It didn’t percolate right off. Only forty-five folks percolated to Chatham, and of that number, nearly a third was the white fellers from the Old Man’s army or was white fellers who picked up and joined us along the way. It was January, cold and snowy, and on account of that or whatever other duties kept them free Negroes home, it was as pitiful a convention as I ever did see. It was held in an old Masons’ lodge in a single day, with lots of speeches and resolving and herebys and halooting ’bout this and that and not a bite to eat; a bunch of them fellers read declarations the Old Man had written up, and there was a lot of hollering ’bout who shot John and what the slave needed to do to prosper and get clear of the white man. There weren’t nothing too good for encouragement in the whole deal from what I could see. Even the Old Man’s pal Mr. Douglass didn’t come, and that made the Old Man’s feathers fall some.
“Frederick never plans well,” he said airily, “and he will regret the lack of planning that caused him to miss one of the great moments in American history. There is great speakers and great minds present here. We is changing the course of this country as we speak, Onion.”
Course, being that he was the main appointed speaker and wrote the constitution and set the bylaws and basically done the whole thing himself, that helped make the thing in his mind seem more important. It was all ’bout him, him, and him. Nobody in America could outdo John Brown when it come to tooting his own whistle. He let the Negroes have their moments, course, and after they blowed out more hot gas and done more grousing ’bout the white man and slavery in that one day than I was to hear in the next thirty years, it was his turn. It was the end of the day, and they had speechified and signed papers and made resolutions and the like, and it was the Old Man’s turn to speak and show his papers and froth his mouth ’bout the whole slavery show. I was dead tired and hungry by then, course, having had nothing to eat being around him as usual, but he was the main event, and that being so, they was all licking their chops for him when he shuffled to the front of the room fluffling his papers, while the room lay quiet, full of expectation.
He wore a string tie for the occasion, and sewed three new buttons on his tattered suit, of which they was all different-colored buttons, but for him that was sporty. He stood upon the old rostrum, cleared his throat, then declared, “The day of the Negro’s victory is at hand.” And off he went. I ought to say here that these wasn’t no ordinary Negroes the Old Man was talking with. These Negroes were upper crust. They wore bow ties and bowler caps. They had all their teeth. Their hair was clipped clean. They was schoolteachers and ministers and doctors; shaved men who knowed their letters, and, by God, the Old Man roused these sporty, free, highfalutin, big-time Negroes till they was ready to roast corn and eat earworms in his favor. He raised the rafters on that old lodge house. He had them Negroes bellowing like sheep. When he harped ’bout destroying the white man’s slave yard, they hollered, “Yes!” When he railed ’bout taking the revolution to the white man, they screamed, “We is all for it!” When he honked on ’bout busting them slaves loose by force, they piped out, “Let us begin!” But when he quit his speech and held up a paper asking for volunteers to come up and sign on in his war against slavery, not a man stepped forward nor raised his hand. The room was quiet as a cotton sack.
Finally a feller in the back stood up.
“We is all for your war on slavery,” he said, “but would like to know what your specific plan is.”
“I can’t announce it,” the Old Man grumbled. “There might be spies among us. But I can tell you, it ain’t a peaceable march using moral suasion.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I aim to purge America’s sin with blood. And I will do it soon. With the help of the Negro people.”
That curdled my cheese right there, and I decided Canada is where I would stay. I had my pantaloons, shirt, and shoes hidden away, plus a few pennies I’d managed to save up from our Yankee fund-raising. I figured with all them high-siddity niggers in the room, there must be at least one or two kindhearted souls among ’em who would help me get started out new again, maybe tender me some shelter and a bit to eat till I got going enough to pull up my own knickers.
A slim feller with long sideburns and a smock coat near the front of the room stood up. “I allows that is plan enough for me,” the feller said. “I will join up.” His name was O. P. Anderson. A braver soul you will not meet. But I’ll get to O.P. in a minute.
Next the Old Man looked around the room and asked, “Is there anyone else?”
Not a soul stirred.
Finally another feller spoke out. “If you will just tell a little of your battle plan, Captain, then I will join. I can’t sign a contract knowing what kind of dangers is ahead.”
