53-4.
One of the participants relates, that--"When the agitated party broke up their council for the night, it was perfectly plain that Brown could not be held back from his purpose." The discussion of the friends on the second day (February 23) was therefore only whether they should aid him, or oppose him, or remain indifferent.

Against every admonition of reason, mere personal sympathy seems to have carried a decision in favor of the first of these alternatives.

"You see how it is," said the chief counselor, Gerrit Smith; "our dear old friend has made up his mind to this course and cannot be turned from it.

We cannot give him up to die alone; we must support him." Brown has left an exact statement of his own motive and expectation, in a letter to Sanborn on the following day.

"I have only had this one opportunity in a life of nearly sixty years ...