Hundreds of copies of a provisional constitution were found among John Brown's papers after his 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia. It called for a new state in the Appalachian Mountains, a sort of West Virginia, populated by escaped slaves from plantations, which were at lower altitudes. It was introduced into evidence at his trial as evidence of sedition. John Brown also wrote, at about the same time, a little-known Declaration of Liberty, inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Creation of the constitution The Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States was written by Brown while a guest in Frederick Douglass's house in Rochester, New York, in February, 1858. He later described it as "of my own contriving and getting up". This constitution was adopted at a convention Brown held in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, on May 8–10, 1858. Although this document was dismissed by contemporaries as evidence of Brown's madness, David Reynolds points out that at the time, the U.S. Constitution itself was "a highly contested text". It was rejected by the abolitionists Wm. Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, who called it "a covenant with death and an agreement from hell" because it indirectly sanctioned slavery, as the Dred Scott decision had just confirmed. Projected use of the Constitution Just what the provisional constitution was intended for is not completely clear. It was not distributed in Harpers Ferry. There is no record of any comments by Brown on how and when it was to be distributed and used. "John Brown never...communicated his whole plan, even to his immediate followers. ...With characteristic reticence Brown revealed his whole plan to no one, and many of those close to him received quite different impressions, or rather read their own ideas into Brown's careful speech." Brown's planned raid on Harpers Ferry was laid out at the Chatham Convention, held in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, in 1858. The convention of mostly black delegates also adopted the measures of Brown's Provisional Constitution. Printed certificates named the following as officers under the Provisional Constitution: John Brown, Commander in Chief John Henry Kagi, Secretary of War George B. Gill, Secretary of the Treasury (reproduced at right) Jeremiah G. Anderson, named Captain, October 1, 1859 William H. Leeman, named Captain, October 15, 1859 (reproduced at right) It was not the constitution of a projected new state, for that it was made up of the mountainous