" There are spies everywhere. I’d be a fool to tell ’em my top-secret plans!” He was confounded with it. He was furious when some of his supporters declared they weren’t going to send him a dime more if he didn’t tell them their plans. The ironical thing is, I reckon he would have told them his plans. He wanted to tell ’em his plans. Problem is, I don’t think the Old Man knowed what his plan was hisself. He knowed what he wanted to do. But as to the exactness of it—and I knowed many has studied it and declared this and that and the other on the subject—Old John Brown didn’t know exactly what he was gonna do from sunup to sundown on the slavery question. He knowed what he weren’t gonna do. He weren’t going to go down quiet. He weren’t going to have a sit-down committee meeting with the Pro Slavers and nag and commingle and jingle with ’em over punch and lemonade and go bobbing for apples with ’em. He was going down raising hell. But what kind of hell, he was waiting on the Lord to tell him what that is, is my reckonings, and the Lord weren’t tellin’, at least that first part of the year in Tabor. "

― James McBride , The Good Lord Bird