The provisional constitution and sundry blank commissions were surreptitiously printed, and captains and lieutenants appointed by the signature of John Brown "Commander-in-Chief," countersigned by the "Secretary of War." Gradually, also, the commander-in-chief resolved on an important modification of his plan: that, instead of plunging at once into the Virginia mountains, he would begin by the capture of the United States armory and arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

Two advantages seem to have vaguely suggested themselves to his mind as likely to arise from this course: the possession of a large quantity of Government arms, and the widespread panic and moral influence of so bold an attempt.

But it nowhere appears that he had any conception of the increased risk and danger it involved, or that he adopted the slightest precaution to meet them.
Harper's Ferry was a town of five thousand inhabitants, lying between the slave-States of Maryland and Virginia, at the confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers, where the united streams flow through a picturesque gap in the single mountain-range called the Blue Ridge.

The situation possesses none of the elements which would make it a defensible fastness for protracted guerrilla warfare, such as was contemplated in Brown's plan.

The mountains are everywhere approachable without difficulty; are pierced by roads and farms in all directions; contain few natural resources for sustenance, defense, or concealment; are easily observed or controlled from the plain by superior forces.