The Good Lord Bird
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Let every man work for the abolition of slavery in his own way.
Its essentially the argument we hear from him in Hiving the Bees.
That may be true, but the full picture is a lot cloudier.
So what did Douglass do?
Well, in the first week of November he sailed for England on what he called a long-scheduled trip.
Hiving the Bees painstakingly recounts just how exquisitely Brown fumbled his planning for the raid at Harpers Ferry.
(Douglass must have thought hed made a wise choice to back out.)
Then he proceeds to begin (loudly) banging a local wife, Mary Huffmaster.
John Brown, what the hell are you doing!
Whats the song you singing, he asks.
Onion breaks out in an old Dixie hymn.
Is you on the gospel train?
Youre gonna get us all murdered, a woman rage-whispers at him, and she isnt wrong.
And not just for their own lives.
How can the Railman bring in that many rebels overnight?
How can Tubman motivate them?
It looks like fate.
And what an exit.
Like his newfound lord and savior, Onion presumably does the same thing.
All the way back to Harpers Ferry.
To stand by his man.
