Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays

[232] meet these men at Harrisburg, while LeBarnes was to secure a reinforcement of German-Americans, among whom he had much influence, from New York. Only one man in Harrisburg, an active Abolitionist, knew of our purpose, and I met Montgomery at this man's house, after taking up my own residence, on February 17, 1860, at the United States Hotel, under the name of Charles P. Carter. I had met the guerrilla leader once before in Kansas, and we now consulted about the expedition, which presented no ordinary obstacles.

The enterprise would involve traversing fifty miles of mountain country by night, at the rate of about ten miles each night, carrying arms, ammunition, blankets, and a week's rations, with the frequent necessity of camping without fire in February, and with the certainty of detection in case of snow. It would include crossing the Potomac, possibly at a point where there was neither a bridge nor a ford. It would culminate in an attack on a building with a wall fourteen feet high, with two sentinels outside and twenty-five inside; with a certainty of raising the town in the process, and then, if successful, with the need of retreating, perhaps with wounded men and probably by daylight. These were the difficulties that Montgomery, as our leader, had to face; and although, in