for the
general good," and the institutionalization of the Sabbath. In 1858 William Howard
Day published a version of Brown's constitution in Canada. John Brown, Provisional
Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States (St. Catharines, Ont.,
1858).

247.3 his friends from Chatham (Canada)] On the morning of 8 May 1858, at a
schoolhouse in Chatham, Canada West, John Brown convened a secret convention
attended by a dozen of his followers and by thirty-four blacks. The meeting framed a
constitution for the revolutionary state that Brown proposed to create for liberated
slaves in the Appalachian fastnesses. Article 46 of the unanimously adopted constitu-
tion denied any intention to overthrow state or federal governments or to cause the