His first blunder was in divulging all his plans to Forbes, an utter stranger, while he was so careful in concealing them from others.

Forbes, as ambitious and reckless as himself, of course soon quarreled with him, and left him, and endeavored first to supplant and then betray him.
[Sidenote] Realf, Testimony Mason Report, p.91.Ibid., pp.

91-4.
Meanwhile, little by little, Brown gathered one colored and six white confederates from among his former followers in Kansas, and assembled them for drill and training in Iowa; four others joined him there.
These, together with his son Owen, counted, all told, a band of twelve persons engaged for, and partly informed of, his purpose.

He left them there for instruction during the first three months of the year 1858, while he himself went East to procure means.
[Sidenote] "Atlantic," July, 1872, p.

51.
At the beginning of February, 1858, John Brown became, and remained for about a month, a guest at the house of Frederick Douglass, in Rochester, New York.