John Brown's Birthday Celebrated on May 8: Graveside Ceremony Attended by Descendants of the Old Man and Harpers Ferry Raider Copeland

Justus Lucas, a member of the Frederick Douglass Club at James P. Duffy School No. 12 in Rochester, NY, gives one of Douglass’ speeches at a wreath-laying ceremony at John Brown’s gravesite on Saturday, May 8, 2010. Looking on, from left, are state Sen. Betty Little, Brown descendant Alice Keesey Mecoy, John Copeland descendant Brenda Pitts, Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward and North Elba town Supervisor Roby Politi. (Nathan Brown - Adirondack Enterprise photo)

LAKE PLACID, NY - The people who braved Saturday's cold and wind to come to John Brown's 210th birthday party left with some reason to hope that the historic site will stay open.

State Sen. Betty Little, R-Queensbury, told the crowd that Parks Commissioner Carol Ash has said she will do everything she can to make sure the 41 state parks, and especially 14 historic sites, that are being considered for closure remain funded. Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward, R-Willsboro, said the state has an "obligation and a duty" to make sure historic sites are kept open.

Numerous speakers and performers took part in Saturday's commemoration at the farm, where Brown and what are believed to be 11 of his followers are buried. Students in the Frederick Douglass Club at James P. Duffy School No. 12 came all the way from Rochester to participate, reciting Douglass' speeches, and students from Newcomb Central School performed "Take it to the Top," a song they wrote about slavery.

Brown's actual birthday was Sunday, May 9. The park closures and service reductions proposed in February would save $6.3 million, of which the John Brown farm represents $40,000.

As well as Brown, the event was meant to honor John A. Copeland, a free black who took part in the raid on Harper's Ferry. Brenda Pitts, a descendant of Copeland, was there and spoke briefly, as did Alice Keesey Mecoy, a descendant of John Brown who was heavily involved in the events last year commemorating the 200th anniversary of the raid and Brown's execution.

Franny Nudelman, an associate professor in the English Department at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, talked about the treatment of Copeland's body. While Brown's body ended up being given to his family and buried in North Elba, Copeland's was stolen by medical students and dissected. The corpses of black people were frequently treated this way during this time, Nudelman said; medical students got bodies for research from black cemeteries. Virginia Gov. Henry Wise apparently considered giving Brown's body the same treatment, knowing the symbolic power of the corpse, but decided against it. A couple of years later, Union soldiers were singing about "John Brown's body," which was "a-moulderin' in the grave," but "his soul was marching on."

"From the moment he was sentenced to death, his body became a source of controversy and struggle," Nudelman said.

Reggie Harris set to music and sang a letter Copeland wrote to his parents in the days before his execution.

Source: Nathan Brown, "Abolitionist's Birthday Celebrated," Adirondack Enterprise [Lake Placid, NY], May 10, 2010

“His Words Still Point to the Future”: Novelist Terry Bisson Remembers John Brown

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This article was published this past October, for the sesquicentennial of the Harper's Ferry raid, and unfortunately I missed it at the time. I'm pleased to present it in the month of John Brown's 210th birthday by permission of the author--LD

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I dreamed I saw John Brown last night.

No surprise. The old man is still very much with us. What some saw as his madness, and others as his martyrdom, is still discussed and debated, celebrated and vilified in scores of new articles and books every year. Save perhaps for Lincoln, no American of his day has had more words thrown at him than Old Captain John Brown: the scourge of white supremacy.

Abolition was the great cause of his day. Brown was an abolitionist with a difference. He saw to the heart of the matter: that slavery was war, the war of one portion of humanity against another. Unlike many in the Abolitionist movement, he regarded the humanity of Africans as a given; it was the humanity of the white race that was in question.

Brown wasn’t big on democracy. Or compromise. The federal government was in a contortionist mode those days, trying to accommodate both slavery and expansion, but Brown wasn’t a bender. He wasn’t good at seeing both sides, but he could spot the hinges of history.

Kansas was one.

He carried arms to the new territory, which was under siege by southern “Border Ruffians,” determined to make Kansas a slave state with a campaign of murder and arson. The town of Lawrence was sacked and burned, and the free-staters intimidated, until a single cold-blooded night of terror — five “ruffians” pulled from their beds and put to the sword — gave the Southerners pause and the free-staters heart.

Brown neither claimed nor denied the bloodshed in the Swamp of the Swan, but both sides knew who had done it. It horrified many but brought others to his side. The men who sought the old man out were the best of their day: dreamers perhaps, idealists for sure, but men with grit.

Mounted and armed, Brown’s guerrilla band defeated or held off forces many times their size at Osawatomie and Black Jack. They even conducted cross-border raids into slave Missouri to carry off slaves and smuggle them to Canada. Tubman had done this in silence and secrecy. Brown and his men (who included his sons) did it on horseback with Army colts, frontier style.

The Eastern papers loved it. Osawatomie Brown, Kansas Brown, was feted and feared. Then, like a fox, he disappeared. There was a price on his head but none dared try and collect it. Only his trusted friends saw him as he made his way back East: Frederick Douglass, the “Secret Six,” Emerson and the Concord crowd. Brown was back with bigger plans than Kansas. He meant to take the war to the South, “into Africa.”

Harpers Ferry, then Virginia, was the north of the Old South, where the Potomac plunged through the Blue Ridge only sixty miles from the nation’s capital. Free blacks outnumbered slaves, and the train to DC took only an hour or so. Brown’s target was a federal arsenal. Not for the aged muskets (he had better guns) but for the symbolism, the acknowledgement that slavery was Federal and not just Southern.

He gathered his fighters in a farmhouse in the hills. Seasoned Kansas vets were joined by new recruits, including both escaped slaves and free blacks from Oberlin. Out of respect for their captain they read the Bible, but they knew their Tom Paine and David Walker better.

Brown wanted his friend Frederick Douglass along (to “hive the bees”) but Douglass backed away, convinced that Harpers Ferry was “a perfect steel trap.” Trap or hinge? It was in the balance. The two embraced and parted. Shields Green, an escaped slave who had come with Douglass, left with Brown, saying, “I believe I go with the old man.”

And so it was. Could twenty-two men, well armed, disciplined, determined — change the course of history? Brown thought so. His plan was to strike and then fade into the mountains: to embolden the slaves, to terrify the slaveowners, and to force the wavering abolitionists to see the issue for what it was: war. Had he succeeded, the Civil War would have been started not by the secessionists but by the abolitionists, and the issue from the first shot would have been freedom, not union. The conflict might have been shorter and the outcome less bloody.

But it was not to be.

At Harpers Ferry, Brown faltered. He let the train go through. He took hostages. He dithered, he delayed too long in the town, to the dismay of his lieutenants. After a string of brilliant successes, Brown failed only once, but as Che noted a century later, once is all you get.

Wounded, captured, surrounded by his enemies and his dying men, Captain Brown fought on with the only weapons left to him: his words. He was generous to his adversaries, gallant and unremorseful to the end, conscious both of his failure (“By my own folly”) and the righteousness of his deeds.

Kentucky sent a hemp rope and John Brown was hanged. Bells tolled throughout the North; the South was silent, apprehensive, and though they knew it not, doomed. Old Captain John Brown’s cortege was attended by mourners all the way to the Adirondacks, where he was buried. The blacks he loved knew him well and mourned him as a fallen fighter. Victor Hugo, Thoreau, and Emerson mourned him as a martyr. The abolitionists, Unionists now, marched into the Americas’ greatest and most terrible war under his banner, singing “John Brown’s Body.”

He was a man of his time, far removed from ours in spirit and substance: and yet his deeds still shape our present and his words still point to our future, as America boils in rage and uncertainty under its first black president.

“You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now. But this question is still to be settled, this Negro question, I mean. The end of that is not yet....”

John Brown.

Alive as you or me.

Source: “John Brown—150 Years After Harpers Ferry,” Monthly Review online (Oct. 2009)

About the author: Terry Bisson is a science fiction writer [visit his website, Terry Bisson of the Universe]. His “alternate history” of what might have happened if John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry had succeeded, Fire on the Mountain (1988), has been republished in a new edition by PM Press.

John Brown's descendant to visit farm

LAKE PLACID, NY — The John Brown Farm historic site will host the annual celebration of John Brown's birth Saturday, May 8, 2 p.m.

The keynote address will be provided by Franny Nudelman, author of "John Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence and the Culture of War," and performances will be given by Reggie Harris, Ness White, and the Frederick Douglass Student lub of Rochester.

The celebration will be highlighted by a visit from Alice Keesey McCoy, Brown's great-great-great-granddaughter, and Brenda Pitts, a descendant of John A. Copeland, a Black American Harper's Ferry Raider.

John Brown Day is being organized by John Brown Lives! in cooperation with John Brown Coming Home, the John Brown Farm Historic Site, the New York State Archive's Partnership Trust and the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism. John Brown Farm is located at the end of the John Brown Road, just off Old Military Road and behind the Olympic Jumps.

John Brown Day 2010 is free, open to the public, and will be held outdoors. People are urged to dress for the weather. For more information, contact Martha Swan at 962-4758 or Naj Wikoff at 523-2445 ext. 108.

Source: Denpubs.com (May 4, 2010)

A Quick Entry on Latest Movie.com: "Santa Fe Trail"

The screenplay for this film was written by a native Virginian who believed in the “unnecessary” view of the Civil War. It portrays the future Confederate leadership as completely heroic and perhaps gave the 20th century its worst popular notion of John Brown. There is not only a lack of faithfulness to historical detail in this film, but its interpretation is patently anti-Brown, indifferent to the real issues that Brown understood, and completely ignorant (as are most people who think they know) of the real John Brown in history. Perhaps people may find this film entertaining, but you have to be someone who enjoys old films and screen stars; apart from that, there is nothing of enduring value and it is long overdue for a serious cinematic endeavor to engage the Harper’s Ferry raid and Raider and put the Southern officers (who shortly betrayed the Union and did far more damage than John Brown ever would have done) who arrested him in a fairer light. Movies, after all, aren’t going to give you solid history. If you want to know who John Brown was, read my biography, or that of Evan Carton or David Reynolds. But surely we are ready for a more fair and realistic portrayal of the last days of the antebellum era and the man who represents freedom to blacks and (curiously) insanity and “terrorism” to whites. I wonder why?

This may not get posted. See Latestmovie.com

John Brown and "The Story of Us": More Docu-Crap

My brother-in-law called me at 10:45 P.M. to tell me that there was something about John Brown on the History Channel, so I quickly switched the channel just in time to see the first few minutes of the segment on the Old Man.  I was appalled.  In those few minutes, "The Story of Us" not only visually misrepresented John Brown by using an actor that didn't resemble him in the least (not even have his famous but cropped beard), but misrepresented the facts and extended conventional errors that have plagued the story of Brown and the Harper's Ferry raid for many years.  It was almost as if the script was written by a careless college sophomore and one of those National Park Service "authorities" at Harper's Ferry.  Honestly, it was so bad, so poorly framed and presented that I didn't wait until after the station break before I switched back to the movie I was watching before.   In plain words, it stunk.  It sucked.  It was docu-crap, the kind pseudo-educational material that will get bought up by public schools and shown to countless school kids over the next decade, further misleading and undermining everything that serious scholars are trying to accomplish.

If I haven't been clear enough, let me reiterate that the official rating by this blogger of "The Story of Us" as far as its John Brown segment is concerned is zero, nada, nothing--less than nothing.  Don't watch it.  Don't record it and save it for later.  And my goodness, don't buy it to show to your students.  It offers nothing worth watching regarding John Brown.  Indeed, whoever wrote the script should be driven out of town at the sharp end of a pike.

Historic John Brown Photo Chronology Exhibit Featured at the Kansas State Historical Society Until July: A Note from Jean Libby

Dear friends,

I am honored to announce the move of the traveling copy of the John Brown Photo Chronology exhibition for its next display at the Kansas State Library and Archives Historical Research Gallery in Topeka from April 26, 2010 to July 31, 2010.

Much gratitude is expressed to the National Archives and Records Administration at Philadelphia for hosting the exhibition from mid-November 2009 to April 2010 and greatly improving it with frames (which they donated) and educational text panels.

An exhibition is a living thing because it has the elasticity of change and improvement with contribution by the archives which own the originals. The biggest change is the addition of the reproduction of a salt print of the bearded John Brown by M. M. Lawrence, the original daguerreotype photographer.

The Curator of Photography at the Library of Congress, Carol M. Johnson, placed the M. M. Lawrence print online for research in November 2009. As well as a new panel for the exhibition (including the permanent exhibition at the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park) I have created an insert page for the published catalog, which is the "Look Inside the Book" feature for an upcoming conference.

The revelation of the M. M. Lawrence print and the continued contribution of historian friends and John and Mary Brown's descendants, Paul Keesey and his daughter Alice Keesey Mecoy, provide the frame for the timetable of the making of the bearded photograph into discrete versions from one portrait sitting, which occurred in late May, 1858, in New York City.

What is intriguing for historians and biographers is that these versions were directed by John Brown himself in the spring of 1859 as he was preparing to liberate slaves in Virginia in the coming months, beginning at Harpers Ferry.

I welcome communication on these findings and will be pleased to mail copies of the complete academic narrative of the exhibition at individual request.

Many thanks to Leslie Simon and Andrea Reidell at NARA in Philadelphia; to Pat Michaelis and Nancy Sherbert at the Kansas State Library and Archives in Topeka, and to Debbie Piscitelli and the Harpers Ferry Historical Association in West Virginia for hosting the John Brown Photo Chronology exhibition. The permanent exhibition is at Harpers Ferry NHP, also nicely framed as a contribution by the HFHa.

Jean Libby

Allies for Freedom

www.alliesforfreedom.org

Allies for Freedom publishers

John Brown Action Figure? Not!


Alice Keesey Mecoy, my esteemed friend and the great (3x) granddaughter of the real "Great Emancipator," John Brown (not that tall, bearded pretender with his own personal temple in Washington, D.C.), told me about this one folks:


eBay is currently featuring a John Brown action figure for sale under the title, "John Brown abolitionist Civil War custom 12" figure." Now get this, first of all the thing is going for $50.  It's a 12-inch G.I. Joe for goodness sakes with a bathroom, for goodness sake. This so-called John Brown comes with a little rifle that looks like something that fell out of a G.I. Joe set, a gun and holster, pants, boots, and something that Alice aptly describes as an outfit from Star Wars. The folks selling it have the audacity to have it posed near a print of John Steuart Curry's famous painting of Brown--but the worst part is that the figure doesn't even resemble a young John Brown, let alone John Brown in the late 1850s. It's got brown hair and beard, but JB's hair was darker and streaked with gray by the time he got to Kansas in 1855, and virtually gray when he was there in 1858-59. Of course, Brown never wore a beard trimmed that close, and even his trademark long, white beard was actually cropped much shorter at the time of the Harper's Ferry raid.


At any rate, this has got to be the worst popular representation I've seen of JB in any medium and one cannot help but get the impression that somebody had a bright idea to make a "John Brown action figure" based on a lot of leftover pieces lying here and there in the toy factory.


Oh yeah, there's one other thing that's missing from this bogus John Brown action figure. Can you guess what it is? (No, not a noose. Look at a complete version of the Curry painting and you'll figure it out.)

The Cat Who Went to Kansas (and Other John Brown Animals)

John Brown, besides being a friend of freedom, was an animal lover. It is doubtful that he would subscribe to the contemporary presuppositions of "animal rights" activism (whether or not one believes in animal rights or human responsibility for animals has a lot to do with one's fundamental philosophy, but I won't address that here). Nor would he kiss his pets, have them sit at the dinner table, or put them in his will as some folks do these days. But as a thoroughgoing biblicist, Brown personified the Proverbial "righteous man who cares for his beast." [This complete entry is available only in the forthcoming book, John Brown: Emancipator]

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Robert E. Lee's Legacy is in Defending White Supremacy

Mr. Coates, an excellent author and senior editor for The Atlantic, has recently (Apr. 14) addressed the argument of another writer who contends that the Confederate General Robert E. Lee can be seen as a fine man, "warts and all," particularly in his capacity as a military leader in the cause of Southern secession. Coates responds:

I think the key problem here is the point that Lee's "great legacy is his defense of the system, through force of arms at a horrific cost." That system being a kind of all-encompassing white supremacy--a system of consumption--that did not just indict slave-owners, but poor whites and yeoman farmers that owned no slaves.

The question, though, is one of means versus ends. Can you admire the way someone lived, even if you deplore that which they were willing to give their life for? I don't know. I have deep-seated questions about the means employed by some people who I have, at various times, included in my pantheon. I question John Brown's means, but not his moral ends. I question Nat Turner's means, but not his moral ends. I'm hard pressed to come up with people admire despite deploring the great cause of their life.

I certainly agree. However, if Mr. Coates does not sanction the means of John Brown, I can only hope that he will read more closely on the Subject. Certain of Brown's actions may have been extreme, but he did nothing except in defense of his family and in the cause of the slave, over against racist, terrorist, and violent foes. In his Kansas career fighting racist thugs, Brown put five greasy villains in their graves, yet he is excoriated by professional historians as if he were a deranged serial killer. In contrast, on the basis of something as hollow as statesman's loyalty, Lee commanded multiple thousands in treason against this nation, and through his illicit command did such great harm against his own nation that he virtually sowed a myriad corpses like bloody seed across the landscape of this nation. Was he really a humble, noble, and salutary figure? If he was, then God save us from such "good" people!

Pat Buchanan Defends the Confederacy

This past week, the right-wing leader and journalist, Pat Buchanan, raised more controversy in defending Virginia's governor McDonnell in his determination to pay tribute to Virginia's Confederate history. According to an article by David Edwards and Daniel Tencer on the raw story website (9 Apr.), Buchanan was interviewed on MSNBC's Hardball, where he made an outrageous apologetic in favor of the historical Confederacy, misrepresented the motivation of Virginia's secession from the Union on April 17, 1861, and then proceeded to defend the rebel cause. According to Edwards and Tencer:

Virginia did not secede over slavery," Buchanan said. "Virginia stayed in the union when Lincoln was elected. ... What took them out of the Union was when Abraham Lincoln said, ‘We want 75,000 volunteers, your militia and your soldiers in Virginia, to attack the deep South and bring them back into the union.’ They said, ‘We're not going to kill our kinsmen.’ That's how Virginia left the union."

The writers report that Buchanan then angered his host, Chris Matthews, by contending that Southern secession was based on a desire for freedom.

"They wanted to be free of the Union," Buchanan said. "They wanted to keep slaves," Matthews retorted. Finally, Matthews pushed Buchanan into a corner. "Who was right in the Civil War?" he asked. "I think in a way both sides were right," Buchanan responded. "Lincoln had a right to save the Union. I think they [the South] had a right to go free."

The date of this posting (17 Apr.) is the 149th anniversary of Virginia's secession from the United States and it seems appropriate to publish notice of Pat Buchanan's undisguised, unrepentant declaration on behalf of the Confederacy. Frankly, none of this is a surprise--no more than Pat Robertson's recent, idiotic declaration regarding Haitian liberation and an alleged pact with the devil. Men like Robertson and Buchanan represent the legacy of the Southern establishment and there is nothing actually revelatory about their remarks if one understands them rightly. The truth is that there are many people, many of them descended from slave holders and Southern rebels, who continue to portray Confederate history in romantic, noble, and grandiose moral and political terms. To be sure, they are not like their fathers and grandfathers, who enforced segregation and opposed black liberation in the civil rights era; but people like Pat Buchanan have done everything possible to reverse the gains of the civil rights struggle within the bounds of contemporary politics.

Jesus once impugned the Pharisees for being like unmarked graves over which people unknowingly walked in defilement (Luke 11:44). In other words, their acceptable appearance as leaders belied the decadence hidden beneath the surface of their religious posturing. The same thing can be said for the Pat Robertsons and Pat Buchanans of the conservative Christian right-wing, particularly in their devotion to Confederate heritage. Pat Buchanan is not a villainous, evil person. However he is unfortunately steeped in the same "Christian" assumptions of his forebears. If Wikipedia is to be trusted, Buchanan is not only the great-grandson of a Confederate army soldier, but a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and an admirer of Robert E. Lee the military mastermind of the Southern war of secession. Should anyone be surprised that Buchanan should go on the offensive in favor of the Confederate cause? Then it also should not be a surprise that his revisionist approach to Confederate history is premised on Southern "freedom" in opposition to the "oppression" of the federal government. Buchanan likely believes his own propaganda. He really does think that the Confederacy was heroic, that its cause was about freedom, and that his forebears were noble, admirable figures whose political militancy can somehow be set apart from the wicked institution of black chattel slavery.

I should stress here that this is not an anti-South diatribe. First, not all Southerners supported secession, nor did all Southerners advocate slavery. Second, chattel slavery is not solely a legacy of the old South; rather, it is a legacy of the Founding Fathers and their Constitution. Thirdly, although chattel slavery became a sectional issue by the time of John Brown's political activism in the 1850s, we should remember that slavery was a national blight that infested many northern states, and many northern slave holders enriched themselves on stolen black labor in New York, Connecticut, and other states that abolished slavery in the 19th century. John Brown himself was not patently anti-South, nor did he blame Southerners for slavery. He blamed the nation as a whole although he recognized that the so-called Peculiar Institution had become essential to the Southern economy in his era. The struggle against slavery and racism in the United States is not a North versus South argument; it is a contest of freedom versus oppression and truth versus fallacy.

As the ancient proverb goes, "the fathers eat the sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." Buchanan's forefather fought for the right of the South to enslave blacks, not for "freedom." The delusion of the slave master's mind (which John Brown recognized as a kind of madness)--the "sour grapes" of Confederate self-justification--has long infested the minds of their descendants with a certain bitterness, namely the prideful necessity of defending immorality and injustice in the name of "Southern" heritage. Yet the question needs to be asked: in what way does Confederate history relate to Southern history? How should it be properly understood? Is Nazism fundamentally identical to German heritage? Is La Cosa Nostra history identical to Italian and Italian American heritage? I would hope that the answer would be obvious. Yet why have so few Southerners ever sufficiently differentiated themselves from the history of slavery and Confederate rebellion? What is it about the fallen Confederacy that so enamors men like Pat Buchanan that they cannot bear witness to the generations of groaning, bleeding, and exploited black people who suffered under the rule that the Confederacy sought to sustain? What is it about the Confederacy that exempts its proud sons and daughters from any sense of regret--yea, that seems even to puff them up with arrogant pride? Even if one accepts the spurious notion that "State's Rights" was the real reason for Southern secession, what was at the core of these "rights"? Was it not primarily the "right" to hold black people in captivity? Was the South otherwise so abused and oppressed by the federal government that it had a higher purpose to rebel? How can Pat Buchanan speak of Southern secession as a matter of "freedom"?

Patrick Buchanan is a true son of the Confederacy. Ostensibly an advocate of high morality, family values, and Christian heritage, he is also a defender of a "lost cause," a fallen slavocracy, and an ill-fated and bloody adventure in rebellion largely premised on the presumption of white supremacy. John Brown has admirers in many nations, especially wherever struggles for freedom have ensued. The same cannot be said for the leaders of the Confederacy whom--with the exception of people like Pat Buchanan--are universally seen as racist oppressors.

Surely the rebel apple doesn't fall far from the Confederate tree.

Regarding "Confederate History Month" in Virginia

The Practical Implications of "Confederate History"

According to reports by CNN and The Washington Post, Governor Bob O'Donnell, Republican Governor of Virginia, is looking pretty stupid.  No doubt motivated by hopes of exploiting the coming Civil War sesquicentennial for political and economic profit, the Gov declared the month of April as "Confederate History Month."  Completely lost in white narcissism, it seems that Governor O'Donnell forgot that (1) Virginia was the heart and soul of black chattel slavery and its interest in rebelling against the union in 1861 was essentially premised on the right to sustain that cruel and exploitative institution; (2) that a large portion of people in Virginia and the rest of the country do not want to commemorate political treason, rebellion, and the contribution that so-called Confederates made in forcing our nation into a bloody civil conflict; and (3) that Confederate history, so-called, is fundamentally intertwined with white supremacy, racial oppression, and hypocritical "evangelical" conservatism--the kind of religious subculture that doesn't condone drunkenness, gambling, or adultery, but sanctions stolen black labor, the rape of black women, the prohibition of blacks from marrying or having an education, and even the right of a white slave master to murder his blacks without facing penalty of law.  And this is a legacy that Governor O'Donnell wants to remember?

The Confederacy was a secessionist movement that formed for all the wrong reasons.

The Confederacy was a secessionist movement that formed for all the wrong reasons.  The Confederacy was a union of betrayal and hubris  that drove millions of the South's sons--slave owners and non-slave owners alike--to death for the sake of the profits of slave holding elites.  The Confederacy was a foolish venture in which arrogant leaders failed to "count the cost" before throwing the nation into a pit of blood and death.  The Confederacy was happily crushed in 1865 because, despite all the arms-piling and antebellum preparations made by Southern leadership in anticipation of secession, it could not go the distance with the federal government. Similarly, neither could it stand vindicated in the light of history because its agenda is clearly one of shame and immorality, no matter what a deluded set of Southern Calvinists may argue.  No decent person should believe that a society essentially defined by race slavery is noble, endearing, or worthy of celebration at the point of its most foolish and wicked history -- southern secession.  If Virginia's Confederate heritage people want to do something, they ought to collect money to build a memorial to all the slaves their forebears exploited, and draft a state apology, signed by Governor O'Donnell, to Virginia's black community.  While he's at it, maybe David Reynold's idea of pardoning John Brown could be thrown in by Governor O'Donnell for good measure.  

At any rate, because he's standing on the wrong side of history, Governor O'Donnell's proclamation came off like a political pants-pooping episode, and subsequently he has had to clean up his mess by a too-little-too late expression of regret, clarifying the fact that the State of Virginia abhors and regrets slavery.  Of course, the Governor did so after the fact, but he is apparently sticking to his guns about making April "Confederate History Month" in the Old Dominion.

It would be easy to blast the G.O.P. over this, perhaps even opine that this is a subtle slap at President Obama.  But this blogger is non-partisan and I'm not going there.  More importantly, this theme goes far deeper than current political tensions between white liberals and white conservatives, neither of whom have ever sufficiently addressed the shameful history of slavery in this nation and the legitimacy of working out some kind of reparations and accountability on the part of the government.  This is about telling the truth about the history of the United States, Virginia included.  Do we really want to celebrate Confederates?   And why is it that so few whites seem to get it, that celebrating the Confederacy in Virginia is like Germans celebrating the role of the Nazis in World War II?  Was black chattel slavery really so much different just because it was enforced by a so-called Christian society?

There are sadly a significant number of Southerners who still love their Confederate so-called heritage.  When they say that they love it, that they're proud of it, that it was a noble Christian society, etc., they are really apologists for the sins of their fathers.  How can Governor O'Donnell sustain Confederate History Month and express regret over slavery?  Didn't the Wisest of All declare, "You can't serve two masters"?  Which master does Governor O'Donnell want to serve, the Confederacy or Liberty?  This double standard is certainly the case with a significant segment of Reformed Presbyterians in the South, who have elevated the Confederate heritage because of its historic theological "orthodoxy," and to this very day idolize Southern, pro-slavery theologians for being faithful to Holy Scripture.  Are these people so devoid of humanity that they cannot see the contradiction in their thinking?

A Confederate Family "Tree"

Confederate history is best summed up in two words: slavery and rebellion.

Confederate history is best summed up in two words: slavery and rebellion, and rebellion for the worst of reasons.  At least John Brown committed "treason" against the Old Dominion in an attempt to set people free from slavery.  Sadly, no other country that has been forced to suppress a civil rebellion has afterward so glorified, praised, and romanticized its defeated rebels and enemies as has the U.S.A.   No traitors and rebels have ever been as warmly welcomed back and forgiven as were white Southern "Confederates."  No government in its right mind would allow the flag of its former rebels and enemies to be flown as state emblems and banners after having crushed that same rebellion.    Had Abraham Lincoln not been such a whites-first politician, and had he dealt with the Confederacy as its leaders deserved, there would have been something akin to the Nuremberg trials in Washington D.C. in 1865, and a whole lot of Confederates would have been "John-Browned" rather than coddled and suckled at the breast of white unity.  "With malice toward none" except former black slaves, that is!

To declare April "Confederate History Month" in Virginia is not only a political insult to the United States and its people, it is a glorification of greed-based rebellion wearing the cloak of nobility.  (No wonder ex-Confederates were so good at hiding under cloaks and hoods after the Civil War.)  Worst of all, "Confederate History Month" in Virginia is an open, flagrant affront to black people and their allies in this nation, who recognize that REAL "Confederate history" is the history of oppression.  Indeed, it is the STARTING POINT of post-Reconstruction segregation, racist brutality, lynching, and discrimination that continued well into the 20th century.  

Maybe blacks in Virginia ought to proclaim their own annual celebration--NAT TURNER HISTORY MONTH.

Maybe instead of complaining about "Confederate History Month," blacks in Virginia ought to proclaim their own annual celebration--NAT TURNER HISTORY MONTH.   If that's offensive to white Virginians and their cousins across this country, then maybe it will finally occur to them how offensive this notion of glorifying Confederate history is to black people and their allies.   If Virginia really wants to commemorate the Civil War sesquicentennial, that is perfectly legitimate as long as the spirit of hubris, oppression, and rebellion is not glorified and idealized in name of "Confederate history."  Rather than celebrate Virginia's Confederate legacy, perhaps an extensive education and information program could promote understanding of the history, politics, and crisis that led this nation to civil conflict and how Virginia's leaders played a major role in bringing this about.  Let Virginia tell the truth about itself and so provide a positive model rather than resurrecting the demons of the Old Dominion.

View the CNN report

Abolitionist John Brown's "Black" Springfield Years Radicalized Him

When John Brown left Springfield after closing his wool business, he bid farewell to his fellow parishioners at the Sanford Street Church (today’s St. Johns Congregational Church), his many friends in the growing African-American community, and his respected cohorts involved in the local Anti-slavery movement.

He left with full confidence that the leaders in the local black community had become quite effective in helping individuals seeking to escape slavery in the south. Brown felt the need to move on to other communities to continue his work knowing that Springfield was in good hands with the likes of strong-minded, brave, and dedicated African Americans like Thomas Thomas, William Montague, and Eli Baptist.

Since the end of the 18th Century, Springfield had become one of the safe havens for blacks escaping slavery from parts of the Northeast including neighboring New York where slavery was still legal until 1828 as well as the southern states.

During John Brown’s residency in Springfield from 1846 to 1849, he witnessed first hand how effective that safe haven status had become. In fact, his years in Springfield helped to confirm his thoughts about the evils of Slavery, the pervasive influence the “Slave Power” had on American national Government, but most of all his sojourn in this community opened his eyes and mind to the possibility of effective resistance.

In Springfield, he found a community whose white leadership from the community’s most prominent churches, to its most wealthy businessmen, to its most popular politicians, to its local jurists, and even to the publisher of the Republican, one of the nation’s most influential newspapers were deeply involved and emotionally invested in the anti-slavery movement.

But just as important, and perhaps more so, John Brown lived within the black community. He attended their church, hired fellow parishioners for his wool business, and notably developed a close friendship with Thomas Thomas even gifting his rocking chair to Thomas’ mother as a measure of respect when he left Springfield in 1849.

In this and many other ways, John Brown displayed a special affection for his African-American friends in Springfield.

His close association with the community more importantly provided John Brown with a living example of what a free black community could be. In church and at meetings, and in his philosophical and political conversations with black friends such as Thomas Thomas, John Brown personally experienced the impressive intellectual capabilities, and leadership qualities within the community. Through the passion of their rhetoric, sincerity of their prayer, and logic of their reasoning, he was inspired to re-double his efforts against the pernicious institution of slavery.

When the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass came to Springfield, he met John Brown and was impressed by this remarkable man.

Douglass remarked, “Though a white gentleman, he is in sympathy with the black man and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.”

While in Springfield, Douglass spent an entire evening with John Brown. An evening which arguably transformed Douglass’ perspective and views on the future direction of the national debate on slavery.

He wrote of his conversations with Brown, “From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass. 1847 while I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful for its peaceful abolition. My utterances became more and more tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.”

In 1849, Brown moved his family to North Elba, New York to live within its local black community. He was sensing progress in the fight against slavery although he also saw a long hard road ahead until abolition. But he was truly encouraged by the growth and development of these African-American enclaves where free blacks could live their lives away the shadows of slavery.

Imagine how distraught Brown must have felt when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. For all the opinions offered on the national stage about the eventual demise of slavery through gradual means, here was proof positive that the Slave Power was not going away. In fact, with the Fugitive Slave Act, it had actually tightened its grip allowing slaveowners to have the force of federal law behind them.

The real and imminent threat of “slave-catchers” reaching out into the former “safe havens” like Springfield in order to drag African-Americans back into slavery became a catalyst for action.

In his first significant action after the Act was passed, John Brown returned to Springfield and immediately sought out his friends from Sanford Street Church, and in particular Thomas Thomas. They met to determined what to do to ensure that communities like Springfield remained “safe havens” and to establish a extra-legal counterforce to the actions of slavecatchers.

Author Joseph Carvalho III at Museum of Springfield History exhibit on John Brown he co-curated. The exhibit is on display at the museum at Chestnut and Edwards streets.

From the pulpit of the Sanford Street Church, Rev. John Mars enjoined his congregation that the time had come to “beat plowshares into swords” to defend their families and their freedom.

It was at this moment that John Brown drafted the founding document of the League of Gileadites with the help and influence of his Springfield friends in the black community.  Significantly, the League of Gileadites was established as an anti-slavery militia with its goal of self-defense against slavecatchers. In the eyes of the federal government and federal law as constituted with the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act, this organization clearly promoted illegal civil, and most remarkably, armed resistance.

After establishing the League of Gileadites, John Brown left Springfield, but he left it in good hands. Not one person was ever taken back into slavery from Springfield from that point on.

In fact, William Wells Brown the famous black orator who traveled throughout the north recounting his own harrowing experience escaping from slavery commented how Springfield was remarkable for its open defiance of the Fugitive Slave laws.  He noted that on his visit to Springfield, that it was a common sight to see and meet local African Americans at the train station armed and ready to resist any slave catcher who attempted to conduct their “business” in their community.

For John Brown, “Bleeding Kansas” and the famous raid on Harper’s Ferry were to follow, two flash points that lead to the Civil War, and Emancipation. It is important to reflect upon Springfield’s place in his life and how the relationships formed during his stay here influenced the dramatic actions he took in the 1850s.

Source:  Joseph Carvalho III, "Abolitionist John Brown's years in Springfield Ma. transform his anti-slavery thoughts and actions," The Springfield Republican - Mass. Live.com (Apr. 6, 2010)

JOHN BROWN SITES ACROSS THE NATION ARE TIED TOGETHER

by Grady Atwater

John Brown is a nationally known and important historical figure, and there are a network of John Brown related historic sites across the nation. One of the major John Brown historic sites is the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in New York, which is special because it’s holds John Brown’s gravesite. New York Governor David Paterson has placed the John Brown Farm State Historic Site on a list of New York State Parks to be closed due to New York’s budget crisis. Closing the historic site has justifiably created a shockwave of protest across the nation.

The loss of the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, New York may seem like a distant problem that really doesn’t have a negative impact on sites in other states, but experience at the John Brown Museum State Historic Site in Osawatomie proves otherwise. Many visitors to the John Brown Museum State Historic Site in Osawatomie are from across the nation, and state that they have become interested in learning about John Brown because they have visited other John Brown related historic sites. The closing of the John Brown Farm State Historic Site will create a gap in the effort to educate the public about the vital role that John Brown and abolitionists played in abolishing slavery and starting the modern civil rights movement.

Individual John Brown historical sites tell different parts of John Brown’s story. The John Brown Farm State Historic Site is not only the gravesite of John Brown, but also demonstrates John Brown’s commitment to helping African American’s achieve freedom and equality. John Brown’s farm was located on 148,000 acres of land that Gerrit Smith set aside to provide new homes for former slaves in 1846. Brown volunteered to help the former slaves to establish farms and become independent, and purchased the farm from Smith in 1848. Brown went to court and stood up with former slaves in legal matters, and worked to help them adjust to freedom. 

Brown’s actions in New York were peaceful, and the John Brown Farm State Historic Site educates the public about the peaceful aspects of Brown’s abolitionist crusade. It is vital to educate the public about all aspects of Brown’s life, and closing the site will close one that works to educate the public about this important part of Brown’s abolitionist crusade.

John Brown is a controversial but important character in American history. His abolitionist crusade sparked the Civil War, and he is a national and international philosophical symbol for ideologically motivated action in the present. Closing the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in New York will impede efforts to educate the public about the vital role that John Brown played in American and world history. The loss of the John Brown Farm State Historic Site will not only hurt New York, it will harm Osaatomie and the entire nation.

Grady Atwater is the director of John Brown Museum State Historic Site in Osawatomie, Kansas.

SOURCE: Grady Atwater, "John Brown Sites Across Nation Are Tied Together,"  Osawatomie Graphic online [Osawatomie, Kan.], Mar. 30, 2010

Owen Brown's Stolen Colt Revolver Restored to Museum by Gun Collector

Robert Hassinger bid farewell on Tuesday to an old friend, a revolver whose craftsmanship, hallmarks and engraving led him on a fascinating quest and fed his lifelong passion for American history. "I like to do research," said the retired insurance investigator, who returned an 1851 Colt "Navy" revolver to the Chicago museum from which it was stolen 62 years ago.

Inside the third-floor boardroom of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland, he donned a pair of white gloves and carefully removed the gleaming revolver from a brown valise. "There's no pitting, no rust," Mr. Hassinger, 83, said as he showed it to Libby Mahoney, chief curator of the Chicago History Museum, who was visibly impressed by its excellent condition.

"I can't really believe that it's resurfaced. You're an extremely honest person," said Kathleen Plourd, the museum's collections director. At a gun show here in 1991, Mr. Hassinger traded an 1860 Army revolver for the earlier 1851 Colt model because its low serial number piqued his interest. He began researching its history, accumulating information in a neat binder.

While paging through Man at Arms magazine in 2001, the North Hills man read an article headlined "John Brown's Colt Navies." John Brown, a zealous abolitionist, led an ill-conceived [sic]* raid in 1859 on a U.S. military arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va. Afterward, he was tried and hanged. Three of his sons also died in the anti-slavery movement. But Brown's third son, Owen, escaped from Harpers Ferry, fleeing to Canada and later returning to the United States. The article reported that Owen Brown's gun, stolen in 1948 from the Chicago History Museum, remained missing and had a serial number of 43156.

Mr. Hassinger knew his Colt revolver bore the initials O.B. on its backstrap. He figured the initials were those of the soldier who used the gun but was never able to match the letters to anyone, even after examining regiment rosters. On the day he got it, Mr. Hassinger showed the O.B. initials to his wife, joking, "This stands for 'Oh, boy, look at the neat gun I got.' "

As he matched the serial number to his revolver, he was electrified by the realization that he held Owen Brown's gun in his hand. Now, he faced a dilemma. "I didn't know what to do," he said. Mr. Hassinger consulted Ronald J. Erhart, a lawyer he knew from the Greater Pittsburgh Civil War Roundtable, who contacted the Chicago History Museum.

He got no response. "Maybe they were afraid I was after some money. I wanted some proof that it was stolen," Mr. Hassinger said. "No claim was made to the insurance company because they thought the gun wasn't worth anything." Mr. Hassinger then consulted Mike Kraus, curator of Soldiers & Sailors. A collector of Civil War artifacts since boyhood, Mr. Kraus believes the revolver is worth between $100,000 and $250,000. Through colleagues, Mr. Kraus reached Ms. Mahoney, Chicago History Museum's chief curator. "She was very interested in talking to me, especially when she heard the phrase, 'Owen Brown's pistol,' " Mr. Kraus recalled.

Ms. Mahoney sent documents showing the Chicago Historical Society accepted the revolver in the 1920s from Frank Logan, a collector of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln memorabilia. The packet included a newspaper account of the gun's theft. That proof satisfied Mr. Hassinger. "I realized that it belonged to them and that it had to go back," he said. But that didn't make it any easier for him to let go of his crown jewel. "This is what makes me want to get up in the morning. I would love to own this, display it and give talks on it. It's a symbol of the development of this country," Mr. Hassinger said.

Collectors, he said, don't really own their artifacts. "We are just custodians of them during our lifetime." He's sad because Chicago History Museum officials "couldn't guarantee that it would go on display." They also declined to reimburse him for the costs he incurred in acquiring and insuring the gun. "That was never a condition of returning it, [but] why couldn't they just hand me $500 or even $100?" he said.

According to Mr. Hassinger's research, the Army adopted this gun in 1855. The 1st and 2nd U.S. Cavalry were the first regiments to carry it. An image of ships engraved on the gun's cylinder portray a fictional encounter between the Texan and Mexican navies, leading soldiers to call it a "Navy" revolver. Samuel Colt, who invented an innovative revolver, ordered this model to be engraved to honor the Republic of Texas because the first revolver he produced in 1836 was later used by Texas Rangers in fighting Comanches. It was called a "belt pistol" because at that time, soldiers stuck it in their belts.

Mr. Hassinger has a theory on how the revolver wound up in Owen Brown's hands. His father purchased a number of Navy revolvers while living in Lawrence, Kan., from 1856-58. Owen Brown joined his father there, participating in conflicts to prevent that state from becoming a slave state. Kansas joined the Union as a free state in 1861.  "The soldier it was issued to may have lost it or may have deserted and sold it," Mr. Hassinger said, adding that the Army rarely recorded which guns were issued to specific soldiers. Or, in 1856, Owen Brown may have fought with a member of the U.S. Army at a Kansas town called Black Jack, and taken the gun from a soldier there. Black Jack is about 20 miles south of Lawrence, the scene of bloody skirmishes over slavery.

The right side of the gun's grip bears the initials of Robert Henry Kirkwood Whiteley, who headed the arsenal on Governor's Island in New York. His stamp meant that the gun had passed inspection and authorized payment for it.

Some time after 1859, Owen Brown returned from Canada to be near his sister, Ruth Brown Thompson, who lived in California. After he died in January 1889, his sister sold weapons that belonged to him and his father to Mr. Logan, who donated the weapons to the Chicago Historical Society.

There's a strong market for Civil War memorabilia. "Stolen property remains stolen property," said Mr. Erhart. "He could have sold it to somebody in the black market. He understood that he had a duty to return it to the rightful owner." Today, Mr. Erhart said, many museums emphasize World War II, and the Civil War's significance is missed by many Americans. "They wouldn't know Owen Brown from Charlie Brown."

Mr. Erhart hoped this gun is displayed, for the sake of Mr. Hassinger and history buffs like him. "It may very well never see the light of day again and that hurts him. He has no say in what they do."

Source: Marylynne Pitz, “Historian reunites abolitionist's gun with museum,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette online (Mar. 31, 2010)

* Editor’s note: The notion that the raid on Harper’s Ferry was “ill-conceived” is a prominent assumption among those who have not studied Brown’s plans sufficiently, such as the author of this article. Note that there are other errors in this article as well: Owen did not “join” his father in Kansas; to the contrary, John Brown “joined” his sons in the terrorist-infested territory in the fall of 1855, whereas Owen and several other brothers had gone to the territory in 1854 after their father’s partnership with Simon Perkins Jr. of Akron, Ohio, was mutually concluded. Likewise, the article incorrectly conveys the impression that after the Harper’s Ferry raid, Owen Brown fled to Canada. In fact, Owen found his way back to northwestern Pennsylvania (where he and his family had lived from 1826-35), and remained “hidden” there while gainfully employed for some time. Owen, who never married, lived for extended times with his brothers, John Brown Jr. and Jason, at their respective homes in Ohio, and later moved with Jason to California. Most of the Brown family moved west during the Civil War and were joined later by Henry and Ruth (Brown) Thompson, who settled in Pasadena, Calif. Owen eventually joined his older sister Ruth and brother-in-law Henry there. The history of John Brown’s guns has been a subject far more explored by gun collectors and enthusiasts than by historians. My own assumption is that Owen’s “navy” revolver was among two hundred revolvers that John Brown received from T. W. Carter, Chicopee Falls, Mass., an arms manufacturer with whom he had corresponded as early as 1856 in expression of anxiety over the rise of pro-slavery terrorism in the Territory. According to correspondence held in the Kansas State Historical Society, two hundred revolvers were shipped to Brown via Iowa City, Ia., in May 1857. Brown did not pay for these guns; the bill for the weapons was sent to George Stearns, the prosperous New England anti-slavery businessman who shortly became one of Brown’s “Secret Six” supporters. [See T. W. Carter to Capt. John Brown, May 25, 1857, John Brown Collection #299, Box 1, Folder 23, Kansas State Historical Society.]--LD