Brown did try to attract more black recruits. In particular he urged his old friend Frederick Douglass to join him as a sort of liaison officer to the slaves. Brown met Douglass secretly in an old quarry near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in August 1859. “Come with me, Douglass,” he said. “I want you for a special purpose. When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I shall want you to help hive them.” But Douglass refused. He was convinced that Brown had embarked on a suicidal mission, “an attack on the federal government” that “would array the whole country against us.”
