and they have to know the story, and with dangerfield newby, they have a coat with two notes. in one pocket is the actual letter that you write about here from his wife saying, husband come, come get us now. you can buy us now. come now. and in the other, of course, is a note from john brown saying we must free the millions of enslaved. and the man is looking at it saying, which do i do? can you tell the rest of the story? >> yeah. i think it's not known enough that this was among the many astonishing things about brown and his band. this was a biracial guerrilla band. and in this tiny mountain hideout -- you should go to the kennedy farm. it's a little log cabin. it's like one of those little log cabins here in waterford. you had roughly 20 men and women crammed into this little hideout all that summer. you can imagine how tense and sweaty it was. they're all writing letters to their lovers and family, essentially farewell letters beus

among the letters are astonishing are from harriet newby to dangerfield. part of what is astonishing is most of the slaves were illiterate obviously. it's unusually to have them illiterate and we have their letters. and he goes there really joins brown's band to rescue his wife and children. and the tragic part of it is he's the first of brown's band who is -- he's gunned down in the street in harper's ferry. his body is desecrated by angry whites. 50 miles short of his goal of rescuing harriet. and the virginians collected these letters that he had from harriet that appear to have been on his person and published them. the governor of virginia published all the documents, and they didn't see any indictment of slavery in these letters. they just published them. you just read these letters that are heart-breaking saying, you know, come save me, dangerfield, because like many virginia slaves of that era, she was scared she was going to be sold to a gang labor plantation in the deep south, and that's exactly what happened. six months later she's sold to a pla