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840 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

James Montgomery, Aaron D. Stevens, and eventually John Brown. An early convert
to Brown's plan to liberate slaves, Kagi accompanied Brown to the Chatham, Canada
West, convention and was designated secretary of war under the Provisional
Constitution drawn up there. Kagi supported Brown,s decision to attack Harpers
Ferry but always maintained that the raiders should then move off rapidly into the
mountains. During the occupation of Harpers Ferry. Kagi unsuccessfully implored
Brown to evacuate before becoming completely surrounded. Rather than surrender,
he died as he was leading an isolated party of raiders in a doomed escape attempt.
John W. Wayland, John Kagi and John Brown (Strasburg, Va., 1961); Oates, To Purge
This Land, 220, 246, 266-68, 280, 290-96; Noble, John Brown, 60-66, 80, 93-97;
Villard, John Brown, 679.

248.29-30 James Gloucester and his wife] Reverend James Newton Gloucester
(1818-90) and his wife, Elizabeth A. Gloucester (1820-83), were friends of Douglass
and notable leaders of the African American community in New York. James grew up
in Philadelphia, entered the Presbyterian clergy, and eventually led a congregation in
Brooklyn's black community. Along with Elizabeth, a native of Richmond, Virginia,
who owned and operated a furniture store in Brooklyn, Gloucester was involved in
philanthropic causes and the black national convention movement. He supported John
Brown's attempted raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. During the Civil War he served as
president of the American Freedmen's Friend Society, which offered aid to black resi-
dents of Brooklyn. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Kings County, 265; The New York
Supplement: Containing the Decisions of the lntermediate and Lower Courts of
Record of New York State, 300 vols. (St. Paul. Minn., 1888-1938), 15:899-900;
Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:379-81.

248.36 Henry Watson] Born in Maryland, Henry Watson (c. 1812-?), was a free
black barber in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in the 1850s. He was an Underground
Railroad operator and assisted in the preparations for John Brown's attack on Harpers
Ferry in 1859. Around 1865 Watson and his wife, Eliza, moved to Elyria, Ohio, where
Watson became a day laborer. 1860 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Franklin County, 185;
1870 U.S. Census, Ohio, Lorain County, 458; 1880 U.S. Census, Ohio, Lorain
County, 432; Henry P. Organ, "John Brown, Frederick Douglass, and Shields Green,"
in John Brown Mysteries: Allies for Freedom, ed. Jean Libby (Missoula, Mont.,
1999), 94-95.

250.27-29 have been assailed. . .about their criticisms] Douglass probably alludes
to published criticism made by black abolitionist minister J. Sella Martin of his failure
to join John Brown at Harpers Ferry and his subsequent flight abroad. New York
Weekly Anglo-African, 31 December 1859; Quarles, Allies for Freedom, 114.

251.4 Jeremiah Anderson, one of Brown's men] Douglass confused two members
of John Brown's raiding party. Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson (1833-59) had been born
in Indiana and worked at a number of trades in Illinois and Iowa. In 1857 he migrated
to Kansas and soon enlisted in the free-state militia under the command of James
Montgomery. He joined Brown's slave-liberating raid on Missouri and followed him