John Brown the Abolitionist

2009-11-07T22:43:00.002-05:00

John Brown Family Descendant Celebrates Ancestry

John Brown’s descendants relived the raid on Harpers Ferry, W.Va., during the event’s sesquicentennial on Oct. 16.

Mary Buster, who grew up in Osawatomie and lived here until she was 23, is a direct descendant of Brown. Brown’s half-sister, Florella Adair, is her great-great-grandmother.

Buster made the drive to West Virginia to participate in the 150-year observance of Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, which was a plan to spark a revolt of slaves in the area and to arm them with weapons that Brown planned to capture from a federal arsenal.

The plan failed, and Brown and his men made a long last stand in a firehouse. The sesquicentennial involved a reenactment of this violent event.

“I loved just the excitement of getting to be where it all happened,” Buster said. “I felt like I was standing on holy ground.”

She said Brown’s plan had been lost on her until this trip, when it finally made sense to her.

“(It helped) getting to hear it from the authors there and the people who were talking about John Brown,” she said. “It was an excellent plan. People say he was crazy to think he could do this, but if it hadn’t been for one or two accidents, it probably would have worked. He really thought it out.”

Months prior to the attack, Brown stayed with his men at the Kennedy farmhouse four miles north of Harpers Ferry. The farmstead is still standing today, and Buster said that was her favorite part of the trip.

“I got a personal tour by the man who owns the house, through the entire house,” she said, “including the room Brown and his men hid for the months leading up to the raid.”

Buster also encountered a group in possession of the last letters John and Mary Brown exchanged during their final hours.

“It shows the human side of John Brown,” she said. Her plan is to get the letters to Osawatomie to be displayed for next year’s Freedom Festival.

“It was amazing to be so far from home and still have people talk about John Brown all the time,” Buster said. “It’s obvious in that park that John Brown is viewed as a hero. Every African-American I met threw their arms around me and hugged me. It was wonderful. (They were) very positive toward the man and what he was trying to do, and that was very nice to see.”

During her three-day stay, she met descendents of Brown’s men, townspeople of Harpers Ferry and others whose lives were affected by the event in some way.

“I am extremely proud,” she said. “The more I read about John Brown and his sister Florella, the more I am proud to say I am related to them.”

Source: Brandon Steinert, Osawatomie Graphic (Nov. 4, 2009)

2009-10-31T19:17:00.002-04:00

Michael Kessler, "John Brown's disobedience: Just Law and Religion."

150 years ago--in October 1859--John Brown led a raid on a U.S. armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. He hoped to gather arms and lead an army to fight slaveholders. Instead, he was quickly stopped and hanged for his lawless actions. Is he a hero, a martyr, or a criminal?

Or is he all three at once? Whatever you judge, his legacy of violent resistance to slavery still raises questions about when resistance to lawful authority is meritorious.

Brown was angry--angry that some of the people in his nation held slaves. He was also angry at the peaceful abolitionists who refused to advocate for forceful overthrow of the institution of slavery. Something must be done, and Brown was the man to do it. His actions helped set off a chain of events that ended in the Civil War.

Brown hoped to raise an army of the willing who would fight against slaveholding factions. He led a group of 21 other men--a mix of blacks and whites--on a raid of the Harper's Ferry arsenal in hopes of securing enough arms to pose a serious challenge. He was wounded, quickly captured, and tried for treason.

By December 1859, he was hanging from the gallows. He left a note with a prison guard that predicted the bloodshed about to engulf the nation: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with blood." Within a year and a half, the nation was torn asunder in bloody battles.

At his trial, he described his deeply religious convictions for the plight of his enslaved brethren and his deep sense of the injustice that slavery perpetrated. Consider his speech upon being convicted:

In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, of a design on my part to free the slaves. I intended, certainly, to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally leaving them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended to do. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite the slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.... This court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done - as I have always freely admitted I have done - in behalf of His despised poor is no wrong but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments - I say, let it be done!

It is hard to quarrel with Brown's claim: a gross injustice like slavery perpetrated under the banner of law should be stopped. Since the legislative changes had not been forthcoming, Brown considered the only option he had to be armed resistance. Disrupt the institution of slavery that God Himself finds despicable.

Indeed, Brown's conviction was borne out to be true--the gross injustice of slavery has been universally condemned for a century by all but the most ardent haters. We have many reasons for the conviction that slavery should be unlawful, most especially widely held religious convictions about the dignity and equality of each human being and rational grounds for thinking of each person as free and equal.

We still struggle, however, with the extent to which laws we judge to be inconsistent with a higher law should be followed. This is an old legacy. Thomas More's famous refusal to swear the Act of Succession and the Oath of Supremacy in 1534 left him parted with his head. His last words on the scaffold were "The King's good servant, but God's First."

Abortion is one area of contemporary debate. Even most who condemn abortion cringe at those who advocate for violence to stop abortion. The murder of Dr. George Tiller was condemned by most groups, including many who advocate for outlawing access to abortion. But when pushed, some people may consider it acceptable to commit unlawful actions in the pursuit of higher justice. The person who killed Dr. Tiller claims to be God's servant.

It's easy to make Brown a hero--he certainly fought for a worthy cause--even while he was, technically, a criminal. What do we do in other cases--like abortion--in which there is wider disagreement about the moral legitimacy of the laws in question? Can we condone people who appeal to a higher law while ignoring the civil law? Do we hold those like Brown accountable to the civil law, even while privately agreeing with their actions? If we condone their disobedience, how do we protect the social order from chaos if everyone is judging for themselves what "higher law" should be followed?

What do you think?

Michael Kessler, Ph.D., is Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Assistant Director at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. His current work is on legal and political notions of fundamental rights, particularly about individual moral liberties and religious freedom. Kessler received his Ph.D. in Religion and Moral and Political Theory from the University of Chicago, where he was a William Rainey Harper Fellow and held a Henry Luce Dissertation Fellowship. He graduated with a BA with honors in Theology, a second major in Philosophy, and a Classics minor, from Valparaiso University. Kessler has also studied law at Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of a number of articles and reviews, and co-editor of Mystics: Presence and Aporia (University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Source: Michael Kessler, "Georgetown/On Faith: John Brown's disobedience: Just Law and Religion," The Washington Post.com (Oct. 31, 2009)

2009-10-30T23:29:00.001-04:00

2009-10-30T23:10:00.000-04:00

Massachusetts Historical Society Features John Brown Exhibit

BOSTON, October 30, 2009—This fall the Massachusetts Historical Society, the oldest historical society in the nation, is mounting an exhibit entitled, "John Brown: Martyr to Freedom or American Terrorist—or Both?" Abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry on October 17, 1859, was one of the major events leading up to the Civil War and remains one of the most controversial episodes in American history. This consists of personal papers, photographs, broadsides, engravings, weapons, and artifacts that illuminate Brown’s life together with evidence of the continuing arguments about the morality and meaning of his actions.

Beginning with Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s remarkable diary account of meeting Brown at his hardscrabble Adirondack farm, long before Brown came to national prominence, the exhibition will document his violent career in “Bleeding Kansas" in the 1850s and the strong support he received from abolitionists in Massachusetts—five of his chief financial supporters, the “Secret Six,” lived in the Boston area. The exhibition will focus on the events at Harpers Ferry in 1859, Brown’s trial and execution later that year, and the controversy about how to interpret his life and these events that has continued ever since. Visitors can see examples of the weapons Brown stockpiled for the attack and one of the last letters he sent to his family from jail while he awaited execution in Charlestown, (now West) Virginia. For the debate on the interpretation of his life and death that began almost immediately after his execution—a debate carried on even in the rooms of the MHS, where many members had known and/or supported him—the Society will show letters and documents about Brown that MHS members gathered during and after the Civil War.

The exhibition is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is open to the public Monday through Saturday, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, through December 23.

Source: Fenway News Online, Oct. 30, 2009

2009-10-29T16:42:00.001-04:00

U.S. Representative Shelley Moore Capito Calls for Legislation to Honor John Brown & Harper's Ferry Raid

HARPERS FERRY, WV - U.S. Representative Shelley Moore Capito (R) WV, introduced legislation to honor John Brown's Raid and Harpers Ferry.

The House of Representatives passed the legislation recognizing the 150th anniversary of John Brown's Raid and the important role Harpers Ferry played in our nation's history.

John Brown led 21 men during his famous raid on October 16th, 1859, which ignited the abolitionist movement leading to the Civil War.

Capito called on her fellow representatives to support the bill and also said, "I also encourage those near and far Americans to visit Harpers Ferry and the surrounding area to share in the deep history and tradition in our state of West Virginia."

West Virginia became the only state formed as a the result of the Civil War in 1863.

Source: WHAG-TV, Hagerstown, Maryland on-line

2009-10-29T15:52:00.005-04:00

John Tarleton, "Rethinkin’ Lincoln"

The Indypendent [New York City], October 30, 2009

When Abraham Lincoln accepted the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1858, he warned that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” The future president believed it was impossible for the rapidly growing country to continue half-slave and half-free. Like many moderates of his day, he sought a compromise solution that would contain slavery in the hopes that it would eventually expire.

John Brown shattered this illusion. In October 1859, Brown and a small interracial band of followers seized a government arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Va., in a failed attempt to launch a slave revolt. Brown, with his long, flowing white beard, was sent to the gallows and became an instant martyr for millions. His daring raid managed to radicalize many Northern opponents of slavery while intensifying pro-secession sentiments in the South, just as the 1860 presidential campaign was set to begin.

Lincoln disavowed Brown as a madman while pursuing his successful bid for the White House. However, Brown’s parting words (“The sins of this guilty land can only be purged with blood”) would prove to be a prophetic curse. As the Civil War unfolded, Lincoln would find himself trodding much the same ground that Brown had as he reluctantly moved toward becoming the “Great Emancipator” that history remembers him as.

Now, 150 years after Harper’s Ferry, the distinct but overlapping paths of the two men — one a fiery apostle of direct action, the other a pragmatic reformer — are explored in a pair of exhibits at the New-York Historical Society. Combined, the two exhibits speak to the recurring question of whether social change is brought about by radical organizing from outside existing institutions or by reformers acting from within those same institutions.

CONTRASTING VISIONS

The John Brown exhibit is tucked away in a single upstairs room. The show follows Brown’s increasingly militant response to concessions made to pro-slavery forces during the 1850s. This in turn is a prologue to the audacious plot he hatched on a remote farm five miles outside of Harper’s Ferry. The details of the raid are precisely recounted. Unlike most abolitionists, Brown believed that slaves were ready and able to fight for their freedom and only needed the arms to do so.

Relying heavily on personal correspondence, the exhibit presents the voices of Brown’s family members, fellow conspirators, skeptical allies in the abolitionist movement and the widow of one of his victims. Deeply religious, Brown was a man on fire. Whether he was a heroic freedom fighter or a 19th-century domestic terrorist is left for visitors to discern.

Downstairs, a sprawling Lincoln exhibit uses a vibrant multimedia format. Audio, video, photos, cartoons, paintings, newspaper front pages, personal correspondence, historic artifacts, an interactive game for aspiring war profiteers and more are used to provide a fascinating look at the 16th president and the Civil War. The show grapples with issues familiar to our own age — an unpopular war, economic crisis, incarceration of prisoners by presidential decree and deeply entrenched white racism. By focusing on Lincoln and New York, the great drama of the Civil War era plays out on a human scale.

The John Brown exhibit is tucked away in a single upstairs room. . . . Downstairs, a sprawling Lincoln exhibit uses a vibrant multimedia format.

NEW YORK ON EDGE

Support for Lincoln was thin in New York City, as many business elites wanted to maintain trade ties with Southern cotton growers while working-class whites worried that the abolition of slavery would mean more competition for their jobs. When Lincoln took office, Mayor Fernando Wood went so far as to suggest that New York should secede and become its own independent city-state, which would be free to trade with both the North and South.

These roiling tensions come to life throughout the exhibit, from Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union address which launched his longshot presidential campaign, to torchlight parades by thousands of young, whiterobed Lincoln supporters known as the “Wide Awakes” to the screaming front-page headlines of the city’s unabashedly partisan newspapers.

While the exhibit focuses on Lincoln, it does not exalt the Great Man but shows him as the controversial figure he was at the time. For many of his supporters, like the African-American orator Frederick Douglass and New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley, Lincoln was far too cautious in eliminating slavery once the war was under way. His detractors, meanwhile, are shown portraying him first as a simple-minded rustic (“The Railsplitter”) and later as a thick-lipped tyrant (“King Abraham Africanus I”) and promoter of interracial marriage, a common slur defenders of slavery used against abolitionists.

At about the midpoint in the exhibit, you can sit in the front pews of a re-created African-American church. It is Jan. 1, 1863, and jubilant voices celebrate the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation while a stirring choral rendition of “John Brown’s Body” is performed. Six months and a couple of rooms further into the exhibit, euphoria turns to horror as simmering race and class tensions explode when poor Irish immigrants unleash their fury on New York’s African-American population.

Blown-up wall panels with street maps of the city provide a detailed log of the four-day orgy of violence. It was the deadliest riot in U.S. history. At least 120 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured prompting Lincoln to send in federal troops to quell the disturbance. Sitting in a small enclosed chamber, one can listen to the re-created voices of victims and eyewitnesses describing what they saw.

Lincoln’s institution of a military draft — a first in U.S. history — was the catalyst for the riots. The war’s carnage was mounting with no end in sight. The rich could buy their way out of military service for $300 (a massive sum for the average workingman), while private contractors made fortunes off supplying the troops with shoddy uniforms, rotten food, defective rifles and so on. Such were the conditions that allowed the anti- Lincoln press to stoke a racially charged backlash of one group of powerless people against another.

EMANCIPATION

The Union Army’s growing shortage of manpower forced Lincoln’s hand on slavery. Citing “military necessity” he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and authorized African-Americans to serve in the U.S. military (but only in segregated units). Almost 200,000 did so by the end of the war.

By freeing the slaves, Lincoln transformed the war into the kind of moral crusade previously espoused by John Brown. A proud Black soldier depicted on the front page of an African-American newspaper highlights a great irony: The same federal government that Brown rebelled against was now arming former slaves to fight for their freedom on a scale that he could have only dreamed of a few years earlier.

The mythology that grew up around Lincoln beginning in his own lifetime is gently deconstructed throughout the exhibit, from Greeley’s branding of “Honest Abe” during the 1860 election campaign to the post-Emancipation Proclamation depiction of Lincoln as the benevolent white father liberating the slaves to Lincoln’s final ascent to secular sainthood following his assassination. Lincoln is presented as an extraordinary figure, but viewers are also invited to ask questions and draw their own conclusions.

The Lincoln exhibit’s greatest shortcoming is its lack of context for understanding the economic vision that guided Lincoln and the Republicans. While the Democrats were the party of the Southern slaveholders, most Republicans were not hardcore abolitionists. They did want to see slavery’s spread halted, but for practical reasons. The expansion of the export-oriented plantation economy of the South was incompatible with the North’s continued development of a modern, entrepreneurial capitalism based on wage labor and satisfying the demand of a growing internal market.

The grand compromise that emerged following the end of Reconstruction in 1876 saw the South economically subordinated to Northern capital but allowed to maintain its “peculiar” racial caste system minus chattel slavery. Lincoln and the Republicans would have happily settled for this in 1860. Almost a century later, the civil rights movement successfully challenged many of the worst abuses of a segregated society. Cloaked in moral fervor but guided by nonviolent principles, it shook the country’s power structure and helped ignite the other great social movements of the 1960s. The tactics were different from those of John Brown — but Brown’s dream of interracial solidarity and political and social equality for all was a vision that America was once again moving toward. And much still remains to be done, regardless of who is in the White House. Even in 2009.

Lincoln and New York and John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy will be on exhibit at the New-York Historical Society through March 25, 2010.

212-873-3400 • nyhistory.org

2009-10-28T11:39:00.003-04:00

Answering Rothstein: The Apprehensions of the Ignorant

Unfortunately it is almost impossible to expect even a cultural exhibit about John Brown to evade the sniping of misinformed, biased writers like Edward Rothstein. In his New York Times article, republished in this blog under this same date, Rothstein erroneously refers to "Brown’s vision of a spontaneous slave insurrection," something that John Brown certainly did not envision or plan. Either Rothstein is ignorant of the facts or he thinks like a Southern slave owner. The latter believed that any effort to undermine their so-called Peculiar Institution was "insurrection." In fact, insurrection is precisely what John Brown sought to avoid: insurrection involves the uprising of enslaved people with the intent of exterminating their masters. The ideology behind insurrection is that by killing masters, slaves render themselves free. Taken to extreme, this entails killing the heirs of slave masters, which took place, for instance in the Nat Turner Revolt almost thirty years before the Harper's Ferry raid led by John Brown in the same state of Virginia.

John Brown had no "vision" of insurrection, except as a nightmare. His intention was to arm enslaved people and fight only in self-defense, making every effort to avoid insurrectionary developments and to evade major fighting as much as possible. To be sure, he intended that enslaved people fight in self-defense of their movements if necessary, but nowhere is there any evidence that Brown was an insurrectionist.

The problem is that writers like Rothstein tend to assume they understand Brown, either because they have been miseducated or because they are too fundamentally arrogant to do the research. They simply write what they think constitutes the "problem" of John Brown--an attitude that prevails as much among liberal journalists as among conservatives.

Secondly, the notion that Brown's plans were "fantastical" and that "his strategic abilities" were "sorely strained" at Harper's Ferry is also gross error. First, let Mr. Rothstein be reminded that Brown's plans were hardly beyond reach--both the idea of gathering up enslaved people and withdrawing into the mountains, as well as striking the armory at Harper's Ferry. That his plans failed do not prove them "fantastical," particularly since it is clear that Brown erred in a number of specific judgments--and even the most experienced military commanders may err. Brown's errors were indeed questions of judgment and timing, but the strategy he devised would certainly have enjoyed at least a moderate measure of success had he followed through correctly. Many a battle has been lost due to such misjudgments. Harper's Ferry itself had no military guard and was minimally supervised by civilian workers. It was easy enough to seize the armory at night, and Brown essentially had his way with the town of Harper's Ferry; the problem was leaving before his opponents could muster their own forces. Had Brown, his raiders, and the enslaved men he had gathered departed Harper's Ferry by 6 o'clock the next morning, history might be telling a different story about the raid. That he delayed almost until noon the next day was the fatal flaw, and there is nothing "fantastical" about any of this. Once more, ignorance of the facts on the part of one journalist, conveyed to the public by the most respectable newspaper in the country, marks another setback in educating the public about one of the most important episodes in U.S. history as it regards the struggle for human rights.

But Rothstein's remarks worsen in conclusion. He writes:

But can we not also be distressed by the implications of Brown’s methods, and worry over their enthusiastic embrace over the last 150 years? In his welcome of martyrdom, his visions of apocalyptic retribution and his unshakable belief in his own virtue, Brown is now so familiar a type on the world scene that we cannot resist being horrified by the temptation of terror that he succumbed to, even if, as in this particular case, we welcome its long-sought goal.

It has taken about a century to regain the balance of fairness and thoughtfulness in discussing John Brown, and this journalist decries the "enthusiastic embrace" of Brown's methods? What "enthusiastic embrace"? Certainly not that of the white community! Perhaps Rothstein bemoans the "enthusiastic embrace" of Brown by the black community--you know, the ones whose forebears were enslaved, raped, and terrorized in this country, having been reduced to mere chattel by white society? It is sad that journalist Rothstein is so worried that Brown's efforts on behalf of black liberation are embraced. I wonder if he would be equally saddened had the same John Brown used the same methods as a Nazi killer and liberator of Jews during World War II? There is something wrong with this kind of thinking. That a so-called white man, writing about a white man who used "violence" against an overwhelming racism and institutionalized injustice, should be more worried over the deaths of five racist brutes in Kansas than about the broad scale horrors of black enslavement in the antebellum era suggests that Rothstein presumes the priority of white people, even pro-slavery thugs, over an oppressed people. Again, I wonder whether he would be lamenting Brown's violence if the slain Doyles, those abettors of terrorism in Kansas, had been virulent pro-Nazis engaged in anti-Semitic violence. What's wrong with this picture folks? Why are writers so scandalized by Brown? As the Old Man himself realized, the actions he took, had they been applied to the context of other peoples, would have been roundly praised and awarded. It seems that's a truth that still prevails among white journalists.

Rather than see Brown as a good (yes and also imperfect) man who sought to do something to undermine slavery when the rest of the country was all about compromise and indifference, Rothstein wrongfully sums up the abolitionist as a man of terror, apocalyptic vision, and self-delusion. The man that Rothstein writes about is not known to me; I do not recognize him in the facts of history. I am a biographer of John Brown the abolitionist, certainly one of a small number of scholars who knew more about the man than the rest of the general population. It seems to me that the people who always draw Rothstein's conclusions are not among the number of those who know Brown; they are dealing in caricatures and bogeymen of their own making. It is regretful that the New York Times is not only a newspaper that refuses to publish balanced information about Brown in its Op-Ed section, but also extends erroneous information about the abolitionist at a time when his contributions should finally be appreciated rather than disdained. This is why, among all biographers working in U.S. history, John Brown's biographers must forever be caught up in this tiring, annoying struggle of simply getting a fair hearing for the Old Man in the court of public opinion. White society, especially its academics and journalists, are often far kinder, historically speaking, to men who were far worse in every respect than Brown. This sadly leads us to the conclusion that the reason for this double-standard is fundamentally about race and racism. Brown lived and died in association with and devotion to the human rights struggles of African people in the U.S.A. Many whites simply will never forgive him for holding such an allegiance, first because they do not understand it and second because it vexes and frightens them in some aspect of their thinking. It may be that Mr. Rothstein is so vexed.

2009-10-28T09:17:00.004-04:00

Edward Rothstein, "One Man’s Crusade Against Slavery, Seen From Two Angles."

New York Times on-line, Oct. 27, 2009

RICHMOND, Va. — His body may lie a-moldering in the grave, but in what form exactly does his soul go marching on? We may think we know something about John Brown, the abolitionist and stern Calvinist who 150 years ago this month led 21 followers to take over the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., expecting to gather weapons to fuel a widespread slave rebellion. His self-proclaimed Provisional Army of the United States took hostages (including a great-grandnephew of George Washington) and killed four innocent citizens. Finally, after being captured by a detachment of Marines led by Robert E. Lee, and tried, Brown and six other insurgents were hanged for treason, though their cause ultimately triumphed.

But in two small-scale but heavily laden exhibitions — one at the New-York Historical Society, drawing on the extraordinary Gilder Lehrman Collection, the other at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond (the first show devoted to Brown in a city that was the capital of the Confederacy) — it becomes clear that Brown’s legacy is nearly as riven now as it was on the eve of the Civil War. His actions still raise unresolved issues about the limits of dissent, the nature of terrorism and the effects of revolutionary violence.

The two exhibitions are also subtly different, reflecting in some respects contrasts that have their origins in the controversies of that earlier era. In New York “John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy,” developed by James G. Basker, president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and others, states its goal from the start: to examine “John Brown’s beliefs and actions in the context of growing national divisions over slavery in the 1850s.” We read in the wall text how, in that crucial decade, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act four years later, as well as the Dred Scott decision of 1857, “precipitated a firestorm between slaveholding Southerners and free-labor Northerners.”

Violence even broke out on the Senate floor in May 1856, when Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina assaulted an antislavery colleague, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, beating him so badly that it was three years before Sumner returned to the Senate.

Out of that atmosphere, Brown’s violence also took shape. We see his fierce intelligence in letters to followers, and read reminiscences of his hanging and its aftermath. There are shadows here, but his legacy is given few ambiguities. It is displayed in documents representing the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which ended institutional slavery and its legal culture. Brown’s legacy, the show suggests, finally found fruition in the 1960s civil rights movement (evoked here by a placard carried in a march that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined the day he was murdered).

Ultimately, the assessment of Brown that remains is that of Frederick Douglass, who disagreed with Brown’s tactics but is quoted here in 1881: “If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery.”

In Richmond in “The Portent: John Brown’s Raid in American Memory,” something quite different happens. In the South Brown was condemned not only for his abolitionist views but also because he tapped into latent fears of a slave rebellion. Now, of course, the curators, the historians William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, take the virtues of Brown’s abolitionist cause for granted; indeed, the last part of the exhibition is devoted to a series of 22 schematic, affecting prints of Brown’s life and his martyrdom by the artist Jacob Lawrence (based on his 1941 paintings). Melville’s 1859 poem “The Portent,” about Brown’s hanging, gives the show its title, presciently calling Brown a metaphysical herald, a “meteor of the war” that was about to begin.

But in Richmond abolition is not the theme; Brown’s tactics are. And we can hear the clamor of the debate more clearly. As the show points out, Brown’s virtue was not always so transparent, even in the North.

Brown was hailed by Emerson, who said he would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.” Thoreau glorified him as living beyond death. Victor Hugo called him “this liberator, this fighter for Christ,” whose hanging (“so great a crime”) “would impart to the Union a creeping fissure.”

The first biography of Brown, published soon after his hanging, is open here to its title page, where the author, James Redpath, with a typographical shout, dedicated the book to Emerson and Thoreau, “WHO, WHEN THE MOB SHOUTED, ‘MADMAN!’ SAID, ‘SAINT!’ ”

But at the same time Hawthorne called Brown a “blood-stained fanatic.” Lincoln called his raid “absurd” and deplored Brown’s “violence, bloodshed and treason.” In the major Northern cities “Union meetings” were held to condemn Brown.

A petition signed by 3,500 Bostonians proclaimed, “We deeply sympathize with the people of Virginia.” In New York, the exhibition says, there was a huge political meeting: 6,000 people filled the Academy of Music; 15,000 gathered outside; and 20,000 signed a resolution regarding “the recent outrage at Harpers Ferry as a crime.”

There were some, clearly, who opposed Brown because he was both violent and an abolitionist, but others opposed him simply because he was violent. One of the remarkable objects on display here is a long pike topped with the blade of a Bowie knife. In March 1857, in preparation for the raid, Brown ordered a thousand such custom-designed weapons from a Connecticut manufacturer, for use by slaves with no experience with guns. The weapon has a primitive power, and helps give some idea of the kind of battles Brown imagined.

There is a letter in New York, written to Brown before his hanging by Mahala Doyle, the wife and mother of those murdered. “Altho vengeance is not mine, I confess, that I do feel gratified to hear that you ware stopt in your fiendish career,” she writes, pointing out that the Doyles didn’t even own slaves.

“O how it pained my Heart to hear the dying groans of my Husband and children,” she recalls, noting that her youngest son, whom Brown spared in response to her entreaties, wished he could be at the hanging to help adjust the rope around Brown’s neck.

This makes the issues more stark, and in Richmond they become explicit. “Does an individual have the right to carry out violent acts based on conscience?” the exhibition asks in a video surveying the history of the raid. “Does a noble end justify a bloody means?” And given Brown’s unwavering belief in his own righteousness and his embrace of the most extreme methods, the show asks, “Is Brown so different from today’s bombers from Oklahoma City to Iraq?”

The exhibition does not answer those questions; it is effective enough just to raise them. What makes this case so disturbing is that here we have a cause that is now considered inherently virtuous: the abolition of an institution that had led to untold violence and degradation. Moreover, slavery seemed to be so firmly established that nothing but violence could unseat it.

Brown’s vision of a spontaneous slave insurrection might have been fantastical, and his strategic abilities sorely strained, but one judgment (as in New York) is that good grew out of this apparent evil. Like the Union forces in the Civil War, Brown used violence in the service of ending violence.

“I think I did right,” Brown told his captors after the raid, and he considered his effort to be “the greatest service man can render to God.” The New York exhibition has a letter Brown wrote in prison: “I do not feel myself in the least degraded by my imprisonment, my chain, or the near prospect of the Gallows. ... I go joyfully in behalf of Millions that have no rights that this ‘great, & glorious’; ‘this Christian Republic,’ is bound to respect.”

But can we not also be distressed by the implications of Brown’s methods, and worry over their enthusiastic embrace over the last 150 years? In his welcome of martyrdom, his visions of apocalyptic retribution and his unshakable belief in his own virtue, Brown is now so familiar a type on the world scene that we cannot resist being horrified by the temptation of terror that he succumbed to, even if, as in this particular case, we welcome its long-sought goal.

“The Portent: John Brown’s Raid in American Memory” is on view through April 11 at the Virginia Historical Society, 428 North Boulevard, Richmond; (804) 358-4901, vahistorical.org. “John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy” is on view through March 25 at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, at 77th Street; (212) 873-3400, nyhistory.org.

=================

St. Louis Civil War Roundtable Monthly Meeting features John Brown Portrayal

Famed abolitionist John Brown, as portrayed by Dave Matheny, Emeritus Professor of Rhetoric and Public Address at Emporia State University and veteran Chautauqua participant, will be the dinner speaker at the Civil War Roundtable’s next meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 28, at Two Heart’s Banquet Center, 4532 S. Lindbergh Blvd. Member cost is $17 with dinner, $5 without. Annual CWRT dues are $35, with discounts for multi-member households and students. For more information on future to attend s monthly event as a guest, call Paul Hauser 636-861-0220.

Phone: 636-861-0220

2009-10-27T10:18:00.007-04:00

John Brown Symposium in Springfield, Mass. features Biographer David Reynolds

On Oct. 17, 2009 the 150th anniversary of the raid on Harper’s Ferry that ignited the Civil War, the Springfield Technical Community College School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences held a symposium on abolitionist John Brown, who lived for four years in Springfield. Pictured above is David S. Reynolds, author of the best-selling biography John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, with the bust of John Brown. Pictured below is Professor John Gately, also an antiquarian book dealer, speaks about his collection of memorabilia of John Brown and the era just before the Civil War.

Source: BusinessWest Online [Springfield, Mass], Oct. 26, 2009

Brown’s raid events draw large crowds; Officials say nearly 5,000 people came out for 150th anniversary of abolitionist's seige

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and the local community on Oct. 15 recognized the 150th anniversary of Brown's attempt to seize weapons from a local arsenal in an attempt to arm area slaves.

Numerous events took place leading up to the anniversary, and activities continued throughout that weekend.

In all, officials said nearly 5,500 people took part in events at the park that weekend, despite the rainy weather. More than 2,000 travelers stopped by the newly opened Harpers Ferry Visitor Center that weekend, said Paulette Sprinkle, director of the Jefferson County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"That's just what we got in this building," Sprinkle said of the figure.

Sprinkle said the weather may have deterred some of the visitors who were initially expected to turn out for the events.

"The weather was so bad," she said.

Initially, officials with Harpers Ferry National Historical Park expected crowds for the anniversary to be so large that the park's 1,000-car parking lot would not be able to accommodate everyone. Plans were in place to use nearby Bolivar Heights for auxiliary parking if it was needed, she said.

The crowds ended up being smaller than those projections, but considering the weather, Sprinkle said they were still a healthy size.

"That was a very good turnout," she said.

Sprinkle noted that the events surrounding the John Brown sesquicentennial are not over just yet.

In November, events will continue at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. A community forum and walking tour through Charles Town also are planned for that month.

Members of the Jefferson County NAACP are reportedly planning events in December, including a ceremony in which participants will retrace the route from the Charles Town jail to the site where Brown and two of his raiders were hanged.

Sprinkle said the county is expected to again play host to visitors who are partaking in the community's historic tourism attractions in 2011. At that time, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War will get under way, continuing through 2015.

In a previous interview, Sprinkle noted that tourism is the No. 1 industry in the county. In 2006, reports show that historical attractions, outdoor activities and local gaming facilities combined to create nearly 6,670 jobs in the area.

Sprinkle said Tuesday that it is her agency's job to help attract visitors to participate in the many attractions that the local area has to offer.

"What we do is help promote the events as we know they're coming," she said.

In 2008, she said the group placed nearly 10 million ads. The figure was based on the number of ads placed, multiplied by the number of publications and their circulation.

"Of course most of those (ads) had a lot about John Brown," she said. "We usually emphasize the other things we have here too."

Marsha Wassel, spokesperson for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, had not returned calls from The Journal at presstime.

- Staff writer Naomi Smoot can be reached at (304) 725-6581, or nsmoot@journal-news.net

Source: The Journal [Martinsburg, West Va.], Oct. 27, 2009

2009-10-24T18:00:00.006-04:00

A Harper's Ferry Return: Reflections from My Visit, October 15-17, 2009

For the longest time I did not think that I would be able to attend the symposium at Harpers Ferry this month in commemoration of Brown's raid, and since I am scheduled to speak at other John Brown events this fall and winter, I pretty much put aside any idea of going down for the sesquicentennial events in West Virginia. However, about October 1 (the deadline for registration for the symposium) the skies cleared and it became evident that I could get away after all. Unfortunately it was now too late to register, and the Harpers Ferry people didn't even respond to my phone inquiries. I nearly gave up attending, but my wife Michele encouraged me to go anyway. "It's a historic moment for John Brown's legacy, your friends are going to be there, and you should go," she told me.

Things came together: I was able to travel by Amtrak to the Ferry with Larry Lawrence, founder and chairman of The John Brown Society (based in New York City); and Norman Marshall, portrayer of John Brown in the wonderful play, "John Brown: Trumpet of Freedom," offered to share his motel room in Martinsburg, about a half-hour's drive from Harpers Ferry.

Arriving on Thursday afternoon, we had just enough time to drive over to Charlestown, where we were delighted to hear the author Brian McGinty's presentation about the trial of John Brown--delivered in the very same courthouse where the abolitionist and his followers were found guilty and condemned to death. I am reading McGinty's new book, John Brown's Trial and will refrain from making too many comments because I am preparing a review for a scholarly journal. Certainly McGinty's approach throughout was balanced, showing both an appreciation for inequities bound up with the trial (Brown was tried and convicted largely by slaveholders) but also agreeing with the State of Virginia's charge of treason against Brown. (I may be wrong, but I suspect that legal expert and historian Paul Finkelman would not agree.) By the way, Larry made a penetrating comment/question to McGinty which the author evaded. Perhaps he did not want to address the "racist imperialist" theme invoked by our stalwart friend of Brown.

Afterward, under the assumed identity of a registered symposium participant, I "John Browned" my way into Greg Artzner & Terry Leonino's (Magpie) presentation about John and Mary Brown, which I enjoyed from the back row. I particularly liked Greg's performance of John Brown's silent way of laughing, a fact that we know from the testimony of Nellie Russell, the wife of Judge Thomas Russell, who hosted Brown in their Boston home and who also later went down to Charlestown to visit him on "death row." I bought my copy of the Magpie CD back in 2000 in Lake Placid, at an event sponsored by our friend Martha Swan of John Brown Lives!, so it was nice to finally meet these talented and deeply devoted friends of the Old Man.

The next morning I tried to come clean and register for the symposium but was turned away by the Park Service staff. Registration was closed and the catering was precise, or so I was told. Perhaps they would have let me slide had they known I am a John Brown biographer, but trying to get special treatment seemed unworthy of the Old Man's legacy, so I jumped on the next bus down to the Ferry and spent the morning and early afternoon covering the tourist spots and sites of old downtown Harper's Ferry. For the most part, I'd have to say that the mini-museums and restored sites of the town are quite well done and in a couple of hours it is possible to get a fairly good education about the town itself, the John Brown raid being only one portion of its history.

The two John Brown museums in town are very different from each other. The National Park Service's John Brown museum is well done for the most part, and features some important relics and fairly well presents the story of the raid. (Currently, you can enjoy Jean Libby's photo exhibit of John Brown upstairs, who has done the definitive study of dagguereotypes and images of the Old Man, and for which there is a companion volume now on sale on Amazon.com.) The other John Brown museum, which costs $7 for admission, is almost like a "haunted house," where you walk through corridors and look through display windows at very old and often poorly prepared mannequin exhibits portraying various scenes of Brown's life and efforts against slavery (the whole thing seems like it's a left over from the 1960s; the owners are wringing as many bucks as they can out of it before it falls apart).

On Friday afternoon, I had occasion to wait in the welcome center of the Harpers Ferry during which I sat reading, occasionally interested by the mini-lectures provided to tourists by one of the National Park Service representatives. A number of these tourists were foreigners who knew little about antebellum history let alone John Brown. I mention this because some of the Park Service official's remarks that I heard were very telling: "A lot of people around here don't like John Brown very much. . . . We're not celebrating John Brown's raid, we're commemorating it. . . . John Brown the rabid abolitionist." It struck me that these Park Service people are playing the role of educating many people every year regarding the Harper's Ferry episode. How many tourists have been fed this image of Brown as "rabid," a fairly obvious anti-Brown description? I wonder if this same official would speak of slave masters as having been "rabid" too?

I should add that on Friday evening, since I could not march to the Ferry with the symposium folks (it was raining and cold and I probably would have ducked out anyway), I hung around town with Ian Barford, who was taping our whole outing, including plenty of time around the fire engine house (i.e., John Brown's "fort") with a camera equipped with night vision.

On Saturday I got a few minutes to see Jean Libby, finally, as well as John Hendrix, my former parishioner from Jersey City who now resides back home in St. Louis. He is a very successful illustrator and a newly published book for young people entitled, John Brown: His Fight for Freedom. I also saw my dear friends Alice and Fred Mecoy (Alice is a direct descendant--that is, great-great-great-granddaughter of the Old Man), but had unfortunately little time with them this time around and regretably missed her presentation. Just before we left, I was able to slip into one symposium presentation pertaining to black raider Dangerfield Newby and and his widow Harriet Newby. It was revealed that Dangerfield had saved about 750 dollars (about $17,000 today) to buy Harriet and some of his children out of slavery, but this significant sum was not enough. Newby fell in Harper's Ferry and his body was desecrated, as were the bodies of others of Brown's company, to the shame of the "gallant" white Virginians who were not satisfied to kill these liberating invaders.

So that was my time in the Ferry. I enjoyed being there for the importance of the historical moment. I missed a good deal of the symposium itself, but the best of these presentations have a tendency to end up being published in a collection anyway. The most important aspect of the Harpers Ferry event for me was being there--seeing friends and associates in the study, walking the streets and talking with other visitors, and celebrating Brown's effort, even if the National Park Service is only remembering it.

2009-09-29T12:17:00.008-04:00

Some Notable John Brown/Harper's Ferry Raid Commemorative Programs in October

TORRINGTON, CONNECTICUT
Friday, October 16th: A Commemorative Event At John Brown's Birthplace (Co-sponsored with the University of Connecticut, Torrington.)

Friday, October 16th @ 4:30pm at the John Brown birthplace on John Brown Road. (Rain or shine)

The schedule is as follows:

Introduction by Mark McEachern, Torrington Historical Society
Dramatic reading from John Brown's Body, a poem by Stephen Vincent Benet
Music from the John Brown Suite by Peter McEachern with Russ Johnson and George Sovak
Remarks on John Brown by Robert P. Forbes, Assistant Professor of History and American Studies, University of Connecticut
Musical selections by the Workman Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church Choir, Torrington. Pastor: Rev. Sowatei K. Lomotey
Musket salute by civil war re-enactors from the CT Civil War Round Table
Music from the John Brown Suite by Peter McEachern with Russ Johnson and George Sovak

At 5:30 pm, there will be a reception in the Litchfield Room, Litchfield County Extension Center, University of Connecticut, Torrington.

Sunday, October 18th: Lecture and Book Signing by Brian McGinty (co-sponsored by University of Connecticut, Torrington.)
Sunday, October 18th @ 5:15 pm at University of Connecticut, Torrington Branch, 855 University Drive.
The final day of the John Brown events includes a lecture and book signing by Brian McGinty, author of John Brown's Trial (Harvard University Press, Oct. 2009).
The book will be available at the University of Connecticut, Torrington bookstore, and the author will sign books after the lecture. McGinty provides the first comprehensive account of John Brown's trial, which raised important questions about jurisdiction, judicial fairness and the nature of treason. McGinty sees the trial, rather than the raid, as the real turning point in the struggle between north and south.
"Recommended for all readers interested in the Civil War..." -- Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia University Library, Parkersburg.
"The author's legal knowledge illuminates the proceedings' intricacies and shortcomings, and reveals how Brown's brief closing statement, considered among the most eloquent words in the nation's history, had a more lasting impact than his armed raid. Brown's statement, writes McGinty, 'transformed his public image from that of a violent fanatic to one of a public hero'. McGinty makes a strong and plausible case." -- Publishers Weekly

The Torrington Historical Society
192 Main Street, Torrington, CT 06790
860-482-8260
http://www.torringtonhistoricalsociety.org

AKRON, OHIO
The Summit County Historical Society will open the freedom fighter's former home, the John Brown House, from 3 to 6 p.m. on three upcoming Tuesdays: Sept. 22, Oct. 27 and Nov. 24. The house is at Diagonal and Copley roads in Akron. To learn more or book group tours at other times, call 330-535-1120.

Brown will be this year's star of the annual Ohio Underground Railroad Summit, a gathering for $75 per person on Friday, Oct. 16, and Saturday, Oct. 17, at the Hudson Library and Historical Society. The library owns a leading trove of Brown materials, which visitors can see for free whenever the building is open. The library is at 96 Library St., 330-653-6658,
hudsonlibrary.org.

On Friday, Oct. 16, officials will commemorate the anniversary of the raid at 11 a.m. at the John Brown Monument, which stands in a normally closed part of the Akron Zoo. The monument was built in 1910 by the German-American Alliance and improved in 1938 by the Negro 25 Year Club.

During the event, Brown will be portrayed by Neil Thackaberry, who runs Actors' Summit on Hudson's Owen Brown Street, named for John Brown's father. Visitors to the commemoration may park at the zoo for free. After the commemoration, the John Brown House will be open until 2 p.m.

From Oct. 16 through Feb. 14, the Akron Art Museum will display "The Legend of John Brown," featuring celebrated prints by Jacob Lawrence in the museum's collection, at normal hours and admission prices, 330-376-9185, akronartmuseum.org.

On Saturday, Oct. 17, Leon Bibb of WEWS Channel 5 will narrate and the Akron Symphony Orchestra will perform a John Brown concert, including the debut of "The Passion of John Brown" by Jesse Ayers, a Malone College professor. The concert will begin at 8 p.m. at E.J. Thomas Hall. For details, call 330-535-8131 or see akronsymphony.org.

On Wednesday, Dec. 2, Akron leaders will commemorate the anniversary of Brown's hanging at 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 647 E. Market St. At the end, the church bells will toll, as many local bells did 150 years ago that day.

Through the rest of 2009, an exhibit of artifacts called "Summit County's John Brown" will be on view in the Special Collections department on the third floor of the downtown Akron-Summit County Public Library, 60 S. High St., 330-643-9000, akronlibrary.org.

In 1865, Oberliners raised a monument to three slain local raiders, among the first black Americans so remembered. The tribute stands today at Martin Luther King Park, East Vine and South Pleasant streets.

The monument is part of a local "Freedom's Friends" tour by the Oberlin Heritage Center at 11 a.m. the second Friday and fourth Saturday of each month through October and by appointment. For details, call 440-774-1700 or see oberlinheritage.org.

Besides the John Brown House, his only local home still open to the public is now Benedict's Antiques, 4138 W. Streetsboro Road, Richfield, 330-659-3427. The shop is open 12:30 to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
Symposium on abolitionist to be held at Springfield Technical Community College
Saturday, September 26, 2009

"The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon: John Brown & The Coming of the Civil War," a symposium on the militant abolitionist from Connecticut who led the raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., on Oct. 16, 1859, will be held on Oct. 17 at Springfield Technical Community College.

David S. Reynolds, author of John Brown Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, will be the keynote speaker.

Dinah Mayo-Bobee, visiting professor of history at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, will also present on Brown and the "Pottawatomie Affair."

Richard Colton, historian at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, will discuss the destruction of Harpers Ferry and its effect on the armory.

John F. Gately, chair of the English department at the community college, will present and discuss some Brown related items from his abolitionist collection.

Brown, who is the subject of a panel in the new Museum of Springfield History set to open on Oct. 10, and his family moved to the Springfield to establish a method of distribution that would offer a wider and fairer market for raw wool. Although the company failed, the four years Brown spent in Springfield were crucial to his deepening involvement in the abolitionist movement.

A book signing of Reynolds' best-selling biography will be held after the symposium.
Registration would be appreciated and can be done by notifying John Gately at Gately@stcc.edu

PETERBORO, NEW YORK
Norman K. Dann Ph.D. explains the support of Gerrit Smith and the Secret Six for John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, which took place October 16, 1869. Dann will present on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 2 p.m.

The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark is located at 4543 Peterboro Road in Peterboro NY. There is a $2 admission and free to students, stewards, and residents of the Town of Smithfield.

For more information, visit www.sca-peterboro.org or call 315-684-3262.

2009-09-21T08:08:00.002-04:00

John Brown's Akron Celebrates His Legacy:
Jacob Lawrence's "The Legend of John Brown" on Exhibit; Other Events Featured

This fall marks the 150th anniversaries of John Brown’s anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, a pivotal event in igniting the Civil War, and his Dec. 2, 1859 execution. To commemorate Akron’s most famous historic resident, the Akron Art Museum presents selections from Jacob Lawrence’s print series The Legend of John Brown. The exhibition will be on view from Oct. 16 to Feb. 14, 2010. Lawrence, one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century, was the first African American to depict the story of the controversial white abolitionist.

Lawrence’s screenprints, which are owned by the museum, will be joined by related images and artifacts from the Summit County Historical Society and the Akron-Summit County Public Library Special Collections Division.

A Northerner, Brown (1800-1859) worked on farms in Northeast Ohio before moving to Akron in 1844. An expert breeder of sheep and respected authority on wool, he attracted the attention of fellow shepherd Simon Perkins, Jr., the son of Akron’s founder. The two formed a business partnership and Brown moved into a two-room cottage yards away from Perkins’ own mansion.

Brown’s religious convictions led him to oppose slavery. While working with Perkins, he remained an active abolitionist and regularly housed slaves moving through the Underground Railroad in his Akron home. Now part of the Summit County Historical Society, it houses a permanent display about Brown’s life.

In contrast with the northern pacifist attitude, Brown believed that militant actions were the only way to end slavery. In the mid-1850s, he organized covert attacks in an attempt to liberate slaves and bring down the pro-slavery establishment. In 1859, with a company of 21 men—white and black—he led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He was captured and hanged for treason on December 2. While historians agree that Brown’s actions helped spark the Civil War, his dogged determination and the violence of his methods have been hailed as both heroic and foolhardy.
Jacob Lawrence’s screenprints frame the story as a narrative, which is the depiction of a particular story in either painted or graphic form. Each image presents a specific incident in Brown’s dramatic life. Rather than depicting these events in a realistic manner, Lawrence tells the story using sparse details rendered with simplified forms and vibrant colors, which heightens each scene’s emotion.

Lawrence (1917-2000), who lived in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, was the first African American artist to be included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He was a storyteller who used the visual arts to interpret and disseminate important events in American history. His prominence as an artist undoubtedly helped perpetuate the remarkable story of John Brown’s life as an abolitionist.

This exhibition is organized by the Akron Art Museum and supported by a gift from Akron General.

Related Community Events

Akron-Summit County Public Library John Brown exhibit
On View through December 31
Visit Special Collections to see the Summit County’s John Brown exhibit, including historical artifacts from Akron during the era and small glimpses into all the different time periods of his life: moving to Hudson, Ohio as a young boy, his own life as a husband and father, business failures, the infamous raid at Harpers Ferry and finally his hanging as a traitor in 1859.

150th Anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid at the Akron Zoo
October 16, 11 am
A commemorative event will be held at the Akron Zoo grounds and the John Brown Monument in Perkins Woods.

The Passion of John Brown by the Akron Symphony Orchestra
October 17, 8 pm
The Akron Symphony will perform a new work, commissioned for the Akron sesquicentennial commemoration, “The Passion of John Brown,” by Malone College professor Jesse Ayers, in a concert remembering the heroic works of historic figures. The concert will be held at E.J. Thomas Hall.

150th Anniversary of John Brown’s Execution
December 2
To commemorate the day of the execution of John Brown, on December 2, 2009, the City of Akron and Summit County Historical Society will hold a memorial event in collaboration with the First Presbyterian Church on East Market Street in Akron.

Museum Information
Address: One South High, Akron, OH 44308
Tel: 330.376.9185
Fax: 330.376.1180
Website: www.AkronArtMuseum.org
Gallery and Store Hours: Wednesday – Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm, Thursday: 11 am – 9 pm, Closed Mondays and Tuesdays
Café Hours: Wednesday – Sunday: 11 am – 3 pm, Thursday: 11 am – 7:30 pm; Closed Monday and Tuesday
Library Hours: Wednesday, Thursday & Friday: 11 am – 4 pm
Admission: Adult general admission is $7, Student and Senior (65+) general admission is $5, Children (12 and under) are FREE, members are FREE. On the first Sunday of every month, individual admissions to the collection are FREE. Special exhibitions may require paid admission. No tours available on these days.

Source: The Suburbanite.com [Akron, Ohio], September 21, 2009

2009-09-19T11:09:00.005-04:00

The Gilder-Lehrman Instituate and New York Historical Society's

JOHN BROWN EXHIBIT

September 15, 2009-March 25, 2010

The Gilder-Lehrman collection, an amazing archive for anyone and everyone interested in U.S. history, holds an amazing amount of John Brown material--particularly letters from Brown and his children. By all accounts, it is one of the most important collections of the several major John Brown holdings across the country.

According to the Gilder-Lehrman Institute's website:

On view from September 15, 2009 through March 25, 2010, this exhibition of rare materials from the Gilder Lehrman Collection and the New-York Historical Society also sets the stage for the culminating presentation of the Historical Society’s Lincoln Year, with the landmark exhibition Lincoln and New York, opening October 9, 2009.

“John Brown: The Abolitionist and His Legacy examines Brown in the context of growing national divisions over slavery in the 1850s,” said James G. Basker, President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. “Most African Americans and abolitionists saw John Brown as a martyr for a noble and humane cause. Others saw him as a terrorist who attacked legal institutions and was willing to kill to achieve his goals. This exhibition invites people to examine the tension between these divergent views at the critical moment in American history, with repercussions down to the Civil Rights movement of the twentieth century.”

"John Brown’s attack at Harpers Ferry convinced Southerners that their political and economic survival was threatened, while outrage over his execution rallied and unified Northern abolitionists,” according to Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. “As we continue our year-long celebration of Abraham Lincoln, we hope these extraordinary and seldom-seen materials will not only shed light on Brown himself but will help illuminate events that led to Lincoln’s election in 1860."

Visitors to the exhibition will encounter manuscripts never before exhibited, including dramatic letters by John Brown to his followers; a letter by Frederick Douglass praising Brown but distancing himself from the raid; Brown's parting words on the eve of his execution; a letter from the mother of a Kansas murder victim, damning Brown on the scaffold; and reminiscences by Brown's children and other eyewitnesses.

Lending dramatic context to these materials are powerful images, such as the 1859 sculpture “The Slave Auction” by John Rogers; the heroic 1867 painting by Thomas Satterwhite Noble, "John Brown's Blessing"; photographs of Brown and his family members; photographs of his supporters, the "Secret Six"; and photographs of other key participants. Among the other important objects on view will be a "John Brown Still Lives!" broadside from 1859; a rare printing of the Emancipation Proclamation; a 1926 lynching poster; and other artifacts of the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras.

Apparently most of the materials on display are from the Gilder-Lehrman Collection, although researchers should be aware that the New York Historical Society, which hosts and houses the Gilder-Lehrman Collection, has its own prestigious holdings which include John Brown letters and documents.

As to James Basker's remarks quoted above, we should point out that the term "terrorist" was not in use in the U.S. in the antebellum era, so this portrayal is anachronistic. To be sure, John Brown was viewed as an invader and killer by his enemies (the defenders of slavery), but given the fact that slavery had its own share of invaders and killers, one should not confuse certain contemporary notions (put forth largely by white scholars and intellectuals) of Brown as a "terrorist" with the inimical perception of Brown by pro-slavery people in the antebellum era. Similarly, the reference to a "letter from the mother of a Kansas murder victim" is a loaded description. Undoubtedly a reference to the letter of Mahala Doyle to John Brown, this is indeed the letter from the widow and bereaved mother of three men killed by Brown's men in May 1856. The question remains to what degree they were "victims": in the most literal sense, the Doyle men, father and two sons, were Brown's victims because they were apprehended and executed at his direction. But in the broader sense, the Doyles, along with the two other men killed by Brown's men in May 1856, were conspirators, collaborators in a plot to murder, and essentially insurgents--so that killing them was more a strike against victimization, a kind of counter-terrorism (to engage Mr. Basker's terminology).

Whatever the case, readers of this blog who reside within reach of New York City are advised to make the trip to the New York Historical Society, not only for the Gilder-Lehrman Exhibit, but beyond that to utilize these great archival resources for research and study. For further information, visit the New York Historical Society website and the Gilder-Lehrman Institute website.

2009-09-14T09:12:00.006-04:00

John Brown, Slavery, and the Legacies of Revolutionary Violence in Our Own Time:
A Conference Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid
Gilder Lehrman Center's 11th Annual International Conference
October 29-31, 2009

Discussions of the place of violence--its forms, its causes, its justice or injustice--in American history often begin with John Brown and his exploits in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in the 1850s. Brown's image has been appropriated by groups from the left and the right. He is a historical as well as a legendary figure, and often the myth overshadows the reality. This conference will explore the meaning and memory of John Brown as well as the problem of violence in American culture, past and present.

Schedule
Conference Participants
Thursday, October 29
7:00 – 7:30 p.m. Conference Registration

7:30 – 9:00 p.m. Performance

* Performance of John Brown: Trumpet of Freedom
Norman Thomas Marshall, Playwright and Actor
Introduction by Larry Lawrence, The John Brown Society

Friday, October 30
8:30 - 9:00 a.m. Coffee and Registration

9:00 - 9:15 a.m. Welcome Remarks

9:15 - 10:30 a.m. Keynote Address

* W. Fitzhugh Brundage, UNC-Chapel Hill

10:30 - 11:00 a.m. Coffee Break

11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Panel 1: John Brown: A Problem in Biography

* David Reynolds, City University of New York, Baruch College
How I Wrote John Brown, Abolitionist: A Cultural Biography
* Evan Carton, The University of Texas at Austin
The Word and the Life: John Brown as Reader
* Robert Blakeslee Gilpin,Center for the Study of the American South, UNC-Chapel Hill
The Wind and the Whirlwind: Can Biography Explain John Brown?
* Louis A. DeCaro, Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary
* Moderator: Annette Gordon Reed, New York Law School

1:00 - 2:30 p.m. Lunch

2:30 - 5:00 p.m. Panel 2: John Brown and the Arts

* Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, University of Pennsylvania
John Brown Embodied: An Afterlife in American Visual Culture
* Franny Nudelman, Carleton University
From Armed Propaganda to Creative Suffering: John Brown and Traditions of Expressive Violence
* Kirke Mechem, Composer
John Brown: The Opera
* Robert Stepto, Yale University
John Brown in the Visual Art of Hovenden, Lawrence and Pippin
* Moderator: David W. Blight, Yale University

6:30 p.m. Speakers Dinner

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31
9:00 - 9:30 a.m. Coffee and Registration

9:30 - 11:30 a.m. Panel 3: John Brown and the Legacies of Violence

* Beverly Gage, Yale University
Was John Brown a Terrorist?
* David Rapoport, UCLA
John Brown and the Legacies of Violence
* Kay Wright Lewis, Rutgers University
Considerations on the Rhetoric of Race War in the Antebellum South
* Caleb Smith, Yale University
* Moderator: David W. Blight, Yale University

11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Lunch

1:00 - 3:00 p.m. Panel 4: John Brown and Abolitionism

* John Stauffer, Harvard University
'I'll be John Browned': Abolition in the Southern Imagination
* Richard Blackett, Vanderbilt University
John Brown and the Tradition of Attacking Slavery at the Source
* Caleb McDaniel, Rice University
William Lloyd Garrison, Nonviolent Abolitionists, and John Brown
* Wendy Hamand Venet, Georgia State University
John Brown, Female Abolitionists, and Rights for Women: A Mixed Legacy
* Moderator: David W. Blight, Yale University

3:00 - 3:15 p.m. Coffee break

3:15 - 4:30 p.m. Concluding Roundtable: John Brown: A Problem for Our Own Time

* Russell Banks, Author
* Tony Horwitz, Author

For further information, visit the conference website here

2009-09-02T12:52:00.012-04:00

OSAWATOMIE NEWS

Brown Fought In Spite of Unfavorable Odds

Source: Grady Atwater, Osawatomie Graphic [Osawatomie, Kan.], Sept. 2, 2009

Luke Parsons* was an abolitionist who fought alongside John Brown at the Battle of Osawatomie on Aug. 30, 1856. Parsons delivered a speech in the town on “John Brown’s Day” on Aug. 30, 1913, and at the time was the last living survivor of the Battle of Osawatomie living in Kansas.

Parsons stated that John Reid and his pro-slavery force’s purpose in attacking here was to “destroy the town of Osawatomie and arrest John Brown and his little band, charging them with treason.”

According to Parsons, Brown was aware that he could not win the Battle of Osawatomie. He said that “Brown, through his spies and scouts, knew they were coming, knew their strength and purpose, and with his small band could offer but feeble resistance.”

Brown was most concerned about the safety of the citizens of Osawatomie and told Parsons: “We must save the women and children first, and then save ourselves if we can. We will attract their attention while the men get their families out of danger.”

Brown’s willingness to die for his abolitionist beliefs is made clear when he gave the order to “take more pains to end life well than to live long.”

Brown’s first plan was for Parsons to take 10 men and make a stand in a blockhouse while Brown and his men fired at the pro-slavery flank from the trees along the Marais des Cygnes River. However, when Parsons and his men observed that the pro-slavery force had a cannon that could blow the blockhouse to smithereens, they abandoned the structure.

Parsons reported that Brown “conducted this battle coolly, courageously and well. He showed no fear whatever.”

He also observed that Brown placed his men in the timber so Reid and his pro-slavery force did not know how many men Brown had with him. The pro-slavery forces initially charged Brown’s forces on horseback, but the charge failed, and Parsons noted: “There was never a better opportunity to shoot men, they in plain sight, mounted on green horses, trying to form a new line.” This gave ample time for Brown’s men to aim and fire, and Parsons could “see them fall all along the line until they got wise enough to dismount.”

The pro-slavery forces’ cannon proved to be no real threat, as Parsons reported: “The cannon bothered them more than us, for they fired too high.”

However, Parsons went on to say that “their overwhelming numbers began to tell to their advantage. They pressed us back slowly, we falling back one at a time until it got too hot for us, but we kept up the line well until we got to the riverbank; here. we gave way altogether, to take a new position in a log house on the other bank. “Brown waited there to fight on, but the pro-slavery forces rode into Osawatomie and sacked and burned the town.”

Grady Atwater is the esteemed curator and tourism director of the city of Osawatomie, Kansas, and an important grassroots scholar of John Brown studies. We are always delighted to publish his articles, which play a major role in keeping Brown's Kansas legacy alive in this generation.--LD

*For more information, see Edward P. Bridgman and Luke F. Parson, With John Brown in Kansas: The Battle of Osawatomie (Davidson: Madison, Wis., 1915).

John Brown Museum Receives $92,000 for Building Repair

Source: Travis Perry, Osawatomie Graphic [Osawatomie, Kan.], Sept. 2, 2009

As the rain came down Aug. 26, a crew of workers scrambled to cover the roof of John Brown Museum with a tarp to keep the water from leaking through the unfinished roof.

Still, things are in much better condition than they were even two years ago, said Grady Atwater, administrator of John Brown State Historic Site.

The museum is receiving a $92,000 overhaul that will be completed during the next two years in three phases — the first of which involves the repair of a leaky roof, an issue Atwater has been talking about since 2005.

“I vividly remember the day,” said Atwater of his first encounter with the leak. He was a volunteer at the time.

“I looked around, and it was leaking all around, pouring down the walls,” he said.

But that was nothing compared with the woes he and countless others in Osawatomie faced during the 2007 flood.

“Water was about one inch above the ground (around the museum),” Atwater said. “I was in here literally pushing water away from the cabin.”

After vigorously lobbying the Kansas State Historical Society for the funding needed to fix the building, the issue was finally put on the front burner in 2008, when federal stimulus funding allowed the project to be put into motion. The work was handled by a crew from J.A. Lyden, a Topeka-based construction company that specializes in work on historic buildings. Crew superintendent Troy Carpenter said the group has been working on the roof since Aug. 12, and he hopes to have the first phase of the project completed by the end of September.

In the second phase of the project, an underground drainage-tile system will be installed around the museum to divert water away from the structure, and all the windows and doors will be replaced in the final phase.

Atwater said the available funding may not be sufficient to fully complete the last phase of the project, meaning donations to the museum are still as important as ever.

But, he said, the project is worth every penny.

“The only other cabin (people have) taken this much care to preserve belonged to Abraham Lincoln,” Atwater said of the Adair Cabin in the museum. “We have to protect this cabin; it’s a precious cabin.”

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FREEDOM FESTIVAL
John Brown Memorial Park
10th and Main Streets
Osawatomie, Kansas 66064
September 19-20, 2009

Freedom Festival Arts and Crafts Fair, Frontier Artisans, Children's Activities, and Food Vendors

Program Summary

Saturday Sept. 19
10 a.m. Civil War weapons and drill demonstration
11 a.m. Debbie Shadden and Pony Express
1 p.m. Civil War weapons and drill demonstration
1:30 p.m. Florella Adair, portrayed by Mary Buster
2:00 p.m. Abraham Lincoln, portrayed by Tom Leahy
3:00 p.m. John Brown, portrayed by Kerry Altenbernd
4:00 p.m. Reenactment of the Battle of Osawatomie

Sunday Sept. 20
10 a.m. Church service in John Brown Memorial Park
11 a.m. Todd Mildfelt, Civil War era music
12 p.m. The Lecompton Reenactors play "Bleeding Kansas"
1 p.m. Reenactment of a Civil War battle between Confederate Partisans and Union Troops
2 p.m. Mary Jane Richie, abolitionist, underground railroad conductor, portrayed by Anne Hawkins
3 p.m. Amelia Earhart, portrayed by Ann Birney
1-5 p.m., Army National Guard Climbing Wall

Contact info: 913.755.4384 or adaircabin@kshs.org

2009-09-01T12:36:00.005-04:00

More About Illustrator/Writer John Hendrix and His New Book, John Brown: His Fight for Freedom

Source: Terry Rombeck, "Story for All Ages: KU Alumnus Writes Book on John Brown," The Journal-World & News [Lawrence, Kan.], Sept. 1, 2009

This might be the only illustrated children’s book that has the hero hanged at the end. But, true to history, that’s how it goes in John Brown: His Fight for Freedom, a 40-page book full of colorful drawings that is released today. It’s the project of John Hendrix, a Kansas University graduate now living in St. Louis.

“Part of the desire of mine is to revitalize his reputation in some ways,” Hendrix says. “I have a point of view about him. If I gloss over the stuff that’s controversial or icky, this could be easily dismissed as propaganda. That’s not helpful in telling the history.”

It’s a story that’s been told many times about the abolitionist, who is viewed as anything from a civil rights hero to the father of modern terrorism. But it’s probably never been told quite like this, with double-page illustrations and words that Hendrix figures are appropriate for a fifth-grade audience. “By then, they’re learning what slavery was,” the author says. “I see it as a supplement to a history class.”

Hendrix lived in Lawrence from 1994 to 1999, earning two degrees from KU. It was during his time here that he worked on his first John Brown project, a brochure on the history of northeastern Kansas for the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce. When he moved to New York a few years later, he met a pastor who had written a book about Brown. Several colleagues encouraged him to pursue a children’s book on the abolitionist using his illustration skills, which he has used for publications such as Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Esquire and The New York Times.

“Honestly, I thought that was a crazy idea,” he says.

Eventually, Scholastic Press signed on. He worked several years with that publisher until it eventually decided the subject matter might not be a good fit. That’s when he found Abrams Books, which agreed to pursue the project.

All of the major moments in Brown’s life are represented in the book, including the killing of five pro-slavery settlers on Pottawatomie Creek by Brown and his sons and the fact that the first man killed during the raid at Harpers Ferry — where Brown was attempting to take over an armory — was a free black man named Shephard Hayward.

The book also ends the same way Brown’s life ended: with his hanging for the Harpers Ferry attack. But Hendrix says he did try to keep the violence in check, limiting the number of guns and battle scenes in the book. The biggest challenge, he says, was to depict Brown as someone who was “both sane and fiery and compassionate” — especially considering many people identify his image first and foremost with the John Steuart Curry mural that hangs in the state Capitol in Topeka.

“The eyes very much came into play,” Hendrix says. “His face was very stoic. Moses meets Superman is kind of our pose. I wanted him to have grandfatherly wisdom on top of strength and size.”

And for as important as the drawings are, he wanted to make sure the history was as accurate as a textbook. “It’s listed as a nonfiction book,” he says. “We had to be rigorous with our facts. We really didn’t want this to fall into historical fiction.”

The facts pass the test, as far as Jonathan Earle is concerned. Earle is an associate professor of history at KU who studied the Civil War and who himself has authored a book on Brown. He admits he was skeptical when he first heard of Hendrix’s book. But after reading it, he says it works. “He cites the important works, takes John Brown’s religion and gets into how his thinking was far out of the mainstream,” Earle says. “He makes that a central part of the book.”

And he was surprised at how directly the book dealt with the controversial periods of Brown’s life. “There’s difficult stuff,” Earle says. “He doesn’t avoid the difficult parts of the biography, such as John Brown and his sons murdering the settlers in Pottawatomie. He doesn’t airbrush him.”

Hendrix sees Brown more of a civil rights leader than a terrorist. He’d like to share that view with a new generation of historians — starting them out in elementary school. “I think he was much more akin to Martin Luther King than John Dillinger,” Hendrix says.

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Also see an excellent blogger review by clicking here--LD

2009-08-27T18:14:00.004-04:00

Outgoing Summit County Historical Society Director: John Brown's Legacy "Just Not That Important" to the "Foundation Community"

She Tried Unsuccessfully "For Years" to Raise Enough Money to Have John Brown's Home in Akron Renovated*

To Paula Moran, abolitionist John Brown ''is the quintessential historic figure'' from Summit County. That is just one of the things she has learned about local history after heading the Summit County Historical Society (SCHS) for the past dozen years.

Moran, 51, worked her last day Wednesday as executive director of the nonprofit group and will be moving to Maryland and then to Norfolk, Va., to join her husband, Harry P. ''Hank'' Lynch, former president and CEO of Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. He is now executive director of Nauticus, a marine science museum. Leianne Neff Heppner, curator of the historical society, has been named interim executive director.

Moran answered Beacon Journal [Akron, Ohio] questions about Brown, Akron and her hopes for the future of the historical society.

Q: What are you proudest of during your time here?

A: I am most grateful — I never say proud — for the incredible relationships I have enjoyed, many of whom have assembled to work together for the benefit of the Summit County Historical Society [SCHS]. It was a pure team effort, and I am a very lucky woman to have been right here, right now, as a part of that wonderful team.

Q: What story will you tell people when they ask you for a quick tale about the history of Summit County?

A: The story I will tell is Akron is home to many firsts, such as public education, mass-produced toys, breakfast cereals and marbles . . . but all we talk about is the big ditch. We have what is arguably the best park system around, between Metro Parks and the National Park, easy access ski resorts and unique shopping experiences to rival much bigger cities. West Point Market and Mustard Seed Market I will miss terribly. We forget that the catalyst for the Civil War was our very own John Brown, discounting his life and legacy by pronouncing him a madman. Our weather may leave something to be desired some of the time, but it is still a wonderful, warm, and friendly place to live with myriad opportunities for living a wonderful quality of life.

Q: Can you talk more about John Brown and would you like to see more done at the John Brown home to explain his life here?

A: John Brown is the quintessential historic figure here and I have fought to get that recognition for him the entire time I have been at the helm of SCHS. However, SCHS does not and will not for the foreseeable future, have the resources to renovate the exterior of his historic home. The assessments (city highway maintenance taxes) we pay the city of Akron are so high that we have often had to access a line of credit just to pay them. I quite frankly am appalled by this. I have tried for three years to raise the $100,000 required to cover the John Brown Home [with special siding] to preserve and maintain it and have been able to raise only a fraction of that thus far. It just isn't that important to the foundation community or to international history and to the cause of civil rights.

*excerpted from Jim Carney, "Historical Society Director Reminisces," Beacon Journal [Akron, Ohio], August 27, 2009, posted on Ohio.com.

2009-08-26T13:37:00.005-04:00

Quentin Tarantino: On Doing a John Brown Movie (Again)

An article in the New York Magazine (on line) posted on Aug. 26 notes the appearance of film maker Quentin Tarantino on The Charlie Rose Show on Aug. 21. Tarantino was naturally discussing his recent cinematic triumph, but as in a former interview [April 18, 2007] by Rose, the subject of making a John Brown movie came up again.

Tarantino: . . . there is one story that I could be interested in doing, and probably it would be one of the last movies I'd do--ah, my favorite hero in America, is John Brown.

Rose: Of course.

Tarantino: John Brown is my favorite American who ever lived.

Rose: And why is that. . .because of what he did?

Tarantino: Yeah, you know. He basically, you know, he basically, single-handedly, started the road to end slavery, and the fact that he killed people to do it, you know, he decided, "OK, we start spilling white blood, then they're going to start getting the idea."

The film maker went on to note that Brown has not been portrayed in too many movies, and he alluded to Raymond Massey's portrayal of Brown in the fundamentally negative and hostile (Southern) cinematic interpretation, Santa Fe Trail [1940]. Actually, Massey portrayed Brown again in the slightly more sympathetic Seven Angry Men [1955], but the latter was not influential, and certainly failed to challenge the negative cultural impact of Santa Fe Trail.

As John Brown bio-pics go, Tarantino says that he does not want to make a "solemn" bio-pic. That is, he doesn't want to try to portray a life story, but would rather do an epic moment or episode. For instance, he would portray Brown's role as a guerilla fighter, making raids on pro-slavery men. His production would be biographical in that it would be "true," but he would not make a "musty" life-to-death story about Brown because he feels those kinds of movies are "showcases for actors but not really showcases for story-tellers or directors."

Unfortunately, Tarantino reiterated the idea that this project is something he will do later in life, perhaps toward the end of his career. We would like to remind Mr. Tarantino that, notwithstanding our hopes that he has a long and fruitful career, tomorrow is not promised. Indeed, the time is ripe for him to begin working on a John Brown movie before someone else who despises Brown or who thinks he was a prairie psycho makes the ground-breaking movie.

Biographers and historians obviously have a different set of expectations of a bio-pic than film makers, and my own record suggests concern that Tarantino might reduce Brown's life to a blood-fest. After some consideration, I would like to think that Quentin Tarantino would take a higher road to telling John Brown's story because, unlike many historians, he seems to "get" John Brown--notwithstanding the fact that his descriptions of Brown are idealistic and simplistic. Certainly it is unfair to a great cloud of witnesses to say that Brown started the road that led to the end of slavery. For instance, Brown was deeply moved and educated by black revolts in the U.S. (Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner) and Haiti (Toussaint L'Overture). My fellow Brown biographer David Reynolds makes this case to be sure, but he is careful to make the necessary qualifications of a historian in pointing out how Brown can be said to have been on the vanguard in ending slavery. Likewise, to reduce Brown's contribution to killing white people also begs for qualification and explanation. In fact, Brown failed at Harper's Ferry precisely because he was trying to avoid the killing of whites--he knew how easily his effort could slide from a self-defense liberation effort to a full-scale insurrection and bloodletting. His error at Harper's Ferry was overcompensating in favor of protecting the moral and ethical quality of his raid, and ended up forcing him and his surviving raiders to sacrifice their own lives instead of conducting what could easily have been a successful terrorist campaign. But Brown was not a terrorist and I hope that when Quentin Tarantino makes his John Brown movie (next year!), he will be careful to make that point clear toward the re-education of many ill-informed viewers.

Mr. Tarantino is urged to take this project on now, in the sesquicentennial year of John Brown's raid and hanging by the State of Virginia.

2009-08-15T19:31:00.002-04:00

Descendants of John Brown and his followers attend reception

CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. — Brenda Pitts remembers standing where her uncle, John Anthony Copeland, was hanged Dec. 16, 1859.

“It felt very somber,” the Columbia, Ind., woman said. “I thought about what he went through. They used the wrong rope. It took 30 minutes for him to die.”

Pitts was among less than a dozen descendants of John Brown, his followers and others involved in the raid on Harpers Ferry who attended a reception Friday night in the parking lot behind the Jefferson County Courthouse.

The event was sponsored by the Jefferson County chapter of the NAACP as part of its 17th Annual Jefferson County African American Culture & Heritage Festival this weekend.

Pitts said she learned about her great-great-great uncle by reading about the raid on Harpers Ferry, which occurred Oct. 16-18,1859.

Copeland, one of Brown’s 21 followers in the raid, was a free black man and a student at Oberlin College in Ohio. His uncle, Lewis Leary, was also one of Brown’s men.

Pitts said her family plans to come to Harpers Ferry for a reunion in mid-October during the 150th anniversary of Brown’s raid on the town.

“My family feels so strong about the contribution Uncle John made,” she said.

The guest of honor Friday was Alice Keesey Mecoy of Allen, Texas, Brown’s great-great-great granddaughter. She said Brown’s raid was a family secret no one ever talked about.

Thursday was her first visit to Harpers Ferry.

Judy Ashelman of Ranson, W.Va., has family connections with Barclay and Edwin Coppoc, two of Brown’s raiders. Barclay escaped; Edwin was captured and hanged.

The brothers were nephews of Ashelman’s great-great grandfather, Joshua Coppoc.

Deana Steece of Shepherdstown, W.Va., said her great-great grandfather, the Rev. Joshua Young, officiated at Brown’s funeral in New York.

Elliott B. “Bud” Perrett of Frederick, Md., said his great-great grandfather, Seldon Perrett, was Brown’s second cousin. He produced a copy of the genealogy to prove it.

Today’s festival highlight will be a parade at noon that will wind through Third Avenue and North George Street in Ranson then south to Washington Street in Charles Town to Lawrence Street.

The festival will continue at Wright Denny Alternative School in the 300 block of South Lawrence Street.

On Sunday, a re-enactment of the meeting between Frederick Douglass and John Brown, featuring actor Fred Morsell, will be shown at 3 p.m. at the Betty Roper Auditorium at the corner of South Charles and West Congress streets.

Source: Richard F. Belisle, The Herald-Mail [Hagerstown, Md.], August 15, 2009

2009-08-05T13:24:00.013-04:00

Notes on John Brown's Names of War

Students of John Brown's public career as a freedom fighter are well aware that he employed the use of pseudonyms in both the Kansas and Harper's Ferry episodes. Indeed, Brown's use of the nom de guerre is legendary. Yet biographers and students of Brown's life seem never to have bothered to inquire into the origin of these names, the assumption being that they were all simply "made up" names with no significance otherwise. To the contrary, because John Brown chose them, they reflect some aspect of his life, and may even unlock aspects of character that are meaningful to the biographer.

This is certainly the case of the his rarely used pseudonym, "James Smith," which appears in two of Brown's letters written on June 3, 1857. Brown was known to have said in his family that he liked having a common name and would even have preferred the more common name of "Smith." Perhaps this is why he used the pseudonym "James Smith" in writing to his Kansas associates, Augustus Wattles and William Addison Phillips, the chronicler of the Kansas struggles and the author of an important reminiscence of John Brown. In my study of Brown's letters, I have not found his usage of "James Smith" repeated thereafter, probably because he decided upon an even better nom de guerre, Nelson Hawkins.

Before proceeding, it should be noted that Brown was not the only one who employed the use of pseudonyms on the Kansas scene. In fact, his "James Smith" letter to Phillips is actually addressed to William "Adison," Brown's misspelling of the writer's middle name. Evidently both men felt it necessary to employ false names to evade the watchful eyes of pro-slavery interests in Kansas. In one of Brown's memorandum books (held in the Boston Public Library collection), he notes also having written to "W.B. Edmonds" on August 4, 1857, and just above it wrote three initials, "EBW." As it turns out, "W.B. Edmonds" was the pseudonym for E. B. Whitman, the general agent of the National Kansas Committee. So Brown hardly invented the idea of using pseudonyms in Kansas.

I have mentioned that Brown did not apparently continue to use the "James Smith" pseudonym, although most students of his story will recognized that he later appropriated the "Smith" name for the Harper's Ferry venture. I will return to that name below. In 1857, however, Brown found a new name that he used frequently in communicating with family and associates, the legendary pseudonym, "Nelson Hawkins."

While I have generally found that most of my "discoveries" have already been noted by the late great Boyd B. Stutler, I'm humbly sure that the source of Brown's "Nelson Hawkins" pseudonym seems even to have evaded Stutler (and every other scholar). I was fortunate enough to come upon a lead when examining a letter from John Brown Jr. written to his sister, Ruth Brown Thompson on February 23, 1851, now held in the Gilder Lehrman Collection, currently residing at the New York Historical Society. In that interesting letter, John Junior describes a warm evening at home with family and friends, including one Nelson Hawkins, who happened to be playing chess with his brother Jason Brown. It seems, Junior explains in the letter, that Nelson Hawkins was hanging around the Brown household because he liked Jason's sister-in-law. This passing reference to Jason's chess mate opened up a world of interest to me. Who was this Nelson Hawkins since Junior obviously was not referring to his own father? Happily, Nelson appeared in the 1850 census for Summit County, Ohio. From the census we surmise that he would have been in his late 20s at the time that Brown began to use his name in Kansas, and that he was a carpenter by profession. Since John Brown had moved his family back to Akron, Ohio in 1851 (where they remained for four years before returning to the Adirondacks), we can assume that he was well acquainted with the real Nelson Hawkins. (It would be interesting to learn if Nelson eventually married Jason's sister-in-law, but I never checked.) As I've pointed out in my book, John Brown--The Cost of Freedom, Brown's appropriation of Nelson Hawkins' name is strongly suggestive of Brown's sense of humor. Most of the letters in which Brown signed off as "Nelson Hawkins" actually are written to his family. While Franklin B. Sanborn received at least one "Nelson Hawkins" letter from Brown, he would not have known the significance of the name. But wife Mary Brown, namesake John Jr., and others in the family probably were amused. (Nelson Hawkins is listed in the cut-out of the census below, on the third line, from the 1850 Census, Portage, District 14o, Summit County, Ohio, Oct. 15, 1850, p. 433.)

Perhaps more interesting is another discovery of mine, also featured in John Brown--The Cost of Freedom) concerning Brown's most famous nom de guerre, "Isaac Smith," the name that he carried with him to Harper's Ferry in 1859. Like "Nelson Hawkins," it is more likely that this "Smith" name was appropriated from an actual person and was not simply a variation of his beloved "common name" theme.

Reading through microfilm of the Springfield [Mass.] Republican some years back, I began to see that a frequent advertiser in that paper was an umbrella manufacturer named Isaac Smith. Considering that Brown lived in Springfield from 1846-49, it is unlikely that Brown would have missed the advertisements of "Isaac Smith & Co." Even after his residence in Springfield ended (April 1849), Brown later visited Springfield when raising funds for his anti-slavery efforts in the later 1850s. Furthermore, the Smith company had its corporate office in New York City and a branch office in Boston, so it is also possible that Brown either became aware of the name or was reminded of it during subsequent trips east, especially his notable visits to Boston. All in all, there is a reasonably good basis for concluding that John Brown's Harper's Ferry pseudonym, "Isaac Smith & Sons" was an appropriation of "Isaac Smith & Co." of New York and Boston. With the possible exception of the real Isaac Smith, who would have suspected that the controversial abolitionist had hijacked the name of an umbrella manufacturer in his great anti-slavery plan? Certainly none of the John Brown scholars has made this connection thus far, and it seems the most reasonable one in my own estimation.

Although I have likely established the sources for Brown's pseudonyms "Nelson Hawkins" and "Isaac Smith," his third notable nom de guerre remains a mystery: "Shubel Morgan." "Shubel" is a Hebrew word, a biblical name which means "captive of God." (This is a proper name that is rendered in the Hebrew both as Shubael or Shebuel. See 1 Chronicles 25: 4, 20.) The name has great resonance when one considers that this was the name that Brown chose to employ when he and his men forcefully brought eleven people out of southern slavery and escorted them safely to Canadian freedom in early 1859.

Yet even this does not necessarily explain the source of the name. As we have already seen in two other cases, it is possible that "Shubel Morgan" was the name of someone that Brown had actually known or heard of in his life and travels. To be sure, no evidence has come to light showing that Brown knew or interacted with anyone named Shubel Morgan. Still, it is possible that the name, in whole or part, was appropriated by Brown and not simply contrived because of its biblical reference to captivity.

Consider the possibility that "Shubel Morgan" is actually a combination of two names. While this is sheer speculation, it is interesting to consider that Brown's famous pseudonym is a combination name based upon two religious leaders in North America, Morgan Edwards (b. 1722) and Shubal Stearns (b. 1706). Morgan Edwards emigrated from Wales to North America and founded the first Baptist college in the colonies, a school that later became Brown University in Rhode Island. (He and John Brown shared the same birthday of May 9.) Shubal Stearns was from a Boston Congregationalist home and became an advocate of the Great Awakening's separatist revivalism. Departing from the paedo-baptism of the Congregational church, Shubal Stearns himself became a renowned Baptist preacher of the "born again" message. While these men are obscure and forgotten in our time, it is possible that Brown had heard of them. Was his pseudonym, "Shubel Morgan" another example of John Brown's tendency to appropriate real names, or was it simply a clever concoction based upon his frequent Bible reading? We will never know, but perhaps John Brown students and scholars will continue to find the theme of his pseudonyms to be a point of interest in reflecting further on his life, personality, and traits as a religiously-motivated radical.--LD

2009-08-04T10:05:00.012-04:00

JOHN BROWN for KIDS
John Brown: His Fight for Freedom to be released in time for the Harper's Ferry Raid Sesquicentennial

I am currently enjoying two newly released books on the Old Man, Robert E. McGlone's John Brown's War Against Slavery [review forthcoming] and the delightful and brilliant John Brown: His Fight for Freedom by John Hendrix. Hendrix's John Brown is a beautiful, yea, masterful illustrative work for young people. As I have no technical or professional knowledge of the illustrator's craft, I will leave it to readers of greater understanding to detail the beauties of this work. Suffice it to say that the book is wonderful--beautiful images, colors, and wonderfully imaginative use of typography. John Hendrix, although still a relatively young man, is a seasoned illustrator with an impressive curriculum vita and portfolio, and you are encouraged to visit his professional website, which includes an array of information, a sketchbook, and a gallery (you can purchase prints, including prints of John Brown).

What makes John Brown: His Fight for Freedom even more interesting is that the illustrator is also the author of the book, and a truly excellent writer in his own right. Of course I must acknowledge a measure of bias here: I met John and Andrea Hendrix about a decade ago when they moved to the east coast so that John could pursue his studies at The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Having studied at Lawrence, Kansas, John was already endowed with a real interest in Brown and had done some illustration work on a Kansas project related to the subject. Delighted as I was to have the Hendrixes attend the church where I was serving as pastor (in nearby Jersey City), I was even more pleased to learn that I found someone else who was actually interested in talking about the Old Man. It quickly became evident to me that John is not only a super-talented guy at his craft (I was also tickled to learn that he worked in his sketchbook during church service, which means that a few of his sketches were sort of illustrated notes on my sermons), but that he has the mind of a scholar. While I am honored that my books have, along with other texts, served to inspire and instruct John in his own reflections on Brown, his work as writer equally impresses me for its clarity and faithfulness to the record.

He has not only written an honest, studied account of John Brown, prepared for a young audience and thus crafted as succinct and simple (in the best sense of the word), but has captured critically important themes of the story. One of my favorites is a line from a page picturing John Brown perplexed as the raid at Harper's Ferry turned for the worst: "The unfolding events shook John to the core," our John writes. "He became a hesitant leader." This is a critical moment in the story, best chronicled by Osborn Anderson, the surviving raider who left us the only written account by a participant in the raid. John also provides a thoughtful author's note, a short bibliography of selected sources, and an index. However impressive for its art, this is not simply a book of grand illustrations that will excite the imagination of young people and interest adults as well. It is also a reflective, researched, and arguably relevant interpretation of Brown in its own right.

I believe that, broadly speaking, should young people have the opportunity to read John Brown: His Fight for Freedom, this book may prove to be a significant factor in creating a generational turning-point in the way that Brown is understood in this nation. Hendrix not only knows art and illustration; he also understands Brown as a cultural and religious figure, and he seems far more mature, liberal, and reflective in handling Brown than do many academics still caught up in the same old pants-piddling commentaries about the Old Man as a fanatic, madman, and terrorist.

I thought I would also include a brief entry that John Hendrix made about the book this past spring on Drawger:

"This is the first book I wrote and illustrated, and it represents over 6 years of work, struggle, heartache and caffeine. Seeing it exist as a real book for the first time is so thrilling and humbling. Truly, I have no idea how this book got made. A book, for children, about a religiously motivated abolitionist who was hanged for treason is the definition of a hard sell.

The book was picked up in 2003 the first time at another publisher and we worked on it for a year and a half before they dropped it due to the controversial nature of the content. But, it came to life again at the amazing Abrams Books for Young Readers in 2006, thanks to editor Howard Reeves.

Writing any book for children is not an easy undertaking, but a non-fiction book adds an entirely new level of scholarship and responsibility to the historical record. I found that I really enjoyed learning everything I could about a subject. Lets just say, next time you see me at an opening, don't bring up John Brown- because I have hours of material.

Most people ask me why I chose to write a book, for children, about John Brown.

In my opinion, he is a true civil-rights hero. And, generally, most people think he was 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, I feel as though he deserves a more accurate account of his life.

The challenges in telling this story are easy to pick out. Though I really think there is value in talking to children about the nature of human conflict and the nature of evil, showing the events of his life (visually!) to an audience of young people was tough. You don't want to sugar coat his action and create some inadvertent propaganda. But you also need to be sensitive and protect young people from things that would negatively affect their minds. Generally I think that kids are pretty robust thinkers and can handle cognitive dissonance, as long as we present it in a manner that is clear.

I've been invited to present my work at the 150th anniversary of the Harper's Ferry Raid at the John Brown Conference this year... and yes, I will be wearing my full John Brown costume.

It is not officially released till September, but just track me down in person.... I'll be carrying a copy with me at all times for the next three months. Now, its time to start the next book. A John Brown sequel!"

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John Brown: His Fight For Freedom: An Exhibit (University City, Mo.)

Source: Paul Friswold. "Hendrix on Brown." Riverfront Times (St. Louis, Mo), Aug. 4, 2009

You may have seen John Hendrix's illustrations in Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times or Hemispheres, the in-flight magazine for United Airlines. Hendrix combines his significant skill at crafting a strong drawing with a designer's eye for composition to create visually arresting images that are heavy with significance. He's also a big fan of Civil War history, a fact that informs his forthcoming children's book, John Brown: His Fight For Freedom. The famous abolitionist may seem an odd choice for a young reader, what with the murders and the attack on the Harpers Ferry Armory and all, but Hendrix handles the matter truthfully and with respect for his readers' intelligence. Hendrix also highlights the idealism of a man out of step with his own time, who believed slavery was an abomination in God's eyes, and who was recognized by Thoreau and Emerson as a visionary civil-rights advocate. In honor of John Brown, Hendrix has commandeered the gallery and the front window at Subterranean Books (6275 Delmar Boulevard, University City; 314-862-6100 or www.subbooks.com) with original illustrations and developmental drawings that show the process of making the book itself. His front window display, a massive open Bible with a chain and padlock atop it and a Bowie knife slicing said chain asunder, is classic Hendrix magic. Nothing could more perfectly represent the two sides of Brown's public character. Hendrix's work is on display daily through Sunday, September 27. On Thursday, September 10, Hendrix celebrates the official release of the book with a reception and signing.

Date/Time:Daily from Mon., August 10 until Sun., September 27

Price: free

VENUE

Subterranean Books

6275 Delmar Blvd.

University City, MO

314-862-6100

http://www.subbooks.com/

2009-08-03T19:11:00.004-04:00

Abolitionist John Brown's Pikes Were Made to Order in Canton, Connecticut

by Rinker Buck, The Hartford Courant (August 2, 2009)

CANTON — Residents of this town can be forgiven if they've never heard of a particularly grisly and medieval-looking weapon produced here that changed American history. But that situation that could change as conferences and memorial events this year observe the 150th anniversary of John Brown's raid in Harper's Ferry, Va., in October 1859.

In the late winter of 1857, Brown, an abolitionist whose family originally settled in Canton, stopped in the Collinsville section while on a fundraising tour of the Northeast. Brown and his supporters had just spent two years fighting a series of pitched battles in "Bleeding Kansas," against pro-slavery forces. While relaxing and telling stories one morning at the Collinsville pharmacy, Brown met Charles Blair, manager of the Collins Co., later known as the Collins Axe Co., which by the end of the century would become one of the world's largest edge tool and farm implement manufacturers.

Brown pulled from his boot a fearsome-looking 8-inch dirk, or pike, which he said he had seized from pro-slavery fighter H.C. Pate at the Battle of Black Jack in Kansas. Fixed to the end of a 6-foot pole, Brown said, the pikes would make an excellent defensive weapon for free-soil settlers in Kansas. Blair agreed to have the Collins Co. make 1,000 pikes, affixed to cured wooden handles, for $1 apiece.

Brown promptly disappeared after paying Blair for about half of the order, and then suddenly reappeared in the summer of 1859 with enough cash to pay for the rest of his pikes. By then, Brown and about 20 radical abolitionists were finishing plans for a raid on the federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry, which they hoped would incite a slave insurrection in the South. The pikes would be used to arm slaves on Virginia plantations, though Brown was evasive when Blair asked why he needed them.

By that time, the Collins Co. was busy, and arranged to have the second half of the order completed by another ironworks, C. Hart & Son of the Unionville section of Farmington. In the late summer of 1859, the completed order of pikes was shipped in unmarked crates, ending up at the farm in Sharpsburg, Md., that Brown and his co-conspirators were using as a staging ground for their raid.

Except for one pike that Brown carried on the Oct. 16 raid itself, none of the Collinsville weapons ever made it into the hands of slaves. After Brown's raid was quickly thwarted by federal forces, about half of the pikes were found in a large farm wagon that Brown's party had sneaked into Harper's Ferry. The other half were found at the Sharpsburg farmhouse.

Brown, who was severely injured when the arsenal was retaken by federal forces, was tried for treason and then hanged in Charles Town, Va. — now West Virginia — in December 1859.

But the Connecticut pikes and their intended use in arming slaves became a potent symbol for outraged Southerners during the inflammatory period leading up to the Civil War, from the raid to the attack on Fort Sumter 18 months later.

Pikes As Propaganda

Dr. Lawrence S. Carlton has studied the fate of the unused pikes. The retired doctor and medical school professor has acted as the unofficial historian of the Canton Historical Museum, which is on the former grounds of the Collins Axe Co.

About a dozen of the pikes, Carlton said, were secured as souvenirs shortly after the raid and somehow found their way to Edmund Ruffin, a Virginia pro-slavery leader who sent them to Southern governors and political leaders with a label that read, "Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern brethren."

At least one Northern abolitionist, Wendell Philips, acquired a pike and carried it on stage during anti-slavery lectures just before the Civil War, when Brown was being posthumously lionized in the North as a martyr for the anti-slavery cause.

"It's ironic that both sides used the John Brown pikes for propaganda purposes in the hysterical period leading up to the war," Carlton said.

Collinsville and Unionville have also conducted a lively, but mostly friendly, competition over the years about who can claim rights to making the pikes for the famous raid.

Interest in the pikes, and John Brown's raid, seems to be growing as the October anniversary approaches. An evening procession from the Sharpsburg farm to Harper's Ferry will be staged on Oct. 16, and as recently as two years ago, a Dallas auction gallery sold a pike for $13,000.

"$13,000 for a John Brown pike doesn't sound like much to me," said Blair Tarr, the museum curator at the Kansas Historical Society, which bought one of its two original pikes in 1881 for $15, from a Charles Town man. "Anything related to John Brown is very coveted today. He was a very important figure in American history." Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant

2009-07-12T19:29:00.004-04:00

Erin Cunningham. "Public Tours Farmhouse Made Famous by John Brown."
The Herald-Mail on-line [Hagerstown, Md.], July 12, 2009

SHARPSBURG — Some historians say the Civil War began in the small Sharpsburg farmhouse where abolitionist John Brown planned his historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, said Sprigg Lynn, who owns the property with his father.

On Saturday and Sunday, the public was invited to tour the Kennedy Farmhouse on Chestnut Grove Road during an open house to commemorate the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s stay at the home where he began planning and staging the failed raid. Dennis Frye, chief historian for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and head of the committee overseeing the John Brown commemoration in four states, said about 300 people attended the event Saturday and another 200 were expected Sunday. In addition to tours, led by the property owner, South “Captain” Lynn of Montgomery County, Md., visitors also were able to participate in children’s activities, listen to music and have refreshments.

On June 30, 1859, Brown spent the night in Hagerstown, at the former hotel that is now the site of the University System of Maryland at Hagerstown, Frye said. Then, in the first week of July, Brown rented the Kennedy Farmhouse, where he stayed until Oct. 16, 1859, before the famous raid. “Here (at the Kennedy Farmhouse), Brown hid his army, secured his weapons and made his plans to attack Harpers Ferry,” Frye said.

A little more than one year after the raid, the American Civil War began.

On Saturday officials unveiled a new marker, making the Kennedy Farmhouse an official stop on the Maryland Civil War Trail. The federal government also has declared it a National Historic Landmark.

If you are interested in a tour of the Kennedy Farmhouse, go to www.johnbrown.org or call 202-537-8900 and ask for “Captain.”

For additional information about activities commemorating the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, go to www.johnbrownraid.org.

2009-07-11T23:20:00.009-04:00

Brown Biographer David Reynolds Interviewed in Esquire; Some After Thoughts

David Reynolds is a fine scholar and his 2005 biography of Brown has probably done more to bring the subject to the front burner of historical recognition than any other work in the last quarter of a century. I have my differences with his work on certain points, but his book is a milestone effort, and Reynolds himself has caught a lot of heat because his reading of Brown is far more generous than is admitted by his apparent willingness to class Brown as a "terrorist."

This is apparent in a June 16th interview in Esquire magazine by John H. Richardson. My own comments follow the text of the interview, which is reproduced entirely as follows:

The recent assassination of Dr. George Tiller by a "pro-life" activist got me thinking about John Brown, the abolitionist whose bloody raid on Harper's Ferry is widely credited for sparking the Civil War. Since anti-abortionists often compare abortion to slavery, I searched around to refresh my dim memory and was surprised to find a CUNY Graduate Center professor named David S. Reynolds — a National Book Award finalist for Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography — calling Brown "a deeply religious, flawed, yet ultimately noble reformer."

Noble? He hacked people to death with swords.

I called Reynolds for clarification.

"John Brown, in a sense, took the law into his own hands to start a war of terror that would dislodge slavery," he admitted. "But to me, slavery is qualitatively different from abortion."

Some of Reynolds's reasons, and I quote:

1. This was an absolutely vital national issue. As the Civil War proved, tens of thousands of Americans were willing to take up arms — 620,000 Americans died, more than all other wars. Abortion doesn't seem to be that nationally divisive.

2. Abortion was an issue in the nineteenth century, when abortion techniques were much worse than now, and Native Americans were horribly killed by thousands. But John Brown only took up arms against slavery. And even pacifist types like Henry David Thoreau supported him.

3. Brown looked forward to being hanged because he wanted to die for the millions of black people who were enslaved at that time. When he was in prison, he wasn't thinking of himself — all of his letters were filled with comments about the poor slaves.

4. There was a certain democracy to his vision. Even though he was devoutly Christian, and in some ways extremely conservative, some of his followers were atheists, deists, skeptics. It wasn't just the Christian right versus Leftism — he had a deeply American and democratic form of terrorism, if you want to call it that.

Of course, you could say much of the above about Osama Bin Laden, and people have — like the distinguished Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, who once wondered what would have happened to America if John Brown had access to airplanes? Reynolds's answer, when I pit the same choice to him, was either a classic academic hedge or painfully honest humility. Take your pick:

"Everything is, to some degree, subjective — I think Nazism, slavery, what Pol Pot did, what Mussolini did — I mean, slavery was the murder and rape and torture of adult people as well of children. To me, personally, from my subjective standpoint, that's qualitatively different than killing a fetus. But I know that for other people, that's not true."

And Bin Laden also believes he is fighting a justified war against an imperial power that kills adult and children.

"Bin Laden wants to ban Christianity, atheism, and Judaism and create a Muslim theocracy," Reynolds continued. "That seems to me so incredibly radically different than what John Brown believed in, which is a nation in which people of all races and creeds and both genders are given the exact same social rights. So from my perspective, people like Paul Hill and George Tiller seem too narrow."

I'm giving Reynolds a hard time, but his argument is one that most Americans consciously or unconsciously accept. In fact, every time you sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which is a slightly altered version of "John Brown's Body," you are praising an act of domestic terrorism:

He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled
through and through
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew
His soul is marching on..."

And therein lies the problem. His soul is marching on. And marching and marching and marching. "Was it worth it?" I asked Reynolds, hoping that two congenitally waffling Whitman lovers like ourselves could find a way out of this endless nightmare. "Was ending slavery was worth 620,000 lives?"

"Yeah, I think it was," he told me. "It's a horrible thing to say."

Even though the first person Brown killed at Harper's Ferry was a free black man?

"Yes," he said. "It's a tragedy."

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First, I would point out interviewer Richardson's sense of horror over the few people killed by John Brown's actions, as well as the loss of over one-half million Civil War soldiers (most of whom were white) is not counter-balanced by an apparent sense of horror over the realities of slavery. Reynolds appreciates the extent of wickedness that slavery represents in our history, but Richardson seems indifferent, which is why he has the audacity to ask: "Was ending slavery worth 620,000 lives?" Give or take a number of thousands of black soldiers and war victims, what Richardson actually seems to be asking is: "Was ending the enslavement of black people worth a half-million white people's lives?" This should tell the reader something immediately about the perspective of the interviewer vis-a-vis John Brown.

Of course I do not agree that Brown was a "terrorist," not in Richardson's hostile sense of the word, or in Reynolds' much friendlier use of the term. Brown is a counter-terrorist by all standards and anyone who denies this simply has not read his story correctly. By 1858 he was a law-breaker and a wanted man to be sure; but considering that the U.S.A. in the mid-19th century was a flagrantly racist, white supremacist, and unjust and violent nation in its treatment of blacks and Indians, I find it hard to be so scandalized by Brown's brand of "criminality." Those who condemn Brown by holding "law" over his head as if it were the ultimate standard of righteousness are off-balance and typically insensitive to the realities of this nation's history. In 1859, the law of the land declared that black people had no rights that whites were bound to respect; the law declared that black people were slave masters' property any where in the nation; and the law mandated that anti-slavery whites had to assist slave hunters in arresting black people in the North so that they could be forcibly "returned" to the South in chains. If you hold that kind of law over John Brown's head, you're no better than slave master and a tyrant yourself.

As to abortion, I really do believe that if John Brown were transported into the era of Roe v. Wade he would be absolutely "mortified" (to use one of his favorite terms) by the contemporary secular notion of democracy that reigns supreme, as well as the vast numbers of abortions that have taken place in the name of "choice." My liberal and leftist friends who admire John Brown likely would prefer not to talk about these matters because it makes them feel uncomfortable to think that their hero was a conservative Christian as well as a radical abolitionist and militant egalitarian. Indeed, David Reynolds was understating things when he told Richardson that Brown "was devoutly Christian, and in some ways extremely conservative." John Brown was an evangelical, a Westminster Confession Calvinist, and a believer in the Bible as the inspired word of God. His views on contemporary issues like choice and gay rights would most certainly be no different from the typical contemporary evangelical viewpoint today. To be sure, Brown was not as culturally narrow-minded or racist as most evangelicals then and now, but his "progressive" orientation stopped at race and class issues.

But would John Brown shoot an abortion professional or blow up an abortion service site? Although many people, liberals and conservatives alike, assume that he would do so, I disagree. Based on what I have observed of Brown's life and beliefs, I do not think he would take any violent action against abortion professionals or abortion service sites unless (1) the anti-abortion side had exhausted every legal and democratic measure in the effort to abolish abortion and (2) pro-abortion people were forcing their practice upon anti-abortion people. In the absence of both dilemmas, Brown would probably advocate using every possible democratic measure, as well as educational, religious, and social means of discouraging women from resorting to abortion. This is not mere speculation. A careful reading of Brown's life shows that he fairly well followed the same standards in opposing slavery and its advocates.

Reynolds points out that abortion is not as divisive an issue today as slavery was in 1859. That's true in many respects. Many conservatives, including evangelical Christians who denounce abortion, have apparently come to a grudging acceptance of the status quo. Beyond voting for the ostensible "anti-abortion" Republican candidate, evangelicals characteristically have not taken on the anti-abortion struggle with the same determination that their forebears did in fighting slavery. This is largely because abortion is more complex and difficult to address as a social and cultural issue. Even women with anti-abortion convictions have had abortions and the church must minister to these women with a greater degree of sympathy and compassion. And this is the point: if abortion and slavery are parallel wrongs, then who is the actual counterpart to the slave master--the abortion professional or the woman who chooses to have an abortion? Either way, critics of Brown should remember that he never killed a slave master (except in a pitched gun battle) in Kansas or Harper's Ferry. Brown did not advocate the murder of slave masters as a measure of ending slavery per se; why do people think that he would necessarily gun down an abortion professional?

Finally, assuming that Brown opposed abortion on the basis of personal religion and spirituality, he might simply throw up his hands and conclude that a nation that promotes abortion in the name of democracy deserves whatever moral and social degeneration that befalls it. He once repeated the words of Euripedes in silencing a smart-mouthed Virginian, saying: "'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad,' and you are mad." It might be that having made careful examination of his beloved America in the 21st century, John Brown might simply leave it at that.

2009-07-09T00:41:00.005-04:00

John Brown and Ely Moore: A Kansas Debate Explained

by Grady Atwater. The Osawatomie Grapic [Osawatomie, Kan.] on-line, July 8, 2009

John Brown was a dedicated foe of slavery and regarded anyone who sided with or was neutral on the slavery issue with suspicion. Ely Moore Jr. was neutral in the fight over slavery and enforced federal government Indian policy in the area, which made him an ally of a proslavery federal government in Brown’s eyes and, therefore, an enemy.

Moore and Brown had an antagonistic relationship, and Moore’s account of Brown’s conduct in Kansas Territory reveals the disdain the men had for each other. Moore reported in Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1911-1912 that “in the late summer or early fall of 1855, an evil bird swooped down upon us, arrogantly invading our territory. True, the bird assumed the form of a man, but carried a heart of stone that could not be mellowed save by the flow of human blood. The noxious visant, though by some crowned as a saint and a martyr, was but a dangerous paranoiac at large — John Brown.”

Moore’s opposition to Brown’s abolitionist crusade in Kansas Territory was compounded by Brown’s refusal to allow him and a companion to enter his camp Dec. 24-25, 1855. Brown’s reaction angered Moore, for Moore had rescued him in November 1855 from a near-drowning and freezing death in Rabbit Creek. However, Brown was an abolitionist guerilla fighter, and the last thing he wanted was to have a federal government agent in his camp who could report to authorities how many men he had and his whereabouts.

Moore firmly stated his opinion of Brown, saying “the adoration which many entertain for John Brown and his acts here and elsewhere is incomprehensible. Even the State Historical Society insults the heirs of many good and brave Kansans by placing on the walls of the honorable secretaries’ office the portrait of John Brown, surrounded by the portraits of those gallant men who placed Kansas on her sturdy feet, even giving up their gifted lives in so doing.”

Brown is a deeply controversial character in American and world history. His actions in Kansas Territory and his raid in Harpers Ferry, Va., helped to spark the Civil War. The reality that his actions in and around Osawatomie were a part of changing U.S. history made Osawatomie history of national and international importance.

However, there is another aspect of Brown’s abolitionist crusade that makes him and Osawatomie historically important. He has become a philosophical example when people nationally and internationally discuss the issue of ideologically-based violence. Historians and others analyze Brown’s actions in Kansas, studying his motives and the ramifications of his abolitionist crusade.

Brown inspires debate about actions that began when he battled proslavery forces during the Bleeding Kansas period and his raid at Harpers Ferry. The debate continues in the present and shows no sign of fading. Brown’s actions in and around Osawatomie are a part of that discussion, and the controversy over Brown puts Osawatomie on the historical map, which brings visitors to the community from all over the nation and the world.

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

— Grady Atwater is site administrator at the John Brown State Historic Site in Osawatomie, Kansas. His knowledgeable and thoughtful articles on John Brown are always appreciated by the readers of this blog.--LD