Muscatine Weekly Journal

The Confession of Capt. Cook.

The confession of Cook, old Brown's chief man in command, is jealously guarded, for purposes to be hereafter developed. Its importance is hardly sufficient to warrant such care. It is ostensibly withheld from the public eye in order that it may be issued in copy-righted pamphlet form, for the benefit of the man Young, who was wounded in the conflict at the Ferry, and who is now left destitute. It is quite a Virginia notion, this turning of public paper to private uses. The document, as read in Court, filled twenty-one pages of foolscap, but threw comparatively little new light on the Harper's Ferry affair. It was mostly a record of Cook's personal experiences. It related how he first became acquainted with Brown in 1856, just after the battle of Black Jack; how he was induced to join Brown to co-operate with him in his labors for securing the freedom of Kansas; how certain expeditions for rescuing slaves from Missouri, and setting them free in Canada, were accomplished, and similar details equally irrelevant. The more important portions were those which told of the Convention held in Canada, at which the well-known constitution was framed; of the military training under Stevens, which Brown's party went through, altering their original intention, which was to be instructed by Col. Forbes; and of his own exploration of Jefferson county, Va., under Brown's direction, to prepare the way for the insurrection.

Gerrit Smith, Fred Douglass, Dr. S. G. Howe, and others, were mentioned in the confession, but not in a way to deeply implicate them. Their connection with Brown involved, however, the presentation of pistols, money, &c. Cook said that the time of the invasion would have been different but for the information given by Col. Forbes. But, altogether, the confession does not bear very strongly upon the case, and it is the opinion of the Court that Cook has withheld the greater part of his knowledge.