More telling, perhaps, was another comment Salmon made in the same interview: “Father’s idea in his Harper’s Ferry movement, was to agitate the slavery question. Not to create an insurrection. The intention of the pikes was to strike terror—to make agitation.” This disturbance, Salmon said, would spark the great conflict Brown believed was necessary to end slavery. “He wanted to bring on the war. I have heard him talk of it many times.”
