John Brown the Abolitionist -- A Biographer's Blog

2012-02-11T16:01:00.009-05:00

Standing Lincoln, Kneeling Black--
A "Worship, Full and Supreme": Frederick Douglass Remembers Abraham Lincoln

A Statue of Limitations

On April 14, 1876, Frederick Douglass delivered the keynote address for the unveiling of Freedman's Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington D.C. It was the centennial year of U.S. independence and although emancipation and the end of the Civil War were only a little more than a decade before, the nation had turned heartily toward the celebration of independence with little thought of the end of slavery. According to history blogger Josh Brown, the lavish, expansive Philadelphia Centennial Exposition had been "more about the future than the past, heralding the nation’s triumphant recovery and dynamic growth since its bloody civil war." Yet the Philadelphia Exposition reflected the larger attitude of white America in that little mention was made of black emancipation and Reconstruction.1

The April 14 event that same year was obviously attuned to remembrance of Lincoln's assassination, which took place on the same date in 1865. Perhaps the Freedman's Memorial statue is familiar to most people, with its legendary image of a standing Lincoln with a kneeling black man at his feet. In the right hand of Lincoln is the Emancipation Proclamation, while his left hand is salvifically extended over--but not touching--the gratefully obeisant black man. Douglass himself disliked the statue. Although he said nothing about it in his address, he was overheard saying that “it showed the Negro on his knee when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom.”2 What makes Douglass's remarks all the more profound is the fact that the Freedman's Memorial statue was the only image manifested in what had been a larger plan in tribute to black freedom. Josh Brown informs us that the original plan--primarily funded and supported by blacks--was an ambitious exhibit that was to be executed by New England sculptor Harriet Hosmer. This planned memorial had attracted the interest and support of black war veterans, but also white liberals who were excited to see a memorial commemorating "the African-American experience from slavery to freedom, culminating with the figure of a black soldier brandishing a rifle." This was a radical concept, especially in the 19th century, and perhaps it's no wonder that it never came to fruition despite serious efforts to attract more support. "Moving through a succession of plans and artists, the designs grew more fragmented and unfocused," writes Brown.

The Ideals of Black Obeisance

Ultimately, all that came of this worthy plan was the standing Lincoln-kneeling black man, a statue executed by sculptor Thomas Ball. The portrayal of the liberated black man was boastfully authentic, having been based upon the photographic image of a real person, a former slave named Archer Alexander.3 But as Douglass himself recognized, it was anything but the image that had been intended, showing the progress of blacks from slavery to militant self-emancipation. The black man in the Freedman's Monument is not a strong soldier who has fought for black liberation as much as for the Union. Instead, the preferred image is of black servile gratitude--the exchange of "Massa" for the Christlike mythology of the so-called Great Emancipator. Historians may be quick to point out that toward the end of his life, Lincoln entered the fallen Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia, and was greeted by grateful former slaves, including one black man who knelt before him. If I'm not mistaken, however, Lincoln had the good sense to be embarrassed by the man's posture and admonished him to stand. Not so in the Freedman's Monument, which suggests Lincoln, like Jesus, receiving the worship of a true believer while bestowing his grace upon the kneeling black.

Of course this is an image that warmed the hearts of white people then and probably still resonates with emotional affirmation for many whites today. Generally speaking, white society has always assumed that blacks should be grateful for any kindness showed to them, while at the same time, white society long feared (and perhaps still does) the image of strong black men with guns, even when they were fighting on the same side. In 1863, when Douglass had his first meeting with Lincoln, he was informed by the President (in Douglass's words) that "the wisdom of making colored men soldiers was still doubted," and that "their enlistment was a serious offense to popular prejudice." Lincoln himself believed that since blacks had "larger motives" to enter the army, they should "be willing to enter the service upon any conditions," which apparently meant not being armed, not being paid the same as white soldiers, and not being afforded the same protections as whites when taken as prisoners of war.4 To be sure, there is a complex of friendly/useful black images embedded in the mind of white society, from black maids to mystical-therapeutic characters, all of which come to the aid of troubled white heroes and heroines. But at the core of these images is the paradigm of the black man kneeling before the Jesus of "American" Civil Religion. In post-Civil War terms, for blacks to have refused to bow before Lincoln would have been much like early Christians refusing to offer an oblation to the genius of Caesar. Treason.

III

Lincoln and Messianic Mythology

In today's New York Times (11 Feb. 2012), a museum review by Edward Rothstein highlights a $60 million "transformation" of Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. There has been a museum there devoted to Lincoln for years, but now there will be a 10-story building called the Ford's Theater Center for Education and Leadership next to the Peterson House, across the street from Ford's Theater, where Lincoln died. Whatever else the Center will offer, it will feature an "extensive exhibition" about Lincoln and his times, with a special focus upon the assassination--a exhibit consisting of "careful narrative, well-chosen images, and informative touch screens." It also features a 34-foot tree-like sculpture comprised completely of books about Lincoln.5 While this is completely consistent with the larger scope of Lincoln's portrayal in U.S. history, as well as the fact that we have entered the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, it is also indicative of the reverential mythology of Lincoln the slain messiah of the nation and the "Great Emancipator" of black people. Yet the question remains whether all of this Lincoln adoration is grounded in history.

The messianic Lincoln mythology is undoubtedly a phenomenon of nationalistic self-interest, although it also represents the cooperation and collaboration of 19th century white liberals as well as the black community following Lincoln's assassination. Historian Leon Litwack writes:

Despite the disappointment over Lincoln's lenient amnesty program, his misplaced confidence in southern Unionists, and his "moderate" experiments in state reconstruction, the assassination of the President silenced his black critics and threw a stunned black community into deep mourning, as though it had lost its only white friend and protector. The President's initial doubts about the wisdom of emancipation and the enlistment of blacks were not forgotten, his equivocations on civil rights ignored, his schemes of colonization, expatriation, and reconstruction forgiven.6

Litwack goes onto describe how black people fell into place, mourning for the dead Lincoln and declaring him a martyr. One black newspaperman declared Lincoln "the only President who ever had the courage to acknowledge the true manhood of the negro," concluding that he was "the greatest earthly friend of the colored race."7 In a scene that anticipates naive blacks weeping over the assassinated John F. Kennedy ninety-eight years later, The Freedman (a white antislavery publication) noted one elderly black woman crying unabashedly as the President's funeral cortege passed through New York City. Wringing her hands and weeping, the tearful woman kept lamenting aloud, "He died for me, he died for me!" The story was entirely pleasing to the white Christian editors of The Freedman, who turned the incident into a black love fest for Lincoln:

How many thousands of her race have felt and said the same,--"He died for me!" and may truly have added, "How we loved him while he lived, and how precious is his memory now that he is dead!" Yes; you loved him. Why? Because he so loved your people that he was willing to die for them. If President Lincoln could have foreseen his death, do you not think he would cheerfully have given himself a sacrifice to the cause of liberty and justice? I think he would. . . .I do not believe he would have hesitated or shrunk back in the least. You have reason, yes, we all have reason, to honor and love the name of Abraham Lincoln.

As if this weren't enough, the editor goes all the way to the cross: "Do you not think of Jesus, the blessed Son of God, our Redeemer and Saviour? He suffered for us. He died for us. Do our tears fall when we think of his great love?"8 Obviously there was a missionary agenda in the article since The Freedman was published by a Christian antislavery organization, The American Tract Society. However, the redemptive language was clearly deliberate--at least as deliberate as Emerson's "gallows glorious" rhetoric had been drawn to connect John Brown to Christ after his hanging in 1859. But Emerson was no evangelical and the cross represented moral example, not blood propitiation to him. The evangelical ratification of Lincoln as the greater Christ figure of the Republic at best demoted John Brown to the role of John the Baptist, his biblical doppelganger. With the martyred Lincoln freshly enshrined in the glories above, Old Brown was now reinterpreted as the one who had gone before Lincoln, making straight the path before the coming Lord. Brown's brief stint as Jesus was over. He was now, at best, co-martyr with Lincoln; but all of the energies of antislavery society now began to move toward the apotheosis of Lincoln far above Brown.

This is evident in the same issue of The Freedman, its lead article picturing a woodcut engraving of the popular Matthew Brady photograph of the President and his youngest son, Tad, at his side. The grief of the nation is quite evident in these words, but also the inclination to enshrine the dead Lincoln in a salvific aura, especially for black people:

And of all the people in this nation, none feel the blow more deeply than the freed men and women, who, by the firm, strong, just hand of Abraham Lincoln have just been recued from the iron grasp of the oppressor. He was your EMANCIPATOR, your FRIEND. God raised him up, and gave to him alone, of all the good and great men of our land, the privilege and honor of unbinding your fetters, and bidding you go free. This one act will cover his name with distinction and glory, and make his memory sweet and precious to you forever.9

The Gospel According to Frederick Douglass

In light of the mythology of Lincoln the messianic emancipator, it is interesting how Frederick Douglass is often referenced in relation to Lincoln, and yet his actual criticism of the President is rarely discussed by historians and journalists. To be sure, Douglass did appreciate the President, as it were, always making lemonade from the lemon that had been served up to black people in the person of Lincoln. Despite his distaste for the Freedman's Monument and his in depth criticism of Lincoln as a benign racist and paternalist, Douglass did honor him as the man who ultimately became the instrument of breaking down the prison house of slavery through the might of the federal government. "[F]or no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him," Douglass had concluded, "but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.” Why was Lincoln "doubly dear"? Douglass's rationale is clear: assuming white supremacy, he was still appreciative that despite Lincoln's white priorities, he ultimately addressed the issue of slavery by wedding it to the concept of saving the Union--something that he had not first upheld. Notwithstanding his actual political record, Douglass maintained that "it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement" resulting in the end of slavery. As the foremost leader of white people, he was thus able to use the power of white society in the North to crush the power of the slavocracy. Furthermore, Lincoln, while hardly free of racial prejudice, was at least devoted to the end of slavery, Douglass concluded, and it was his constitutional disdain for human bondage that made Lincoln a redeemable figure in his eyes.10

But if historians and journalists merely concentrate on the best face that Douglass could put on the President, they do a great disservice to the truth. For it was also the witness of generous Frederick Douglass that weighs heavily against Lincoln in the broader judgment of humanity and history. Let Douglass's words from the same address ring out, loud and true, as to the real nature of Abraham Lincoln "the Great Emancipator":

. . .Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. . . .

Speaking to white people in the audience, Douglass is even more pointed:

Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow citizens, a preeminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by force of circumstances and necessity.11

It is a mark of the genius of Douglass (in my opinion, the most brilliant figure in 19th century U.S. history) that he could expose the truth of Lincoln so drastically without failing to appreciate how the President had inadvertently stumbled into history as a useful tool of freedom despite himself. Douglass was kind, but there is no deception in his words. He was likewise truthful in uplifting John Brown as the man who could die for the slave in contrast to himself, the man who could live for the slave. The truth of Douglass's doctrine was substantial, although in the case of John Brown, it counterbalanced a drama of two men with very different ideas and plans. Of course, Douglass was not looking for a white messiah, and his own ego as a leader should not be missed by the historian either. Yet a comparison of Douglass's words regarding John Brown and Abraham Lincoln would lead us to conclude that it was the latter who fell short of the former with respect to black emancipation.

The worship of Lincoln, "full and supreme," continues as the staple of "American" history. Although he died like an emperor seated in a theater box while watching a comedy, one would think that Lincoln had died on Calvary, and that from the wound in his head there had flowed blood and water--the redemption of the nation and the life giving stream of the emancipated slave. This is a far cry from the way that John Brown is remembered. While we hardly need to make a messiah of either man, it is interesting that between the two of them, it was Brown who set out to die if need be, from the onset of his liberation struggle. Between the two of them also, it was Brown who died like a martyr--surrounded by his enemies, with all the powers of the state against him, and with prayer, not laughter, on his lips.

Notes

1 Josh Brown, “Another View of the ‘Statue of Emancipation.’” Picturing History (Jul. 10, 2010). Retrieved from: http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1045
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid. Josh Brown seems to have derived his information from the Kirk Savage's book, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998/99.
4 The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford: Park Publishing, 1881; rpt. Seacaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1983), pp. 352-53.
5 Edward Rothstein, "Lincoln Museum, Acts II, the Morning After the Death," New York Times (11 Feb. 2012), C1, 5.
6 Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Knopf, 1979), 527.
7 Ibid.
8 "He Died For Me," The Freedman [Boston: American Tract Society] (July 1865), p. 32.
9 "Abraham Lincoln, Our Emancipator," The Freedman, p. 1.
10 The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, pp. 494-95, 497-98.
11 Ibid., 492-93.

2012-02-08T14:12:00.000-05:00

Note This:
John Brown Gets an Honorable Mention in Lincoln Play, "Necessary Sacrifices": A Note from Greg Artzner of Magpie

Greg Artzner & Terry Leonino--Magpie!

Terry and I received complimentary tickets to see "Necessary Sacrifices", the two-hander about Lincoln & Douglass at Ford's Theater in DC last Saturday and we were pleased to hear that they included the exchange between Douglass and Lincoln regarding John Brown in which Lincoln, post Emancipation Proclamation, proposes that Douglass lead an expedition that was a dead-ringer for Brown's subterranean passway idea. As Lincoln spoke, I leaned over to Terry and whispered, "He sounds just like John Brown" (whom he had dismissed as a mad man in act 1). Well, lo and behold, the next words out of Douglass's mouth were "Do you know who you sound like?" "No. Who?" "John Brown."–Greg

http://www.magpiemusic.com

2012-02-04T18:49:00.000-05:00

Local Legacy:
Pieces of History

While the 84-year-old Litchfield resident may not have led a raid at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., nor was he hanged for treason by the United States government, Neidt and his predecessors spent their lives preserving the memory of a famous Torrington abolitionist who did.  

In 2004, Neidt passed that multigenerational legacy to elated officials of the Torrington Historical Society in the form of artifacts that were lovingly preserved by his grandfather Albert Neidt, and father William Neidt.  "My grandfather worked in a mill, but a group of men asked him if he would go work at the John Brown house," Edward Neidt explained. "They said ‘We’ll pay you that same amount you’re making here."   And Albert Neidt did just that, effectively establishing the Neidt family’s dedication to the man many now call a martyr for the abolition of slavery.

John Brown was born in 1800 on a vast parcel of farmland along what Torrington has named John Brown Road. Following his death in 1859, the Brown homestead became an international attraction and evolved into one of Connecticut’s first museum houses.  Much to the disappointment of the world, the John Brown house was completely destroyed by fire in 1918 - but not before Albert and William Neidt retained a handful of artifacts that were presented Friday to historical society president David Bennett and executive director Mark McEachern.  "I’m 84. My daughters don’t want these things," Neidt said. "I can’t think of a better place for them to go."  

Thanks to Neidt, an original guest book cataloging the names and dates of early 20th century visitors to the John Brown site, in addition to hand-forged metal nails and a piece of the homestead’s interior paneling, will forever be preserved in the historical society’s permanent collection.  But the most unique, and perhaps most valuable piece presented by Neidt were blueprints of the John Brown homestead - drafted from memory in 1938 by Neidt’s father, who lived in the house through his early teens.  "These are the only documents in existence that the show the floor plans of the John Brown house," McEachern said. "There are no photos - this is it."

According to McEachern and Bennett, the well-preserved blueprints and accompanying artifacts will remain on the premises of the historical society for use in future exhibits, courtesy of the "Neidt Collection."

Source: "John Brown Artifacts Donated to Torrington Historical Society." The Register-Citizen [Torrington, Conn.], 3 Feb. 2012.

2012-02-01T13:31:00.000-05:00

Quote Note
Author Richard Boyer on John Brown

". . .my admiration for the old man grows the more I see and learn of him. I do not think him a fanatic nor do I see him as a religious nut. I think of him as representative of the best of his age and time who did a job that needed to be done. I do not feel in the least patronizing towards the Old Man. On the contrary he seems to me one of the very greatest of Americans, in some aspects greater even than Washington or Lincoln. He acted almost alone and a little in advance of the events he helped to forward. Washington and Lincoln were not alone and advanced on the crest of great popular movements. And neither acted with such immediacy as Brown and one can't help but admire a man who hits out and acts while everyone is talking."

Source: Richard O. Boyer, Twin Falls, Idaho, to Boyd B. Stutler, Charleston, West Va., August 8, 1955, RP01-0276E-F, Boyd B. Stutler Papers, West Virginia State Archives.

2012-01-24T12:56:00.000-05:00

The Art of Profundity:
How Should We Remember John Brown? A John Hendrix Postscript

"John Brown has been a source of controversy for more than 150 years. In difficult times, men were forced to make difficult choices. When faced with the horrors of slavery, John could not bear the thought of inaction. . . . His decision to wage war on slavery in America made him an outlaw and ultimately cost him his life. But I think that his role in American history is often misunderstood.

"Today it is hard to grasp the immense sense of desperation felt by John and people like him during the time in Kansas still referred to as 'Bleeding Kansas.' On those barren plains there were no laws, no protection for families, and no hope for justice. While reading about those events, I often asked myself, if I saw my neighbors threatened, my family terrorized, and my dearest friends hauled away in chains, what would I do? Would I strike back against injustice?
"As I continued to study the life of John Brown, I began to admire him because he would not make a truce with injustice. Now, no man is perfect, and John was no exception. His ambitious plan to free the slaves was a spectacular failure. But though the United States1 hanged him as a traitor, I feel we must not dismiss him as a madman. Terrorists crave destruction and turmoil, and the seed of John's rebellion was compassion. . . ."
"John was a devout believer in Christianity. He used the Bible's words--that men are loved and valuable to God--as a holy plumb line. When he held this truth up against the crooked world, he knew things should be different. I was astonished to read about John's belief that black people should not just be free but equal, which was an idea far outside mainstream abolitionism in the antebellum United States. His passion for freedom was undisputed. Frederick Douglass said of John Brown: 'His zeal in the cause of my race was greater than mine. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him.'
"We should remember John Brown because he was not afraid to fight for the freedom of an oppressed people to which he did not belong. John was not a vigilante. The goals of his crusade were never mayhem, self-glorification, or personal vendetta, but freedom for all who were persecuted. It is difficult to say if his was against slavery was simply 'right' or 'wrong.' Ultimately, John Brown's contribution was not freedom itself, but an unbridled vision of conviction."

1 Brown was not hanged by the government of the United States, but by the State of Virginia. However, James Buchanan, the President of the United States in 1859, could have insisted on trying Brown in a federal court since Brown had attacked a federal armory. Instead, he opted to favor pro-slavery interests and handed Brown over to Virginia. So we can say that the Executive Office of the federal government essentially threw Brown to the wolves in allowing Virginia to try him, among other things, as a traitor to the State. In the long run, this is probably more true, since Brown's intentions were hardly revolutionary with respect to overthrowing the federal government.--LD

John Hendrix, Author's Note, John Brown: His Fight for Freedom (New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2009), pp. 38-39.

2012-01-21T00:12:00.000-05:00

Faith Matters--
Is John Brown Stigmatized Because of His Faith?

In 2009, John Hendrix, author and illustrator of the superb young people's book, John Brown: His Fight for Freedom (New York: Abrams Books, 2009), made this observation in a blog interview:

To me, he is a true civil rights hero. And most people think he is a lunatic. We have this popular image of him as an insane loony who killed people with some flawed notion of his own importance, who was punishing innocent civilians because of his religious beliefs. When you really read what he believed and why he was brought to his actions--you see just how unique he was in his own era. A true visionary, and he has been minimized because I think most people are uncomfortable with people who are strongly motivated by religious ideas. So, as a person who shares the faith of John Brown, I feel as though he deserves a more accurate account of his life.1

More recently, Hendrix reiterated this perspective in a podcast interview in New York city, when he stated:

John Brown is a fascinating hero in our country who happened to be a crazy Christian believer. And so he has been marginalized in my opinion because of his radical faith, not so much because of his violence. They like to pin it on the violence, but I think if the faith was not there, I don't think we would see it the same way. . . .It's not my mission to rescue his Christianity, but I can't help but think about it.2

Although I think political perspective is bound up in the basis for Brown's cultural demonization, I believe John is correct, and probably more so now than even fifty years ago when the onus of Brown's "violence" tended to be placed on his alleged insanity. As the two most recently published books on Brown show, secular scholars tend to connect his faith to his "violence." He is not simply a terrorist, but a religious terrorist.

1 "John Hendrix Interview Adventure Series 3." Interviewed by Chad W. Bickerman (Mar. 11, 2009). Mishaps and Aventures. Retrieved from: http://cwdesigner.blogspot.com/2009/02/john-hendrix-interview-adventure-series.html

2 John Hendrix interview by Sam Weber, Episode 13, Your Dreams My Nightmares (WSVA radio.com). Retrieved from: http://yourdreamsmynightmares.com/post/15733033001/your-dreams-my-nightmares-episode-013-an

2012-01-06T17:16:00.001-05:00

Slander Mistaken for History:
John Brown in Robert Jewett & Ole Wangerin’s Mission and Menace

Mission and Menace: Four Centuries of American Religious Zeal (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008) is Robert Jewett and Ole Wangerin’s text on U.S. religious history, covering the period 1607 to 2007. We understand that no historical survey will be entirely up to par in every segment or detail. Generalists do one thing, specialists another thing. So while I cannot fault Drs. Jewett & Wangerin too much for flummoxing the John Brown story, I cannot let them get away with it either.

Blaming Calvinists for Violence

Under the suggestive heading, “The Rise of Religiously Motivated Violence” (p. 118), Jewett and Wangerin blame “a predominately Calvinistic public in both the North and the South” for heightened violence, mob violence and skirmishes. This is a gross generalization. It would have been more appropriate for them to write, “a predominately white Anglo-Saxon Protestant public.”

"Without the Shedding of Blood"

Then Jewett and Wangerin introduce John Brown’s actions in Kansas and Virginia as the “definitive expressions of zealotry in the northern part of American culture.” They point out that Brown’s favorite scriptural slogan was Hebrews 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins,” and add: “which in fact was not intended to encourage violence against evildoers” (p. 119).

This is simply skewed. It is true that Brown often quoted Hebrews 9:22, but never as a justification for violent acts against “evildoers.” Brown believed that slavery was a national and corporate sin of the nation, and that the biblical sin of blood remission (judgment) applied as much to corporate sin as to individual sin. He believed that because slavery was such a great evil, God’s judgment would fall upon the nation—that it would exact a costly judgment. He once went so far as to say that it would be better if an entire judgment perished than for the nation to be destroyed in divine judgment. This may have been hyperbole, but it is important to understand that Brown believed God’s judgment upon the nation was inevitable. He wasn’t speaking of his own “violence,” but the righteous judgment of the divine. In this he was no different from many others, who sensed the great cloud of guilt that hovered over the nation. Even the slave master Thomas Jefferson once declared, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

To skew John Brown even further, Jewett and Wangerin say that Brown “felt that the only way for the sin of slavery to be atoned—and for the nation to be redeemed—was to annihilate slave owners.” This is a spurious notion that has no bearing in the historical record. Brown did not want to annihilate slave owners; he was only willing to kill slave owners in self-defense, but he had no plan or intention to “annihilate” slave masters in an insurrectionary fashion. Once again, people are so accustomed to hearing misinformation about Brown that this kind of error becomes incorporated into history books.

Pottawatomie, Again

To no surprise, Jewett and Wangerin see the Pottawatomie killings of May 1856 as “terrorist killings,” and mistakenly say Brown denied participating in the killings “when national atonement failed to transpire” (p. 119). Once more, they are not only ignorant of the historical record, but are biased by the bad information that they have received in their preparation. Clearly, they have no idea that the terrorists in Kansas were the pro-slavery thugs who threatened peaceful free state people, murdered five free state men, and planned on a violent seizure of the territory in spite of the democratic process. They do not know that the five thugs killed by Brown’s men at Pottawatomie were collaborating with terrorists and plotting the deaths of the Browns and others. Certainly, Brown had no thought that the killings would bring redemption for the nation; he was simply cutting off a conspiracy at its root—especially because there was no recourse to protection from the law in war-torn Kansas territory.

Harper’s Ferry Raid

As this segment is little more than a reinterpretation of a popular “historical” fiction, it is no surprise that Jewett and Wangerin's take on the Harper’s Ferry raid is corrupted. They call the raid a “farcical affair” because it was “poorly planned and executed.” They go so far as to say that the raid was so poorly contrived that “the anticipated slave uprising could not possibly have occurred.” Jewett and Wangerin conclude that “Brown’s disdain for rational planning was perfectly consistent with the impulse of hot zeal,” that Brown set aside planning in the belief that anything God willed would succeed regardless. (p. 120)

Of course, Jewett and Wangerin have no knowledge of the story and are really dealing in 20th century caricatures. The fact is that Brown planned the raid exceedingly well: he knew the details of the armory operation, knew that it had no military guard and little security; he made contact with black communities and individuals in the vicinity in advance; he knew which slave masters in the area to seize as hostages, and seems to have known the number of black males under bondage of these men; he brought superior weapons to Virginia than the Virginians held, including those manufactured at the armory; he knew the layout of Harper’s Ferry, and the appropriate time to move. There was nothing farcical, inadequate, or “poorly contrived” about his plans for the raid.

However, Brown did fail to execute his plans, and he admitted this himself. Yet his failure to follow through on his plans indicts his judgment, not the plan itself. The only mistake that Brown made at Harper’s Ferry was the worst one he could have made: he delayed. The kind of raid he had in mind would have been most successful if executed with rapidity and precision; he accomplished this going into the town, but failed to finish in the same manner. He really did err. But the point here is that failure does not make a plan farcical, just as sometimes even poor planning may be successful for unanticipated reasons.

Poison Roots, Poison Fruits

Jewett and Wangerin’s brief history book treatment of John Brown is terrible. It reflects ignorance and prejudice. But more so, it represents their naïve trust in some of the worst source material in 20th century John Brown historiography. Whenever one reads a history book, one should always check out the bibliography and notes first, because the sources used will largely determine the nature of the work in most cases. In this case, their source texts are corrupt, or at least suspect: Robert Penn Warren’s 1961 book, The Legacy of the Civil War; C. Van Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (1960); and Allan Nevins’ Prologue to the Civil War (1950). Poison roots lead to poison fruits: These works represent the height of the unofficial anti-Brown movement in the U.S. academy of the mid-20th century. Warren was a neo-Southern patriot who built his career on an anti-Brown screed written in the 1920s; Woodward was a Southern historian with his own biases against Brown, and Nevins despised Brown and slandered him in the name of “scientific history.” None of them were biographers of Brown. None are recognized or trusted in Brown scholarship today. Even back in the mid-20th century, Boyd Stutler, the greatest John Brown student, recognized the great degree of prejudice displayed in their writings.

One more sad thing about Jewett and Wangerin’s work on Brown is that it was written in the 21st century though based upon outdated, prejudiced sources. Couldn't they have updated their sources, maybe do some research before slandering the man? Perhaps the burden of this work was so great that Jewett and Wangerin figured that they could get by with leftover books in the library. Or perhaps Jewett and Wangerin just hate John Brown and don’t care to learn the truth. Regardless, the segment on Brown in Mission and Menace is some of the worst stuff I’ve seen on Brown in this era, and should be avoided at all cost. This book will undoubtedly mislead readers who depend upon it as a source for historical understanding. I definitely urge students of U.S. religious history to either avoid this book, or read it with great reservation.

If Drs. Jewett and Wangerin ever read this entry, I would suggest that they ponder the relevance of observing the Golden Rule toward those who are dead as well as those who are alive. John Brown at least deserves to be treated fairly, especially by Christian authors in a text on Christian history.

2011-12-31T12:30:00.003-05:00

Relic of Sorrow--
Remembering the Black Lynching Victims of the South

I came upon this item in a file, no doubt recovered years ago during one of my happy research forays, but unfortunately forgotten. It does not apply to the John Brown story, but its relevance speaks for itself. This poem, written by Charles Fred White, is headed by "Afro-American," which seems only a reiteration of the publication's title, Afro-American, dated September 1900 (p. 245). We should not forget that after the undoing of Reconstruction, with the cooperation of the Republican Party, white terrorism was fully unleashed upon black people in the South, and for decades thereafter the violent, murderous white lynch mob reigned.

Many of us are familiar with the poignant song, "Strange Fruit," made famous in 1939 by the legendary Billie Holiday. (As a side note, my late father, after having heard her recording of "Strange Fruit," and having no knowledge of her otherwise, referred to her quite appropriately in Italian as "Madonna Dolorosa.") "Strange Fruit" originated as a poem by Abel Meeropol and appeared first in a Leftist publication in that era.

Yet Meeropol's poem was hardly the first to address the outrageous racist violence that beset black people for so many years in between the end of Reconstruction and the developments pertaining to Civil Rights nearly a century later. Charles Fred White's poem was written to be sung as well, but quite bitterly to replace the lyrics of the patriotic anthem, "My Country 'Tis of Thee." It's a song worth singing, if only in remembrance of the many men and women who died as victims of terrorism in a nation--a nation whose literary and scholarly leadership, even in the 21st century, cannot stop talking about John Brown being an "American terrorist." No wonder black people fundamentally distrust the "American" narrative so often celebrated by the "majority."

O, country, 'tis of thee,

Land of the Lynching Bee,*

Of thee I sing.

How long will this base wrong

Pollute thy freedom song?

Perpetrated by a thong

Of heartless fiends.

My native country, thee,

How I long to be free!

Thy name to love.

I long to see the time

When this most heinous crime

Will be changed to deeds divine,

Like those above.

Let wailings swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees:

"God's will be done."

Let mortal souls awake--

Let all that breathe partake--

This spell of crime to break,

Ere the nation's gone.

O gracious God, to thee,

In thine all-wise mercy,

We now appeal!

May this land soon be brought

Out of this doom it's wrought;

For long, in vain, we've sought

Freedom to feel.

* One might expect this to have read, "Lynching Tree." But there is no error of transcription here. In fact, "bee" works very well, particularly in the traditional sense of a "bee" being any kind of social gathering, often including competition, and associated with an old English word associated with neighborly help among farmers. Thus the "Lynching Bee" reflects how entire communities throughout the South were complicit, directly or indirectly, in mass murder, even genocide against black people.

And yet there is no end to this obsession among white writers and scholars about "John Brown and violence," "John Brown and terrorism," etc. It seems to me that there are much bigger targets to hit when it comes to the themes of violence and terrorism in "America," especially since mistreatment of non-whites is so pervasive in U.S. history. Yet it is Old John Brown who remains the favorite target of white writers, to be singled out as the defining paradigm. I guess that's because the handful of largely contemptible white people who died as a result of his actions just matter more.

"You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."

2011-12-29T20:03:00.012-05:00

The Perennially Unfinished Business of Biography--
Two Responses to Midnight Rising (with comment)

Review by Jean Libby, independent researcher and scholar

Tony Horwitz, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Confederates in the Attic (Pantheon, 1998). He delivers the details of the event and the people in it by choice or by chance in a narrative that weaves the documentary base into reality. Not since Stephen Benet’s epic John Brown’s Body (Doubleday, 1928) have the streets of Harpers Ferry on October 16 – 18, 1859, been so vividly portrayed. Like Benet (who is effectively invoked in section breaks) the author Tony Horwitz has a strong background in the Civil War.

His work as a war correspondent serves him well, as the John Brown raid is a battle which was intended to be a larger movement (or invasion) gone wrong. The raid became larger with John Brown’s unflinching insistence on freedom and citizenship for enslaved Americans. Placing Brown’s plan in the context of world history of small, dedicated and well-equipped forces the raid makes sense. Horwitz’s knowledge of the terrain—gained on the ground with the expertise of National Park Service ranger David Fox and NPS historian Dennis Frye—focuses his writing with extensive research notes and clarifies the story so often told in miserable confusion.

Horwitz leads us down the same road to Harpers Ferry that John Brown and his men took from the Kennedy Farm in Washington County, Maryland, on October 16, 1859. The road begins in Sharpsburg, where three years later Confederate forces under the commands of officers who captured John Brown in Virginia would march in the uphill direction toward the creeks and fields that resonate in American Civil War memory—Antietam, the Dunker Church, and South Mountain.

I took that road in the midnight hours of October 16, 1978, which was one of the few occasions that the calendar date is on Sunday night, as it was in 1859. There was no walking path across the bridge; our National Park Service AWOL guide had a key to unlock the entry gate to the trestles, and knew the train schedule because we would have been knocked into the Potomac had one greeted us in either direction. On the same road the same Dennis Frye who guided Tony Horwitz and the conference attendees at the 150th raid anniversary in Harpers Ferry in 2009 walked along. He was a history student at Shepherd University working part time at the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in 1978, where he is now the Chief Historian. I learned the terrain from his father, John Frye, a ranger on the C & O Canal and longtime archivist at the Western Maryland Room at the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown.

This reviewer, among others, is generously credited for research contribution in the acknowledgements. I had the recent happy experience to be introduced by the author at a book-signing in Menlo Park, California , and make an announcement of local history programming about, and with descendants of John and Mary Brown. “’Am I Not John Brown’s Daughter?’ Annie Brown in the Civil War” will be presented by Alice Keesey Mecoy at the Sunnyvale Public Library on March 7, 2012.

The mothers, wives, and sweethearts of all the raiders are expanded with the sources. With the participation of Professor Phil Schwarz in Virginia, the story of Harriet Newby, whose love letters to Dangerfield reveal the immorality of slavery, moves forward in Midnight Rising by Tony Horwitz.

General readers receive the respect of making their own judgements from Tony Horwitz. As it should be, I do not agree with all his characterizations of John Brown. The subject is balanced, and covered well with the documents. One of the best sections is Brown’s trial and courtroom behavior. This is brought to life by the author’s journalism background and style. It is the author’s originality in writing that makes this history move. Whether read comparing the well-organized chapter notes to the text or straight through with Tony Horwitz’s journalistic structure and rhythm, it is a true to life meeting with John Brown on that rainy midnight of October 16, 1859. Jean Libby

Jean's full review can be read by clicking on the following link:
http://www.alliesforfreedom.org/files/Midnight_Rising_Review.pdf

* * *

Letter from Larry Lawrence, Chairman, John Brown Society

New York City
December 1, 1859

For full distribution in the John Brown world.

The position of The John Brown Society on the book on John Brown by Tony Horwitz, entitled, Midnight Rising.

Tony Horwitz is a talented writer, and has written a very readable book on John Brown.

The problem with his book is that he is wrong on Harpers Ferry and on Pottawatomie -- still the two most controversial aspects of the revolutionary career of John Brown. He lags behind the judgment of scholars like David Reynolds and Lou DeCaro on both events.

His book could have been much better if he had consulted and learned from these two already published John Brown scholars and researchers. He had ample opportunity to gain from their prior work, and he failed to take advantage of that opportunity.

I do not have the time, due to other more pressing personal and political concerns, to go into a detailed treatment of this book. Lou DeCaro speaks for me on this matter, and I defer to his highly educated opinion in relation to the book by Mr. Horwitz, as I have deferred to his opinion in many other areas related to the life of my old hero. Lou continues to do valuable and serious research on John Brown.

Happy Holidays to all in the John Brown community

[signed]

Larry Lawrence

* * *

I appreciate the contributions of both my friends and associates, Jean Libby and Larry Lawrence, who have devoted their lives in different ways to advancing the historical remembrance of John Brown and promoting a sound understanding of his life and work in the cause of justice. I posted their responses to Tony Horwitz's book together coincidentally, although I feel somewhat constrained to add remarks about both. Jean is understandably impressed by the rich detail and writing of the book, particularly the manner in which Tony recreated the unfolding drama of the Harper's Ferry raid in 1859. As a lifetime researcher on Brown, the raid, and Brown's black allies, she is appreciative of his work overall, preferring to relegate criticism of Tony's treatment of Brown to others. Certainly, there is a great deal understated in her remark that she does not agree with all of his characterizations. Without negating her objectivity and appreciation of the book's positive narrative qualities, I would suggest that what is primarily important is the question of John Brown and his actions, for this is ultimately why the book was written. It is one thing to recreate the mayhem of Harper's Ferry during the raid, or the drama of the courtroom during John Brown's trial. It is quite another thing to characterize John Brown for the ages--or at least, for the next generation or two.

I likewise appreciate the interest on the part of Larry Lawrence to respond. Although Larry is not a biographer, he is perhaps the most well read student of John Brown, 19th century U.S. history, and the political history of the U.S. that I've ever encountered. Larry knows the John Brown literature and its history, and he monitors and studies the academic and cultural developments relating to the Old Man's story with an eagle eye. Unlike Jean, Larry is far more critical of Tony's book, particularly in his characterization of Brown in Kansas and Virginia. Notwithstanding his deference to me and to David Reynolds, I wish that he might have addressed the book in some detail reflecting his knowledge. Furthermore, I think we should not forget the important contribution of Robert E. McGlone, whose John Brown's War Against Slavery deserves far greater recognition and attention--especially since it seems that Tony likewise has flown in the face of McGlone's sophisticated historical assessment of John Brown in Kansas and Virginia. On the other hand, I do not think that Tony's approach to Brown, like it or not, is due to any lack of consultation or research. His is an informed and deliberate opinion, and Tony is quite aware of the contemporary scholarship on themes like the Pottawatomie killings and the Harper's Ferry raid. To the contrary, like the rest of us, he has his own presuppositions and objectives, and they are quite manifest in Midnight Rising. I believe a number of his contentions are highly problematic; certainly, his perception and understanding of the man who died at Charles Town, Virginia on December 2, 1859 is significantly different from mine.

Yet the writing of John Brown biography is perennially unfinished business--every generation produces writers of great stature like Tony, and writers of considerably lesser stature (like me). However, the last word on Brown has never been published, and the debate continues.

2011-12-25T01:35:00.005-05:00

Season's Greetings
He Would Have Loved It

This photograph appeared in the April 1898 edition of Peterson's Magazine, noting the following under the cutline, which reads: "Present Occupants of the John Brown Homestead, Torrington, Conn."

A negro family now occupies the house at Torrington, Conn., where John Brown was born, May 9, 1800. It seems a strange coincidence that after a half century this historic house should be occupied by people of the negro race, for whom the old hero gave his life. The view is from a photograph by H. D. Barker.

Certainly the Brown family would have been pleased that an African American family lived under their former roof. Certainly it was not uncommon for black people to visit and stay under John Brown's roof during the days of his life--from little known, even forgotten, people to some of the most famous names in 19th century black history dined and rested in the home of John Brown.

The home in which John Brown was born was built in 1776 and purchased by Owen Brown in 1799. Owen kept his family in this house until removing them to Connecticut's western reserve lands in Ohio in 1805, when John was obviously quite young. The Torrington Brown homestead was made a landmark in 1901, but burned down in 1918. I do not have sufficient information about the circumstances surrounding the fire and its origins, and whether it was occupied at the time. One hopes that the fire was not the work of some or another hooded fraternity, the likes of which typically despise the memory of John Brown.

2011-12-15T10:49:00.001-05:00

Side Note--
What Sumner Wrote About Stephen Douglas

Sen. Charles Sumner

In 1874, Elias Nason published a biography of Charles Sumner, an anti-slavery senator from Massachusetts. Sumner is often remembered for the episode in which he was brutally attacked and beaten in the Senate chamber, in May 1856, by Preston Brooks, a South Carolinian. Brooks was outraged at the inflammatory and insulting speech that Sumner had given in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act--a speech which derided South Carolinian slave masters and Senator Andrew Butler of the same state. Brooks, being Butler's nephew, sought revenge by nearly bludgeoning Sumner to death after pinning him down at his desk in the senate chamber. John Brown considered Sumner a martyr, visited the recuperating senator in 1857, and reverently examined his blood-stained coat. Contrary to hackneyed historical narratives, the Sumner beating had nothing to do with Brown's actions in the Pottawatomie killings of May 1856.

Stephen Douglas,
The Little Stinker

In preparation for his Sumner bio, Nason requested information from James Redpath who--among many other things--was Brown's authorized biographer and a leading antebellum journalist and author in the service of the antislavery cause. Redpath wrote a letter to Nason on April 10, 1874, now in the Stutler Collection, which included a brief description of one of the slave masters' greatest political champions, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas, the so-called "Little Giant" is famously remembered as Abraham Lincoln's political nemesis. But Douglas was more so the nemesis of enslaved black people, just as he was the author of legislation that both pacified and strengthened slave masters. Most notably, Douglas was the mastermind behind the Compromise of 1850, which unleashed a ruthless revision of older slave "rendition" legislation--the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The Fugitive Slave Law reduced the entire nation to slave territory in effect by giving the Slave Power the right to pursue, arrest, and return fugitives, and by granting greater incentives to judges to rule in favor of slave masters. Douglas also supported the racist Dred Scott Decision of the Supreme Court in 1857, which infamously declared that blacks had no rights that whites were bound to respect, and which negated any claim to freedom on the part of slaves relocated to free states with their masters. Of course, these developments further galvanized the abolition movement, adding to its numbers, and leading people like John Brown to the realization that only political violence could end such a deeply entrenched and empowered "institution" like chattel slavery.

On the personal side, Sumner's brief description of Douglas (relayed by Redpath) is interesting, if not amusing:

Of Stephen A Douglass, (then a very great man in then popular estimation,) [Sumner] said: "Douglass, in private life is a brutal vulgar man without delicacy or scholarship; he is filthy in his person; he always looks as if he needed clean linen & sh[oul]d be put under a shower bath.

So, not only did the politics of the "Little Giant" stink. He stunk too.

2011-12-14T00:14:00.001-05:00

Old News--

Thaddeus Stephens on John Brown in 1859

. . . .A good joke about Harper's Ferry is laid to the door of Thaddeus Stephens. He was talking of the "invasion" at a Washington hotel, the other evening, with a Southern friend. Southern waxed hot, and declared that John Brown, "d--n him,["] deserved a dozen hangings. "Yes," said Thaddeus, in his solemn, drawling style, "you are right; he deserved hanging. He only brought 17 men; if he had brought thirty he would have settled the Slavery question forever."

Original Source: "Miscellaneous News," Independent Republican [Montrose, Pa.], Dec. 15, 1859, p. 2

2011-12-13T11:55:00.001-05:00

Photo Contendere:
The Browns of eBay?

Thanks to the ever vigilant Scott Wolfe, our friend in the field and roving historical detective, we are made aware of a current eBay item on sale, purported by its owner/seller to be a set of daguerreotypes from the 1850s of our man Brown and his family. According to the eBay description the “Image Shows fantaical [sic] anti slavery religious zealot John Brown with his wife Mary Ann, oldest son John Brown Jr and 5 more of their children.”

In fact, while the items for sale may be authentic mid-19th century daguerreotypes, they are clearly NOT images of John Brown the abolitionist and his family. The owner/seller probably is aware that there is good reason to doubt their authenticity, but makes quite an effort to rationalize selling the dags as John Brown pics:

"Likeness of the elderly man to John Brown has been compared to known authentic photographs some of which are shown below. You might find a number of men in old daguerreotypes that bear a vague resemblance to john brows [sic]. However the chances are very slim that the wife would also look like John Brown's wife, and that the couple would also have a large family with all the children looking like the children of John Brown. Historical records state that John Brown took a second wife of substantially younger age, which is also shown in this picture. All total John Brown is said to have fathered 20 children. most known images of Brown show a beardless gaunt face. At the end of his life he has a long beard and a more healthy looking face. This rare image shows an intermediate beard growth."

Hilarious. Of course, the comparison may have been made between Brown family daguerreotypes and these items, but the question is whether the comparison proves or fails—and the answer is that they fail. The pretense that these images conform to certain criteria—a younger wife, large family, and family resemblance—is clearly rationalization on the part of the owner/seller, who is trying to unload an anonymous set of daguerreotypes at quite a profit. In fact, although we do not have many images of the family, it is clear that this eBay family are not Browns; the younger woman bears no resemblance to Mary Brown, and the children do not correspond to the Brown family for that time period in sex or age.

Most laughable is the owner/seller’s attempt at explaining the facial hair of the elderly man in his daguerreotype as John Brown with “intermediate beard growth”! Not only does the man in this image not look like John Brown (nor does the hair resemble Brown’s hair at any time as far as we know), but this “intermediate beard growth” is all wrong. It seems his beard was gray from the first time he grew it, which was around 1858, and it never appeared like the whiskers of the old man in this daguerreotype. Some also know that at the time of the Harper’s Ferry raid, for instance, Brown was not wearing his legendary long, gray beard. His whiskers were cropped short, but were never “intermediate” as shown in this image. This just isn't John Brown, and shame on the owner/seller for trying to make of this an honest sale, when it is far from it.

Needless to say, if you are going to spend $5000 this Christmas for a John Brown stocking stuffer, this is not the item. You may do better getting a deal on some loose John Brown whisker hairs or possibly a chunk of wood from his gallows.

2011-12-12T00:42:00.007-05:00

Osawatomie Notebook:

Word and Act: Theodore Roosevelt, Barack Obama, and John Brown

Now, with this second period of our history the name of John Brown will forever be associated; and Kansas was the theatre upon which the first act of the second of our great national life dramas was played.
Theodore Roosevelt, August 31, 1910, Osawatomie, Kansas

Pres. Obama waves at Osawatomiens
from the presidential limo
Pete Souza-White House

This past week (Dec. 4) I noted that President Obama was scheduled to speak at Osawatomie, Kansas, at the site of John Brown’s heroic conflict with pro-slavery terrorists, and the site where Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was invited to speak at the dedication of the Osawatomie historic site on August 31, 1910. Although the occasion became a kind of starting point for his bid for the 1912 Presidency under the banner of his own new third party, his original intention for speaking in Kansas was to promote the most progressive or liberal form of Republican politics at a time when the party was split between conservatives and “insurgent” progressive Republicans. Roosevelt wanted to be the guiding spirit of the Republicans and promote his liberal Republican ideas; but the plan backfired when his speech drew criticism for identifying his campaign with Brown. In fact, according to historian Robert LaForte, Roosevelt’s speech “evoked a wide variety of responses. It was labeled ‘Communistic,’ ‘Socialistic,’ and ‘Anarchistic’ in various quarters; while others hailed it ‘the greatest oration ever given on American soil.’"1

Theodore Roosevelt in Osawatomie, 1910
Dike Dickerson photo-Kansas Historical Society

Roosevelt had originally come into office as a result of the death of President William McKinley, who was mortally wounded by an assassin in September 1901. Roosevelt served out the McKinley term, was reelected in 1904, but failed to gain the nomination for the 1912 election due to a split in the Republican Party that left William Howard Taft the party’s victor. In 1911, Roosevelt founded his own third party, the Progressive Party, and finally came in second place to Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the Presidential election, leaving Taft, his Republican rival and former friend, in third place.

Part I: Theodore Roosevelt Makes a Speech

The 1910 Osawatomie speech is known as “The New Nationalism” speech and is considered one of the great orations in the history of the politics of the United States. Roosevelt began the oration by citing that the history of the nation was marked by two great crises, the first at its founding and the second in the Civil War. Roosevelt’s references to Brown, Lincoln, and the Civil War made it a compelling treatment of the nation’s recent history; it had only been fifty years since John Brown was hanged in Virginia, and barely a half-century since the end of the war. Yet it was not a history lecture, but a savvy politician’s address reflecting Roosevelt’s political agenda. “I do not speak of this struggle of the past merely from the historic standpoint,” Roosevelt declared. “Our interest is primarily in the application to-day of the lessons taught by the contest a half a century ago.” The hopeful candidate declared that it was almost useless to “pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises.” He considered it “half melancholy and half amusing” to consider how the nation “in company with John Brown, and under the lead of Abraham Lincoln,” fixed the problems of their own era, while the people of his own era were denouncing “those”—meaning himself—“who are trying to meet the problems of the twentieth century in the spirit which was accountable for the successful solution of the problems of Lincoln’s time.”2

Kansas HistoricalSociety

Roosevelt: Lincoln over Brown

It is no surprise that Roosevelt’s references to John Brown invoked strong criticism. Many people hated Brown in 1910 as they do today. By 1910, the age of the so-called “Black Republicans” was long gone and the nation had repented of its 19^th century passion for black liberation and equality. The Great White Nation had already resumed business-as-usual, Reconstruction lay in ruins, and the former slave and his children were now under the heel of segregation laws and violent racism. It was the era of flagrant, non-stop lynching, and John Brown’s reputation was suffering the disparaging revisions of a society that increasingly had grown hostile toward black people and their claim for justice. Furthermore, by this time, the memory of Lincoln had been canonized, and the martyred sixteenth President had become the messianic figure of the nation, while John Brown was increasingly being written off as an extremist fanatic.

One thing that is interesting about Roosevelt’s speech is that despite the criticism it drew, his references to Brown were fairly consistent with the article that he afterward published in self-defense. In that article, "The Progressives, Past and Present," published in The Outlook magazine (3 Sept. 1910), Roosevelt was extremely measured in praising John Brown in order to make it clear that he followed Lincoln, and held Lincoln as the real savior of the nation. Yet Roosevelt had said as much in his Osawatomie speech the month before by citing the leadership of Lincoln and making Brown only a complement to the slain President at best. To Roosevelt, John Brown’s Kansas was not an ideal, but useful: “It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom; . . . In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts.”3

The Long, Liberal Hand of Oswald Garrison Villard

If Roosevelt was consistent in elevating Lincoln far above Brown, he was also careful not to give Brown any praise. In fact, LaForte reveals that one of the speechwriters, William Allen White, was determined to “limit” Roosevelt’s comments about Brown. Why? In order to placate the most famous John Brown biographer of that time, Oswald Garrison Villard.

Oswald Garrison Villard

We should recall that in 1910, Oswald Garrison Villard was the newly reigning John Brown scholar, and his acclaimed book, John Brown: A Biography Fifty Years After, was still a novelty on bookstore shelves. Villard had already used his considerable influence to bury W.E.B. DuBois’s eloquent biography of Brown in bad reviews in 1909—making sure that the black scholar did not steal his thunder before his book was released the following year. The grandson of pacifist William Lloyd Garrison, Villard was something of a limousine liberal (his Southern wife didn’t let black people enter through their front door) with a fanatical devotion to pacifism and a quiet contempt for John Brown. The Garrisons were noble, but the great abolitionist’s heirs were a proud lot. Oswald Garrison Villard inherited money, owned newspapers, and resented John Brown as the man who had inadvertently stolen his grandfather’s glory.

Villard promoted his own biography of Brown as the most advanced modern work of scholarship, and in many respects it was exactly that. Yet it was also heavily biased and carefully written to both praise and damn John Brown as a murderer. In fact, it was Villard who brought the “truth” of the Pottawatomie killings to the 20^th century reader in graphic condemnation of Brown as a kind of oxymoron—a principled murderer. Having amassed an unprecedented body of research, nevertheless Villard manipulated the evidence to produce his work of “friendly fire” against Brown—and he did so with devastating effect. Brown’s reputation, although already under fire from lesser writers since the later 19^th century, now came increasingly into disfavor in “mainstream” (read: white) society. His subjective abuse disguised as pristine scholarship provided ammunition for a whole array of anti-Brown writers well into the 20^th century.4

In 1910, Villard was thus a notable activist and author, and certainly he flexed considerable muscle in all matters pertaining to John Brown. According to LaForte, Villard “was afraid that Roosevelt in characteristic half-knowledge would describe the ‘old fanatic’ in terms so favorable that Villard's interpretation would be set back about 30 years.” Just as he had stymied poor DuBois in 1909, the long, liberal hand of Villard now was manipulating Roosevelt, successfully persuading him to “confine his remarks about Brown.” As a result of this self-interested subterfuge, Roosevelt mentioned Brown only in two incidental references, which surprised the editor of the local newspaper, the Osawatomie Graphic, who expected “more than a mere cursory mention” of the Old Man of Osawatomie and Harper’s Ferry. One attendee spoke of the speech stating that Roosevelt had dedicated a monument to John Brown without mentioning his name.5

Part II: Barack Obama Makes a Speech

As many of you know, I have roots here. I'm sure you're all familiar with the Obamas of Osawatomie. Actually, I like to say that I got my name from my father, but I got my accent – and my values – from my mother. She was born in Wichita. Her mother grew up in Augusta. Her father was from El Dorado. So my Kansas roots run deep. President Barack Obama, December 6, 2011, Osawatomie, Kansas

Pres. Obama in Osawatomie: Never Mentioned JB
Julie Denesha/Getty

This past Tuesday, President Obama went to Osawatomie, Kansas to speak. It was already evident that making this speech in Osawatomie was no coincidence, but certainly the President’s remarks made it clear that he was drawing a historical parallel in his contest with conservative Republicans. In his speech, the President cited Theodore Roosevelt’s stand as a friend of the free market as “the greatest force for economic progress in human history,” but also one necessarily bound to “rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest.” The President pointed out that Roosevelt had come to Osawatomie in order to lay out “his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. “‘Our country,’ he said, ‘means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy … of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.’" Clearly, the President was establishing his current mission as a revision of Roosevelt’s Progressive Republican brand of politics, thus identifying the current opposition of the Republican Party as being the expression of abusive capitalism. Likewise, President Obama was careful to point out that Roosevelt was called a “radical,” “socialist,” and “communist” by his detractors, although the platform he fought for has benefited our society in many respects.6 In other words, Roosevelt was right and so is Barack Obama.

Interestingly, one blogger for the New York Times observed the President’s witticism, “I have roots here. I'm sure you're all familiar with the Obamas of Osawatomie,” by which he overstated the fact that he does have Kansas roots on his mother’s side of the family. “By emphasizing his family’s history on the United States mainland, which is less familiar to the public than his Kenyan ancestry and his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia,” the blogger concluded, “Mr. Obama tried to tie his background to that of the mainstream middle class.”7

Historical Indifference?

Whether or not one agrees with President Obama, it is obvious, then, that his inspiration for the Osawatomie platform was the parallel drawn between Roosevelt’s political challenge of one hundred years ago, and his own forthcoming run for reelection against a hard Republican opposition. Taken at face value, it would seem the President has no interest in John Brown, and that his presence in Osawatomie was only due to the fact that Roosevelt had gone there in 1910.

At first blush, it might seem that the President was indifferent, perhaps even unaware of the significance of Osawatomie and the John Brown epic. For instance, one knowledgeable writer in the Hartford [Conn.] Courant noted yesterday that he found it peculiar that President Obama made no mention of John Brown in his Osawatomie speech last week. “Being passionate about history and the American idea,” writes Bill Hosley, “I was astonished that the president, his staff and the mainstream media overlooked why Theodore Roosevelt, or anyone else, travels to visit Osawatomie.” Hosley goes on to write that the President “could have delivered his speech anywhere,” such as the Theodore Roosevelt national historic site in Oyster Bay, N.Y. But as clever as it was to link his message with Roosevelt’s 1910 address, “to go to Osawatomie and ignore the history that brought Roosevelt there in the first place is disrespectful. . . .”8

Strong words, but I confess that I found them somewhat persuasive at first.

"Osawatomie" tribute in Osawatomie,
the 1970s publication of the Weather Underground

Then I noted an interesting article on a right-wing website, Big Government, in which the author does the typical song-and-dance about President Obama’s ties to “terrorists” Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, including a downloadable copy of a 1975 version of Osawatomie, a publication whose title was inspired by that group’s heroic perception of John Brown. I have seen this kind of stuff before, including the supposed similarity between President Obama’s campaign logo and the old circular insignia of the Weather Underground, and references to the President’s early association with Ayers and Dohrn. Of course it’s nonsense, and even if it were true, I think it’s a matter of conservatives straining out gnats and swallowing camels. (By the way, I ate a slice of pizza while seated next to Bernadine Dohrn in Lake Placid, N.Y. in late 2009, during a John Brown sesquicentennial conference. She seemed quite a lovely person, and if she likes “Old Osawatomie,” I certainly won’t hasten to condemn her.)

The Audacity of Hope-ful Republicans

Yet the conservative writer provided some unintentional assistance to me, at least by giving me pause to reconsider President Obama at Osawatomie. Indeed, an excerpt from his article is worth quoting at length:

[T]he choice of Osawatomie may be more significant than the Roosevelt conceit or Obama’s maternal family roots. Osawatomie was the site of a historic battle between abolitionist John Brown and pro-slavery forces (who were backed by the Democrats of the age). Though Brown’s men were defeated, his audacious tactics earned him the nickname “Osawatomie.” Obama may have chosen deliberately to cast his struggle against “the rich” in the same emotive terms. Obama alluded to Osawatomie in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, in discussing his Kansas ancestors (p. 12): “. . . Kansas had entered the Union free only after a violent precursor to the Civil War, the battle in which John Brown’s sword tasted first blood.” Obama also cited John Brown as one of his historical inspirations in his second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. In a passage that almost anticipates the radical themes of this week’s speech, he writes (p. 97):

The best I can do in the face of our history is remind myself that it has not always been the pragmatist, the voice of reason, or the force of compromise, that has created the conditions for liberty… It was the wild-eyed prophecies of John Brown, his willingness to spill blood and not just words on behalf of his visions, that helped force the issue of a nation half slave and half free.

Obama conspicuously neglected to mention Osawatomie’s history in his speech on Tuesday, but the town is clearly important to Obama’s personal identity, as well as to the way he understands his political destiny. Given that Kansas is not a swing state, the choice of setting likely had more to do with the symbolism of Osawatomie Brown than electoral votes. In Obama’s revision of history, the Republicans are the slave-owners, the villains in “the defining issue of our time.”
. . . . It’s highly unlikely that Obama was channeling Bill Ayers on Tuesday or sending a “dog whistle” to the extreme left. He is not shy about siding publicly with the radicals of the Occupy movement and evoking their rhetoric, and did so in the speech itself. Yet the very choice of Osawatomie, a symbol beloved by the earlier generation of radicals that mentored Obama, is a reminder that his present radicalism has a deep–if largely ignored–history. It also seems to confirm that Obama sees himself as the leader and instigator of an internal struggle among Americans. No matter how much Democrats complain about Republican charges of “class warfare,” Obama’s apparent decision to evoke the symbolism of Osawatomie in launching an attack on the wealthy is a reminder that he, in fact, relishes the fight and believes he will win even if his views are presently those of a radical minority. Like John Brown, he is prepared to sacrifice himself for the sake of his goals–even if, unlike Brown, Obama fights to restrict freedom instead of expanding it.9

Of course, the things that bother this conservative writer are of no concern to me, and I have no interest in getting my John Brown blog entangled in debates reflective of a political system that evokes neither charm nor conviction in my soul. (I should mention, however, that there is a palpable contempt in the unceasing manner in which conservatives refer to the President simply as “Obama.” Dead presidents may be so repeatedly referenced, but it seems to me that our sitting President of the United States deserves to be referred to as “President Obama” at least a few times in such an article. The author’s consistent reference to “Obama” sounds like just another way of saying, “this n----r,” and I find it viscerally offensive.)

Roots and Radicalism

On the other hand, although the writer makes these observations in contempt, they are helpful in demonstrating that President Obama very likely cared much more about speaking in Osawatomie than we realized. Unlike Theodore Roosevelt, President Obama may actually be a quiet admirer of John Brown, as two references in his books suggest, as well as his cultural ties to Kansas. Particularly, I think the writer’s observation that “the very choice of Osawatomie, a symbol beloved by the earlier generation of radicals that mentored Obama” is probably true. I also suspect that beneath the shining “American” armor of political necessity, President Obama may have a “radicalism” rooted in history—particularly a history of admiring leaders who instigated “an internal struggle among Americans.”

Of course, I do not read this as a negative or diminishing evaluation. It suggests that while President Obama probably avoided any mention of John Brown in order to save himself the headache of being attacked by right-wingers all over again, he may actually have had a greater enthusiasm for speaking in Osawatomie, Kansas, than even President Theodore Roosevelt had in 1910. President Obama might have cited John Brown in his speech, after which he would have been obligated to placate angry white people across the nation, possibly even back-peddle to do damage control. Instead, my sense is that he simply overlooked Brown. Perhaps that’s cowardice, or just common sense.

To be sure, it is doubtful that he made the decision to omit mention of Brown on his own. For a President or a presidential candidate, word and act are often matters of political expedience, not clarity. President Obama was probably advised to do so—although I doubt it was the current reigning biographer of Brown who warned the President not to mention John Brown. Yes, it’s possible that the White House is aware of Tony Horwitz’s new book and decided that it was best for the President not to get entangled with the controversial Subject of Midnight Rising—especially since Tony tends to extend the Villardian image of Brown as a well-intended murderer into the 21^st century. Still, it’s interesting that on the day that President Obama was speaking in Osawatomie, Tony Horwitz was giving an author’s John Brown speech in Kansas City.10 Too bad they couldn’t have gotten together for a post-speech book chat.

Notes

1 Robert S. La Forte, “Theodore Roosevelt's Osawatomie Speech,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 32:2 (Summer 1966): 187-200. Retrieved from the Kansas Historical Society website (Topeka, Kan.) on 11 December 2011 from:

http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-theodore-roosevelt-s-osawatomie-speech/13176.

2 Theodore Roosevelt, “New Nationalism Speech” ([31 August] 1910). Retrieved from Teaching American History.org (Ashland University: Ashland, Oh.) on 11 December 2011 from:

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=501.

3 Ibid.

4 See my essay, “Black People’s Ally, White People’s Bogeyman: A John Brown Story,” in The Afterlife of John Brown, edited by Andrew Taylor and Eldrid Herrington (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 11-26.

5 LaForte, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Osawatomie Speech.”

6 “Full text of Barack Obama's Speech in Osawatomie, Kansas,” The Guardian [U.K.] (6 Dec. 2011). Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/07/full-text-barack-obama-speech.

7 Ashley Southall, “In Kansas, Obama Relishes His ‘Deep’ Roots,” New York Times (6 Dec. 2011). Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/in-kansas-obama-relishes-his-deep-roots/

8 William Hosley, “Obama Fails To Note John Brown's Battleground,” Hartford Courant (10 Dec. 2011). Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from: http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-op-hosley-obama-ignores-john-brown-1210-20111210,0,1775988.story.

9 Joel B. Pollak, “Obama’s Osawatomie Speech Echoes Symbols of Occupy Wall Street, Abolitionism–and the Weather Underground,” Andrew Breitbart Presents Big Government (8 Dec. 2011). Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from: http://biggovernment.com/jpollak/2011/12/08/obamas-osawatomie-speech-echoes-symbols-of-occupy-wall-street-abolitionism-and-the-weather-underground/

10 Hosley, “Obama Fails To Note John Brown's Battleground.”

2011-12-09T19:41:00.015-05:00

From Hell on Wheels to Midnight Rising:

The Pottawatomie Killings and Popular Culture

We all know that the image of John Brown in popular culture is negative, and that many people in the United States think of him mainly as the leader of the “Pottawatomie massacre” in the war-torn Kansas Territory prior to the Civil War. From films like Santa Fe Trail (1940) to Skin Game (1971), Hollywood was fairly consistent in portraying the Old Man’s historical forte as sheer homicide. Furthermore, it should be evident that this violent image of John Brown is not just based upon a lack of historical information. Many people in this nation despise John Brown. Yet if they hate him, they also love to hate him—that is, they love to tell his alleged story (which really is their story about him) in cinematic, journalistic, and even historical narratives. For many people, there is even a certain romance in Brown the fanatical prairie killer, not unlike the romance of Jesse James in the “old west.” Yet whereas James is rendered as a sympathetic figure, Brown is almost always portrayed as a merciless, fanatical killer, or as a sincere man with unusually flaws in his moral and psychological fiber. Nor has this contemptuous view of Brown receded after such important breakthrough books as David Reynolds’ John Brown Abolitionist (2005) or Evan Carton’s Patriotric Treason (2006).

“John Brown is a cold-blooded murderer!”

If you doubt my word, just check out this video excerpt from an episode of AMC’s current post-Civil War series, Hell on Wheels, about the adventures of a Southern anti-hero character, Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount). Bohannon, a former slave master and rebel soldier, becomes involved with a westward railroad project while seeking revenge against some murderous Union soldiers. Of course, it is not unusual for Hollywood to portray the Southerner as the central figure, whether hero or anti-hero. Most movies related to the Civil War and “the old West” are sympathetic to the South, and often have portrayed the North as ruthless, invasive, and tyrannical. Filmmaker Kevin Wilmott has rightly observed that most westerns really are “southerns” anyway, and this is no less true of Hell on Wheels.

In the following excerpt, the somewhat drunken Bohannon is sought out by the soul-seeking camp preacher, Nathanial Cole (Tom Noonan). In their exchange, Preacher Cole confesses that prior to the war, he had ridden alongside “Martyr John Brown” in “Bleeding Kansas.” The scene is worth observing:

By all accounts, this is a good scene—well acted and quite authentic in detail, down to the murky camp and the eerie background noises. It is also reasonably framed: in 1865, one would get a Southerner’s attention quickly by declaring association with the hated John Brown. Many white Southerners still hate his guts.

Yet having viewed this excerpt, one should know that it is flatly wrong in historical terms. First, no such person as Nathaniel Cole was involved in the Pottawatomie killings, particularly no drunken killer as Preacher Cole claims to have been prior to his conversion. Second, the five Southerners killed at Pottawatomie by Brown’s men were not slave owners, nor were they killed simply because they were Southern and pro-slavery. Brown peacefully interacted with proslavery Southerners in Missouri and Kansas territory in 1855-56, and never treated them with insult, let alone violence. The five men killed at Pottawatomie were targeted because they were conspiring murder and terrorism in conjunction with invading proslavery “hordes” (as Brown liked to call them). Third, broadswords were used to expedite the midnight killings without drawing too much notice, not as an expression of murderous contempt. And the swords were well sharpened, finely honed instruments of death. The kind of dull-edged hacking described by the fictional Preacher Cole is simply the flourish of Hell’s scriptwriters. Brown intended the Pottawatomie strike to be done quickly and in stealth in order to remove the major figures of proslavery aggression in the vicinity, and to eradicate their imminent assault upon Osawatomie, especially as it targeted the militant egalitarian Brown family. In this light, the Pottawatomie killings were quite successful.

The distinction between history and Hell on Wheels is clear. This is not just the stuff of drama in a contemporary western. To be sure, the evocation of “Bleeding Kansas” in the dialogue and the revelation that Preacher Cole is a reformed butcher makes for a good story. But it is also an example of how popular culture sees John Brown, and how reverentially easy it is for film makers, novelists, and more serious writers to draw deeply from the bloody well of the John Brown myth in “American” popular culture. It works for them, not just as a cinematic effect, but also in homage to an “American” cultural dogma. Thus, when the penitent Preacher Cole confesses to the impenitent rebel Bohannon about his past involvement in Kansas, the latter turns and responds—like any red-blooded American—in almost creedal confession: “John Brown was a cold-blooded murderer!” This belief is deeply imbedded in the civil religion of white America, the underside of the beautification of Abraham Lincoln as the American messiah—slain on Friday, as Emil Ludwig once wrote, “like a prophet.”

Midnight Rising

“First Blood” is the title of chapter four of Tony Horwitz’s widely reviewed literary masterpiece, Midnight Rising. It is the part of his book where he deals quite necessarily with the Pottawatomie incident before moving toward the climax of Brown’s raid and death in Virginia. In fairness to Tony, “First Blood” promisingly sets up the circumstances of “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856, showing that free state Kansans had good cause to fear proslavery terrorism, especially considering that hundreds of pro-slavery militants had invaded the territory in May 1856. Likewise, he acknowledges somewhat that Brown’s kin and community in Osawatomie were on the proslavery radar, although he fails to sufficiently explain the extent to which the Browns—as extreme abolitionists—were particularly despised and targeted by neighboring proslavery conspirators. Furthermore, Tony tends to underplay the extent of the pro-slavery violence already in the territory, especially considering that the actual “first blood” of “Bleeding Kansas” had already been drawn by Southerners: five free state men were murdered before Brown’s men ever began sharpening their swords.

While Tony is honest about the proximity and threat of an army of pro-slavery thugs, he decidedly concludes that the only reason that Brown and his men struck five pro-slavery neighbors near the Pottawatomie Creek is because “Brown was enraged” over their successful assault upon Lawrence, Kansas, a free state town. This, says Tony Horwitz, was the reason for the Pottawatomie killings—as he puts it: “. . .Brown needed no further spur to carry out his Gideon-like mission” (p. 49). Then, after describing the gory killings, Tony opines:

The Browns and their allies cast the killings as an act of self-defense: a preemptive strike against proslavery zealots who had threatened their free-state neighbors and intended to harm them. The Browns’ defenders also denied any intent on their part to mutilate the Kansans. Broadswords had been used to avoid making noise and raising an alarm; the gruesome wounds resulted from the victims’ attempts to ward off sword blows. But this version of events didn’t accord with evidence gathered after the killings. (p. 53)

Of course, anyone who has studied the Pottawatomie incident knows that at this point, Tony is acting neither as journalist nor as historian, but as an American storyteller promoting the same “American ‘gospel’ story” as the screenplay writers of Hell on Wheels. Even though his historical framework is obviously far more factual, there is a great deal in “First Blood” that suggests an overlooking and/or manipulating of the facts. At best, this chapter fails as history because it simply does not present a fair treatment of the evidence. At worst, Tony has set up the story to invoke the bloody, violent image of Brown by insisting that this beloved American myth is history.

We know this is the case for many reasons.

First, Tony acknowledges that Brown’s allies have argued that the killings were based in self-defense, that is, that they were preemptive and justifiable given the extremely dangerous circumstances of the war-torn territory in May 1856. Tony admits the presence of a large number of proslavery thugs near the free state center of Osawatomie, but the danger they present seems to vanish in the narrative. Ultimately, it is only Brown’s alleged vendetta that matters. Indeed, Tony does not weigh the fact that the threat upon Osawatomie was imminent and that there is evidence that the five men killed under Brown’s orders were collaborating with these invading proslavery forces.

Second, Tony completely ignores the testimony of John Brown Junior and others who said that the Old Man made careful investigation into the involvement of these proslavery neighbors in a murderous conspiracy. Knowing the sources, it appears to me that Tony is selective in his use of the historical evidence--ignoring the testimony of Brown’s son Salmon and son-in-law Henry Thompson, which at least would balance out our understanding of Pottawatomie. Not only were Salmon and Henry confident that the attack was necessary, but even John Junior and Jason, who opposed it at the time, came to acknowledge the necessity of killing the Doyles, Wilkinson, and Sherman.

Thirdly, Tony not only ignores the abundant evidence in favor of Brown, but he privileges the testimony and claims of the Southerners—what he calls “the evidence gathered after the killings.” Not only does he fail to weigh their testimony, but he flies in the face of the best historical work on the subject, especially the discussion about Pottawatomie published in Robert McGlone’s carefully researched and deeply considered bio-study, John Brown’s War Against Slavery (2009). Even if Tony wished to ignore my biographical approach to Pottawatomie, serious scholars cannot condone the extent to which he ignored Robert McGlone’s well-researched and seriously considered effort, John Brown’s War Against Slavery (2009).

Yet even if “First Blood” is simply not a reliable chapter, it has been skillfully tailored to suit the beloved myth of the homicidal John Brown. Tony thus infers things about the Pottawatomie killings that are untenable, but which serve the worst image of Brown in Kansas. Most notably, he claims that Brown personally killed James Doyle, one of his inimical neighbors, by shooting him in the forehead. To the contrary, the primary sources and logical analysis of the incident call for the conclusion that Brown shot Doyle’s corpse at the conclusion of the deathly raid. From Oswald Villard to Robert McGlone, historians have never questioned the fact that Brown killed no one with his own hand despite giving the orders for the killings. Yet Tony insists that the man was gunned down in cold blood by Brown at the onset of the attack, claiming that this is more “plausible,” even though he can offer no real evidence, and even though he is running against the conclusion of every serious biographer regardless of their view of Brown. In fact, the only “evidence” he offers is a juxtaposed quotation from John Junior that has no direct bearing on the incident.

Fourthly, Tony infers that the five men killed at Pottawatomie were deliberately mutilated by Brown and his men. Yet he overlooks the obvious fact that their severed arms and hands were defense wounds, and that the men were essentially executed, not deliberately maimed, mutilated, or otherwise tortured. Despite the inference, then he refers to the killings as a “public execution.” But aren't public executions typically carried out before the public--typically in daylight and in the presence of witnesses? (think of the cruel manner in which the Nation of Islam publicly assassinated Malcolm X). To the contrary, the Pottawatomie killings were not “public,” nor did they reflect terroristic priorities. Rather, the killings were done at night, by surprise, and sufficiently removed from the sight of other associates and family members. The fact that Brown and his men said nothing when seizing these men except that they were prisoners, further suggests that the reason for the attack was strategic. These men were not primarily killed as examples (although they inevitably became examples after the fact), but as enemies taken by surprise—neutralized before they themselves could take violent action upon the Browns and other free state neighbors in the vicinity. Interestingly, while Tony quotes John Brown Junior, it was Junior who later spoke of the Pottawatomie killings as a case of the Browns “getting a jump” on their enemies.

Fifthly, as disturbing as the scene at Pottawatomie may be to us in retrospect, it is unwarranted for Tony to make it more than it was. For instance, the swords were clearly used because an extended series of gunshots in the night would have drawn attention. Yet Tony bucks this explanation even though it is the most logical. Nor is it sufficient for him to say that some of the Southern testimony says that multiple shots were heard; this claim is neither tested nor trustworthy, and must be weighed against the full array of evidence, including the testimony of surviving participants like Salmon Brown. Brown’s men, who were on site and involved, said there was one bullet fired—one shot into the head of a dead man. While Tony is right in considering the peculiarity of shooting a dead man in the head, he simply has no sufficient basis to change the story to suit the bloody American myth.

Along with the evidentiary and strategic conclusion that the shooting occurred at the end of the assault (when Doyle was already dead), Tony fails at least to consider possible reasons that Brown might have shot Doyle’s body. For instance, he may have momentarily feared that the man was alive and suffering; or he may have done it because he wanted to make his mark on the very man who would have done far worse to him and his sons; or he may have regretted after the fact that he had not struck a lethal blow on his own, and so fired a shot into Doyle’s body; finally, it may have been a combination of any one of these reasons with the need to signal his men—which is what his son Salmon assumed. I fear that in this case, Tony has seen only what he wants to see.

Finally, Tony blames the subsequent violence of “Bleeding Kansas” essentially on the Pottawatomie killings. He writes: “If it was Brown’s intent to bring on a full-fledged conflict, he got his wish” (p. 55). The problem with this rationale, which dates back to Oswald Villard in 1910, is that pro-slavery violence was already escalating before the Pottawatomie killings. Considering the growing majority of free state voters in the territory and the corollary desperation of pro-slavery forces to seize Kansas for slavery, the escalation of pro-slavery terrorism was primarily due to the larger intention of the South. While the Pottawatomie episode sent shock waves through Missouri and into the South, and while it thoroughly unsettled the hubris of proslavery bullies in Kansas, it was itself only one aspect of “Bleeding Kansas.” Southern terrorism in the Kansas territory was the context of escalating violence in that territory in 1856; without escalating violence, the South knew there was no way of gaining control of Kansas in order to make it into a pro-slavery state. It was Southern pro-slavery desperation and lawlessness that bears the blame for this escalation, not John Brown’s notably bloody act of counter-terrorism.

“First Blood” is a chapter rife with problems. Even admitting that the Pottawatomie episode is both unpleasant and difficult to nail down in its entirety, it is irresponsible to ignore what the most progressive and painstaking studies have concluded: the attack was an expression of territorial civil war; it further marked the desperation of one faction which was vulnerable and living under threat of attack without recourse to local or federal assistance; and the Pottawatomie “victims” were singled out because of their involvement in a deadly conspiracy, not because they were pro-slavery people. According to Salmon Brown, Doyle was upbraided by his own wife at the time he was seized by Brown’s men. She scolded him essentially for bringing the attack upon himself by his “devilment,” which was an admission of his guilt. Her subsequent testimony to her husband’s innocence is suspect, and it is problematic for Tony to make such uncritical and selective use of available sources. Similarly, he fails to contextualize the sickening aftermath of the episode, in which Owen Brown was conscience-stricken about having killed some of these men with a sword. Many a soldier has gotten sick after taking a life in battle; even men fighting in self-defense may afterward express remorse and regret for killing their enemies. Owen was a gentle soul by all accounts. Brown’s son-in-law Henry Thompson, another killer, was likewise a man of gentle character, both men of great moral conscience. It would have been aberrant if they were not bothered by the experience. Yet neither man ever discredited the killings nor repented for their participation. Indeed, they defended the necessity of the action.

Hell on Wheels is pure fiction and Midnight Rising is a work of history. Yet both presume a narrative of slaughter-and-blood in keeping with the American myth of John Brown. The invocation of this figure is at once sentimental and frightening, even as it is both enthralling and vexing. Both works highlight the mantra of John Brown the “cold blooded" killer. And when his story is told, it is by invocation of dark midnight and bloody sword.

2011-12-04T23:09:00.004-05:00

Osawatomie Notebook--
President Obama Follows Teddy Roosevelt's Footsteps to Osawatomie

According to Kansas Watchdog TV (which posted the video below on YouTube), Grady Atwater [a friend of this blog!], Site Administrator of the John Brown Museum in Osawatomie, Kansas gives some history behind President Barack Obama's planned visit to Osawatomie, Kansas on Dec. 6, 2011. Some speculate Obama's visit has historical connections to the "New Nationalism" speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in Aug. 1910 (about 18 months after he left office). Roosevelt was in Osawatomie to dedicate the John Brown Memorial Park, which was an event attended by about 30,000.

According to Aamer Madhani of USA Today, President Obama will follow the example of Teddy Roosevelt by traveling to Osawatomie, Kansas, to address the nation's economic situation. He is scheduled to do so this Tuesday. Madhani says that President Obama will "lay out the choice we face between a country in which too few do well while too many struggle to get by, and one where we're all in it together – where everyone engages in fair play, everyone does their fair share, and everyone gets a fair shot," the White House said in a statement announcing the Kansas address. Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th President of the USA, famously traveled to Osawatomie in August 1910 to deliver an address that called for a "New Nationalism," where every American got "a square deal." As Madhani says, this effort "comes as Obama battles with GOP lawmakers to extend and expand a payroll tax holiday that Congress enacted last year, which reduced the rate from 6.2% to 4.2%. . . . The trip to Kansas will give Obama an opportunity to bolster his push for a payroll tax extension and also another chance to push the White House narrative that the GOP is more concerned about the wealthy than the middle class."

Source: Aamer Madhani, "Obama Looks to Emulate Teddy Roosevelt." USA Today (3 Dec. 2011)

Digging Up Some Notes--
Teddy Roosevelt on John Brown

Teddy Roosevelt went to Kansas to speak at the dedication of the John Brown Park at Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 30, 1910. As a result of his apparently positive remarks about Brown, Roosevelt was criticized for his speech quickly prepared an article in The Outlook magazine entitled, "The Progressives, Past and Present" (Sept. 3, 1910), essentially an apologetic for his remarks in Kansas.

Referring to Kansas, Roosevelt wrote that the struggle there before the Civil War, though "heroic," and had a "dark and terrible side." Both sides of the war had men of "heroic valor" and "self devotion," he concluded. Roosevelt then suggested that some of the same people who had honored John Brown and Lincoln either "shrink from or frantically denounce" those operating in the 20th century according to the same spirit as they did in their time (p. 19). He wrote further that John Brown "stood for heroic valor, grim energy, fierce fidelity to high ideals," and was "one of the most striking figures" of the struggle against slavery: "He did much in his life and more in his death; he embodied the inspiration of the men of his generation; his fate furnished the theme of the song which most stirred the hearts of the soldiers," he concluded (p. 20).

However, Roosevelt ultimately gave Lincoln the highest salutation, rendering him the hero of the nation: "the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln." It was Lincoln, Roosevelt opined, who manifested "valor, energy, disinterestedness, idealism. . . and his also was that lofty and far-seeing wisdom which alone could make the valor, the disinterestedness, the energy, the idealism, of service to the Republic." Roosevelt thus concluded that in modern concerns, we ought to "profit and welcome, and cooperate with the John Browns," yet remember that "the problems can really be solved only if we approach them in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln." To further clarify his position to his critics, Roosevelt concluded that "John Brown prepared the way; but if the friends of freedom and union had surrendered themselves to his leadership, the cause of freedom and union would have been lost." Indeed, Roosevelt went so far as to quote Lincoln's diminishing remarks about Brown from the 1860 Cooper Union speech Both Brown and Lincoln were examples to be studied, Roosevelt wrote, but ultimately Brown is a "warning" for the "extremists" among the progressive movement. "The experience of John Brown illustrates the evil of the revolutionary short-cut to ultimate good ends" (p. 20).

Roosevelt then underscores his self-identification as a "progressive," warning that failing to follow progressive policies will negate democracy. Yet he expressed "concern when progressives act with heedless violence, or go so far and so fast as to invite reaction" (p. 20). In fact, he drew a parallel between supposedly insurrectionary agenda of Brown with the desire to "destroy private wealth": "John Brown's notion that the evils of slavery could be cured by a slave insurrection was a delusion analogous to the delusions of those who expect to cure the evils of plutocracy by arousing the baser passions of workingmen against the rich in an endeavor at violent industrial revolution." (pp. 20-21).

Roosevelt likewise acknowledged that "plutocratic" abuses incite negative reactions, just as did the "insolence of the ultra pro-slavery men" before the Civil War. Quoting Lincoln after the election of 1864, Roosevelt points out that human nature will not change, and men should reunite "having a common interest" in a "common effort to save our common country." Lincoln, he wrote, tried to avoid placing "obstacles" in anyone's way, nor had he "willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom." Finally, Roosevelt reiterated Lincoln's call to reconciliation toward "a more substantial measure of equality in moral and physical well-being" among those "freed from the curse of Negro slavery" and sustained as undivided citizens by the efforts of Lincoln's generation. He ponders the challenge of balancing freedom and equality, concluding that given man's shortcomings, "unrestricted individual liberty" would undermine "approximate equality," while "a rigid and absolute equality would imply the destruction of every shred of liberty" (p. 21).

In his article, Roosevelt sent a clear message that his "progressive" adventure in Osawatomie ought not to be misread or mistaken by the status quo. He was opposed to any extreme of racism, exemplified in his day by blatant racism and neo-Confederate terrorism. Yet he also emphasized that he was at heart Lincolnian in his reading of history, including the conclusion that John Brown was a skewed leader. Though admirable to a degree, Roosevelt writes, Brown's recourse to violence and "revolution" disqualified him from being seen as a hero and leader to the nation, while Lincoln was to be praised for his conciliatory posture toward Southern whites.

Clearly, Roosevelt embraced and extended Lincoln's supposed "liberality" by advocating for freedom from slavery and "approximate equality" for blacks, but far more protecting white people's "liberty" by opposing "a rigid and absolute equality." Roosevelt further misconstrued Brown's anti-slavery objective as insurrection, equating him with the most disdained extremists of his own era. In short, Roosevelt distinguished himself as a true heir to the Lincoln-Republican tradition of moderate, measured support of human rights and black freedom, and absolute devotion and protection of white supremacy and the capitalist prerogative in the United States. His ham-handed treatment of Brown was not only an aspect of damage control to save his political career in the face of white society's disdain, but suggests the conflicted, double-minded manner that we have seen Brown handled recently, where he is at once a figure to be admired and an extremist to be disdained, a heroic opponent of injustice as well as a supposed terrorist, a failed leader, and self-made martyr!

It will be interesting to see if President Obama invokes John Brown in his Osawatomie address, and if so, what his remarks will entail--and if he likewise will afterward be forced to defend his remarks by reassuring the nation of his faithfulness to the "official" history of this nation. Gary Wills had already pointed out Mr. Obama's willingness to cut loose his own pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, at the onset of his quest for the presidency. That the President has chosen Osawatomie to respond in defense of his agenda is interesting, if not peculiar. Is he insinuating his admiration of Brown, or just bringing his challenge to the front lines of a conservative and traditional arena, hoping to play it off with a little historical spice the way that Teddy Roosevelt did 101 years ago?

2011-12-02T18:43:00.003-05:00

152 Years Ago Today:

“A Man of a Different Mould”: John Brown, William Mumford,

and Southern Pharisaism

Barnaby Furnas, John Brown

On the second of December, 152 years ago today, John Brown ascended the gallows, patiently waiting upon his Viriginia captors until they were ready to kill him. By all accounts, he seemed fearless, except for the peculiar care he was said to have taken in his movements once his head and eyes were covered--a natural reaction, as one observant journalist put it, as if he was afraid to fall. When the rope was cut and the trap door swung out, the Old Man fell several inches when the rope grabbed him back from the force of gravity, leaving him to dangle in the breeze as he choked to death. His body showed little movement, certainly no struggle except some movement in his pinioned arms—gestures that steadily diminished as barely sixty years of living drained away. After some time, a doctor listened for the stillness of his breast and he was finally cut down, but not before “Porte Crayon,” the Virginia-born artist of Harper’s made a morbid sketch of the lifeless face under the hood. When his remains were returned to the jail, some discussion took place about injecting his body with arsenic in order to make certain the work of death. But such measures were unnecessary. The Old Man was quite removed from this world.

The Rebel Gambler

Mumford:
"Poor Material
to Exalt"

A decade later, when the Civil War was over and the nation was slowly inching its way back to reordered form of white supremacy sans chattel slavery, Brown was still a significant figure of heroism to many in the North. One such admirer, a journalist named Homer Sprague, prepared an article in the Connecticut-based publication, The Soldiers’ Record, which memorialized the reminiscences of Union soldiers and other points of history relating to the recent war of Southern rebellion. Recounting the conquest of New Orleans by General Joseph Butler, Sprague mentioned some aspects of Butler’s notably harsh treatment of rebels (which ultimately led to his removal from New Orleans), including the hanging of William B. Mumford, a gambler with strong rebel sympathies. After the Union had taken New Orleans and the U.S. flag was displayed over the city’s famous Mint, Mumford had taken it upon himself to tear it down and desecrate it as an act of pro-Confederate valor. Perhaps he was at once the antithesis of the murdered Elmer Ellsworth, who was shot dead in Virginia in 1861 when he pulled down a Confederate flag. But in Sprague’s mind, Mumford was also the antithesis of John Brown.

According to Sprague, “the gambler Mumford” was hostile toward Union forces, and following the surrender of New Orleans, he took it upon himself to tear down the U.S. flag, leading to his arrest and confinement in the Custom House. Union General Butler found himself in a dilemma—to go easy on Mumford would undermine his authority and diminish the Union occupation. Sprague wrote that it was his own regiment that guarded Mumford, and for this reason was privy to some knowledge of Mumford’s character and attitude prior to his hanging (June 7, 1862). According to Sprague, the army Chaplain Salter “repeatedly visited him, and with tears offered him the consolation of religion, and begged him to accept a Saviour's mercy.” Mumford's “singular reply, which Sprague conveyed “in substance” was, "I have no fear of death, because I have lived a blameless life. Having never done anything wrong, I am prepared for a future world, if there is any future world. I only hate to leave my friends."

Brown: "a man of a different mould"

To this, Sprague opined that the kind chaplain would rightly have been “perplexed and amazed” at Mumford’s “stoical indifference, without a prayer on his lips,” for the gambler-turned-rebel “Mumford met death as coolly as did old John Brown on the Virginia scaffold.”

But Brown was a man of different mould; of austere morals, trained to piety, accustomed to spend much of his time in reading his bible or on his knees in prayer. Mumford was conceded to have no religious convictions, was dissolute, intemperate, and a noted gambler—poor material to exalt into a martyr, even in the cause of slavery, for which he died.1

As Sprague’s point reveals, facing death bravely does not prove one’s cause is noble and true. History has shown that Brown’s hanging vindicated his vision for a just society and freedom for all humans. Mumford’s death is largely forgotten; but even when it is recovered from the dusty pages of history, it seems more pitiful than anything else. A fool in the conduct of his life, a fool in the cause for which he died, and a fool in his own stoic conceit facing the bar of eternity.

Thomas Jackson and the Pharisaic Spirit of the South

It was a mark of the Pharisaic spirit of the South that its most noble leaders could not recognize the authenticity of John Brown’s Christian faith. That Pharisaic spirit remains quite vivid in the antagonism that many white Christians still show toward John Brown—the endless harping on his actions in Kansas, his resort to “violence," and all the other self-righteous screeds that typically accompany resentful anti-Brown remarks coming from people I’m supposed to think of as my “Christian brethren.” Of course, the pro-slavery side had its own saints and sinners, the latter group being represented by the hanged rebel gambler Mumford. But even among its saints, its supposedly noble Christian leaders, this same blindness was a great affliction. Consider the remarks of Thomas Jackson, soon to become the Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson, after witnessing Brown’s death on the gallows:

I was much impressed with the thought that before me stood a man in the full vigor of health, who must in a few moments enter eternity. I sent up the petition that he might be saved. Awful was the thought that he might in a few minutes receive the sentence, “Depart, ye wicked, into everlasting fire!” I hope that he was prepared to die, but I am doubtful. He refused to have a minister with him.2

"Grandiose Hubris": Gen. Thomas Jackson
sent money to a "colored" Sunday School while
fighting to keep blacks enslaved

The grandiose hubris of this personal remark is itself a commentary on the kind of religion that had come to typify the evangelical South, including the very pristine orthodoxy of Southern Reformed Presbyterians like Jackson. The Union soldier-reporter Sprague could at least see the incongruity between the stoic bravery of Mumford and the incendiary and ignoble rebellion for which he was willing to die. Quite in contrast and notwithstanding his die-hard Calvinist orthodoxy and upstanding piety, Jackson—like so many other agents and protectors of black bondage—could not recognize the death of a martyr, even when that martyr was swinging in the Southern breeze in his very presence. However evangelically “kind” Jackson was to think he should pray for Brown’s salvation, it seems he missed the point of Brown’s martyrdom altogether. Brown had not “refused to have a minister with him”; he had refused to have a pro-slavery minister’s words of consolation and companionship. For Brown to have done otherwise would have fully contradicted all that he had lived and now was willing to die for. Not only was John Brown as deeply devoted to the same evangelical and Reformed faith of Jackson, but also he was willingly dying for the sake of the oppressed and enslaved, whereas Jackson ultimately died for the cause of the slave master. That Jackson could believe that Brown was not “prepared to die” was more a commentary on the deplorable nature of pro-slavery evangelicalism—yeah, of U.S. evangelicalism, besotted as it was with racist arrogance.

John Brown Vindicated, Mumford Forgotten

John Brown in jail:
"Martyr" is from the Greek
word for "Witness"

It may be a point of indifference to many (if not most) of my readers that John Brown fully leaned on the biblical doctrines of grace. However, as a Christian and a pastor, it matters a great deal to me that we understand that Brown was no jailhouse preacher, no self-manufactured saint who grasped at religion as the last straw once his other plans had failed. Rather, to labor over his letters, especially those letters written to his family, one cannot help but to be moved by the deeply-rooted, time-tested confidence that the Old Man had come to place in his God and Savior. Furthermore, these points of personal evangelical piety and conviction were inseparable from his devotion to the oppressed, his depth of belief concerning the wickedness of slavery, and his own certainty that dying at the hands of people like Jackson and Mumford ultimately would be vindicated by both Providence and history. And he was right.

As Sprague concluded, John Brown was “a man of a different mould”—the kind of man who rarely comes on the scene of history, but always leaves it heavily marked by his life and death. Such men are remembered as if they still live. Their presence in society remains, their appeal to successive generations is vibrant, and their ability to speak to us never wanes. Meanwhile generals and gamblers like Jackson and Mumford become part of the political trivia of history. Mumford is forgotten. “Stonewall” Jackson, who presumed to judge John Brown’s soul, matters little except to a few Civil War enthusiasts and brooding neo-Confederates.

But John Brown’s soul goes marching on.

------------------

1 Homer B. Sprague, "Thirteenth Regiment, C.V.," The Soldiers' Record (Feb. 27, 1869), p. 270

2 Letter from Thomas Jonathan Jackson to Mary Anna Jackson, Dec. 2, 1859, quoted in Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1891), p. 1.

2011-12-01T16:06:00.006-05:00

The Last Night of His Life--

"Your Friend as Ever": Reflections on John Brown's Letter to James Foreman

John Brown wrote many letters and notes from his Virginia jail cell in the days and weeks prior to his execution on December 1, 1859. I’ve managed to track down many if not most of them, although I will never be certain whether some have eluded me, either having been lost to history or “held captive” in someone’s personal collection. Although a century-and-a-half has brought more letters to light than were available in 1911, for instance, the locations of some original manuscripts of Brown’s letters remain a mystery. However, I live in hope that, here and there, one will turn up in some archive or collection, or may yet appear on an auction website--and every so often this is precisely what happens.

Considering that tomorrow is the 152^nd anniversary of Brown’s “public murder” in Virginia, I thought it would be interesting to bring to light one letter that we know about only through published transcriptions that happily have preserved the letter for posterity. Furthermore, the letter is interesting because it points back to an early chapter of John Brown’s life in Pennsylvania, many years before he became a public figure in the antislavery cause.

On the last Thursday of his life, December 1, 1859, the Old Man undoubtedly attended to prayer and reading of the Bible in the early morning hours, after which he labored over his last will and testament, for which his jailer, John Avis, acted as witness. Brown made an addendum to the will on the following morning, Friday, December 2nd, before going to his execution, including a note to his wife.1

Apart from the will, Brown remained busy throughout much of the day, writing a total of six letters to family members and associates, including one to his future biographer the journalist Richard Hinton. Among these letters, Brown found time to pen a short note after night had fallen, in answer to a letter that had been placed into his hands that same evening. As an aside, it should be noted that Brown did not receive his mail directly. The state’s prosecuting attorney, Andrew Hunter, screened all letters addressed to his prisoner, determining which ones would be received and those to be set aside. In all fairness to Hunter, since Brown got letters from admirers and detractors, the attorney seems to have prevented only the most inflammatory and extreme expressions, whether in affront to Virginia or to John Brown. (The rejected letters were subsequently filed, hidden, lost, and then recovered at the beginning of the 20^th century, and have long since been published.) The only letters that Brown seems to have received and destroyed were letters requesting his autograph; there were many, and he had no time for such vanities, especially in the last days of life.

One such letter that Hunter forwarded to Brown came from James Foreman, once an apprentice and family friend from his days in Randolph Township, near Meadville, Pennsylvania (1826-35). In some cases, the letters written to Brown have been preserved, but I am not aware if Foreman’s letter is extant. I only know of it because of Brown’s December 1^st letter written in response. The Foreman letter may be held by one of Brown’s descendants, but at this point it seems lost. Based on Brown’s response, we know that Foreman had written on that previous Saturday, November 26. The letter probably expressed no small measure of concern and sympathy on the part of Foreman and his wife since the two men had been close.

After Brown’s death, James Redpath—Brown’s first biographer—probably by advice of the Brown family or as a result of Brown’s letter to Foreman—inquired of the latter regarding his past association with Brown. Foreman stated that he had gone to live with the Browns as an apprentice, probably in 1826, early in Brown’s move to Pennsylvania. Foreman’s details were slightly off, but his characterization of Brown as a “rigid” church member and man given to prayer, seems right on. Foreman was probably not surprised that his old employer had gone to such great lengths to destroy slavery. Even in the mundane affairs of business, Foreman recalled, Brown had shown “strict integrity for honesty and justice.” Foreman recalled that once when Brown was on his way to get a doctor for his ailing wife (probably his first wife, Dianthe), the faithful husband nevertheless made a short detour to apprehend and rebuke some thieves caught in the act of pilfering from a neighbor’s apple tree.2

The Brown-Foreman association not only spanned the near decade of Brown’s residence in Pennsylvania, but it was far more than a simple business arrangement. First, as an apprentice, Foreman resided with the other employees of Brown’s burgeoning tannery on site, which meant that he enjoyed something of a communal experience with his employer and family. Brown not only worked closely with Foreman and hosted him at his hearth, but also depended upon him in his own multifaceted career as a civic and community leader with his hands in everything from postal service to church matters, and from local improvements to education and antislavery concerns. At some point, Foreman married and moved out of the Brown residence; but after Brown’s first wife Dianthe died in 1832, his mourning became overwhelming. Despondent, Brown moved himself and his young children into the Foreman household, where he seems to have depended on the Foreman’s practical and emotional support for a season before remarrying in 1833.3 In light of this personal history between Brown and the Foremans, it is no surprise that they would write to Brown in the final phase of his Southern captivity.

Whatever was specifically entailed in Foreman’s expressions of concern, the “good feelings” he expressed constrained Brown to respond, albeit briefly. What follows is thus a reasonably authentic transcription:

Charlestown Prison, Jefferson County, Jefferson County, Va., Dec. 1, 1859.
My Dear Friend
I have only time to say I got your kind letter of the 26^th November, this evening. Am very grateful for all the good feeling expressed by yourself and wife. May God abundantly bless you. I am very cheerful in the hopes of entering on a better state of existence in a few hours, through infinite grace in Christ Jesus my Lord. Remember “the poor that cry and them that are in bonds, as bound with them.”

Your friend as ever,
John Brown

The letter is quintessentially John Brown. In most of his letters of incarceration, his heading would typically say, “Charlestown, Jefferson County, Virginia,” but a few were headed, as in this case, with “Charlestown prison.” There is no apparent reason for these variations, although he may have included the reference to “prison” as the days drew near to his execution and the shadow of his death sentence increased. Nevertheless, in correspondence and visitation, he repeatedly asserted his cheerfulness. While it has recently become biographically fashionable to question Brown’s truthfulness, in this regard I prefer to take him as writing and speaking honestly in regard to the peace and cheerfulness he experienced in the face of death. To deny it is to run roughshod over the man's spirituality and faith, and those of who have some knowledge and appreciation for Brown's faith are particularly suspicious of scholars who make external and often unstudied analyses of his Christian faith. Furthermore, as a student and biographer of Brown, I deplore the notion that some narrators have put forth to the effect that the Old Man "reinvented himself" as a martyr and saint following the raid. This is a false dichotomy, misrepresenting Brown the prisoner as much as it does Brown the freedom fighter in the field.4

While it is understandable that Brown’s dependency on faith in his last days would become more pronounced, there was nothing artificial or contrived about the man falling fully upon his religious confidence. Furthermore, it is natural that his letters, written “on death row” would ring with the authentic tone of his own faith. The authenticity, ease, and flow of his expressions of faith only verify how deeply imbedded were these spiritual and religious inclinations within him. Of course, unlike most evangelicals, there was no tension between his belief in the Reformed doctrine of justification by grace through faith and belief in the quest for justice as an expression of the justified state of the believer. As in so many of his letters, his few words contain an inevitable reference to the enslaved, which here echoes in the conflation of two biblical verses, Proverbs 21:13 (the cry of the poor) and Hebrews 13:3 (those in bonds). Yet even this conflation is interesting because Brown weds a verse from the Old Testament with one from the New Testament, thus showing his belief of the full biblical veracity of the antislavery effort. For John Brown, to claim Jesus Christ as “my Lord” bound him in life and death with the poor and oppressed—an apostolic sentiment that reigned neither in the North or the South.

As far as sources are concerned, Brown's letter is preserved in a brief, undated, unattributed newspaper article, probably from the late 19^th or early 20^th century, that provides a transcription from the original.5 According to this clipping, the original letter seems to have been donated to some library, although I am still investigating that point. The only other source for this letter is in F. B. Sanborn’s famous book, The Life and Letters of John Brown--a wonderful resource except for the fact that Sanborn often edited Brown’s letters to the point of obscuring their style and format.6

Here, in these few lines, then, we see John Brown, nearly at the point of execution, pausing to greet an old associate for the last time. The two men had little or no association for nearly thirty years, yet the martyr’s heart was full. “Your friend as ever,” he wrote in closing--signing his name in his famously pinched handwriting.

It was the last night of his life.

----------------

Notes

1 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, holds the original manuscript of the will and addendum.

2 The letter shows that Redpath had written to Foreman on December 21, 1859. Foreman’s letter to Redpath, dated December 28,1859, is held by the Kansas State Historical Society, although transcriptions are also found in the Stutler and Villard collections. It was published by Rabbi Louis Ruchames in 1959, in his John Brown Reader—still the best reader available (The Warch and Fanton reader from the 1970s is out of print, and the one done a few years ago by Trodd and Stauffer is inaccurately and inadequately edited.)

3 See chapters 6 and 7 of "Fire from the Midst of You." Also see the valuable essay by Meadville historian, Anne W. Stewart, "John Brown: From the Record; The Crawford County Years: 1827-1835 The Young Family Man," Journal of Erie Studies (Fall 2002): 44-72.

4 Only two testimonies have in various degrees downplayed Brown’s religiosity in the field, especially in Kansas. In his later years, George Gill, a sometime follower of Brown, expressed great cynicism toward Brown and contempt for his religion. But Gill had grown jaded in later years and certainly was hostile toward Brown's religious views and piety. Brown's own son, Salmon, may have defended his father in later years, but his own personal bias against his father’s evangelical faith seeped into his testimony, particularly when he denied that his father carried a Bible and read it in Kansas, an untenable conclusion given all that we know, including eyewitness testimony. There is no doubt that as an antislavery figure, Brown was known for his extreme devotion to orthodoxy as well as orthopraxy.
5 See John Brown letterbook, Clarence Gee Collection, Hudson [Ohio] Library and Historical Society.
6 See Sanborn, p. 615.

2011-11-21T17:19:00.002-05:00

(A Review) From the Field:

FREUD, FANATICISM AND FACIAL HAIR:

A SOUTHERN SOJOURNER READS MIDNIGHT RISING

by H. Scott Wolfe *

“Can’t we all just get along?” Rodney King

I was soon to depart for my annual tour of the sunny South, so I was desperate for a copy of Tony Horwitz’s new book, Midnight Rising. Thus I trotted into a Barnes & Noble on a hope and a prayer for, technically, the book had still not been formally released. Cornering a clerk, and assuming a tragic look of woe sure to enliven her compassionate instincts, I inquired if the volume could somehow be available. Consulting her computer, she cryptically whispered: “It’s not on the shelves yet, but it is in the receiving room.” I was flooded with regret, for I had neglected to bring latex gloves and a surgical mask…but she happily broke the strained silence with “I’ll go check for you!” And moments later, the angelic capitalist returned with a fresh copy…still warm from the oven…and I was a happy man.

Your correspondent begins reading Midnight Rising

at the Lincoln Trail Monument, near Vincennes, IN

(photo by Nancy Wolfe)

The book was to join me as a traveling companion, and I eagerly anticipated perusing it. And peruse it I did…in fits and starts…from New Harmony, Indiana…to Vicksburg, Mississippi…to its completion upon an iron bench in New Orleans’ Jackson Square. I treated this new acquaintance with an open mind, as I customarily do whenever a new piece of John Browniana appears before these myopic eyes. I have devoted over half of my scandalous lifetime to the study of the Old Man and his associates. And all of my actions have, I sincerely trust, been based upon the accumulation of FACT…not personal bias…not my incisive intuitions or speculations…not clinical diagnostics…and certainly not what some learned sage wrote in his monumental biography of yesteryear.

The notorious keeper of this blog, the much esteemed Dr. DeCaro, had kindly invited me to provide my impressions after reading the Horwitz effort. He also, in subsequent postings, compared my Southern tour to that of James Redpath, the first of the Old Man’s biographers. I must first respond to the latter, for that comparison is invalid. My settled outlook is not that of Redpath’s Roving Editor, not that of Olmstead’s Cotton Kingdom, but rather, more closely akin to H.L. Mencken’s Sahara of the Bozart.** That said, it is on to his initial request….

Comfortably ensconced upon the banks of the Wabash, I began reading the prologue of Midnight Rising…and was immediately beset with terror. Expecting, at long last, a solid historical narrative of the Old Man’s Harpers Ferry incursion, I instead began to lose some of my joyous vacation demeanor…Some unseemly oaths began to be launched (My apologies to the hotel housekeepers who may have overheard me.)…And, most distressingly, my jalapeno pizza at the Yellow Tavern just did not seem as enjoyable as in years past. The cause of my suffering was the author’s blunt statement of purpose: “The place I wanted to be was inside their heads. What led them to launch a brazen attack on their own government and countrymen?” And then, of course, the obligatory references to 9/11, where a “long bearded fundamentalist, consumed by hatred of the U.S. government,” launches a “suicidal strike” upon a Federal facility.

I must admit, I found myself quoting the immortal words of General McAuliffe at the Battle of the Bulge: “NUTS!”

What was life REALLY like in that attic?" The Kennedy Farmhouse,

Washington County, Maryland, pre-raid headquarters

for John Brown and his men (photo by H. Scott Wolfe)

I would be an exceedingly wealthy man if I had received a dollar for every time I’ve told someone that I longed for an accurate, readable account of John Brown and his men at Harpers Ferry. In an long-ago geological epoch, when I first began the intellectual pursuit of the Old Man, I had collected a number of the earlier attempts: Laurence Green’s The Raid (1953); Allan Keller’s Thunder at Harper’s Ferry (1958); and Truman Nelson’s The Old Man: John Brown at Harper’s Ferry (1973). None of these efforts satisfied me, for they were replete with inaccuracies, fictional accounts and a lack of proper documentation. I longed for a truly evocative, sensory treatment of those stirring events of long ago. At times I feared that it would require a gifted novelist…not an arid historian…to tell the story I so craved. For I wanted to hear those desultory gunshots…the squeal of the express train from Wheeling…the curses of the drunken patrons of the Galt House saloon. I wanted to vicariously experience the dark, damp interior of the armory engine house…its numbing cold, its fear and confusion, the moans of the dying, the metallic smell of blood, the choking smoke of gunpowder. Unrealistic dreams, perhaps.

So then, with such high expectations, I was confronted with the possibility of yet another psychoanalytic leap into “their heads,” or the viewing of Harpers Ferry through the well-worn lens of present day Islamic terrorism. Why is it that when writers seek to describe a historical character, such as John Brown, their accounts immediately degenerate into Freudian monographs? “Yes,” they might pontificate, “this homegrown American terrorist found himself gripping a Sharps rifle for the obvious reason that during early childhood he lost a prized yellow marble beyond recovery.” Or perhaps: “Add to this the fact that he once stole three large brass pins,” they rant, “it is no wonder he became a Kansas outlaw.” In more recent Bin Ladenish years, one would almost believe that the length of an individual’s facial hair is in direct proportion to his proneness to fanaticism.

This is crazy! Instead of telling the fascinating STORY…the incredible STORY…the momentous STORY of John Brown, we gravitate toward psychobabble and petty schoolyard disputes. We immediately line up in factions…black and white…pro and con…praise and damnation…hero and villain…terrorist and freedom fighter…sane and insane. We criticize a Brown history or biography as if it were some kind of tax bill being considered by a “bipartisan” Super Committee…each side firmly entrenched…unwilling to budge from their preconceived notions…all fearful of upsetting their basic constituencies. What we are losing folks, through our own neglect, is one of the most fascinating sagas that history can ever hope to offer…one of the greatest stories in the annals of American history. Indeed, I say,“can’t we all just get along?”

Now before you all assume that I am contemplating yet another sword thrust to the vitals of Midnight Rising, do not be misled. There was plenty more to read. And as I absorbed Horwitz’s basic outline of the life of Brown…and the narrative of the Harpers Ferry raid…I can honestly state that I enjoyed the book very much. His goals listed in the prologue did not ultimately consume the book. He did not attempt to stretch the Old Man and his men on the psychiatric couch of history.

No, the narrative did not meet my self-imposed expectations of evocative writing. I could not vicariously find myself tucked behind a tree in the arsenal yard on October 17, 1859. But I found it a very readable book…a book eminently capable of introducing the Old Man to a general audience devoid of the least knowledge and appreciation for his historic import. And (most pleasing to me) for the very first time, the neglected members of Brown’s Provisional Army of the United States were adequately introduced to the reading public. Horwitz has admirably utilized a wide-ranging and significant sampling of primary sources…quoting from the letters and papers of the men…and has provided most welcome, if brief, biographical sketches of those who marched to the Ferry. There is much more work to be done, but perhaps we have turned the first shovel full of earth.

Your correspondent finishes Midnight Rising in

Jackson Square, New Orleans, LA

(photo by Nancy Wolfe)

This is not a scholarly book. This is a popular book. It is written to make money…and a good deal of money is being spent to promote it. The abundance of reviews in major publications and the appearance of the author on such programs as PBS’s Newshour has increased the public exposure of John Brown and Harpers Ferry…which is all to the good. I say, the more the merrier.

Metaphorically, I consider Midnight Rising a sturdy framework…upon which more specialized studies of Brown, his men or the events in which they participated, can be firmly set in place. Once this basic framework is fully laden with the bricks and mortar of honest and unbiased research, it is my sincere hope that the TRUTH of John Brown will, as Mrs. Howe famously declared, keep marching on.

* H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois, Public Library District and now a regular correspondent and contributor to this blog. He has devoted many years of grassroots research on John Brown, the Harper's Ferry raiders, and related themes.

** Editor's note: I had to look this one up, folks. Scott's reference is to a 1917 essay by Henry Louis Mencken in the New York Evening Mail, later reprinted in his book, Prejudices, Second Series (1920). The article proved a blunt and provocative criticism of Southern culture in that era. But Mencken was from Baltimore, and his criticism was not a Northerner's harangue, but rather was premised on his belief that the South had declined into cultural sterility and provincialism in his era. See Fred Hobs, "Henry Louis Mencken, 1880-1956," in Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris Copyright (c) 1989 by the University of North Carolina Press.

2011-11-14T00:42:00.001-05:00

From the Field:
The Roving 21st Century Editor Writes from Deep in the South

I write you from Tupelo, Mississippi . . . awash with the ghosts of Elvis. I have been without computer access since New Harmony, but have had a most successful sojourn in both Vicksburg, Miss. and New Orleans, La. . . .

I survived my seventeen mile jaunt at the Vicksburg battlefield. Pretty good for an old guy. While enroute, I found out that there is still work to be done in the "Red States."

I had halted for lunch at a point known militarily as "Thayer's Approach." I was happily ingesting some biscuits that I had purloined from breakfast, when a group of unreconstructed Confederates pulled up in their enormous SUV. Their "leader" (or at least the fellow with the biggest mouth) promptly began to lecture the others in this way (with the proper Suthin' lilt):

"Don't y'all wish you coulda been up there shootin' Yankees?"

"Y'all bet," they responded in unison.

"Too bad the Confederates didn't win," said the leader. "We sure wouldn't have all these problems we have today. For sure we wouldn't have all these folks on welfare."

"Y'all are right there," said the disciples.

I had my back turned during this discourse and, having finished eating, I headed down the road. About ten minutes later they drove up beside me, and the leader rolled down his window and said:

"Why y'all wearin' that Yankee hat?" ( I was wearing a Union kepi.)

"Well," I responded, "we are inside the Union lines, aren't we?"

"True enough," said he, "so y'all better change it on the other side."

Having experienced these showoffs yearly (and knowing them to be essentially cowards), I slipped in the knife by saying:

"You know, you Rebs are good at two things."

"What's that?" said the blowhard.

"Making Bar-B-Q and surrendering," I answered.

The redneck turned redder, and sped on into the sunset.

True story. Will send you something on my return.

From the (battle)field,

H. Scott

2011-11-13T17:16:00.002-05:00

FYI—

Tony Horwitz’s Midnight Rising: Online Reviews/Interviews

David S. Reynolds, “An Angry Prophet.” TheWall Street Journal (Oct. 22, 2011)

Jack Shea, “In Print : Tony Horwitz's "MidnightRising" digs up John Brown.” Martha’sVineyard Times (Oct. 25, 2011)

Marjorie Kehe, “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raidthat Sparked the Civil War.” The Christian Science Monitor (Oct. 28,2011)

Jonathan Yardley, “‘Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War,’ by Tony Horwitz.” The Washington Post (Oct. 28, 2011)

Kevin Boyle, “On the Road to Harper’s Ferry,” New York Times Book Review (Oct. 282011)

[AND see my response to this review]

Ken Armstrong, 'Midnight Rising' illuminates John Brown.” The Seattle Times (Nov. 6, 2011)

“John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War.” Tony Horwitz interviewed on the Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC Radio, Nov. 7, 2011

Erik Loomis, “BookReview: Tony Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked theCivil War.” Lawyers, Gun$, and Money (Nov. 8, 2011)

2011-11-06T00:32:00.001-04:00

Bearing Witness:

James Baldwin: “Ask John Brown”

PEN American Center is the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. It was founded in 1922 (International PEN was founded in 1921). According to its website, PEN American Center “has remained a writer-centered organization in which members play a leading role,” and today has 3,400 Professional Members—“the most distinguished writers, translators, and editors in the United States.”

This past August 2, PEN American Center featured an interview with James Baldwin by Frank Schatz in 1973, in honor of Baldwin’s birthday. The website says: “In his typically candid style, Baldwin talks . . . about the legacy of slavery, a nation in perpetual decline, and the American tendency to ‘destroy history.’” This feature is less than ten minutes in length, and probably is an excerpt from a larger interview. However, it is vintage Baldwin on Brown.

James Baldwin was a frank admirer of the Old Man. Once, during a presidential campaign, a reporter asked him which presidential candidate he was voting for. Baldwin replied, “John Brown.” I have never been a reader of his fiction, but I consider his essays about racism and white society profound and prophetic. As Malcolm X once observed, Baldwin was not permitted to make a speech during the 1963 March on Washington because they were not sure that he would stick to the script. James Baldwin was unabashed in highlighting the life and meaning of Brown in the most unrestrained tones of admiration. This remarkable interview portion makes this clear, as Baldwin audibly thinks about the racism of the United States, as it were, through the historical lens of Brown's life and struggle. Thanks to the PEN American Center for sharing it with us.

Listen to the interview

Visit the PEN American website for this feature

2011-11-03T14:22:00.002-04:00

Dear John--

John Brown and Violence: A Response

A thoughtful reader, Professor John Rudy, made the following comment on the other entry for Nov. 3rd on this blog. He writes:

I think my chief problem with Brown has always sprung from his use of violence, because I've never been convinced that taking another's life, whether perpetrated by a slaveholder on another human being or by Brown and his men at Harpers Ferry and Pottawatomie, can ever be deemed just.

I have had my students in the class I am teaching on Brown this semester ruminating on that very concept, as well as investigating the divide between Garrisonians and Immediatists, as they try to dissect who Brown was and why he chose to do what he did. I would love to hear your thoughts on when and if it is just and right to end another person's life by force.

Prof. Rudy is kind enough to offer a thoughtful comment and also solicits my thoughts on whether the use of violence is ever "just and right" to use force to kill someone. Obviously, his remarks require extensive reflection and discussion, but I will attempt to make some response in the hopes it is helpful, even if he does not agree.

First, I'd say that the issue of John Brown and violence is typically a theme raised by people who are not pacifists in principle. Therefore we need not get bogged down addressing their criticisms, which essentially reflect some degree of political double standard or hypocrisy. You pose a different question than people who like to attack Brown’s legacy because he used violence while turning a blind eye to the violence of slavery, the violence of their nation against other nations, and the violence of their heroes (often exerted against people of color).

Second, I would only say that if your students want to know who Brown was and the source of his actions, they must fairly understand not only the political but also the religious themes of Brown’s culture and past. Simplistic treatments of the “violent Old Testament God” versus the “peaceful New Testament God” is anachronistic gnosticism that has no validity in itself let alone in Brown’s case. Your students should be willing to consider why a sincere, essentially peaceful, and extremely moral and gentle Christian man like John Brown would fundamentally differ with someone like William Lloyd Garrison. I hope they will consider reading my “religious life” of Brown which may help to some degree. They should also explore the long debate in Christian history between pacifists and advocates of “just” force, but also keep in mind that many Christians like Brown were both peacefully oriented but could not subscribe to pacifism in principle as a binding stricture for all circumstances.

Third, you have asked me what I believe as to the use of force in ending human life. My view is probably closer to that of John Brown. My understanding is living a peaceful, nonviolent existence should be normative for a Christian. While Christians like Brown believed that humans are made in the image of God, the sanctity of human life does not take precedent in all situations for them. Certainly, Brown believed that government was granted the right to capital punishment and to wage war under conditions that did not violate biblical morality. He also believed that under certain circumstances, individual Christians could employ some degree of force to oppose injustice for the sake of the weak and oppressed.

Obviously, there is not enough space or time to debate these presuppositions. There is a long tradition of pacifism within Christianity, and it is arguable that the early church (for instance) did not begin to change until the “Christianization” of the Roman empire. Whether or not that’s true, the preponderant voice of early Christianity was non-violent and extremely so. But later Christians took a different view, particularly the “Just War” view coming out of Augustine and Aquinas. The Protestant Reformers, as seen in the case of the magisterial Reformers like Luther, Calvin, and others, were not pacifists like the Anabaptists. Brown was quite consciously rooted in the Calvinistic-Puritan tradition and probably never was a pacifist, although it seems that in his twenties and early thirties, he was somewhat influenced by a conservative bent that amounted to de facto pacifism. It was only as the slave power grew in militancy and violence that Brown began to conclude that force might be necessary to win back the nation and liberate the enslaved from its grip. Indeed, we can see that Brown did not openly espouse the use of force until the Fugitive Slave Law if 1850 effectively forced the entire nation under the domain of slavery. Certainly by 1859, there was no possibility of any kind of liberation—every legal and practical avenue toward peaceful resolution of the problem of slavery was gone. While the South was increasingly threatening secession, it was itself promoting the most radically violent and terroristic program in Kansas.

Finally, I respectfully disagree that the sanctity of human life always trumps every other issue. I do not understand the teaching of Jesus to advocate complete passivity in the face of wicked violence, although I believe that His followers should go the greatest length before the resort to violence. The answer is not ideal: it is not always clear what the greatest length may be, or what kind of violence is necessary. Often the resort to violence can slip into tragedy, and even good people may end up shedding blood unnecessarily in the midst of a legitimate struggle. It is interesting that Brown’s hero was Oliver Cromwell, whose legacy is forever stained by the bloody slaughter of Irish Roman Catholics at Drogheda and Wexford. Yet Brown’s case is hardly that of Cromwell. The five men killed at Pottawatomie in the Kansas territory in 1856 were collaborating with terrorists and the Browns and others had no resort to protection from the law, even as a veritable army of thugs were planning to attack Osawatomie and specifically targeted the abolitionist Browns. At Harper’s Ferry, Brown gave no order to murder people and those few killed were either shot dead in gun battle or killed by accident and/or apart from Brown’s orders amidst the attack.

Advocating for the necessary use of force and for the necessity of taking human life under certain circumstances is a difficult and often imperfect position to take. It is easy for pacifists to lampoon those who use violence because, as we acknowledge, often the efforts of even the most conscientious soldiers result in the deaths of non-combatants or slip into unforeseen, terrible outcomes.

On the other hand, the pacifist is consistently subject to the criticism that they are enslaved to a notion of peace that is not only unrealistic with respect to the human condition, but also disqualifies them from serving any real good for humanity except as Brown put it, “talk, talk, talk.” Garrison had a lot to say about the evil of slavery, but he had no plan—not even a political plan to end slavery. His solution was to destroy the constitution and “morally” persuade selfish, wicked men to give up their property, which might as well be the religion of tooth fairies and unicorns. I personally do not believe that Garrison advocated a consistently biblical view of the use of force; furthermore, people like him generally stand by while weak and oppressed people suffer without hope of relief. Pacifists never liberate people from evil forces, but rely on "violent" people to do the fighting. Pacifists are so high-minded and doctrinaire about the supposed inviolable value of every human life that they are willing to stand by and let individuals be slaughtered, raped, enslaved, and oppressed in the name of not harming a single soul! God forbid that you or I should ever find ourselves in mortal danger with only a pacifist as an ally.

The reason that Oswald Garrison Villard painted such a negative view of Brown the hero in his 1910 book was because he was not only Garrison’s grandson, but a radical pacifist. Villard himself was later criticized for having been willing to let the Nazis take over the world in the name of non-resistance. Brown and his family were quite convinced that such passivity in the face of evil was no virtue, and in the absence of any effort on the part of any anti-slavery figure of the antebellum era, he alone tried to launch a program that would use force without insurrectionary bloodletting for the liberation of enslaved people.

I think it is easy for you to sit back in the comfort of your particular situation and pin down John Brown's historical ears for having used violence. At least I hope you’re consistent in applying that presupposition to all circumstances, and I hope you would take the same position if the lives of your loved ones and community were under militant and malignant assault. I wonder whether you would reevaluate your assumption that killing bad people is unjust. Perhaps you would be true to your conviction, and allow thugs and murderers to do unspeakable evil in your presence when you have the power to resist. I hope not. I do not consider that virtue, Christian or otherwise. I consider such a response sheer folly.

I admit that taking the road to the use of force is terrible and terribly uncertain. But I believe that time and again in history, good men and women have made a difference by taking up swords and guns in the face of real threats of evil. I also believe that throughout history, the deaths of bad people or people in the service of evil systems has proven a benefit to humanity. Of course, had good people only relied on swords and guns, perhaps their actions would also amount to folly. But people like John Brown did not “live by the sword” as many assume. Brown himself believed that bearing the sword of steel was something given to him for a season and that it was also a manner of warfare inferior to the “sword of the spirit,” which he ultimately wielded with far more success. However, had he not used the sword of steel, he could not have unsheathed the sword of the spirit. Sometimes, whether we like it or not, we find ourselves entangled in conflicts that involve both, and we should worry when men and women neglect either one for the other.

When I think of John Brown, I think of a man whose extraordinary example was clearly seen and appreciated by Garrison, Quakers, and other pacifists precisely because they knew that his use of force and violence was the not the sum total of who he was or what he did in opposing slavery. It seems to me that if you are likewise a pacifist, you should explore more deeply why a whole generation of pacifists were ultimately won over by the words and character of such a “violent” man as John Brown. Were they deluded? Assuming that they were not deluded, then as a pacifist yourself, it seems to me that you have not yet grasped what they did concerning the Old Man of Harper’s Ferry. I suspect that most people are entirely clueless as to John Brown the man who lived, and that his admiring pacifist friends probably knew him better than many of us do today.

2011-11-03T02:03:00.006-04:00

I'm Not Surprised--
Boyle's New York Times Review of Midnight Rising

As I understand it, the policy of the New York Times Book Review is NOT to ask specialists to review new books addressing the subject matter of their specialization. Perhaps it is assumed that professional jealousy and doctrinaire prejudice would militate against a fair review, and therefore it is better to have a review written by someone marginal to the subject. If this is true, then the rationale is flawed, mainly because it sacrifices depth of understanding, even as it potentially blinds the reader from ascertaining whether the book under review is really as good (or bad) as the reviewer says it is.

I raise this point because Tony Horwitz’s Midnight Rising was reviewed in the NYTBR this past week (Oct. 28)--and frankly it’s superficial at its best, and awfully misleading and stupid at worst. In this case, the reviewer is a Ph.D at Ohio State University named Kevin Boyle who—according to his online university profile—teaches “twentieth century American history, with an emphasis on class, race, and politics.” This is not to detract from Dr. Boyle, who seems to be "all that and a bag of chips" as far as academia goes. By all accounts, he is an award-winning, fellowship holding, board-sitting son of a gun and probably knows a lot about his areas of specialization in 20^th century history. The problem is that Dr. Boyle doesn’t know diddly about John Brown, except for what he’s read in Tony’s book and perhaps what he’s watched on the History Channel or some other corrupted source.

For the most part, Boyle’s review is pedestrian. Then he ends the review with this fairly stupid piece of affectation:

Horwitz does his best to keep the ghosts at bay, taking care to avoid tying Brown directly to today’s fevered politics. The link is tricky, to be sure. No matter what anyone may argue, no current issue can claim the moral purity of the abolitionist crusade. Still, it’s impossible to read this fine book without thinking about the modern-day Browns, soldiers of a vengeful God, seeking righteousness in a fierce burst of violence, justice in the shedding of blood. Maybe Horwitz decided that he didn’t need to make the comparison explicit. As he knows so well, the past and the present have a way of fusing together on their own. And this time the connection isn’t comforting at all.

Frankly, I’m not surprised. It was inevitable that some ill-schooled academic (inevitably a white man with all the right credentials) would take Tony’s thesis and run in the wrong direction with it. Almost anything published about Brown is good enough reason for one of these types to do their little anti-John Brown song-and-dance. Can we forget the gratuitous, silly tirade of Sean Wilentz in reaction to David Reynolds’ milestone biography? Dogs just can’t help barking at the moon.

As much as I like Tony Horwitz and respect his work and efforts (no one can say that he didn’t research or produce a well written effort), I still say that his take on Brown is flawed, both regarding Pottawatomie and the Harper’s Ferry raid. Of course I disagree with his treatment of the facts; but this is largely a presuppositional matter. It is important to point out that notwithstanding his careful attention to detail in many respects, Tony’s book flies in the face of important evidence and the preponderant views of the dominant writers and researchers on Brown. While Tony is careful not to step in the same pile he stepped in when he wrote that New York Times Op-Ed piece back in 2009 (by insinuating comparisons between Brown and bearded Muslim terrorists), he leaves enough room for—and perhaps even baits—others to make that same insinuation, as Boyle’s conclusion reveals.

To be sure, Boyle is not entirely culpable for finding it “impossible” not to read Midnight Rising “without thinking about the modern-day Browns, soldiers of a vengeful God, seeking righteousness in a fierce burst of violence, justice in the shedding of blood.” This is partly Tony’s fault, given his ambivalent view of the Old Man--seeing him as both someone to appreciate and someone to disdain. Yet if Boyle’s review ends with references to bursts of violence, shedding of blood, and the inevitable “discomfort,” it’s also because he’s both prejudiced and unstudied in matters pertaining to John Brown—which is only to say that he’s a member of a very large club in the American academy.

As I said before, I’m not really surprised by any of this. "The Old Gray Lady" could have asked McGlone, Reynolds, Carton, or me to review the book. Or they could have asked me if I knew anyone competent to review a book about John Brown, and I could have told them to ask Jean Libby or Scott Wolfe, two people who have spent years in their respective grassroots research on Brown and the Harper’s Ferry raid. (I should mention that I am patiently awaiting a review from the latter, who is currently touring the South, Redpath style, while he reads Midnight Rising). Certainly, a qualified reviewer would have been far more sensitive to the considerable points of vulnerability in Tony’s narrative and interpretation. But knowing nothing about Brown or Kansas or Harper’s Ferry, Boyle merely takes his word for it, and then draws the same old hackneyed conclusion he probably made even before he read the book.

As reviews go, Boyle’s review of Midnight Rising is fairly useless, except to point out that those with the worst prejudices against Brown will not be sufficiently challenged by the book either.

2011-10-24T01:03:00.001-04:00

And A Child Shall Lead Them--
The Youngest John Brown Lecturer in the World?

Young Philip makes for a striking "Osawatomie" Brown

A very proud mother from the State of Nevada was kind enough to write to me, sharing about her son, Philip, who last year--at the age of nine--became probably the youngest researcher, lecturer, and educational impersonator of John Brown in the world. The young man, who is now ten-years-old, was doubtlessly inspired by John Hendrix's wonderful illustrated book for young people, John Brown: His Fight for Freedom. I'm also happy to say that Philip also found some inspiration and assistance from this blog. His work on Brown was part of his participation in a program called "Young Chautauqua," in which children studied a historical personality and then wrote and performed in their own one-person show about their chosen subject. Using Hendrix and other sources, he not only prepared his presentation, but also memorized John Brown's address to the court when he was sentenced to death. According to Philip's mom, he performed his John Brown program in a number of places, including all the classes in his school from kindergarten through 8th grade. "For the rest of the year," she writes, "kids would come up to him and talk to him about what they had just learned about John Brown."

That's excellent, Philip. By all accounts, you make an excellent John Brown. Keep up the research, too. Another generation of John Brown scholars rising!

2011-10-23T18:08:00.000-04:00

An Elephant Story:
John Brown, a Complicated Man?

Writing for the entertainment section of The Washington Post today (10/23), journalist Ron Charles has a happy notice of a book party this past weekend in Northwest Washington held in honor of Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising. According to Charles, the party was hosted by Tony's brother, Josh Horwitz, President at Living Planet Books, and was attended by friends and family in celebration of Tony's latest accomplishment. If I'm not mistaken, Tony's parents were also in attendance, which sounds very sweet.

Tony Horwitz
Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Congratulations, Tony. On the other hand, Charles also reports the following:

"When pressed to characterize Brown as an American hero or an American terrorist, Horwitz refused. 'He was neither,' he said. 'Or both. He was a complicated man.'”

Of course, I take issue with the notion of Brown being "complicated" or "complex," whether it comes from the mouth of Brown's admirers or critics. To be blunt, I don't find Brown a complicated man at all. In fact, studying the course of his life, he seems to have been a very consistent if not predictable person. Nor was there anything complicated about the choices he made or the values and beliefs that drove him. I don't buy it, as I said, whether as a description offered in his defense or as a way of fence straddling.

I'm afraid the real complication here is somewhat more of a postmodern dilemma: it's a reader-response thing. It's not John Brown who is complicated, but Tony's reading of him that gets complicated. Brown is a hero, but he's a terrorist--oh wait, he's not a textbook terrorist, but he's no hero either. Hero or terrorist? Neither? Both? Neither or both?

This reminds me of the story about the five blind men who were asked to describe an elephant based upon the particular part of the elephant that they had grabbed--trunk, tusk, ear, leg, and tail. As the story shows, it's impossible to describe an elephant when the process is so complicated. Yet it would be a big mistake if we then considered the elephant to be a "complicated" beast.

Biographies are not videos or time machines, allowing readers to see the subject as he was and lived. Biographies are interpretative narratives that reflect the perspective of the author. Obviously, none of us can recreate John Brown in text. Mark Twain was right when he concluded that “biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.” While honest biographical portraits based upon sound research should share a basic resemblance with one another, a lot of room is left for interpretation, and this is where the subject can be rendered "complicated," especially if the author's presuppositions require it.

I respectfully differ with Tony on this point. If John Brown seems "complicated" to him, I'd suggest the problem is in the historical grid he's using--the presuppositions he holds and the manner in which those presuppositions have shaped his handling of the story. Of course, we all labor with presuppositions, and absolute objectivity is always beyond us. But I do not believe therefore, as do radical postmoderns, that all interpretations are equally valid. Some efforts at objectivity are better than others; some biographies are truer to the subject than others, and the best efforts to explain someone biographically do not tend toward complicating the subject.

There was an abolitionist named John Brown who was born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800, and was hanged in Charlestown, Virginia, on December 2, 1859. In between those dates, his life was full of detail, drama, color, and texture. His record is both mundane and fascinating, depending on the subject. Yet there is a reasonably sound, evidentiary basis for saying that we can know a good deal about him, and can draw some historically valid conclusions about the kind of man that John Brown was.

The question of whether he was a hero or a terrorist is only as complicated as we want it to be.

2011-10-22T11:26:00.000-04:00

Review
David Reynolds on Midnight Rising

Notwithstanding the immense value of Robert McGlone's 2009 biography of Brown, no author and biographer has done more for John Brown's cultural and historical reputation in the broader public than David S. Reynolds, whose 2005 biography, John Brown Abolitionist broke through the wall of 20th century anti-Brown ignorance and bigotry, effectively restoring a great deal of light and reason to the popular understanding of Brown in the 21st century. Reynolds' book signaled a real change for good, despite the snobbish protestation of writers like Sean Wilentz and others who prefer the conventional view of antebellum U.S. history (where white supremacy and chattel slavery are acceptable landscapes for the more meaningful story of white people and their political history).

Since the publication of Reynolds' book, some scholars have raised questions about Brown while suggesting their general appreciation for his noble stance in history. In one case, it has been suggested that too much has been made of Brown's exceptional stance toward black people, and that his attitude and efforts for black freedom were far more typical among his white abolitionist contemporaries. This attempt to "right size" Brown is unconvincing, especially in light of the Reynolds thesis, as well as my own previous profile of Brown in "Fire from the Midst of You." To be sure, there were some notable white egalitarians among the abolitionists, and in some respects these heroic figures formed notable alliances with black abolitionists, a point illustrated in John Stauffer's seriously flawed but appreciable Black Hearts of Men. However, as Reynolds shows, the sum of Brown's contributions was greater than the parts of the most notable anti-slavery figures in the antebellum era. Hopefully I will revisit this more extensively at some point, but this is neither the time nor the place for addressing the problematic notion that Brown was hardly singular as a moral steward of abolitionism.

Yet the more positive and holistic view of Brown has been even more pointedly challenged, notably by Tony Horwitz in his new book, Midnight Rising. Tony writes on the side of history where Brown's contributions and heroism may be appreciated, but not without considerable challenge and revision. Clearly, Tony is not comfortable with the John Brown portrayed by Reynolds, Carton, me and others being accepted as the emerging 21st century image of the Old Man. According to his own words, Tony argues for a more "nuanced" view of Brown in his new book.

Midnight Rising: Tony Horwitz
is not comfortable with the emerging
21st century portrait of John Brown

It is interesting, then, that David Reynolds has published a response to Midnight Rising in today's Wall Street Journal (Oct. 22), excerpts of which I publish below. (The title, "An Angry Prophet," is undoubtedly the work of an editor, obviously intending to grab readers' attention.) Due to copyright concerns, I have provided a substantial excerpt for the reader, who can use the provided link to read the review in its entirety on the WSJ website.

In his prologue to Midnight Rising, Tony Horwitz laments that, in his son's ninth-grade textbook, John Brown—the militant abolitionist whose attack on Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859 helped to trigger the Civil War—is only a "speed bump for students racing ahead to Fort Sumter and the Gettysburg Address." When I was in high school, in the mid-1960s, my senior-year history book devoted only a dismissive paragraph to Brown. Back then, he wasn't so much a speed bump as road kill—a stinking skunk on history's highway. Brown was widely viewed as a homicidal maniac with a delusional plan for ending slavery.
In recent decades, Brown's reputation has improved, as historians have learned to value his dedication to eradicating slavery, his progressive attitudes on race and his perception that violence alone could uproot the South's peculiar institution. Mr. Horwitz says that, with Midnight Rising, he wants to enhance Brown's role in history by providing fresh information about him and his followers. He does indeed add some details to the record, but along the way he revives a few old, negative images of Brown that have been challenged in recent books, including Evan Carton's Patriotic Treason and Lou DeCaro's "Fire From the Midst of You." . . .

Brown thus plotted an invasion of the South that involved freeing some slaves and then retreating to the mountains, then moving southward and freeing more slaves and retreating again, and so on. He hoped thereby to destabilize the slave system and create panic among slaveholders. . . .

. . .When it came to his plan to invade the South, Brown mustered support in the North and then stayed for months on a Maryland farm, training recruits. On the rainy evening of Oct. 16, 1859, he and 21 followers began their foray on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry. Brown seized the arsenal, liberated slaves in the region and took hostage a number of slaveholders, but he stalled too long in the town. After a bloody battle, he and several followers were captured by federal troops. Brown was tried before a Virginia court and hanged on Dec. 2, 1859. Six of his men followed him to the scaffold.

Why did Brown linger in Harpers Ferry instead of fleeing to the mountains? Mr. Horwitz suggests that he had come to see himself as a new Samson, ready to sacrifice himself as long as the temple of slavery collapsed around him.

Brown's immediate posthumous reputation was inevitably divided. In the South, he was seen as a satanic agitator who represented the North's aggressive designs. In the North, his insurrection plan seemed quixotic and futile, at first. But prominent Northerners like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau called Brown a peerless martyr who had died in a noble effort to free the slaves. Emerson predicted that Brown would make the gallows "as glorious as the Cross." The North's veneration of Brown swelled until he became a legend among Union troops, who famously sang as they marched: "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, / But his soul goes marching on."

The idea of Brown as an inspiring freedom fighter has never died out. But during the long period of legalized segregation known as Jim Crow, his reputation plummeted. Biographers depicted him as murderous, fanatical, insane. This image was conveyed by revisionist historians and by movies like "Santa Fe Trail" (1940), in which Raymond Massey plays Brown as a wild-eyed zealot.

It was left to modern historians to rescue Brown from ignominy. The civil-rights movement fostered a growing appreciation of Brown's forward-thinking views on race. A more positive view informed Stephen Oates's 1970 biography, To Purge This Land With Blood, which showed signs of sympathy while still questioning Brown's methods and sanity.

Mr. Horwitz worries that, "through the lens of 9/11," we may now see John Brown as a "long-bearded fundamentalist" and Harpers Ferry as an "al-Qaeda prequel." He is right to worry about such reductionism, though 9/11, ironically, does help us to see that Brown's invasion plan was not utterly absurd. The past decade has shown what can happen when a determined splinter group wages war from hideouts—how disruptive it can be to the status quo. Had Brown made it to the mountains before he was captured at Harpers Ferry, he too might have had a powerful effect on events—a positive one (unlike al Qaeda), since he aimed to free four million slaves.

Reynolds: "Emerson and
Thoreau were
closer to the truth."

Mr. Horwitz urges us to view Brown from within his own era. Here, too, there are reasons to see his plan as more plausible than crazy. In places like Jamaica and Haiti, black populations had driven out European colonizers by striking from mountain redoubts. Brown's plan changed over time, which leads Mr. Horwitz to see both vacillation and ineptitude. But Brown's tactical idea remained steady: He wanted to disrupt slavery from the mountains, whose topography he knew well from his days as a surveyor.

To emphasize what he calls the "manifest implausibility" of Brown's scheme, Mr. Horwitz presents him as a maladroit leader with a fragmented following. Brown had "poor judgment of personnel," Horwitz tell us—as though there was ample opportunity in the 1850s to sort through a field of candidates ready to join a dangerous mission in the South. Mr. Horwitz notes that Brown's Northern supporters and his own soldiers often quarreled with him about battle plans—as though anyone in that decade could envisage a sure military strategy against the South. (Lincoln, for one, said in 1858 that war was not even an option against slavery.)

In Midnight Rising, Mr. Horwitz corrects a fact here and there, adds some human anecdotes and local history, and records such details as the degree to which the various hanged bodies quivered after the noose had done its work. But much of his book is a gloss of what is already known.

As for the figure at the center of the story, Mr. Horwitz sees him too often as the grim Old Man of long-ago histories: bold, arrogant, sly, fanatical, murderous, muddle-headed and possibly insane. One has to think that, with their more admiring view, Emerson and Thoreau were closer to the truth.

2011-10-17T11:28:00.005-04:00

Isn't that special--
Bad Hair Day Rising?

Bloomberg Businessweek is featuring excerpts from Tony Horwitz's new book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War, and today's excerpt begins:

"In 1859, John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, propelled a divided nation toward Civil War. Brown’s wild hair and desperate scheme to free and arm slaves helped foster his enduring image as a crazed fanatic, a zealot on the far fringe of American society.

But for most of his 59 years, the abolitionist was a clean--shaven entrepreneur--a mercantilist everyman in the rapidly expanding economy of the 19th century."

"Wild Hair" Evokes This Notion of JB, as
seen in this easily googled image

Overall, the excerpt is pretty good. From what I've seen, for the most part I don't take issue with what Tony has written about Brown's early life. But this introductory line is the stuff of magazine articles. It is pure bait, and it shows how skillful word professionals like Tony Horwitz can craft a line that grabs readers' attention.

As far as Brown's mane goes, his hair definitely had body, and both his hair and beard grew quickly. But unless Tony knows otherwise, I don't think there is any contemporary description of Brown having "wild hair"--unless, of course, one considers his blood-matted hair following the failure of the raid as "wild." Recall that at least two marines (not one, as the conventional account goes) tried to kill Brown in the Harper's Ferry engine house, an assault that included being bludgeoned on the head with the hilt of a costume sword. Journalist accounts following the raid note the white-washed brick inside the engine house smeared with blood and strands of the Old Man's hair. Perhaps too, his hair got a little "wild" during his incarceration in Virginia. The degree to which he was allowed to look after his own personal hygiene in jail is not clear; Brown was meticulous in his self-grooming by all accounts. So if he had "wild hair," it was no fault of his own.

But I don't think this is what Tony had in mind. What he is referring to is an image, a notion, really, that exists largely in the minds of "white America"--"wild hair" being a metaphor for someone who was frenzied, irresponsible, and possibly crazy. "Wild hair" is Tony's way of pressing the button, hitting the buzzer, of popular culture. It signals something that he knows they'll understand. It's a word that functions like the bell that makes Pavlov's dog begin to drool.

Just googling and once again it's "Wild Hair"

Of course, Tony proceeds to point out that for most of his life, he was anything but a crazy man. Yet he seems to be signaling that at some point, John Brown went off the road of the rational and became a "wild-haired" kind of guy--the kind of guy who concocts "desperate schemes."

I don't want to make so much of this that the reader won't appreciate whatever is good in Tony's offering. But I do want to point out the power of signal words and phrases in the way the Old Man is described--how by plugging into longstanding popular images and notions that were themselves manufactured by longstanding prejudice, a skillful writer can pre-justify questionable conclusions that may be drawn later, regardless of their historical viability. Whatever else Midnight Rising says about John Brown, remember that it begins with John Brown as the man with "wild hair" and "desperate schemes."

Will it be another bad hair day for the Old Man?

2011-10-16T21:20:00.000-04:00

In Remembrance--
That Sunday Night, 152 Years Ago

One hundred and fifty-two years ago this evening, John Brown and his men were readying themselves for their fateful march to Harpers Ferry. Like today, October 16th fell on a Sunday in the year 1859, and so this evening there is that much more resonance in historical memory as we consider the "John Brown raid." Based on a trusty perpetual calendar, October 16 has fallen on a Sunday sixteen different years since 1859--1870, 1881, 1887, 1898, 1910, 1921, 1927, 1938, 1949, 1955, 1966, 1977, 1983, 1994, 2005, and of course 2011. The next time the Harper's Ferry raid anniversary will fall on a Sunday will be the year 2022.

Although the presentation of Brown in the U.S. has shifted considerably from the 20th century's predominant tone of malicious prejudice, a good deal of misinformation and stupidity still abounds in the popular mind about Brown and his efforts in Kansas and Virginia. It is likely that this will continue to some degree because of recalcitrant racism and pro-Southern sentimentality that taints national life to this day. However, Brown has always had his critics among pacifists and idealists who somehow think that they know better than did those living in 1859 about the possibility of resolving slavery's injustice without the use of "violence." For our part, we see the Harper's Ferry raid as the great moment of our nation's history--when an "army" of young, devoted, and justice-minded men, white and black, endeavored to launch a freedom movement. Contrary to what is now being published abroad, the failure of the raid in no wise disqualifies the plan or the motivation behind it in historical terms. It was a glorious effort, a reasonable strategy, and a sane and noble effort to overthrow slavery throughout the South without instigating widespread insurrection. That Sunday night, 152 years ago was the mark of a special presence in our nation's history, but one that has been overlooked, disdained, and misinterpreted by a society that is largely mis- or uneducated about the realities of racist chattel slavery in this country.

Harpers Ferry Two Years After the Raid
(Harpers Weekly, 4 May 1861)

I have not had the opportunity to read the published version of Tony Horwitz's new book, although I have previously offered a response to the pre-publication manuscript. In that penultimate version, I took issue with a number of things, especially Tony's tendency to disdain Brown's efforts and rationale, concluding that he essentially threw the raid in order to attain his goal of becoming a martyr. I think this is highly problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which it is unfair to the fullest extent of the record, and essentially means that John Brown himself was either lying or deluded in his retrospective remarks about the raid. And frankly, I believe Brown more than I do Horwitz. While I doubt that the final version of his book will differ considerably from the pre-publication draft, I should not comment further until I've given the published book a fair reading--and right now, if my readers haven't already noticed it, since my teaching responsibilities resumed, it's been hard enough for me to keep up with this blog let alone catch up with the pile of "to read" material on my desk. I have seen one review of Tony's book that was pleasantly neutral, if not favorable, toward Brown despite my serious reservations about Tony's conclusions. Nevertheless, Tony's book doubtless will add some vigor and rigor to forthcoming discussions and debates, although I suspect it will find its biggest impact in the wider reading market that has not heretofore paid attention to the John Brown theme, but will do so because of their interest in Tony's noteworthy efforts in popularizing forgotten history. His book will prove considerably less weighty in John Brown circles, although it should not be dismissed either, since he has worked hard in his research and written an interesting book in many respects. Still, it is already manifest that Tony's portrayal of Brown is not going to satisfy many of us, particularly those of us who comprise what Larry Lawrence calls "the John Brown community."

But this is the stuff of what we do. Indeed, it is all that we can do, 152 years later--reflecting, analyzing, speculating, writing, debating, talking, and dreaming of one of the most moving, exciting, and powerful stories in the history of the United States and the larger story of the struggle for justice.
So, dear readers, "get on your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry"--if only in memory and imagination.

Keep marching on, Old Man. Like that Sunday in 1859, today may have been the Lord's Day, but tonight is yours once more.

2011-10-15T10:54:00.001-04:00

Blogfully Speaking--
The Delusion that Plunged Them into War: A North Carolinian's Remarks After John Brown's Hanging

Blogger Lew Powell had an interesting post on his blog, North Carolina Miscellany: Exploring the History,Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State (Oct. 8) noting an editorial in a North Carolina newspaper published on the day after John Brown’s execution in 1859. Under the title, “John Brown without tears (to say the least),” Powell provides excerpts from the editorial:

“Fanaticism in the North is rampant. . . . On yesterday, the godly city of Boston, built up and sustained by the products of negro slave labor, went into mourning, fasting and prayer over the condign punishment of a negro stealer, murderer and traitor. . . .
“In all the Noo England towns and villages, we may expect to hear that mock funerals have been celebrated, and all kinds of nonsensically lugubrious displays made. (It is a pity that they haven’t a witch or two to drown or burn, by way of variety.). . .
“The Yankees have no objection to mingling money making with their grief, and they will, unless Brown’s gallows is known to have been burned, set to work and make [from it] all kinds of jimcracks and notions… and sell them. Let the rope which choked him, too, be burned or we shall see vast quantities of breast pips, lockets and bracelets… for sale. Barnum is already in the market for Old Brown’s clothes. . . (Raleigh Register, Dec. 3, 1859).

Of course, I could not resist making the following comments which Mr. Powell has graciously posted:

Fascinating reminder of the mindset that once defended chattel slavery and dominated the antebellum era with tirades and threat of secession. In fact, there was no market in John Brown “jimcracks and notions,” although in New York City–where Brown’s body was prepared by a mortician–some relics were kept by admirers (screws from his Virginia coffin, segments of the hanging rope mostly). Whether or not Barnum tried to purchase Brown’s clothes is not clear. The Brooklyn mortician who kept them, being a fervent antislavery man, kept them for many years. It was indicative of the hardness of southern hearts that they could see in Brown’s death only the end of a murderer and criminal, and the outpouring of affection and admiration in the North as nonsensical. This malign hubris is what plunged the Confederacy into war at the cost of so many southern lives–all for the purpose of defending a way of life premised upon the degradation and abuse of other human beings. In the retrospect of history, the people of the South look like the greatest of fools. It is a lesson for all of us and for every generation. John Brown was right after all, and only now we are beginning to recognize it as a nation, even though there are still many people trying to suppress that realization.--LD

2011-10-06T18:13:00.000-04:00

From the Field:

EXPLAINING ECCENTRICITY:
THE JOHN BROWN QUILT

By H. Scott Wolfe *

Autumn is coming to the Upper Mississippi valley. The maples clinging to the river bluffs are beginning to show their flashy colors…the Virginia creepers entwine their trunks like red snakes…and there is the continuous plop of black walnut and hickory nuts on the leaf-strewn forest floors. The wild turkeys are packing their crops with acorns, and every squirrel seems to be carting provisions to stock their winter larders.

The air, particularly at night, is becoming quite bracing…while the tinge of smoke is beginning to burn the nostrils. The He-Men of the town are gathering to talk of hunting and to oil their shotguns…while the pumpkins, squash, Osage oranges and stalks of bittersweet are beginning to stock the farmer’s markets.

And the tourists…ah, the tourists…are beginning to flock to my historic town. All seek that last respite before the snow begins to swirl. They come, unfortunately for us of a historic turn of mind, not to view our nineteenth-century architecture, visit the home of General/President Ulysses S. Grant, or observe the ghosts of steamboats-past on our river. They come, rather, to visit the local wineries, marinate in hot tubs, populate the day spas, and gorge themselves on Italian food. (Which seems quite foreign to a town which never possessed an Italian immigrant. As they say, “The customer is always right.”)

But to this humble John Brown researcher, autumn means it’s time to bring out the “John Brown Quilt.” Yes, I said the “John Brown Quilt.” This eccentric pursuer of the Old Man and his men must have his toys…and in my study can be found John Brown statuettes, John Brown dolls (one actually given to me dangling from a rope), a John Brown sculpture (replete with a sign asking, “What can Brown do for you?”), and a number of Brown-emblazoned t-shirts and baseball caps from businesses ranging from Harper’s Ferry eateries to Lawrence, Kansas breweries. I once ate pancakes at “John Brown’s Family Restaurant” in Nebraska City, Nebraska. They peddled shirts showing the wild-eyed Curry image of the Old Man…but instead of clutching a Sharps rifle and Bible, he toted a tray of breakfast entrees. Such are the joys of capitalism!

But the cool of autumn means quilts. And the “John Brown Quilt” is a monument to the sewing skills of my long suffering spouse. It’s not easy to be married to a historical researcher. It means numerous vacation stops at obscure cemeteries, battlefields, museums, and record repositories. It means paper-littered kitchen tables, book-covered chairs and a faraway look in one’s eyes when it’s time to take out the garbage.

But my wife has been a loyal trooper. She has soldiered through many of the Brown-related sites stretching from Maine to Kansas. She can recite, with sufficient prodding, most of the names of the members of the Old Man’s Provisional Army. She can recognize and properly identify images of both the Maxson farmhouse in Iowa and the Kennedy farmhouse in Maryland. What a girl!! My wife is also a historian in her own right…being quite expert in the field of vintage ladies’ clothing and accessories. And being of an old fashioned turn of mind, those newfangled electric sewing machines are verboten in this household.

So a while back, while she pondered a new sewing project, I suggested she attempt a quilt honoring John Brown and his men. Her agile fingers began to fly with scissors, needle and thread…the classic 30s and 40s movies began to glow on the TV screen (my wife cannot create unless viewing a vintage film)…and Voila!! It was finished.

She had created an appliqué quilt consisting of twenty-five squares, each containing her own representation of the armory fire engine house at Harper’s Ferry. Each square also included the name of one of the men who “marched to the Ferry” with Brown on that fateful October night in 1859. In addition, one square shows “Harpers Ferry 1859,” and another, “Provisional Army…United States.” The accompanying images give several views of this, our family monument to historical eccentricity.

So some people can read John Brown…some write John Brown…some talk John Brown…and some travel and visit John Brown. But how many can SLEEP John Brown? All praise to the John Brown spouses…male and female!! Thanks to all of you…and stay warm and cozy this winter! I myself have visions of some woolen John Brown pajamas. H-m-m, where is she??

2011-10-01T14:11:00.000-04:00

John Brown and “Violence”: Two Recent Views of Note

I. O Say Can You See?

This summer the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institute featured a John Brown program as part of their continuing series called, “Time Trial,” a program of their theatrical education program, History Alive! According to the Museum blog, O Say Can You See? the program invited visitors “to serve as jurors in a short hearing for a historical person. In the "Time Trial of John Brown," audience members deliberate on John Brown’s contested legacy and decide how he should be remembered in American history.” Brown is the second biographical dramatization presented in this program about “controversial” figures in our nation’s history.

The first was Benedict Arnold.

“A controversial character in American history,” the Museum blog continues, “John Brown was a radical abolitionist in the mid-19th century. Brown advocated violence to combat slavery and led armed insurrections that would lead to his execution.” To further reinforce the “violent” framework of the discussion about Brown, the blog then provides a link to a pike in the Smithsonian collection, the only link to anything on the web about him.

The blog article also features a short video describing the program, which begins by suggesting that the program was reaching toward some kind of fairness in presenting Brown’s case. Perhaps it did so. But based upon the video, the program fell short. This is apparent in the statement by Susan Evans, the Daily Programs and Theater Coordinator, when she almost desperately seems to point out that by presenting Brown they are not calling people to violence. “We don’t want to make out John Brown to be a hero at all,” she says.

“We don’t want to make out John Brown to be a hero at all,” she says. . . .

Of course they don’t. That’s why they featured Brown in a program about “controversial” people and made him second only to Benedict Arnold. In fact, this all but puts Brown in a dim light, no matter how his rationale is portrayed by the actor-facilitator, Terry Aviril. The point of this program is not to put a light upon the monstrous violence of white racism and chattel slavery, but to excise Brown the traitor from the context of white American normalcy. Even the one black person in the video comes off like his reasoning was run through a good old fashioned cycle of Tide ‘n Clorox. Not only does he point out that his mother used to use “John Brown” as a curse word, but he concludes that being opposed to Brown “in some strange way” might mean one has a problem with “what our founding fathers did.” Really, Brother? I thought the point of John Brown being controversial to white society was that they had a problem with what John Brown did. At least, this seems to be the judgment of black historians As it turned out, even the Founding Fathers didn’t consider chattel slavery an immediate problem to what they "did" in 1776.

You will obviously draw your own conclusions from the video, but you don’t have to be Malcolm X to read the cultural schematics here, folks. Like the staff at the National Park Service at Harper’s Ferry, evidently the staff at the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum/Theater have an opinion about Brown. The title of their blog article is, “How should John Brown be remembered?” I think the answer is obvious.

II. Who Are You Calling a Terrorist?

Along very different lines, Paul Finkelman, the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy at Albany Law School, published a very thoughtful piece about Brown in Prologue Magazine (Spring 2011, Vol. 43, No. 1), the publication of the National Archives. Of course, Dr. Finkelman, a brilliant legal scholar, is widely known as the editor, author, and commentator of the John Brown theme. Although I have differed with him on some biographical points, this article is highly recommended precisely because Finkelman does not frame Brown in the terrorist or violence mode. Rather, first he discusses terrorism and then lifts up Brown for clear examination, applying his practical and penetrating insight to the error of referring to Brown as a terrorist. Readers may use the link provided to read the article in its entirety on the National Archives website. Someone has also posted a scan of the print version on Scribd.

Paul Finkelman

I respectfully differ with Finkelman on a number of points. Overall, he seems to have a thoughtful and insightful reading of Brown’s actions in political context. His reading of Brown’s early life and activities, though positive, can seem pedestrian at times, overlooking some of the aspects of his life that we have come to know. For instance, he seems inclined to see Brown as an impoverished and talentless businessman, whereas I think Brown was probably a better businessman than he looks, and his economic status in the later 1850s, while hardly prosperous, was not as bad as many assume. The late Ed Cotter pointed out to me years ago that Mary Brown had a house, property, some livestock, and other humble assets that left her better off than many, though hardly rich. After visiting Brown’s family in November 1859, Thomas Wentworth Higginson made the interesting observation: “. . . they greatly need money; though not so totally destitute as many seem to think” (Higginson to unidentified, Nov. 22, 1859, in Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 88). Nor is it clear that he properly evaluates Brown’s plans at Harper’s Ferry, although admittedly this is a subject that bears ongoing and in depth study. In short, I'm not so certain where Finkelman comes down on the subject of John Brown the man; I doubt he is an admirer, and in at least one context has opined that Brown "reinvented" himself as a prisoner in Virginia, a thesis that I reject, considering his actions, writings, and personal conduct in jail as being entirely consistent with his entire life and behavior previous to being defeated and jailed. Notwithstanding these points, we are happy to have Dr. Finkelman's arguments regarding the political context of Brown's actions in 1856-59.

Thus, as to the topic of Brown and terrorism, he points out:

There are no complete or certain definitions of terrorism. Terrorists seek to "terrify" people and strike fear in the minds of those at whom their terror is directed. This, however, is not a complete definition. After all, few would consider soldiers in warfare terrorists, yet surely they try to make their enemy "fearful" of them. . . . So, what beyond scaring or frightening people constitutes terrorism? How do we define the "terrorist?" (p. 18)

Finkelman notes that the goal of terrorism is the “terror” itself, not as a means to an end, but to do harm to those that they opposed. “This makes terrorism different from other kinds of illegal activity or violence.” (pp. 18-19) Finkelman says another important characteristic of terrorism is that terrorists kill indiscriminately and without concern (with some exception) because terrorists are not concerned about “collateral damage.” They “avoid direct contact and confrontation with those who are armed, especially the military,” and hope to maximize their violent attacks in mortal terms. Finkelman says that the “classic American terrorist is the sheeted Klansman, with his face covered, killing, beating, mutilating, burning, and raping, to terrorize those who supported racial equality and black suffrage.” Finally, he points out that terrorism overrides the “political context” and opts to use violence, whereas an act of political revolution take place when all other political avenues are closed. (p. 19)

Having made careful analysis of terrorism, Finkelman places Brown on the examination table of history, paying particular attention to the Pottawatomie killings of 1856 and the Harpers Ferry raid of 1859. Do these episodes reveal Brown as a terrorist? He concludes quite reasonably that Brown’s actions differ greatly from terrorist action. I agree likewise. Even at its worst, Brown’s actions either avoid or intend to discriminate in favor of innocent, unarmed, and vulnerable people. At Pottawatomie, only specific men were cut down while family members, associates, and guests were spared. At Harpers Ferry, great pains were taken to care for prisoners, fight only in self-defense, and sustain an honorable presence. Although a number of people were killed by Brown’s men, these killings either went against Brown’s directives or were unfortunate incidents. In both Kansas and Virginia, Brown never conducted himself as a terrorist, and had he done so, a great deal collateral bloodshed would have taken place.

2011-09-15T23:43:00.001-04:00

JB in the News--

Perkins Mansion, Site of Brown’s Execution, Fails to Sell on Auction

(Associated Press, Sept. 14) CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. – Attempts to sell a mansion on the site of abolitionist John Brown's execution have failed. A notice posted on the auction site says the owners failed to get their minimum asking price, which wasn't published. Bidding for the Historic Perkins House in Charles Town had been expected to begin at $950,000 last weekend.

An agent didn't immediately comment today. It's unclear if they'll try again. The 7,000-square-foot, five-bedroom Queen Anne Victorian was built in 1891, about 30 years after Brown was hanged for treason The execution site is in the yard, marked by a white obelisk. Brown attacked a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859, planning to seize weapons and start a revolution to end slavery. But the uprising was quashed within 48 hours.

Both Defeat and Victory: The Battle of Osawatomie Recalled

Grady Atwater, the Administrator of the John Brown State Historic Site in Osawatomie, Kansas, does an excellent job of keeping local readers informed about Kansas history involving the Browns in regular op-ed pieces in the Osawatomie, Kansas, Graphic. Recently, he has a piece about the battle of Osawatomie on August 30, 1856, following a massive terrorist assault on the free state settlement by pro-slavery forces. Atwater writes:

The Battle of Osawatomie was a military victory for the proslavery forces, but a moral and propaganda victory for the Free State forces. Free State advocates lauded John Brown as a hero, and compared him to Leonidas, the leader of the Spartans at Thermopylae. Brown’s and the other Osawatomie defenders’ bravery inspired Free State fighters in Kansas Territory to continue fighting to make Kansas a Free State, and earned John Brown the nickname “Osawatomie Brown.”

Source: Grady Atwater, “Battle of Osawatomie a pivotal moment in history,” Osawatomie Graphic (no date), on KCCommunitynews.com.

Horwitz on Brown: A Positive Pre-review

Tony Horwitz and his son, Bizu
(Martha's Vineyard Times, 2008)

Whether or not the pre-publication remarks published on this blog had anything to do with it, a friend of Tony Horwitz has also blogged about the forthcoming Midnight Rising. The Washington Post features the blogging of Joel Achenbach, whose blog, the Achenblog, recently featured a pre-review of Midnight Rising (Sept. 13). Achenbach says that he is a friend of Tony Horwitz, and acknowledges that he is not a “neutral critic.” However, Achenbach’s comments are not only positive about Tony’s book, but also convey a more appreciative understanding of Brown, something worth noting. Readers can check out the blog article (link below), but the following lines represent the substance of his take on the manuscript:

Midnight Rising takes the caricature of John Brown and turns it into a complex and largely sympathetic portrait. . . . One constant in his life, for decades, was his abhorrence of slavery. He brooked no compromise. He wasn’t a reformist, he was a revolutionary. And he was hardly a lone wolf: He organized a team of raiders that included African Americans as well as several of his sons. Each raider had his own (mostly tragic) story. They all believed in the justness of their cause and showed great courage, even as they had doubts about the tactical genius of their leader (he seemed to think that the ideal place to fight would be somewhere low, surrounding by high ground).

The raid failed, of course, and by many measures was a fiasco. Brown went to the gallows along with many of his comrades. But he found his voice after his capture and, in interviews and in court, struck powerful rhetorical blows against an evil institution. He proved to be prophet. The sins of this guilty land will be purged in blood, he said in his final written statement. And he sure got that right.

These are positive words. Let’s hope that they foreshadow the way in which our man Brown will be more widely perceived as a result of Midnight Rising. We would be foolish to think that the Old Man will ever be admired and uplifted by the majority of our nation. However, our ongoing concern is that he will be more fairly and kindly treated, and perhaps eventually even more admired than despised, especially given his life-long and mortal struggle against the evil monstrosity of racist chattel slavery.

Source: Joel Achenbach, “John Brown and his raiders,” Achenblog, under Washington Post Opinions online (Sept. 13, 2011)

2011-09-08T13:50:00.000-04:00

From the Field--
“Yellow Chrysanthemums": William Leeman and Mrs. Todd

by H. Scott Wolfe*

“Twas better for thee that while young,

Thou joined that holy band…”

William Leeman, January 1855

Long ago during the antediluvian age, when gas was cheap and Congressmen did not carry concealed weapons, I developed an overpowering interest in John Brown. I set forth to walk the ground from Torrington to Harper’s Ferry, and began to assemble, and to read, a collection of all the biographical material previously written about the Old Man.

As I surveyed this historical literature, I began to observe allusions to Brown’s associates…in particular, the members of his “Provisional Army of the United States.” Such references were customarily brief, sometimes only a sentence or two. But I soon discerned that, like the prophesies of the noted economists seen on the evening news, no two accounts ever appeared to agree with each other.

So I was propelled in a new direction, and began to seek biographical references to those other men who, with Brown, “proceeded to the Ferry.” True, there had been pioneer chroniclers such as Richard J. Hinton (John Brown and His Men, 1894) and Thomas Featherstonhaugh (John Brown’s Men: The Lives of Those Killed at Harper’s Ferry, 1899), but modern scholarship remained conflicting and scanty. Therefore, I had a new mission…or should we call it a mania? And it began when my parents welcomed a frisky miniature schnauzer into their household…and we called him “Willie Leeman.”

William Leeman

William Pillsbury Leeman (he preferred the middle name “Henry”) was the youngest soldier of Brown’s Provisional Army…a mere eleven days younger than the Old Man’s son Oliver. Both boys were to die at Harper’s Ferry while, as the former wrote his mother, “waring with Slavery, the greatest Curse that ever infested America.”

So why, of all the raiders, did Leeman first pique my curiosity? What led me to literally recreate his trail across the country? And why did we seriously alter the life of an innocent schnauzer? My reasons were threefold.

Tender Age

First, it was his seemingly tender age. Here was a youthful son of working-class New England who, amazingly, by his mid-teens, had mastered a trade, participated in a pitched battle in Kansas, and had been appointed to a committee to select officers for a projected provisional government. A comparable youth of our era would still be mastering the skateboard and wandering the malls, an iPod secured in one ear, a smart phone crammed into the other. Yes, they did grow up fast in those bygone times.

The Extent of His Wanderings

Secondly, I was intrigued by the extent of his wanderings…from Massachusetts mill towns to the seat of war in Kansas…from black refuges in Canada West to a fated Federal armory in Virginia. And all of this transpired in the course of his brief candle of a life. So I made a decision: I shall tread wherever Bill Leeman had trod. I visited his birthplace, the once bustling Kennebec River port of Hallowell, Maine. There I explored the old riverside neighborhood called “Joppa,” once the home of 19th century factory operatives, and where young Leeman grew up, his father worked the coasting boats of the Boston trade, his two sisters toiled at the red-brick cotton mill, and his mother sat worrying and fretting about all of them. (Note: It was here also that the everlasting aspirations were knocked out of my self-confidence. I naively barged into the public record repositories and exclaimed: “I am here to study William Leeman!” The dry response: “Who?” I then rallied to say: “You know, the man with John Brown at Harper’s Ferry!” Dry response #2: “With who?” It was in Hallowell that I realized it would be a long, lonely journey.)

I sojourned in tiny Oakdale, Massachusetts, where I scoured “High Plains,” the pioneer cemetery, seeking the graves of the two forgotten artisans who taught Leeman the craft of shoemaking. It was in nearby Worcester that young Bill attended the antislavery rally that would infect him with Kansas Fever.

In Kansas itself, I struggled through the underbrush on the north bank of Pony Creek, three miles from the Nebraska line. There, in 1856, Massachusetts men had founded “Plymouth,” namesake of one of the Bay State’s most hallowed shrines. And it was here that Bill worked a claim, begged his family and friends to join him in prosperity, and proudly signed his letters: “William Henry Leeman of the Teritory of Kansas.”

I meandered through the old Connecticut Western Reserve of northeastern Ohio, that “abolition hole” which bred both the philosophy and much of the manpower for the Harper’s Ferry incursion. It was here, in towns called Lindenville, Wayne and Richmond, that the Old Man’s recruits awaited the call to arms and the opportunity to change history. And it was here that Leeman, engaged in cutting hay and running machinery in an oar factory, gave his family the first hints of the momentous task at hand: “I am engaged in a better Cause…in a Cause that will concern thousands, aye Millions…and a company of 12 of us have been nearly a year drilling and Studying Milatary Works…."

"His Last Scamper into Eternity"

And finally, it was in Harper’s Ferry that I walked the muddy, shale-strewn bank of the Potomac River. As I peered into a tailrace culvert piercing the old armory wall, I imagined a frantic and fleeing Bill Leeman, on his last scamper into eternity.

And it was this, the END of Bill Leeman’s life, that intrigued me the most. It was this hideous and final act in his personal drama that both haunted and mystified me. For William Leeman had been shot in the face, at point blank range, by one George A. Schoppert, a resident of Bolivar and a blacksmith employed at the United States Armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Bill Leeman, Massachusetts shoemaker and one time resident of the “Teritory of Kansas” had been lifelessly propped on a rocky outcrop amidst the rushing Potomac. Bill Leeman, “engaged in a better Cause,” had been ripped to shreds by the desultory gunfire of undisciplined militiamen.

I had so many questions. Why did Leeman’s death remain so controversial, even engendering furor into the 20th century? What were the exact circumstances of his death? Had he been armed and dangerous, and his killing thereby justifiable by the “rules of war?” Or had he already thrown away his weapons, raised his arms and been shot in the act of surrendering? Who was this Schoppert, the killer of William Leeman? And had there been eyewitnesses to this sorry affair?

So my research course was set and, as is my confirmed habit, I went back to the original sources.

It soon became evident that the death of Leeman had been controversial from the very beginning. One need only consult the original newspaper reports of the John Brown raid as they appeared in the Baltimore American: “A dozen shots were fired after him; he partially fell, but rose again; threw his gun away and drew his pistols, both of which snapped; drew his bowie knife and cut away all his heavy accoutrements, and ran for the river again. One of the soldiers was about ten feet behind when the man turned, threw up his arms and cried ‘don’t shoot.’ The soldier fired and the man fell into the water, with a part of his face blown away.”

And as to the treatment of his remains, there was other commentary. Said the American: “About the middle of the stream of the broad Potomac lies the body of one of the insurgents named Wm H. Leeman…His black hair may just be seen floating upon the surface of the water and waving with every ripple. The visitors, upon discovering the body today, saluted it with a shower of balls, but the action was one of very questionable taste and propriety.”

The Frederick (Md) Herald reported: “Leeman lay upon a rock in the river, and was made the target for the practice of those who had captured Sharpe’s rifles in the fray. Shot after shot was fired at him, and when tired of this sport, a man waded out to where he lay, and set him up in grotesque attitudes…” The Herald justified these actions by stating that: “It may be thought that there was cruelty and barbarity in this; but the public mind had been frenzied by the outrages of these men, who, being outlaws, were regarded as food for carrion birds, and not as human creatures…”

But as time passed and, as they say, “cooler heads prevailed,” the killing of Leeman is described as a regrettable, even unnecessary act. In his Annals of Harper’s Ferry (1872), Joseph Barry opines: “The killing of this young man was, under all the circumstances of the case, an act of great barbarity, as he had made signs of a desire to surrender. The man who shot him was but a temporary resident of Harper’s Ferry…(and) his name we will omit for the sake of his posterity.” (Note: It is interesting that the recollections of Harper’s Ferry residents often mention the killers of Brown’s men as “temporary residents” or “visitors.” As if the locals were incapable of such outrages.)

In an interview conducted nearly a half century after the fact, local resident E.B. Chambers stated: “Leeman was shot just below the pulp mill in the river. George Schoppert and Ben Price waded out to the rock. Leeman had thrown away his arms & now threw up both his hands but they fired close to his head…Schoppert pulled him up on the rock, cut off his accoutrements & took what he had on him & left him there….”

And how had the secondary sources treated the death of William Leeman? I immediately turned to Oswald Garrison Villard’s John Brown: A Biography Fifty Years After (1910), a volume noted for its richness of documentary material. Villard wrote:

…the death of William H. Leeman, the youngest of Brown’s men, has frequently been cited to prove the ‘savagery’ which the raiders encountered…Leeman made an attempt from the upper end of the yard to escape across the Potomac, a little above the bridge. He soon found himself under such a heavy fire that he stopped on a tiny islet. According to a generally accepted story, he was here killed, after he had surrendered, by a citizen, G.A. Schoppert, who, it was alleged, placed his weapon at the unarmed eighteen-year-old boy’s head before shooting. In 1900 Mr. Schoppert made an affidavit that Leeman had a pistol and a knife when killed, and that he refused to surrender when called on to do so. In his assertion that this was a justifiable killing, Mr. Schoppert had the support of Colonel J.T. Gibson, an eyewitness (p. 440).

An affidavit sworn by Schoppert? The man who pulled the trigger? I checked the footnote and found the following: “Schoppert’s affidavit is in the possession of Mr. Braxton Davenport Gibson, of Charlestown, who vouches for his father’s, Colonel Gibson’s, endorsement of Schoppert’s statement.”

My excitement knew no bounds. Could this affidavit still exist? Who was Braxton Davenport Gibson? He had, no doubt, gone on to his reward. But could someone still point me on the road to finding this crucial document? I vowed that, during my next visit to Harper’s Ferry and Charles Town, I would seek the words of the man who killed William Leeman.

I was sitting in the research library at Harper’s Ferry National Historic Park, gathering information in regard to the old armory “rolling mill.” It was in the vicinity of this structure, I had learned, that Leeman had scrambled into the river. A staff member was passing by, and I posed the question:

“Are you familiar with the name Braxton Davenport Gibson of Charles Town?”

“Sure,” he responded, “the son of Colonel Gibson, who commanded the Jefferson Guards during Brown’s raid.”

“Are there any descendents still residing over that way,” I asked hopefully.

“Talk to Mrs. Todd.”

“Mrs. Todd?”

“Mrs. Augustine Todd. She has the old Gibson house on the site where Old Brown was hanged. You may have to drop her a note. She spends most of her time in Florida.”

So I composed a letter to Mrs. Todd, inquiring as to the identity of Braxton Davenport Gibson…and his apparent possession of the affidavit of George Schoppert. And while I waited…for months, I waited…I went back to making an honest living (among other such frivolities). And then it arrived:

Dear Mr. Wolfe,

Col. John Thomas Gibson was my Grandfather and all important papers were turned over to him. His son, Braxton Davenport Gibson, who was my Uncle, inherited the important data and I now possess them. I would like to have a copy of what you are writing about John Brown.

Sincerely, Frances Packette Todd (Mrs. Augustine J. Todd)

Mrs. Augustine Todd could certainly have been considered the Grand Dame of Charles Town, West Virginia. Frances Davenport Packette was born at nearby “Locust Hill” on July 28, 1901, and her impeccable historical pedigree would be very difficult to duplicate.

Her maternal grandfather was, indeed, Colonel John Thomas Gibson. During John Brown’s raid, the Colonel commanded the “Jefferson Guards of Charles Town,” the first militia contingent to engage the Old Man’s Provisional Army at Harper’s Ferry. He also led the Virginia forces present at Brown’s execution. Later, as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, he participated in those actions leading to the secession of the Old Dominion. And he also served throughout the Civil War as an officer in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Following the conflict, he returned to Charles Town to serve as Mayor and a member of the Jefferson County Commission.

Frances’ mother, Annie Shepherd Gibson, daughter of the Colonel, married William Bainbridge Packette, a prominent farmer and stock raiser, who just so happened to be a great-grand nephew of George Washington…the “Father” of the country with which Colonel Gibson has so assiduously attempted to sever all ties.

On October 30, 1926, Frances Packette married Augustine Jaquelin Todd. Their reception was held in the grand residence, of “eclectic design,” which had been built by Colonel Gibson in 1891 at 515 South Samuel Street in Charles Town. This imposing brick structure, incorporating the “Norman, Romanesque and Queen Anne modes,” occupied the very site of John Brown’s execution on December 2, 1859. The Todds eventually inherited it, utilizing it mainly as a weekend retreat. (Note: The Gibson/Todd house has recently been up for sale. See the posting of Lou DeCaro, Jr. for 8/22/11.)

Following the receipt of the note from Mrs. Todd, I immediately contacted her by telephone. During a pleasant chat, I again mentioned my desire to obtain a copy of the Schoppert affidavit. But she seemed unfamiliar with it and, surprisingly, kept referring to what she called “The John Brown Commission,” which had been passed down through her family. “It’s in the safe deposit box,” she said, “and next time I get downtown I’ll have a copy made to send to you.”

Captain's commission of William Leeman's bearing John Brown's signature (copy in Wolfe Collection)

Never averse to viewing items relating to the Old Man, I readily consented to accept whatever she might be so kind to send to me. And, within a week, I received a copy of a document that led me to attempt my first pirouette (along with sundry leaps) across the room.

It was the “military commission” of William H. Leeman, issued “near Harpers Ferry, Md.” on October 15, 1859…the day before the men commenced their march. Signed by “Commander in Chief” John Brown, it appoints Leeman “Captain in the Army established under the Provisional Constitution.” My thoughts flew back to the initial newspaper reports of Leeman’s death. With misspellings and misplaced initials, the Baltimore Sun told the story: “His coat skirts were cut from his person, and in the pockets was found a Captains commission to Captain E.H. Leeman, from the Provisional Government. The commission was dated October 15, 1859, and signed by A.W. Brown, Commander in Chief of the Army of the Provincial Government of the United States….”

George Schoppert, after killing young Leeman, had rifled his pockets…finding the commission and a small compass. He had passed them on to the local militia commander…Colonel Gibson…whose granddaughter had just made my day.

So what chivalrous act could this Yankee perform for this kind Southern lady? Well, I ordered her some yellow chrysanthemums, to be delivered to the door of the Gibson/Todd mansion. Another note arrived shortly thereafter:

Dear Mr. Wolfe:

How did you know that yellow chrysanthemums are my favorite flowers? (WHEW!, said I) The exquisite plant with beautiful blossoms came several days ago and I do thank you so very, very much. I do not recall seeing “the affidavit sworn by G.A. Schoppert” but when I am next able to go to the Bank I will look again and will send you a copy, if I find it…I appreciate your thought of me.

Cordially, Frances Packette Todd”

Quite the contrary, Mrs. Todd. Like so many kind people who have, over the years, assisted this humble John Brown researcher…I appreciate YOUR thought of me.

"William Leeman II"

A Brief Epilogue. . . The Schoppert Affidavit

Fear not, the affidavit sworn by George A. Schoppert was found. After requesting Leeman material from the Oswald Garrison Villard Collection at Columbia University, I was sent a typewritten transcription of this document…which had actually been published in the February 15, 1900 edition of the Shepherdstown (WV) Register. This transcription contained notations in the hand of Braxton Davenport Gibson, who had apparently sent it to Villard for use in the latter’s projected biography of John Brown. The affidavit gives a detailed account of Schoppert’s actions during Brown’s raid, including those related to the killing of William Leeman. In fact, in the document’s conclusion, he restates his denial of any wrongdoing:

I wish to call public attention to one other account by some one who must have maliciously misrepresented the killing of Leeman in the river. It was stated that he was shot after he surrendered. I say this is a baldfaced lie, and I know whereof I speak. If he had ever raised his hand he would not have been shot. But instead of showing any signs of surrender, he drew his knife, which was a very large butcher knife, cut his belt, disposed of his cartridge-box and coat,…retaining his knife in one hand and a six-shooter in the other, looking me squarely in the face, and, in my opinion, decided to take chances with me, knowing I had but one charge.

In a statement signed on August 17, 1909, Braxton D. Gibson stated: “My father was Colonel of the 55th Virginia Regiment of Infantry, and was as such the first in command at Harper’s Ferry then. He saw the pursuit of Wm. H. Leeman by Capt. Geo. A. Schoppert, when Leeman was trying to escape across the Potomac River, to join the forces of the enemy on the Maryland side of the river. My father said that Capt. Schoppert’s account of the shooting of Leeman is correct as he remembered it. That there was nothing cruel nor barbarous about the shooting. It was merely the killing of an enemy armed and trying to escape; in the rules of war, it was a proper act and justifiable….”

That this war of words continued into the first decade of the 20th century…over fifty years after the death of William Leeman…confirms the persistency of that event’s controversial nature. The preponderance of the primary sources seem to indicate that Leeman was seeking to surrender. Of course, as the above shows, those responsible for his killing swear otherwise.

William Leeman sleeps with his Commander in Chief in North Elba, New York. But the battle goes on.

Authors note: Mrs. Frances Packette Todd died in Clearwater, Florida on January 23, 1987. R.I.P. The military commission of William Leeman is today in the collections of the Jefferson County Museum, Charles Town, West Virginia. The bulk of the surviving correspondence of William Leeman can be found in the Richard J. Hinton Collection, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. The Oswald Garrison Villard Collection at Columbia University is a rich source of information for all of John Brown’s men.

2011-09-01T11:55:00.001-04:00

Archive Discovery--

Forgotten Indictment for Frederick Brown's Murderer is Found in Kansas

According to Annie Vangsnes, a reporter for the Miami County Republic, a newspaper/website based in Paola, Kansas, a museum director in that county recently came upon some important historical records relating to the Kansas episode of August 1856, when Frederick Brown and other free state men in Osawatomie were murdered by proslavery terrorists.

According to Vangsnes, Joe Hursey, the director of the Miami County Historical Museum "was digging through some boxes" in the museum, and came upon the records of Miami County, including grand jury indictments for 1856-1859. Vangsnes says "Hursey was amazed to find the indictment of the Rev. Martin White, who was charged for murdering John Brown’s son, Frederick Brown. White had agreed to act as a guide for proslavery forces entering the county for the Battle of Osawatomie." Besides murdering Frederick Brown on sight, these terrorists also killed David Garrison in cold blood. The record discovered by Hursey not only names White as Brown's murderer, but also names three men as Garrison's murderers: John Reed, John Bradbury and William Edwards. "Hursey said although the charges existed since 1856, no one was prosecuted until 1858 because many high offices were held by those with proslavery sympathies." Vangsnes says the indictment for Martin White, a Methodist minister, was signed by B. F. Simpson, the first county prosecutor and later the youngest legislator in the history of Kansas. Vangsnes says that these records were forgotten until Hursey came upon them. Hursey concluded that the records show "that justice was taking place. There were men trying to prosecute.” It's probably more correct to say that efforts at justice were made. But these men were never prosecuted. Contrary to the legend, the murderous Reverend Martin White was never felled by the bullet of a Brown ally. He lived out his days, largely due to the determination by John Brown not to avenge his son's death. This is an important theme when weighing the incidents of May 1856, wherein Brown is typically portrayed as a terrorist. I hope that Tony Horwitz's forthcoming book will mention this fact.

See the actual article, Annie Vangsnes, “Grand jury Indictment Found at Museum.” Miami County Republic online [Paola, Kan.], 30 August 2011

Also see this blog, entry "Frederick and the Lion: John Brown's Murdered Son and His Killer," 4 Sept. 2010; and "More on the Murder of Frederick Brown by the Rev. Mrtin White, August 30, 1856," 6 Sept. 2010

2011-08-28T02:39:00.004-04:00

The "Ethics" of Picking Splinters out of the Other Guy's Eye

James McClure, the editor of the York Daily Record [York, Pa.] on line, has an interesting article (26 Aug.) in remembrance of Harper’s Ferry raider, Osborne P. Anderson, who escaped capture by Virginia authorities and eventually returned to his home in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. The article was prompted by a recent lecture at Shippensburg University by history professor, John Quist, who discussed the Harper’s Ferry raid in conjunction with a “Civil War Road Show” that took place last weekend at Penn Park.

Osborne P. Anderson

Anderson, one of Brown’s black raiders, worked in a newspaper office as a printer’s assistant, but was encouraged to join Brown’s effort by black expatriate leaders in Chatham. Anderson not only survived the tragic failure of Brown’s raid, but also wrote the only first-hand narrative of the epic struggle, A Voice from Harpers Ferry (1861).

McClure points out that Anderson’s escape route included passing through Franklin County in Pennsylvania and stopping in the town of York, where he found temporary refuge in the home of William C. Goodridge, a former slave.

Justified?

According to McClure, the presentation by Professor Quist ended “with questions about whether Brown's violent actions to destroy slavery were justified.” According to McClure, the “broader related question” was whether slavery needed to be ended by violence. “These good questions have swirled around the public square since, well, 1859,” concludes McClure.

As if this weren’t enough, McClure persists along these lines, asking if Goodridge, a “good Samaritan,” was justified in harboring Anderson, “a fugitive who was part of a band that meted out death to innocent” civilians and milita men. “What was the justification to hide a John Brown raider, who[m] the federal government would have hanged for treason and conspiracy to incite insurrection?” McClure asks.

A Non-Parallel Parallel?

To underscore the point, McClure introduces an example that he readily admits is not a parallel, although he persists in forcing into discussion. The non-parallel example is that of John Wilkes Booth, the actor who assassinated President Lincoln and then fled southward. “If [Booth] had landed in York County, would a Southern sympathizer providing safe haven be exercising justifiable civil disobedience?” McClure contends that this is not an unrealistic question though theoretical, since Booth attended school in York and knew people in that community. And since both John Wilkes Booth and Osborne Perry Anderson “both were part of deadly conspiracies that took lives,” was it justifiable to give aid and support to the latter as he fled northward to Canada?

McClure finally concludes that the “Good Samaritan's action in harboring a John Brown conspirator has not been weighed in the local or national public square.”

An Exercise in Insinuation

My response to this “thoughtful” piece is that it is an exercise in insinuation on McClure’s part. I do not know if the point is McClure’s alone, or if he is simply echoing what Professor Quist of Shippensburg stated in his lecture. Regardless, it not only is NOT parallel as McClure states, but it is the kind of question that suggests a Pharisaic mind and reasoning. By this I mean Pharisaic in the sense of someone posing as righteous in intent, but one who is actually, as the African American expression goes, “signifying.”

First, McClure himself admits that the illustration of Booth is not a historical parallel. Then why use it?Forcing the comparison to Booth only beclouds the question that he really wants to raise, which is whether it was justifiable to assistant Osborne Anderson to escape. I doubt he'd say supporting Booth in flight was justifiable, so it's clear that the real attack here pertains to Brown's raider Anderson.

Second, although McClure says the Booth-Anderson case is not a parallel, he is dishonest in presenting them as if they are parallel in an ethical sense, particularly by pointing out that Booth’s conspiratorial effort and Brown’s raid resulted in the deaths of people. Why didn’t McClure use another case that had similar ethical circumstances although not entirely similar? For instance, McClure (or Quist) might have used the 1851 Christiana incident, when a Maryland slaveholder tracked his runaway slave to a home in southern Pennsylvania in making an attempt to re-enslave him (according to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850). However, the black man fought back and killed the slave master, and then fled to Canada, thus eluding capture by authorities. Like Anderson, the fugitive from slavery reached Canada with assistance from the underground railroad, just like Osborne Anderson. The point is that using the Christiana incident makes for a better “discussion” without being a complete historical parallel because it is ethically similar nonetheless. Unlike the use of the Booth case, it is not an ethical sleight-of-hand to discuss how assisting both black men in their flight toward Canada might be understood. Both cases involved people seeking liberation, both cases ended in violent deaths, and both necessitated flight with assistance.

Finally, while he seems to be pursuing truth, McClure is not really interested in reflecting upon the ethics of helping Osborne Anderson escape. In fact, the nature of his presentation shows that he is insinuating that it was unethical to do so. The insinuation, superficially premised on the fact that “innocent” people died, is a merely a rhetorical facade. "Innocent" people can die in almost any kind of action involving the use of physical force in struggle, whether conducted by heroic citizens, lawmen, or criminals. What McClure seems to miss is that using the Booth example is illicit because Booth specifically designed to kill Lincoln and others; assassination was his only objective. Quite in contrast, Brown’s intention was to liberate people from human bondage, using force if necessary, and only fighting in self-defense. Although people died as a result of his attempt, these killings were not premeditated; some were blunders and others were done in self-defense. Certainly, many more people would have died outright had Brown shown up at Harper’s Ferry with the kind of agenda that John Wilkes Booth had when he and his conspirators attacked in April 1865.

How can McClure pretend this is a reasonable discussion?

Evidently, neither McClure nor Prof. Quist get the point of liberating enslaved people. The fact that he has to reiterate the question of the ethical sufficiency of helping Anderson escape, and whether the use of violence can be justified to end oppression, is not really a discussion for clear heads. This is the discourse of bigotry. Furthermore, I suspect that McClure or Quist would never ask such questions if their loved ones were enslaved, and then someone used violence to liberate them--or at least tried to liberate them.

McClure and anyone else who raises this kind of “discussion” must necessarily seat himself alongside the Pharisees of history. The Pharisee in the time of Christ was an expert at picking a "splinter" out of one man’s eye while being thoroughly blinded by the "log" in his own eye. McClure has provided us a splinter of a discussion fit only for people similarly blinded by that old log of prejudice. [revised 8/29--LD]

Source: James McClure, "John Brown's Raid Raises Ethical Questions." York Daily Record [York, Pa.], 26 Aug. 2011

2011-08-22T01:05:00.000-04:00

History for Sale--

Historic House of Brown's Execution Site for Sale

The field were John Brown was hanged in 1859 later became the site of a 7,000-square-foot, five-bedroom Queen Anne Victorian mansion. Built in 1891, the mansion subsumed the actual site of Brown's gallows, the place now being the yard with a white obelisk and a plaque. According to the Associated Press, the mansion and property have been placed on auction to be sold in early September, the opening price being $950,000. The mansion, known as the Historic Perkins House, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is pretty much in the same state as it was in 1891, although some features have been added, like a swimming pool and a gourmet kitchen.

2011-08-20T10:39:00.001-04:00

Bell & Howl IV--
Swint Responds to Brodeur (Updated Sept. 6)

Yesterday I featured an op-ed piece written by a citizen of Marlborough in criticism of Howard Swint's efforts to return the "John Brown Bell" in that fair city to the site of its origin. In fairness to Mr. Swint, I post his follow-up comments as follows. This presents the final entry on this topic, unless I find more persuasive reason for following up.(LD)

Allegations of “legal blackmail” being employed in an attempt to have the John Brown Bell returned to its rightful owner are both intellectually dishonest and purposely misleading. After having been denied the opportunity to present my research findings, as well as those of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, to the City of Marlborough, First Church of Marlborough and the shell organization that claims ownership, legal recourse is what these organizations compel for remedy. It is a form of due process reserved for those seeking fair and equal justice under law when denied in the pursuit of good faith efforts to right a wrong and in this instance, denial of the opportunity to even speak formally and to present a compromise. As to "slander" Brodeur is also both intellectually dishonest and factually wrong as the anecdotal accounts by those who took the bell were false and misleading and they in effect impugned them themselves when they contrived their accounts during the Civil War and falsified provenance thirty years afterwards. Brodeur must know this or he would otherwise support a forum where the facts could be established based on historical record. And if silence is the language of complicity, then the aforementioned who deny the opportunity to be presented these findings share in the dishonor of allowing material possessions stand before that of their country. The John Brown Bell belongs to the United States government and if obstructionist policies necessitate legal action to quiet the title then it will be their decision to have these findings heard in the courtroom as I have been denied the requested forums.

After having been denied the opportunity to present my research findings, as well as those of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, to the City of Marlborough, First Church of Marlborough and the shell organization that claims ownership, legal recourse is what these organizations compel for remedy. I seek and have been denied the opportunity to act in good faith the opportunity to even speak formally and to present a compromise. My point rests with the fact that those who took the bell manufactured accounts that were false and misleading. They contrived orders and authorization during the Civil War and falsified provenance thirty years afterwards. I'd much rather present in a forum where the facts could be established based on historical record. The John Brown Bell belongs to the United States government. Obstructionist policies in Marlborough will necessitate legal action to quiet the title. And it will be their decision to have these findings heard in the courtroom as I have been denied the requested forums. Howard Swint

September 6, 2011

Brodeur Responds

In a recent article of his hometown Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail (Civil War dispute still rings in Charleston, Aug. 16, 2011), Mr. Howard Swint is quoted as saying, "As much as I regret threatening a legal path, this seems like the only way to get their attention." In his recent oped piece in the MetroWest Daily News, (Howard Swint: Who owns John Brown's Bell?, Aug. 3, 2011), Mr. Swint uses the word 'profiteer' three times when referring to soldiers who lost their lives or limbs in defense of the Union despite the fact that no one has ever proved (nor, before Mr. Swint, even suggested) that a single dime of 'profit' was made in connection with the Bell. From these sources, I maintain my position that Mr. Swint has used legal blackmail and slander and leave it to others to judge.

No one in Marlborough (or anywhere else) has denied Mr. Swint from presenting his research findings. Indeed, the MetroWest Daily News has given him ample opportunity to present his case and propose compromises, which he has done on more than one occasion. That his arguments fall on deaf ears is no new experience for Mr. Swint having been similarly rejected in his home state for proposing the removal of the statue of Civil War hero Stonewall Jackson from the West Virginia state capitol, (the Charleston Gazette, Howard Swint: W.Va. Capitol no place for Confederate memorial, May 28, 2011).

The issue of the Bell is a matter between the National Parks Service and the John A. Rawlins Bldg. Assoc. The people of Marlborough fully recognize this reality and wish that repeated controversialist Mr. Swint put his talent as a historian to more productive use.

PAUL BRODEUR, Marlborough

Source: Milford Daily News [Milford, Mass.], Sept. 6, 2011

2011-08-20T00:57:00.001-04:00

John Brown Pastimes?
Paper Dolls, Fake Beards, and "WWJBD?"

Recently, Rachel Smalter, an Adults Program Librarian at the Lawrence, Kansas, Public Library noted in her blog, Librarian in a Banana Suit (yes, a real banana suit), that Lawrence Magazine had a link for a download of a (clean shaven) John Brown paper doll by an artist named Jason Barr. According to Rachel, Lawrence Magazine, Lawrence Public Library, and the artist subsequently joined forces to come up with a John Brown Paper Doll giveaway in conjunction with local Civil War events at the library. Rachel says the John Brown paper doll program is part of "Civil War on the Western Frontier" (CWWF), a series of annual community events organized by the Lawrence Visitor’s Bureau. Of course, the paper doll kit is purely amusement. This is not about dressing the Old Man in a variety of authentic outfits of the day, but rather attiring him in a gorilla suit, or a jean shorts and T-shirt that reads, "Honk 4 Hemp," or a clown mask, a long, black fake beard, and other amusing accouterments.

Moving from this flippant sort of pop cultural handling of the Old Man, another Lawrence-based publication recently was called to my attention. It is entitled, "What Would John Brown Do?"--perhaps a spin-off of the "What Would Jesus Do?" Christian style fad, in which believers wear T-shirts, caps, and bracelets emblazoned with "WWJD?" Whatever the case, there is an article by Amber Brejcha Fraley featuring ten questions with answers supplied by a number of notable Lawrence citizens: Kerry Altenbernd, a law librarian and John Brown impersonator; Katie Armitage, a historian of Lawrence; Napoleon Crews, an attorney and author; Karl Gridley, another Lawrence historian with a special interest in John Brown; Kevin Willmott, filmmaker and creator of the "mockumentary," CSA: Confederate States of America; and Cathy Hamilton, a humorist and director of Downtown Lawrence, Inc. The article features amusing photographs and thoughtful responses to the questions which are too lengthy to reproduce here, but can be read at the link above (or here).

For what it's worth, I've reproduced the questions below and presumed to present my answers/opinions as well. . . .

1. Would JB go into Free State and order a JB beer? Is he the type of guy that you would like to have a beer with?

In his day, John Brown had the option of going into drinking establishments and consuming beer, and socializing with friends at places where people consume beer and other alcoholic delights. So I'm sure the answer is a resounding “No.” On the other hand, Brown was not a teetotaler. No self-respecting Calvinist would be as far as I can tell. Abstinence from alcohol was the religious expression of post-Reformed and fundamentalist religion, the kind that spread through the revivalists of his day, or that which was associated in religiously-oriented social reform movements in the 19th century. In the early 1850s, JB made cherry wine for a short time as a business venture; but there is also evidence that he disdained drinking hard liquor. So he probably didn't think drinking was a sin, but I doubt he drank alcohol beverages. He wouldn't be caught dead in a bar or saloon, even if he were drinking tea. He would not think it was the kind of place that a godly man would patronize. If I'm not mistaken, his beverage of choice was tea.

2. Would JB buy into the "healthful body, healthful mind" approach? Would he go to the gym?

JB was a lean, hard-working, long-walking man whose diet was likewise lean, so going to the gym wouldn’t have made sense to him. On the other hand, JB was quite interested in any advancement of science that involved the human body and psyche, so he would probably be interested in the kinds of health information that the average TV viewer hears on shows like Dr. Oz. But would he spend two hours at the gym to bulk up his physique? I don’t think so.

3. Would JB be satisfied with the progress, or lack of, in racial equality over the past 150 years? What would JB think of racial relations in the US in general? Of recent racial tensions with the immigration debate?

On one hand, I think JB would be pleased that the U.S. is a de jure “racial equality” nation; he would also appreciate the fact that what he believed about racial equality in his day has become more broadly accepted. But I doubt he’d agree with those who have proclaimed "the end of racism." I should point out that this question is phrased in two different ways; in the larger print it says: "Would John Brown be satisfied with the status of the modern black community?" That could also be taken as a different kind of question--that is, what JB would think of the "State of Black America" today. I wouldn't venture to say, except that his social evaluations of whites or blacks was rooted in his religious presuppositions as well as his belief in self-determination.

With respect to immigrants, JB would take the side of the underdog every time; but he would also hold the underdog to the same standard as the rest. How that would flesh out in the current immigration debate is hard to say. People forget that despite his radical humanitarian views, JB was a very conservative man in many respects, so this dynamic is hard to transpose to our time.

4. Would he be involved in non-violent politics? Would he run for office? What issues would be of concern to him?

I know people will not believe me, but JB was basically non-violent. That is to say, he only believed in using violence when there was no alternative left. The slavery by 1859 had exhausted every means of resolution according to purely democratic or non-violent terms. For all intents and purposes JB practiced non-violent resistance up until the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, after which he prescribed fighting back. But as far as non-violent politics--no I do not think he would join any party that absolutely tied the hands of good people in the name of non-violence. I don’t think that JB would even have supported Martin Luther King Jr.’s strategy, although he would have admired him the way he admired Wm. Lloyd Garrison in the 19^th century.

As far as political office goes, we tend to run JB through the filter of his antipathy toward antebellum politicians in regard to slavery. He certainly didn’t think politicians were going to resolve the slavery crisis and he was right. Would he have run for office later in life like some famous generals have done? For some reason, I can’t imagine him making that transition. Yet, in a local sense, I can imagine him running for some office so that he could make sure local justice and civic order was upheld. Issues of justice were of his foremost concern; but he harked to the Puritans and was a child of the three-fold societal model that they bequeathed to North America—school, church, and family.

5. Would JB be proud of the modern American public education system?

Probably not. JB was a strong advocate of the public school system in his day, but his concept of public education today would be considered a kind of Christian liberal arts viewpoint. He’d would be offended by the social and philosophical ideas that are espoused in many public schools. He would also be offended by the way that racism is manifested in public education, where public schools serving the poor lack the resources that are available in other public schools.

6. Would JB Wave the Wheat? Root for the Hawks? Cheer for the hometeam? How interested would he be in sports, or would he consider them a useless diversion?

I doubt JB would support any sports team, and I think he’d consider sports enthusiasm a useless diversion indeed. In his day, he looked down on men who hunted and fished for sport, so I think he’d look at today’s vast arenas and team enthusiasm as evoking comparisons with ancient pagan arenas—bread and circus sort of stuff.

7. Would JB dig in the ground? Would he be an organic farmer? Would you see him at the farmers' market? Would he be concerned about the issues of local agriculture? Would he be an urban gardner?

JB did dig in the ground. Although he was not a professional farmer, he farmed for food, even in the cold Adirondacks. JB was an organic farmer by definition, but in the modern context, he might prefer organic farming if there were scientific support for it from his standpoint. I think he’d enjoy farmers’ markets and would very much be concerned about local agriculture. These issues would strike not just close to home for him, but close to his sense of stewardship and responsibility. His intercession on behalf of wool growers in the 1840s also shows that if justice issues were tied in with issues of local agriculture, he would be greatly concerned. Urban gardening? No, John Brown did not like city living, so I doubt he'd ever have any real occasion to become an urban gardener.

8. Would JB file on April 15th? Or would he be a tax resister? If so, what would he be protesting in particular?

Yes, he would pay his taxes in obedience to the teachings of Christ. He paid taxes throughout his life, although he had problems sometimes because of money shortages. JB opposed the Mexican War as the southern slave masters’ attempt to expand slavery, and he didn’t want government money spent on that war. He expressed this sentiment but he still paid his taxes. So I suspect today he’d still be paying his taxes, although he might dislike doing so for any number of reasons pertaining to foreign and domestic policies.

9. Would JB be a marijuana legalization advocate? What would he think of the war on drugs or the culture of drugs in modern America? Would he be a big agricultural-use hemp advocate?

JB would have nothing to do with the use of any kind of drug for “recreational purposes.” This would be like abusing alcohol for the sake of getting drunk, and he wouldn't do that either. Perhaps JB would support the war on drugs. But he might even support a literal war that would include invading foreign countries if he believed all other avenues and possibilities were exhausted. As to the culture of drugs, I suspect he would advocate capital punishment and zero tolerance because of the threat that drugs pose to the internal stability of the nation.

10. Would he be an eco-conscious fuel-consumption advocate. . .Would he be an 'American made' car advocate?

I suspect JB would support the best solutions for the best outcomes as a matter of course. He was not a man of extravagance or wastefulness. I believe he would prefer buying “U.S.” goods, from wool socks to pistols. Given his historical point of view—standing as he did between the American Revolution and the Civil War, he was very “American minded” and would support his nation as a priority. Obviously it’s a different world today and I don’t know if he’d mind buying a “foreign car” that was manufactured in a U.S. plant by U.S. workers.

WWJBD? Who really knows for sure?

2011-08-19T09:59:00.001-04:00

Bell & Howl III--
Marlborough speaks of its own liberty bell

Another interesting installment on the "John Brown Bell" controversy is found in an op-ed piece in today's (19 Aug.) MetroWest Daily News [Framingham, Mass.] by Paul Brodeur. The author points out that the Union soldiers who stole the bell from the Harper's Ferry engine house were no mere thieves, but heroic figures in the Civil War. Some of the original group who removed the bell did not survive the war, and others suffered great personal loss as a result of fighting for their country and emancipation. Brodeur clearly resents Howard Swint's inclination to portray these soldiers as mere thieves and opportunists. More interesting is this closing paragraph from Brodeur's piece:

Apart from their exemplary community spirit, some of these men were also involved in the resettlement in Marlborough of the slaves from the Harpers Ferry Wager Hotel. To them, abolition was not an empty phrase, but an idea that required commitment. The very presence of these freed slaves in Marlborough make a compelling case that the Bell, a neighbor to them in Harpers Ferry, belongs with them in Marlborough.

In a real sense, this important aspect weighs far more heavily on the side of Marlborough's side of the argument. Not only as the Massachusetts town possessed the bell for over a century, but its soldiers were far more than souvenir hunters. The same spirit that inspired the removal of the Harper's Ferry engine house bell also animated these men and their community to extend the work of John Brown by liberating quite literally the same people that Brown had intended to liberate. In so doing, they deprived the slave holders of Harper's Ferry of their "property" and resettled them in their own community. Could a more fitting defense of the Marlborough side be made?

What did these liberated black people and their descendants in Marlborough think whenever they looked upon the "John Brown Bell"? We may never know. But I suspect they were not particularly concerned about its return to Harper's Ferry.

2011-08-18T12:43:00.000-04:00

More Bell & Howl--
Will Swint Go to Court?

According to an article by Linda Wheeler in "A House Divided," the Civil War blog of The Washington Post (16 Aug.), since Howard Swint has had no response from the city government of Marlborough, Massachusetts, "he now plans to take legal action by filing a motion with the U.S. District court to bring the bell back to Harpers Ferry." Swint has proven a one-man army in single-minded pursuit of the "John Brown Bell"--the Harper's Ferry armory bell that once rang atop the engine house where Brown made his last stand in October 1859. The bell was removed by Union soldiers during the Civil War and kept by a loyal friend for thirty years before it was shipped up to Massachusetts, where it has remained a symbolic centerpiece of Marlborough since 1892. Swint really would like to see the bell returned to the engine house, now part of the National Park Service in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. He has tried appealing, reasoning, and arguing to no avail. More recently, he has proposed a program of shared possession between Marlborough and Harper's Ferry, although the mayor of the latter town has not made an issue of returning the bell. No doubt, people in West Virginia would like to see the bell returned, just as people in Marlborough and other places in the northeast probably feel just as strongly about seeing the bell remain where it has been for 120 years.

The question of making this a federal case opens a whole new scenario. On one level, it might make sense since the bell originally was the property of a federal facility, not a [West] Virginia town. Were it returned today, it would also be returned to government property, the National Park Service at Harper's Ferry.

Mr. Swint, backed by the 20th century research of Boyd Stutler, contends that the bell was removed from Harper's Ferry without approval of the army. Both Stutler and Swint, respectively, made good faith searches for any written order permitting the removal of the bell, and found none. The latter has further argued that this strengthens the claim of those who want the bell removed and restored to the engine house structure in West Virginia. But the absence of documentation does not entirely prove the point. There are two witness testimonies from the Union soldiers stating that they received permission, although they requested it after the fact of the bell's removal. In a 1910 pamphlet telling the story of the bell, Lysander Parker wrote:

Realizing that our treasure was the property of Uncle Sam, we thought best to consult proper authority before proceeding further, and immediately through Major Gould, Provost Marshal of the 13th at Sandy Hook, we made direct application to the Government for it and in due season received permission from the War Department to appropriate the bell. It was then boxed by Levi Taylor and Algernon S. Smith and placed on board the canal boat “Charles McCardell.” This boat was used during the time we were there for the officers quarters and there it remained until we rejoined out regiment.1

Another "bell raider," James M. Gleason, gave his account of the incident in 1901, in a published speech available through the Marlborough Historical Society website.2 Gleason's account seems a bit more hazy, although he also states that orders (after the fact) were issued by Major [Jacob] Gould permitting the bell's removal. Gleason's account varies with Parker in stating that the bell was at first "dumped in the canal," then retrieved and boxed after Gould's orders came through.

Obviously, if the bell becomes a court case, it will require far more intensive examination of the evidence and judgment would be made accordingly. However, given the fact that the bell has been held by Marlborough for well over a century, this may also be a significant factor in the eyes of the law. Of course the question remains whether, at this stage in our nation's economy, we want government time and money spent on this issue. Mr. Swint may also do more harm than good if he presses this matter to the point of a federal lawsuit. Not only will Marlborough dig in its heels, but the matter may grow from irritation to hard feelings.

To my mind (and I've given this matter little thought, and only recently), perhaps the only real route to take would have been for the National Park Service to ask for the bell on loan, to be displayed annually, perhaps through the month of October, where it could be placed atop the engine house in commemoration of the John Brown raid. Unfortunately, at this point, I doubt the leaders of Marlborough will even go for that. It's a bell of a dilemma.

1 Parker (1910) quoted in "Nine Weeks at Harper's Ferry; Part V The John Brown Bell," 13th Mass.org. Retrieved from: http://13thmass.org/1861/harpersferry.html#john_brown_bell.

2 "The John Brown Bell: An Address Delivered by James M. Gleason. . .April 11, 1901, under "The John Brown Bell," Marlborough Historical Society website. Document download address: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61504099/Retelling-50-years-later-of-the-events-that-led-to-the-taking-of-the-John-Brown-Bell

2011-08-17T11:59:00.004-04:00

Reading Between the Lines--

John Brown as Straw Man: The Case of Col. Patrick Lang

Fairly often, some blogger or journalist pulls out the John Brown straw man to make some point that typically has no relation to the historical fact. Let some dubious fanatic blow up a government building or burn a Qur’an and some bloggers go wild with references to Brown. It’s almost standard practice of the mainstream white male mentality in the U.S. The latest case is Col. W. Patrick Lang, a retired senior officer of the U.S. Military Intelligence and the Special Forces. Lang has an entry, "John Brown Comes Again" in his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis (which is the motto of Virginia, the Old Dominion).

Primarily, I’m not interested in the point of Lang’s politics. He raises the John Brown straw man in some ongoing discussion about “the darlings of the Republican Party” and the use of “American exceptionalism” as an excuse for funding modern empire. He is evidently concerned about the impact of “Dominionism,” a kind of conservative, neo-Manifest Destiny with individualized and political implications (depending on whether it's being taught by a televangelist or a right-wing politician). Col. Lang is particularly resentful of the “Dominionism” of the religious right, which portray themselves and the U.S. as “the last best hope.” Although in this case I think he has a point, I take issue with his historical application and think it is very revealing.

First, in reaction to right-wing Christian “Dominionism,” he writes: “My Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut ancestors believed crap like that at first and then they did not. My people moved on west to get away from the Dominionists.” Well, sir, this is only partly true. In all fairness, your Puritan ancestors deserve a bit more consideration. They did not come to North America with a dominionist agenda per se--at least not the agenda that you're attributing to this ilk of the G.O.P. Puritans came with the intention of establishing a thoroughly Protestant society free of Roman Catholic influences in church and state, and they came with the intention of making a positive example for England ("a city on a hill"). It is true that their legacy unfolded in ways expansionist and dominionist, but the Puritan legacy not only produced oppression, but also abolitionism and advocacy for human rights based on biblical principles. So balance the books.

Although Lang appeals to the popular straw man Brown at Pottawatomie (the facts of which itself he seems to be clueless), it bears mentioning that Brown valued the aspects of his Puritan ancestry that pertained to human rights and the equality of all people under God. He was hardly the archetype of the present day religious right-wingers who are spouting dominionist rhetoric. In fact, he was opposed to people in his own day that expressed such a political agenda. Brown was never a Republican, and certainly not a hyper-nationalist in any sense. Using him in this way is historically illicit.

Furthermore, Col. Lang not only generalizes the beliefs of his Puritan ancestors as “crap,” but seems to believe that some of them “moved on west to get away from the Dominionists.” Really, Col. Lang? To the contrary, most of Lang's "people” actually went west to extend the social and political norms of the older section of the nation. About the only people who “moved on west to get away from the Dominionists” were of the John Brown stripe. Consider Kansas Territory and the fact that most “free state” settlers were also racists who didn’t want blacks to settle there. These “anti-slavery” whites were struggling with pro-slavery whites who wanted to bring blacks into Kansas as slaves. The only folks who went west in the 1850s “to escape Dominionism” were abolitionists like John Brown’s family! Col. Lang should be more careful with history. Using John Brown as a whipping boy is an inclination of of a certain mind set, including the well-decorated and prestigious tools of the federal government.

Col. Lang reveals himself finally and fully in his closing remarks: “They hanged John Brown in Harper's Ferry? I wish I had been there.”

Here, Col. Lang. Eat Your Heart Out

Of course, had Lang been a soldier in 1859 instead of the 20^th century, he would very likely have encircled Brown’s gallows and found a great measure of delight in his death. But in a real sense, Lang was there. To use the old King James Version phrase, he was present at the hanging of Brown “in the loins” of his forefathers. His blog is entitled “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” not only the motto of Virginia but also the words exclaimed by John Wilkes Booth after he murdered Abraham Lincoln. And just like Lang, the murderous Booth wished to be present at Brown’s hanging, and donned a militia uniform in order to get in the front row.

Obviously, Col. Lang is closer to Brown’s killers than even he realizes.

2011-08-16T15:11:00.000-04:00

Ephemera--
John Brown Pike in Upcoming Auction

For those of you with some money to spend on historical relics, you may be interested in knowing that a John Brown pike is coming up for auction by Historical Collectibles (Dallas, TX) on November 12. (The pike pictured above is not the one on auction by HC.) For your information, here is the catalogue listing from the HC website:

John Brown Pike Captured by Marine Major William Worthington Russell at Harper's Ferry October 18, 1859. (See Catalog Introduction) Classic form as produced by Charles Blair of Collinsville, Conn. on direct order from Brown for use in his imagined slave insurrection. This example is numbered 420 on the top of the cross guard, blade tang (which has become partially separated from the haft) and the iron ferrule. Overall with deep dark untouched patina, absolutely no rust or pitting and exactly as taken by Russell. The screws are missing from the iron ferrule, although the holes are visible. Retains 25" of the original wooden haft, broken off at the bottom, whether for easy storage and transport by Russell, or at the time it was captured, is unknown. Historic example of this iconic primitive weapon captured by the commander of the Marine contingent that assaulted the firehouse where Brown's raiders were ensconced on that fateful day. Purchased from Russell's direct lineal descendants and accompanied by a sword/notarized affidavit attesting to same.

2011-08-15T14:10:00.000-04:00

Documentary Download!

Jean Libby's "Portraits of John Brown, the Abolitionist"

No one since the late Boyd B. Stutler has devoted so many years, miles, and dollars to John Brown documentary study and field research as has Jean Libby. From the 1970s, she has made painstaking exploration of primary documents, both written and images, that have made it possible for scholars to better understand Brown's abolitionist networking and activities. It was Libby who first took seriously Osborne Anderson's eyewitness testimony to the Harper's Ferry raid after decades of being slighted and ignored by biographers. It was Libby who radically challenged the slave master propaganda of Brown's alleged failure to attract and involve enslaved blacks at Harper's Ferry--a stubborn error that still has currency today in the study. In more recent years, she has collected, studied, and edited Brown's abolitionist documents, and has made meticulous and tireless study of the extant photographic images, providing the first photographic canon of Brown images in the history of our research. Jean will tell you that she's no biographer, and although this is literally true, her in depth and extensive study of Brown and his family qualifies her as a biographical authority in her own right. As the following note from Jean demonstrates, her research and exhibitions pertaining to Brown's images have enjoyed wide recognition, especially since the Harper's Ferry sesquicentennial two years ago. Her book, John Brown Photo Chronology (Palo Alto, Calif.: Allies for Freedom Publishers, 2009) is the catalog of the exhibition at Harper's Ferry, and is indispensable for students, scholars, and researchers. I have received this communication from Jean, in which is also a link for my readers to download her review essay, "Portraits of John Brown, the Abolitionist." I would like to thank her for making this accessible to my readers.--LD

----------------------------

The sesquicentennial of the John Brown raid in October 2009 inspired institutional online exhibitions from the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Virginia History Society as well as my own authored John Brown Photo Chronology, which is on continued display at the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Other exhibitions which include John Brown but are not solely about him are reviewed for content.

The issue of language often used to describe John Brown is addressed in this review essay, which includes full academic references and illustrations which are properly permitted.

Thank you to the staff of the Harpers Ferry NHP for conducting an informal survey of visitor response to the portraits of John Brown at the museum, and to Andrea Reidell, Education Program Coordinator for The National Archives at Philadelphia, who integrated the traveling copy of the John Brown Photo Chronology into a lesson plan for high school students

All are welcome to download and cite the copyrighted essay as desired.1

Jean Libby, editor

Allies for Freedom

www.alliesforfreedom.org

1 The essay URL: http://www.alliesforfreedom.org/files/PortraitsofJohnBrown_the_abolitionist.pdf

2011-08-12T13:39:00.012-04:00

Ephemera--
Two Harper's Ferry Items in the News

It's Hammer Time

The Fredericksburg [Maryland] Free Lance-Star and the Washington [D.C.] Examiner websites have recently published a feature story by Clint Schemmer about the donation of a 28-pound sledgehammer to the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia. The sledgehammer was used by the marines during the final assault on John Brown and his men in the Harpers Ferry armory engine house on October 18, 1859. After the raid, the sledgehammer was picked up by a local doctor, who gave it to someone else, who later sold it to someone else, where it was passed down through the family line for nearly one hundred years. There were two other sledgehammers used, one is held by the National Park Service at Harper's Ferry, and the other is lost to history.

Of course, the sledgehammer method didn't work; Brown had secured the doors from the inside to flex sufficiently under these blows. Most historians point out that the marines then picked up a nearby ladder with which they successfully were able to ram through the engine house doors. Only Jean Libby, who has studied the raid quite closely, has explained that the ladder was used the day before by a group of railroad men who were repelled by Brown's heavy fire. As methods go, the railroad men were probably more effective in attacking the engine house than the marines, who brought the wrong tools for the job. One wonders how much longer it would have taken Lee and the Leathernecks to take the engine house if they had not happily stumbled over the ladder. As Homer Simpson would put it, "Doah!"

At any rate, the sledgehammer will be installed in a gallery entitled, "Defending the New Republic." Gretchen Winterer, a curator of the museum, pointed out that the raid by Brown was intended to "arm slaves and start a revolt throughout the South." Of course, she is correct, although it is interesting to consider such a revolt from the eyes of Ms. Winterer, the Marine Corps, and the slave owning interests that the marines served in those "turbulent times." It gives us pause to remember that what freedom-loving people today consider a heroic action by John Brown, the National Museum of the Marine Corps will label as a threat against "the New Republic." Likewise, this should remind us that in 1859, the marines were a de facto arm of the slave power, and no pretense of nobility and patriotic virtue can change that fact.

Winterer makes an interesting observation, that the marines were sent into the engine house without loaded guns, only bayonets. Certainly, John Brown and his men had no knowledge of this fact. However, she says this was ordered "because they didn't want to harm any of the hostages." Well, that's partially true. But it was also because they didn't want to "harm" any of the hostages' dark-skinned property that might get in the way as the Leathernecks set about butchering Brown's raiders inside the engine house. Even though Winterer portrays the marines as "seizing the raiders," the reality is that they butchered them and were under orders to do so, because that's what slave masters do to people trying to free their slaves.

To reiterate: the attack on John Brown and his men at Harper's Ferry was the putting down of a slave revolt, not the defense of a nation. At that moment in U.S. history, the marines were the bad guys. It's probably not the last time that the marines functioned as bad guys with respect to U.S. action, but here the marines were used by slave masters to seize black people and return them to slavery and to kill the U.S. citizens who were trying to set them free.

Hammer that.
--------------

Bell & Howl

I've actually been ignoring this controversy for weeks, but I would be remiss not to at least mention that there is a hot little debate going on over the so-called John Brown Bell, which hangs in a tower on Union Common, in the town of Marlborough, Massachusetts. Why the controversy? The bell originally hung over the Harper's Ferry armory engine house, the very site where Brown made his last stand against the powers of slavery and white supremacy. The bell was taken by Union soldiers during the Civil War and hidden for thirty years, after which it was taken up and carried north to Marlborough in 1892. Until the 1960s, it was suspended on the front of the Marlborough Grand Army of the Republic and American Legion building, after which it was moved to its present site.

Ken McGagh, MetroWest Daily
News-2008 (Framingham, Mass.)

According to the late Boyd Stutler, in the time of the Harper's Ferry raid, the bell served both as a fire alarm as well as the armory "work whistle," signaling shift ends and starts. Stutler speculated that the bell may have been used even before the erection of the fire engine house on the armory grounds. He never found a picture of the engine house taken prior to the raid, nor did he find any orders or authorization from the Union army to have the bell removed.

That's the bell part.

The howl part is that recently, some well-meaning protest has arisen, particularly from a howling commercial real estate broker named Howard Swint, who is from Charleston, West Virginia. Mr. Swint is a well-meaning gentleman who believes that the bell should be returned to the Harper's Ferry engine house. The folks at Marlborough see it differently. Mr. Swint is persistent; like Stutler, he has done research to discover if there was any federal order to have the bell removed and has found none. No surprise, since Stutler was quite thorough in his work. Frankly, the bell was stolen by some Massachusetts men in blue, carefully hidden, and then carried off many years after the War had ended. As Swint would point out, the lack of authority in removing the bell probably mitigates against Marlborough's interests, but then again, I'm not a lawyer and this is not just any stolen bell.

The late Boyd Stutler took an interest in this bell in the 1940s, and being both a journalist and a John Brown documentary scholar, he did research and interviews. Swint would be happy to know that Stutler agreed that the bell should be returned to Harper's Ferry. Of course, with all due respect, both Swint and Stutler reflect the special interest of West Virginia, the 1863 invention of Lincoln's administration and the state that subsumed Harper's Ferry.

Despite the mockery and criticism that Swint has taken online from certain pro-Marlborough writers, he is trying to take the high road. Lately he has proposed that Marlborough and Harper's Ferry develop a sister-city relationship that would allow joint custody of the bell. So far, Marlborough's city fathers have not responded to the sister-city pitch and Swint is disappointed, according to the Framingham [Mass] Daily News (Aug. 12). Somehow compromise between North and South just doesn't seem to work well. Incidentally, Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. has expressed his willingness to sign on in support of Swint's proposed compromise.

Whether or not Swint realizes it, cracking the Liberty Bell is probably easier than cracking the case of the "John Brown Bell" of Harper's Ferry, er Marlborough, Massachusetts. Even in the mid-20th century, when Boyd Stutler was on the ground at Marlborough to interview local citizens, he found they showed "considerable pride of possession" (Stutler to Barnes, 28 Sept. 1962, Stutler Collection). In response to a piece about the bell that Stutler wrote in a West Virginia paper in 1962, a local named Orlo Strunk, Jr. (Stutler Collection) published a poem that reflects Mr. Swint's current appeal:

They came and sacked the fire house bell,
"The spoils of civil war," they said.
The Northern soldiers sent it home;
"Too bad," they said to Johnny Reb.

The years have mellowed civil strife,
The men of Company One are dead,
The ghost of Mister Brown is gone,
And Harpers Ferry moves ahead.

I pray the Marlborough children hear
The message of the pillaged bell;
And come to know the cost of hate--
To sense the claim of freedom's knell.

Stutler doubtless appreciated the sentiment of this contemporary poem, but he also held a poem written in 1917 from the Marlborough perspective, by Edith Folsom (Stutler Collection). The poem is somewhat more lengthy and readers can use the link to read it in its entirety. As the poem illustrates, Folsom perceived a strong link between the pro-Brown sentiment of Marlborough at the time of the Civil War and the meaning of the bell, which by then was already wed to the city's spirit as well as its landscape:

In the quaint bell-tower in Marlboro [sic] town,
Old men in blue still the swinging cord.
"His soul is marching on, O Lord!"
The air re-echoes, "John Brown - John Brown."

A good friend recently asked me for an opinion about the bell. My response is bifurcated. The reasonable part of me thinks that compromise is the best solution. After all, the bell first belonged to federal property and at the very least, compromise would mean sharing it with a National Park Service facility, which is also federal property. It's not like handing the bell back to Wise, Hunter, and the rest of John Brown's judicial murderers. A compromise would even give Marlborough a little publicity, I suppose, and Boyd Stutler would probably smile in his grave.

On the other hand, the loss of the bell can also be perceived as symbolic of the price that was paid by slaveholders for their brutality, greed, and perfidy. Jesus taught, "count the cost before you go to war." Wise and the rest of the Old Dominion did not sufficiently count the cost, and a great deal was lost, especially in life--all for the sake of expanding slavery. There was nothing noble in the Southern cause, and notwithstanding the stubborn, ahistorical pride that reigns in Dixie to this day, the Confederate soldiers died as fools, fighting for a cause that today overshadows their descendants. The bell was taken in war by Union soldiers. Yes, the bell was stolen--really stolen twice, once during the Civil War, and then again thirty years later, long after the war was over. But a lot of things were lost in the war because Virginia and other states chose to secede. Contrary to the Strunk poem, there is more to keeping the bell than hate.

First, the people of Marlborough paid in blood and tears for a war that they didn't start and didn't want. The thieving men in blue who swiped the bell would not have been in Harper's Ferry were it not for the same people who hanged John Brown and afterward pushed their own state out of the Union into secession, rebellion, and war. Like it or not, West Virginians may have to own up to the historical consequences of the war as symbolized by the loss of "their" bell. Second, the "John Brown Bell" has been part of Marlborough's life and history for over a century now, perhaps longer than it was actually situated atop the engine house at Harper's Ferry. Shouldn't the State of Virginia return John Brown's papers to Alice Keesey Mecoy and other Brown family descendants? The point is lots of stuff gets stolen by superior force in times of conflict and a case can be made for this stuff to be returned. But the city of Marlborough may wonder why they should be expected to do so, simply because some folks in West Virginia want "their" bell returned.

Finally, the leaders and citizens of Marlborough may very well see returning the bell as a concession to the spirit of the Confederacy, even if Mr. Swint is representing an entirely different approach. After all, the white South pretty much recovered everything after the defeat of Reconstruction--land, power, and the right to revise the meaning of the Civil War, even in places like Harper's Ferry. Given the strongly anti-Brown sentiment that pervades the National Park Service at Harper's Ferry today, and the consistent way in which Brown is misrepresented in NPS tourist narratives, frankly it gives me a little satisfaction in knowing that the engine house bell is out of their reach and may be for sometime. Bells represent resounding clarity, something that is not typical of the NPS at Harper's Ferry.

The postscript to this is that, in the grand scheme of things, all this hoopla over a bell seems overdone, the kind of controversy that white folks have the privilege to indulge in. It reminds me of an outraged property owner who was also a realtor in a real estate office in Florida where I was temping many years ago. One day I happened to hear the realtor raging over the phone because someone had intentions of constructing a building that would ruin the front view from his plush condominium. "It's unconscionable!" he declared. "Unconscionable?" I said to myself. "I can think of a lot of other things that are unconscionable." I feel the same way about the "John Brown Bell" affair. After all, if Uncle Sam is not willing to officially apologize to black people and Native Americans, let alone pay reparations or return stolen land, why should it really matter if the "John Brown Bell" is returned to the National Park Service facility in West Virginia? To borrow the words of Jesus, it seems to me we're "straining out gnats and swallowing camels," and it's white folks doing all the straining.

Postscript (16 Aug): Visit the Marlborough Historical Society's website for more information and downloadable materials about the John Brown Bell.