Following the trail blazed by a discredited predecessor, the writer of _Fifty Years After_ abandons the teachings which the record discloses concerning this episode, and, concurring with Mr. Redpath, tries to confirm in our history that author's perversion of the facts relating to it. He assumes to believe, and seeks to teach the public to believe, that Brown's plans were, comparatively, crude, and that his movement in execution of them was of a harmless nature: that he merely intended to attempt to carry on a guerrilla warfare from some point in the nearby mountains, and that his entrance to Harper's Ferry was not an occupation of the place but a "raid" upon it, undertaken for the purpose of advertising, in a spectacular way, the guerrilla warfare which he intended to engage in. He says:[401]
As for their general, he not only was the sole member of the attacking force to believe in the assault on the property of the United States at Harper's Ferry, but he was, as they neared the all-unsuspecting town, without any clear and definite plan of campaign. The general order detailed the men who were to garrison various parts of the town and hold the bridges, but beyond that, little had been mapped out. It was all to depend upon the orders of the commander-in-chief, who seemed bent on violating every military principle. Thus, he had appointed no definite place for the men to retreat to, and fixed no hour for the withdrawal from the town. He, moreover, proceeded at once to defy the canons by placing a river between himself and his base of supplies,--the Kennedy Farm,--and then left no adequate force on the river-bank to insure his being able to fall back to that base. Hardly had he entered the town when, by dispersing his men here and there, he made his defeat as easy as possible. Moreover, he had in mind no well-defined purpose in attacking Harpers Ferry, save to begin his revolution in a spectacular way, capture a few slave-holders and release some slaves. So far as he had thought anything out, he expected to alarm the town and then, with the slaves that had rallied to him, to march back to the school-house near the Kennedy Farm, arm his recruits and take to the hills. Another general, with the same purpose in view would have established his mountain camp first, swooped down upon the town in order to spread terror throughout the State, and in an hour or two, at most, have started back to his hill-top fastness.... Hence, he confidently hoped to retire to the mountains before catching sight of a soldier of the regular army or of the militia,--by no means an unjustifiable expectation....