Essay:

The Slavemasters’ Butcher: Answering Leatherneck Magazine and Israel Green

Leatherneck, the online “Magazine of the Marines” features an article by a writer named Hash Mark, originally published in 1925 under the heading, “How the Marines Captured John Brown.”1  Mark recollects how he came to learn that John Brown had been apprehended at Harper’s Ferry by U.S. marines. “I also learned,” wrote Mark, “that Brown's life was spared on that occasion largely through the efforts of Lieut. Israel Green, of the Marines, when the said Israel Greene walloped John Brown in the engine-house between the Shenandoah and the Potomac.”  This is an incredibly erroneous assertion, since Green did his level best to kill John Brown.  Green did not “spare” Brown—he simply failed to kill him despite being younger, stronger, and having sufficient opportunity to bludgeon him to death. 


[The complete entry is available only in the forthcoming book, John Brown: Emancipator]