I looked at him with some astonishment, that he could rest upon a reed so weak and broken, and told him that Virginia would blow him and his hostages sky-high, rather than that he should hold Harper’s Ferry an hour.
Recalling his meeting with John Brown before the Harper's Ferry raid, Douglass expresses his skepticism about the plan's viability.
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More from Frederick Douglass
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from voting their convictions.
The nation or people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether.
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.