Essay

“I Drew My Sword in Kansas When They Attacked Us”:

John Brown as Counter-Terrorist

Thanks to the misinformation and harping of writers who actually know next to nothing about John Brown, he is all-too-often remembered as the man who led the Pottawatomie killings in the Kansas territory, which took place overnight on May 24-25, 1856. The story of the killings of five pro-slavery southern settlers has been recounted ad nauseam, often in an unbalanced and even distorted fashion, always to Brown’s disadvantage. In these narratives, the men who were killed by Brown and his party are typically presented as having been guilty of nothing more than holding pro-slavery sympathies. Furthermore, they are portrayed as having been almost randomly chosen as targets of Brown’s alleged vendetta strike against pro-slavery people.

In this distorted scenario, the five men killed become victims and Brown and his men become not only murderers but also terrorists. However, one cannot present this flattened, sterile reading of the Pottawatomie killings without (1) misrepresenting the real facts of the incident; (2) ignoring the historical-political context; and (3) overlooking the moral and political "big picture" as it existed in 1856.

The Real Facts

As to the real facts of the incident, the Pottawatomie "victims" were not killed because they were merely pro-slavery, nor were they killed because they were southern men. While Brown did not agree with pro-slavery settlers in Kansas, he interacted with them peacefully from late 1855 until the heated circumstances of spring 1856, when pro-slavery terrorism was mounting in its bold assaults on free state people. Brown traded with pro-slavery Missourians and co-existed with pro-slavery settlers because, despite his hatred of slavery, he was willing to respect the democratic process that was supposed to have been going on in the Kansas territory through “Popular Sovereignty,” the idea that the future of Kansas as a state would be defined by the ballot.

It is true that Brown went to Kansas with weapons in late 1855; but he did so only to act in defense of his sons and their families who had already settled there in 1854. From his arrival in the fall of 1855, Brown monitored political matters in the Territory with great optimism and with no intention of fighting or attacking pro-slavery people. Indeed, throughout the first six months of his residence in Kansas, he never lifted a finger to oppose, threaten, or harm a pro-slavery person. It was not John Brown who was a terrorist; it was the pro-slavery faction that was anti-democratic and terroristic because they were clearly intent upon imposing slavery one way or another.

But if the “Pottawatomie Five” (Wilkinson, Sherman, and three Doyles) were not killed because they were pro-slavery men, why were they killed? Simply put, the men who were targeted by Brown and his men were part of a circle of Kansas territorial settlers who were actively engaged in conspiring to assist and support the overthrow of the democratic process in the territory; they were also local allies of invading pro-slavery "ruffians" (read: terrorists) who had invaded the territory with the intention of using violence to intimidate and, when necessary, eradicate free state people—particularly pro-black abolitionists like the Browns.

While some of the “Pottawatomie Five” were low-life types, this was not the reason they were killed. Nor was the fact that the Doyles--three of the five who were killed--were former slave hunters the point of their being targeted. Rather, the point of their being taken from their homes and killed was that they were discovered through reliable sources to have been conspirators and collaborators with invading terrorists, or “hordes” as Brown referred to them. Specifically, Brown had good knowledge that these men were connected with locally encamped terrorists, and that these terrorists had real intentions of attacking the Browns because of their pronounced anti-slavery and pro-black views. Indeed, Brown was convinced that waiting passively would only give these men time and opportunity to bring destruction upon his family.

One important fact that is usually overlooked is that the typical free state person was more likely pro-free white labor, not pro-black. Simply compare Abraham Lincoln’s “anti-slavery” views to those of John Brown and you will get the idea: Lincoln wanted the United States to be a white’s first nation (this was Frederick Douglass's assessment); blacks should be free, but he always gave priority to white people. Brown thought this at best was only half-right. He was a “radical abolitionist,” not because he picked up a gun, but because he constantly preached the equality of all people. In Kansas, this made the Browns a minority among free state settlers.

One should also remember that when Brown went to Kansas, he was already deeply connected with the leaders of the black liberation movement. Frederick Douglass was sipping tea in the Brown homestead over a decade before he was invited to Lincoln’s White House. The Browns read black newspapers, entertained black guests in their homes, and hosted a number of major black leaders before they ever thought about going to Kansas. Such openness was not typical of free state people, and the Browns were quite outspoken and even defiant in upholding their social and political views regarding the equality and empowerment of blacks. This is a key factor in understanding the political background to what happened at Pottawatomie Creek—and what might have happened had the Browns not struck first.

The Historical-Political Context

The historical-political context is another reality that is typically overlooked when John Brown's alleged "terrorism" is discussed in popular commentaries and TV documentaries. First, we must remember that by May 1856 a de facto civil war was already underway in the Kansas territory. Although there was no formal political division of the United States until secession in 1861, there was actual political division manifested in the Kansas territory in 1856. In 1856, it was the free state side that was grappling with the federal government, which was dominated by pro-slavery interests. In 1861, it was the pro-slavery side that was struggling against the federal government, now under the control of the Republicans, who wanted to delimit--but not abolish-- slavery. Unlike John Brown and a handful of abolitionists, much of the North was still enamored with the idea of political compromise with the South.

It is no small matter that Kansas in 1856 was a territory, not a state of the union. Given that the Kansas territorial war was technically outside of the United States, the distance, in terms of geography and information, was exploited by powerful pro-slavery forces. In other words, because the Kansas territory was literally on the frontier, on the “outside” of the political United States, pro-slavery terrorism targeting a largely benign and unprepared majority of free state settlers met no initial resistance. In his correspondence, John Brown’s letters reflect the "outside" reality of the Kansas territory. For instance, in a letter to his wife dated January 9, 1856, he wrote: "We get no News from the States of account to satisfy our hunger which is very great"; and again on March 6, 1856, he wrote: "It seems that those of our friends who write us, take it for granted that we know of all that happens in the United States." Free state and pro-slavery settlers alike shared the experience of being removed from the nation in a manner that had practical and political implications. Certainly there was a deficiency in information and communication that separated free state people from the United States. Interruption of and/or tampering with the mail and news reporting enabled pro-slavery interests to work behind a veil of political ignorance and naïveté in the free states of the union. With the support of pro-slavery interests in Washington D.C., the initial siege of the territory by pro-slavery thugs, including the first attempt to seize the town of Lawrence, could be carried out to a significant degree because it was “outside” and away from the ready sight of the free states. To no surprise, the record of Kansas’s territorial governors in this period reflects the power of pro-slavery interests and the relative impotency of free state interests. Indeed, what passed for "law and order" in the Kansas territory was pro-slavery domination at best. At worst, there was such a fragmenting of the rule of law that neither peaceful pro-slavery nor peaceful free state settlers were safe (Gov. John Andrew of Massachusetts made this point in his testimony before the U.S. Senate in 1860).

Free state settlers (who were in the majority) went to Kansas without the means of war, being fully confident in the just oversight of the federal government regarding the democratic process. As it turned out the most definitive presence in Kansas was that of the so-called Border Ruffians—armed terrorists from Missouri, as well as other pro-slavery thugs streaming into the territory from the South. As free state settlement increased so did violent and aggressive pro-slavery forces, particularly in the early spring of 1856. Meanwhile, federal and territorial officials failed to insure the civil rights and democratic freedoms of settlers, especially free state people. Brown had brought guns and swords to Kansas, but he never would have broken them out had the threat of terrorism begun to explode after the spring thaw. The notion that he is somehow the prototypical “domestic terrorist” is pure nonsense. If prototypes of domestic terrorism are to be found in the Kansas story, they are found in “Border Ruffians” from Missouri and pro-slavery hordes from the Deep South, some of which carried banners proclaiming “The Supremacy of the White Race.” These thugs threatening free state people before Brown arrived in the territory, and it was the murder, conspiracy, and malicious intentions of such men that constitutes the real prototype of domestic terrorism in the United States.

Pottawatomie and the “Big Picture”

Brown’s lethal response to the plotting and conspiracy of pro-slavery collaborators in his vicinity must be viewed against the backdrop of free state settlement and pro-slavery expansion, which is a vital part of the “big picture.”

Initially, the free state settler movement was politically conservative, somewhat passive, and apparently naïve regarding the intentions of the federal government and the power of pro-slavery interests. Since the free state movement was fundamentally conservative, free state leaders and settlers in the territory were not initially willing to use a militant response to pro-slavery intrusion. First, free state settlers were not political radicals. True enough, their interest in western settlement expressed a political opposition to the expansion of slavery; but free state people were willing to tolerate slavery in the South as long as it did not expand.

In contrast, pro-slavery leaders were about the business of expansion. The whole reason that “Popular Sovereignty” was introduced was to give pro-slavery leaders some hope of furthering their interests in the expanding nation. Pro-slavery leaders would not vote for a transcontinental railroad unless the government included pro-slavery options into the opening of new territories, including Kansas and Nebraska (1854). Actually, pro-slavery interests were determined to expand slavery by any means necessary, but were willing to go along with the democratic process as long as it worked in their favor.

John Brown was a careful student of pro-slavery politics and he believed that the South was not going to relent without militancy, an insight that was proven correct in history. In the 1850s, Brown believed that pro-slavery interests were exploiting federal resources and quietly planning to break out of the union if they were not successful in expanding slavery westward. He understood that Kansas was a watershed in the destiny of the nation as far as slavery was concerned. Journalist William A. Phillips recounted a conversation with Brown in early 1859, when the Old Man told him that civil war was on the minds of some of President Buchanan’s cabinet members; that “for years” the military’s resources had been manipulated and maneuvered to the advantage of the South; and other pro-slavery officials in the military and administration were preparing to ravage the federal government’s resources in the event of secession. Phillips was skeptical of Brown’s gloom-and-doom reading of antebellum intentions in the South, but Brown prophesied:

No, the war [in Kansas] is not over. It is a treacherous lull before the storm. We are on the eve of one of the greatest wars in history, and I fear slavery will triumph, and there will be an end of all aspirations for human freedom. For my part, I drew my sword in Kansas when they attacked us, and I will never sheathe it until this war is over. Our best people do not understand the danger. They are besotted. They have compromised so long that they think principles of right and wrong have no more any power on this earth. [William A. Phillips, “Three Interviews with Old Brown,” The Atlantic Monthly (Dec. 1879): 743-44.]

We have no reason to doubt the fundamental integrity of Phillips’ reminiscence, not only because the historical framework of his article is trustworthy, but because Brown’s remarks are very consistent with his letters and other recorded words. It is clear that he understood the significance of the territorial civil war in Kansas, especially the fact that it was only an opening skirmish in what he believed would become an unprecedented tragedy in the young nation’s history. Beyond this, he seems to have alluded to Pottawatomie as the jumping-off point of his own activism: He raised the sword in what he perceived as an attack upon himself, his family, and their allies--in conjunction with the larger free state presence.

By pointing out the lack of understanding among the “best” free state people, Brown was criticizing the politically conservative and ill-prepared leaders of the North who were so caught up in political business-as-usual that they did not see the naked reality of the pro-slavery power. Not perceiving them as enemies, they persisted in the belief that the South could be placated and bartered into cooperation with the North. Meanwhile, the South was playing politics while quietly preparing for secession and war.

Brown knew full well that pro-slavery interests were fundamentally violent and hostile to both democracy and human rights. But in the Kansas territory he also had to contend with a large segment of free state people who were “besotted”—muddled and stupefied by their own belief that somehow the nation could find a solution by political compromise. By settling in Kansas, most free state people were not only establishing new lives and expanding the white frontier, but were hoping to bring Kansas into the federal union as a free state based upon the assumption that the South would actually cooperate if defeated by the ballot. Not only were they entirely unrealistic about prospects of “Popular Sovereignty,” they were reactionary and critical of the more militant voices among the free state side. Not a few free state leaders were unwilling to use force and were quite critical of any talk of militancy in the face of pro-slavery aggression.

The conservative, passive, and even timid stance of many free state settlers was matched with one other problematic factor that also made things hard for John Brown. Far too many were fundamentally racists and Negrophobes. The contemporary assumption that “free state = abolitionist” is flatly incorrect. In fact, there was a significant different between free state whites and abolitionists. Free state whites (including Southerners who came to the Kansas territory) did not presuppose black equality or “racial integration.” To the contrary, free state assumptions entailed the legal exclusion of blacks from settlement in Kansas. The black man was persona non grata in free state society. Why would they allow blacks in the new territory? Salmon Chase, an Ohio governor and later a member of President Lincoln's cabinet, once bemoaned the "degrading" moral presence of blacks in his state. "I do not wish the slave emancipated because I love him," Chase declared, "but because I hate his master; I hate slavery; I hate a man that will own a slave." [See letter of W. D. Chadwick dated Nov. 8, 1859, The Valley Spirit (Chambersburg, Pa.) Dec. 7, 1859, p. 1]. Such was the true spirit of the free state movement in John Brown's era.

Yet the Old Man, ever the optimist, preferred to characterize the free state position as “half-right,” for he was happy to find agreement as to the exclusion of slavery from the new territory. However he wanted Kansas to enter the union as a free state for whites and blacks to live together in equality. This was the family philosophy of the Browns, and their determination to see that position triumph was no small sore spot in their relations with free state people. Needless to say, if this troubled free state allies, the Browns’ gospel of black equality was downright infuriating to pro-slavery settlers, including neighbors living in their vicinity. Indeed, the Browns’ reputation as lovers of black people was broadcasted by the Browns themselves in a tone of defiance. Although he had refused to follow his father in the case of the Pottawatomie killings, it is interesting that John Brown Jr. had attempted to liberate a slave by force around the same time. To his disgust, he was obligated by his free state colleagues to return the victim to his master.

Conclusion

It has often been claimed that it was the Pottawatomie killings that incited war in Kansas. This is a frank misrepresentation of the facts. Violence, terrorism, and warfare were the work of pro-slavery thugs—armed men who had no intention of desisting whether or not they met resistance. The shelling and sacking of Lawrence in May 1856 was the natural result of pro-slavery politics in Kansas. Soon to follow was the intended attack on the Browns, radical abolitionists that were marked for removal by any means so that the pro-slavery faction could advance their cause over against the democratic process. Osawatomie, the burgeoning free state community closest to the Browns’ settlements, was marked for assault whether or not Brown had acted. The fact that pro-slavery terrorists attacked Osawatomie three months after the Pottawatomie killings was simply a regrouping of the pro-slavery faction’s original intentions. It is ludicrous to argue that the attack would not have taken place if the Pottawatomie killings had not taken place.

Like matters in the United States several years later, matters in Kansas had to come to the climax of war because pro-slavery interests were determined. There is no “counter-factual” in this regard as much as contemporary historians would like to argue. Blaming John Brown for the inflammation of matters in Kansas is like blaming a surgeon for causing the advance of his patient’s disease, as if the doctor’s scalpel is somehow the source of the patient’s disease. One may not believe in inevitability; one may argue against Brown on the basis of some possibility that the war could have been avoided. The Slave Power could never have been defeated by the implementation of latter day civil rights marches, sit-ins, and non-violent demonstrations as some scholars wistfully speculated at the sesquicentennial of the Harper’s Ferry raid last year. (Such a rationale amounts to little more than counting stars or staring into one’s navel, and in the case of some historians, somber adventures in “counter-factual” speculation are a demure manner of attacking John Brown’s legacy, while at the same time admitting that he was “on the right side of history.”) In 1856, pro-slavery interests were advancing with determination into Kansas; they saw it as a first step toward achieving the territory they intended to take. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out what would have happened if pro-slavery terrorism had not been checked in the Kansas territory; nor did the Slave Power easily surrender. After Brown was hanged and buried, even the most conservative people in Kansas probably wished that he were resurrected to face off against the likes of “domestic terrorists” such as Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson.

When John Brown and his men pulled the Pottawatomie Five from their cabins in the dead of night and hacked them to death, their deeds were terrible, bloody acts of a kind that would make any man sickened. There is no way to beautify the Pottawatomie killings: they are a reminder that the advance of evil can sometimes become so great that even good men are driven to extreme measures of violence in order to stop it. John Brown never regretted the Pottawatomie killings, although the episode was probably painful in memory. When the widow and mother of the slain Doyles wrote to him in his Virginia jail cell, perhaps both gloating and grieving in the process, Brown evidently read her letter and said nothing. What could he have said? Had he not also lost sons in the war against slavery? The only difference between the two of them was that he grieved over sons slain in defense of human rights; the Widow Doyle’s husband and sons had died as terrorists caught in a snare of their own making. By her own words at the time, they had fallen prey to their own “devilment.”

Like their leader, none of the killers ever expressed regret for wrong doing in the Pottawatomie incident. It may have broken Owen Brown’s heart to kill his enemies so savagely; but neither he nor Henry Thompson (Brown’s son-in-law) ever reneged on the necessity of the bloody deed because they understood that the lives of their own family were at stake. No doubt speaking for himself as well as Owen, Henry, and the others, Brown wrote to his wife, only slightly veiling their role in the bloody incident: "We feel assured that he who sees not as men see does not lay the guilt of innocent blood to our charge" [John Brown to Mary Brown, June 24, 1856].

The Pottawatomie incident cannot be viewed as a case of domestic terrorism. To the contrary, the awful slaying of five men along the Pottawatomie Creek in May 1856 must be viewed through the lens of political and historical reality. John Brown used blunt but measured force to excise a real threat; his actions were counter-terroristic, surgical, and specific to a particular case where all forms of law and justice had broken down, and where the power of thugs and terrorists threatened to swallow up everything sacred to freedom. "The horrors wrought by his iron hand cannot be contemplated without a shudder," Frederick Douglass (who probably knew the details from Brown himself) would later write in reference to Pottawatomie. "But it is the shudder which one feels at the execution of a murderer" [Life and Times of Frederick Douglass] John Brown saw his family and compatriots overshadowed by a murderous threat and he struck first. He did not lift his sword to initiate terrorism, but to answer terrorism with finely honed steel.

And evil men trembled.

The Bodies of John & Mary Brown's Fallen Sons Were Withheld by the State of Virginia

Communications from Jean Libby and Yours Truly

In Spring 2010 the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) published an online exhibition of John Brown materials in cooperation with The Library Company of Philadelphia. The letters exchanged between Mary A. Brown (21 November 1859. 109) and Governor Henry A. Wise (26 November 1859 115 ½ ) are digitally reproduced.

The historical significance of these letters cannot be overstated. Mary, in her own handwriting and, as HSP states, apparently on her own initiative, asks that the “mortal remains of my husband & his sons may be delivered to me for decent & tender internment among their kindred.” Wise replies, “Sympathizing [the HSP has mistranscribed this word as ‘Sympathy’ in their exhibition text] as I as do with your affliction, you shall have the ‘exertion of my authority and personal influence to assist you in ‘gathering up the bones of your sons and your husband’ in Virginia…” The letter states there is an order enclosed “to Maj. Gen. Taliaferro, in command at Charlestown, Va., to deliver to your order the mortal remains of your husband “when all shall be over” to be delivered to your agent at Harper’s Ferry, and, if you attend the reception in person, to guard you securely in your solemn mission.” The problem is that the HSP states that [Brown’s] “His body and the bodies of his sons were released to his wife for internment on the family homestead.”

Many of the documents in the Dreer Collection were published in the Calendar of Virginia State Papers in 1893. They were used in John Brown’s trial. Some had been published in the Baltimore papers just after John Brown’s raid. These are the famous carpetbag documents. Both Governor Wise and Andrew Hunter put out a call for their return to Virginia authorities for use in the trial while they were appearing in the newspapers.

Eric Ledell Smith, Associate Historian at the Pennsylvania State Museum and a member of the Board of Directors at HSP, researched and wrote “Finding the Carpetbag: Documents in the Dreer Collection at HSP” John Brown’s Family in California, which I edited and published as Allies for Freedom publishers in 2006. Eric correlated the publication of the documents in the Dreer Collection with the Baltimore newspapers and the Calendar of Virginia State Papers. The list and notes you see here are from his original manuscript. He added the other locations for the published version. My friend Eric Ledell Smith died in Harrisburg in June, 2008.

Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., a John Brown biographer and a recent guest speaker for HSP, has contacted the people there with recommendation for revision of their online history. Another person who could be someone who works with HSP in a diplomatic way and organize the history is Hannah Geffert, who is from Philadelphia and visits there regularly. Hannah lives in Martinsburg and is a retired research professor. She can access the people and archives in West Virginia and even Richmond. I would ask you, Hannah, if you are willing to organize the HSP education project.

The letter exchange that is published online for the first time is very important to understanding Mary Brown as well as the events of John Brown’s execution. Please notice from the attached listing that the Mary Brown – Governor Wise exchange are #109 and #115-115 ½ on the list. Numbers 116 – 119 in the Dreer Collection list are letters from Governor Wise to Maj. General Taliaferro, in Charles Town enforcing martial law since November 24, 1859. Mary’s letter is dated November 26, the letters to Taliaferro are November 26 and 27. To understand the history, we need to know the content of all the letters noted here. I will order photocopies immediately. I believe that Taliaferro was chosen because he put down an insurrection of enslaved and free African Americans in his home in Gloucester County, Virginia, in the 1830s.

There is a relationship between Taliaferro and one of the Allies for Freedom authors, Judith Grevious Cephas. “Old Man Tolliver” was mentioned as the slaveholder in a family history. That is the pronunciation of Taliaferro by local people even to the present day in Virginia, both black and white. I hope that Judie will be willing to contribute your family history to this study, as well as your thoughts about the meaning of the letters between Mary Brown and Governor Wise.

I believe that Lou DeCaro’s characterization of the Virginia authorities (Governor Wise and Maj. Gen. Taliaferro, local sheriff, judges) as hostile to the request of Mary Brown for permission to claim the bodies of her sons Watson and Oliver as well as her husband after his execution – no matter what the language of the letters to her – is correct. As further evidence, in the transcription of her interview with the New York Tribune reporters following her meeting with John Brown in prison on December 1, 1859 (published on December 3, in John Brown’s Family in California, pages 15-16): “I learn from Captain Moore that she rather repelled all attempts on his part to express sympathy with her under her affliction. She resented the idea that Capt. Brown had done anything to deserve death, or to attaint his name with dishonor…”

In other words, Mary didn’t buy into Governor Wise’s expressions of “tenderness” toward her.

Thank you all for your attention to this complex situation. The Network to Freedom nomination of Mary Brown’s gravesite is planned for July 15, 2010. The sponsoring organization is Allies for Freedom.

Jean Libby

Allies for Freedom

1222 Fulton St.

Palo Alto, CA 94301

415-505-5131 cell

editor@alliesforfreedom.org

650-618-8603 fax

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

My email to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania:

It was my great pleasure to have been a guest speaker at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania this past December in conjunction with your John Brown program, and to have been the recipient of your kind hospitality in doing some research as well. In light of our collaboration, perhaps you will not mind me calling something to your attention regarding your website exhibit.

Jean Libby, one of our foremost John Brown scholars, has recently pointed out something that is historically inaccurate, and had I noted it earlier myself, I would have felt obliged to mention it. The problem pertains to the narration provided in regard to your on-line display of the correspondence between Mary Brown and Gov. Henry Wise of Virginia. Your website exhibit reads the following:

True to his word, arrangements were made for Mary Brown to meet the body of her sons and husband at Harpers Ferry. In another letter from the collection, Governor Wise sent orders to Maj. General William Booth Taliaferro to protect John Brown’s mortal remains from mutilation while en route from Charles Town to Harpers Ferry.

As to accuracy, the first sentence in this excerpt is incorrect; the second sentence, which states that Brown's remains were protected from mutilation, further highlights the error of the previous statement. In fact, it is not the case that the bodies of Brown's sons were returned to Mary Brown when she and her companions came to Virginia at the time of his hanging. Oliver Brown's body was interred with the bodies of other of Brown's slain raiders and was not returned North until these remains were found and disinterred decades later, and then reinterred at the Brown farm in North Elba, Lake Placid, N.Y. The body of Brown's other slain son, Watson, was taken by Virginians and used by medical school students, quite contemptuously, for experimentation and display. Watson's displayed remains were later seized by a Union officer during the Civil War, taken to Indiana, and subsequently taken by the family for interment at the Brown farm.

Finally, based on the letter from Wise that you have displayed on line, the Virginia governor acknowledged Mary's request to have the bodies of her husband and sons, but only consented to order the body of her husband handed over. So while he was "true to his word," he did not fully grant Mary Brown her request and gave no explanation as to why. As we may observe with regard to Brown's shabby trial and rush to the noose, the "gallant" Virginia treatment that he received had only the veneer of civility and Christianity. Wise feels he cannot deny Mary absolutely, so he hands over the Old Man's body; but he deliberately denies her the motherly comfort of burying her sons. This was neither a Christian nor a gentleman. I find slight satisfaction in knowing that Wise and his family were run out of their Virginia home during the Civil War, and that a portrait of Brown was placed on the wall of his former parlor by some thoughtful abolitionists.

Thank you for your consideration.

Yours truly,

Rev. Louis A. DeCaro Jr., Ph.D.

Student and biographer of John Brown the abolitionist

Osawatomie Notebook: John Brown's Practical Theology
Grady Atwater is the administrator of the John Brown State Historic Site in Osawatomie, Kansas

John Brown and his family believed in the equality of all people in the eyes of God, and therefore viewed African-Americans as equals to European-Americans.

Brown practiced what he preached, as evidenced by a report from the novelist Richard Henry Dana, Jr. in the July 1871 issue of Atlantic Monthly. Dana and a group of men had been out hiking in the Adirondack Mountains in the summer of 1849 and had gotten lost. They emerged from the woods and found themselves at Brown’s farm at North Elba, N.Y. Brown welcomed Dana and his party into his home, where Dana found Brown’s racial egalitarianism surprising.

John Brown in his forties, around

the time he met Dana and his 
companions in North Elba.

Dana described his first impression of Brown’s home: “Three more worn, wearied, hungry, black-fly-bitten travelers seldom came to this humble, hospitable door. The people received us with cheerful sympathy, and, while we lay down on the grass under the shadow of the house, where a smutch kept off the black flies, prepared something for our comfort.”

Mary Day Brown, Brown’s second wife, took care of the hiking party. “She would not let us eat much at a time,” Dana reported, “and cut us off resolutely from the quantities of milk and cool water we were disposed to drink, and persuaded us to wait until something could be cooked for us, more safe and wholesome for faint stomachs; and we were just weak enough to be submissive subjects to this backwoods queen.”

Dana observed that John Brown was aiding former slaves and free African-Americans to establish new homes in the Adirondacks on land donated by Gerrit Smith, a wealthy abolitionist. Dana reported that a Mr. Aikens, their guide, “told us that the country here belonged to Gerrit Smith; that Negro families, mostly fugitive slaves, were largely settled upon it, trying to learn farming; and that this Mr. Brown was a strong abolitionist and a kind of king among them.”

John Brown proved that he put shoe leather into his beliefs at supper.

As a prisoner of the state of Virginia in 1859, Brown would
not allow pro-slavery clergymen to pray with him because of his
firm conviction regarding the injustice of chattel slavery.

“We were all ranged at a long table, some dozen of us more or less, and these two Negroes and one other had their places with us,” Dana wrote. “Mr. Brown said a solemn grace. I observed that he called the Negroes by their surnames, with the prefixes of Mr. and Mrs. The man was ‘Mr. Jefferson,’ and the woman was ‘Mrs. Wait.’ It was plain that they had not been so treated or spoken to often before, perhaps never until that day, for they had all of the awkwardness of field hands on a plantation, and what to do on the introduction was quite beyond their experience.”

John Brown believed in the equality of all people in the eyes of God and acted on that belief. He regarded African-Americans as equals and acted on that belief —  making him a radical in a time when racism was the norm in American society.

Source: Grady Atwater, “Everyone Is Equal In The House Of The Lord.”  Osawatomie Graphic online [Osawatomie, Kan.], June 2, 2010

JOHN BROWN LIVES! in PETERBORO

Swann (left), along with Larry Lawrence, chairman of the John Brown Society 

(NYC) in 2008, at the John Brown Farm, Lake Placid, N.Y.  (L. DeCaro Jr. photo)

Martha Swan, founding director of John Brown Lives! Lake Placid N.Y., will bring reports from the North Country to the Smithfield Community Center in Peterboro on Saturday, June 12 at 12:00 noon. During her program, "The World that Made John Brown---and The World Yet To Be Made," Swan will review the many activities held throughout 2009 commemorating John Brown and Harpers Ferry, as well as the John Brown Day 2010 to be held at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site on Saturday, May 8 from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. Swan will give an overview of the political and social backdrop of the United States during the fifty-nine years of John Brown’s life, from 1800-1859, that led to Brown’s formation as an abolitionist and man of action. She will also reissue the call reminiscent of our abolitionist forebears that was first issued last December for 100 Anti-Slavery Conventions to galvanize New Yorkers to commit to the unfinished task of abolishing slavery and achieving racial justice in our world today. She will report on the efforts to restore state funding for the John Brown Farm, a state historic site since the 1890s, and provide an update on its status. The program is free and open to the public.

Martha Swan initiated and produced the Dreaming of Timbuctoo Traveling Exhibition that forced a re-thinking of Gerrit Smith’s antebellum “scheme of justice and benevolence” championing black voting rights and the redistribution of land to 3,000 free black New Yorkers. That “scheme” led Brown to settle in the Adirondacks and choose it as his final resting place. The work of John Brown Lives! has been featured in the New York Times, on National Public Radio, and in newspapers and other media outlets across the state.  The John Brown program is part of the National Abolition Hall of Fame & Museum (NAHOF) Open House at 5255 Pleasant Valley Road in Peterboro which will be held during the 18^th Annual Peterboro Civil War Weekend Saturday and Sunday, June 12 and 13, 2010. Members of the Cabinet of Freedom for the Hall of Fame will be at the abolition exhibit and the newly installed audio-visual exhibit on the inaugural meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society held October 22, 1835.

Peterboro Civil War Weekend is an educational and fundraising event sponsored by the Town of Smithfield, the Smithfield Community Association, and private donors. Proceeds from the event support the preservation and promotion of the heritage of the Town of Smithfield. During the event Peterboro relives the period of the mid 1800s when the hamlet held national recognition because of Gerrit Smith’s Underground Railroad station, the visitations of famous abolitionists, and the connection with John Brown that sparked the War Between the States. Peterboro sites are on the Heritage NY Underground Railroad Trail and on the National Park Service Network to Freedom Underground Railroad Trail. New exhibits at four sites will be open. Saturday June 12 hours for the event are 10 am – 5 pm, and Sunday June 13 from 10 am to 4 pm. Admission is $7 for adults, $3 for ages 6 – 12, and free for children under 6. Admission to the to the special Civil War concert at 8 p.m. may be paid at the door. Parking is free.

For more information on John Brown Day May 8, 2010 contact www.johnbrowncominghome.com

For more information on Peterboro Civil War Weekend: 315-684-9022, and www.sca-peterboro.org

The World that Made John Brown---and The World Yet To Be Made presented 11:00 a.m. Saturday, June 12, 2010 at Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY 13134. Free.

--Dot Willsey, National Abolition Hall of Fame

A Memorial Day Tribute to the Fallen Slaves of the U.S.A.

While the Memorial Day holiday is focused upon the fallen soldiers of this nation, it is a good thing to remember those who suffered and died under the monstrous regime of Slavery U.S.A., generations and millions of black people who have been overlooked except as subjects for academics to write about.

The soil of the U.S.A. is replete with the bones of African and African American people. These people lived and died as chattel slaves over a period of centuries, victims whose labor was consistently stolen, whose bodies and personal lives were used, abused, and dominated by white society, and whose suffering has been overlooked, trivialized, or sentimentalized by many in white society.

Where is the national monument to the slave in Washington D.C.? What acknowledgement has been made by the federal government, at least in expressing some official regret for imbedding slavery in our nation’s constitution? After all, slavery was not a southern institution in actuality: it was an institution of the U.S.A., and it was perpetrated upon black people in New York as well as South Carolina, in John Brown’s Connecticut as well as Robert E. Lee’s Virginia. But simply raise the issue of reparations in a political context and half the white people of this nation fly into a rage: “Get over it!” they say, “slavery was a long time ago!” And the inevitable: “I never owned a slave, why do I have to apologize!”

Of course, given the fact that slavery was a legal, constitutional matter, there is a basis in law for some kind of reparations discussion. Scholars and activists may argue over the nature of reparations, but certainly we are not so far removed by historical distance from the days of chattel slavery that something cannot be done. At the very least, some kind of official apology, some historical monument, some day of remembrance, ought to be mandated by the federal government and by state governments.

The complete lack of conscience regarding the remembrance of the enslaved of this nation is adding insult to injury. How can we pretend that slavery was a sad and inconvenient arrangement, something we are not quite proud of, yet something we don’t quite feel so badly about—at least not enough to consider the reality of the “peculiar institution” in all its bloody horror and capitalistic benefits. Does it seem a mere inconvenience that generations of black women and girls were systematically manhandled, molested, and raped, and that the offspring of rape were also enslaved? Does it seem a footnote of history that black men were brutalized, emasculated, humiliated, and violated as slaves of white society? Does it seem a small matter that stolen black labor enriched the banks of this nation North and South, and that the just wages of generations of black people were robbed and invested in the economy of this nation, enriching production, commerce, and insurance companies? Does it seem of little matter that all of this was done under the pretense of a Christian and democratic society that pretended itself to be noble, godly, and just?

John Brown, among other devoted anti-slavery people, recognized the malignant nature of slavery in the U.S.A. Yet while he was not the only one to oppose slavery, he was the only one in his era with an actual, functional plan to move against slavery. In this sense, Brown was not literally a revolutionist: he was definitive in not seeking to overthrow the government itself and this he made clear in his papers and official documents. What he sought to do was to destroy slavery in the hopes of saving the nation, to excise it like some cancerous tumor from the body politic of his beloved country. The reason he sought to do so, in part, was because he had a real historical memory that entailed a consciousness of the travesty of slavery—something that typically his greatest critics, even today, do not demonstrate. It is no accident that the people who hate or dismiss John Brown the most in our culture tend to be the least inclined to acknowledge the expansive wickedness of chattel slavery in their nation’s history. Such people would rather re-murder John Brown by way of half-truths and distortions than own up to the truth of their nation’s (and sometimes their ancestors’) barbarity, cruelty, and criminality as it pertains to black chattel slavery.

Before a monument is built in remembrance of John Brown, there should be a monument built in memory of the enslaved people of this nation. Were Brown himself alive, he would be the first to say so. The failure of this nation to remember them, or to honor their hardships and unacknowledged and stolen labor, is a blot upon the record of this country.

"Captain" South Lynn Honored: He Restored John Brown's Maryland Headquarters

The Kennedy Farm has been restored by "Captain" Lynn
to resemble its appearance at the time Brown used it as
his base of operations prior to the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859

"Captain" South Lynn

HAGERSTOWN, MD. — (AP) The owner of the western Maryland farmhouse from which radical abolitionist John Brown launched his ill-fated raid on a federal arsenal in 1859 is being honored for his restoration work.  South Lynn, owner of a hardwood flooring business in Washington, received the John Frye Historical Preservation Award on Tuesday from the Washington County Commissioners.

Lynn bought the Kennedy Farmhouse near Dargan in the early 1970s and spent more than $100,000 in personal, state and federal funds restoring it.  The log structure was the staging area last October for a 150th anniversary commemoration of Brown's march with 18 followers to Harpers Ferry, W.Va.

Brown was captured and hanged for treason. The raid ignited passions that led to the start of the Civil War 18 months later.

Source: Restorer of John Brown site honored by Md. County.” San Francisco Examiner on line (May 26, 2010)

Visit the Kennedy Farmhouse website and even take a virtual tour!

John Brown Activist Martha Swan to Speak in Peterboro, NY, June 12

PETERBORO, N.Y. — Martha Swan, founding director of John Brown Lives! in Lake Placid, will bring reports from the North Country to the Smithfield Community Center in Peterboro on Saturday, June 12 at noon.

During her program “The World that Made John Brown — and The World Yet to be Made,” Swan will review the many activities held throughout 2009 commemorating John Brown and Harpers Ferry.

Swan initiated and produced the "Dreaming of Timbuctoo" Traveling Exhibition that forced a re-thinking of Gerrit Smith’s antebellum “scheme of justice and benevolence” championing black voting rights and the redistribution of land to 3,000 free black New Yorkers. That “scheme” led Brown to settle in the Adirondacks and choose it as his final resting place. The work of John Brown Lives! has been featured in the New York Times, on National Public Radio and in newspapers and other media outlets across the state.

The John Brown program is part of the National Abolition Hall of Fame & Museum (NAHOF) Open House at 5255 Pleasant Valley Road in Peterboro, which will be held during the 18th annual Peterboro Civil War Weekend Saturday and Sunday, June 12-13. Members of the Cabinet of Freedom for the Hall of Fame will be at the abolition exhibit and the newly-installed audio-visual exhibit on the inaugural meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society held Oct. 22, 1835.

Peterboro Civil War Weekend is an educational and fundraising event sponsored by the Town of Smithfield, the Smithfield Community Association, and private donors. Proceeds from the event support the preservation and promotion of the heritage of the Town of Smithfield.

During the event, Peterboro re-lives the period of the mid-1800s when the hamlet held national recognition because of Gerrit Smith’s Underground Railroad station, the visitations of famous abolitionists and the connection with John Brown that sparked the war between the states.

Peterboro sites are on the Heritage NY Underground Railroad Trail and on the National Park Service Network to Freedom Underground Railroad Trail. New exhibits at four sites will be open. Saturday, June 12 hours for the event are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, June 13 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults, $3 for ages 6–12, and free for children under 6. Admission to the to the special Civil War concert at 8 p.m. may be paid at the door. Parking is free.

For more information on Peterboro Civil War Weekend, call 315-684-9022 or visit: www.sca-peterboro.org

Source: "John Brown Program June 12 in Peterboro." Oneida Daily Dispatch online (May 21, 2010)

Osawatomie Notebook: Remembering John Henrie Kagi, John Brown’s Noble Lieutenant

John Brown was suffering from ague in the fall of 1858, and his trusted lieutenant, John Kagi, nursed him back to health in the Adair Cabin in Osawatomie.  Ague was a form of malaria that affected Osawatomie’s pioneers because the community was built near the Marais des Cygnes River, which means “marsh of the swans” in French, a marshy river in the 1850s. Mosquitoes bred in the marsh and infected the pioneers with the disease, which was a common illness in early Osawatomie.

Concerning Brown’s convalescence in the Adair Cabin, Kagi wrote to his sister and father: “I have just received your letter of 1st of Sept. — having just arrived in Lawrence. I left the vicinity of [Fort] Scott & [Chanton’s] Trading Post some five or six weeks since, but Old B. was again quite sick while on the road, so that we were compelled to lay up at Osawatomie for a month, during which time, by my taking care of him, I was taken down, but only for a week. I have now acquired a tolerable degree of health. It is quite sickly in all the southern part of the [Territory]. B. has now quite recovered.”

Despite Brown’s and Kagi’s illnesses, and the rigors and dangers of the conflict in Bleeding Kansas, Kagi’s resolve was not weakened, but rather strengthened.

“I am exceedingly sorry to [learn] of your destitute condition and of your failure of health,” Kagi wrote. “But I believe there are better times dawning, to my sight, at least. I cannot now laboring and waiting without present reward, for myself alone, it is a future reward for mankind and my dear father and sister. There can be no doubt of the reward in the end, or of the drawing very near of the success of a great cause which is to earn it. Few of my age have toiled harder or suffered more in this cause than I, yet I regret nothing that I have done; nor am I in any [discouraged] at the future. It is bright and good, and treads on to meet the hopeful with rapid strides.”

John Brown and his men believed that slavery was a malevolent stain on America’s moral and spiritual fabric, and they were willing to endure illness, fight and risk death to end it.

 John Brown was preparing for his Harper’s Ferry raid in 1858, and was gathering arms and support for his Virginia campaign. Kagi worked to gather arms and troops in Kansas Territory in 1858 and wrote: “Things are now quiet, generally. I am collecting arms & c. belonging to J.B. [so] that we may command them at any time. All difficulties in the way of our speculation have now disappeared or have been surmounted, and we only await the favorable season. Do not fear. [Did] you know detail, which I cannot give, you would look upon matters with a different eye. Not one of the most fearful and [cautious] who do know these have the least doubt of a speedy and certain success.”

John Brown and his men believed that slavery was a malevolent stain on America’s moral and spiritual fabric, and they were willing to endure illness, fight and risk death to end it. Osawatomie was the headquarters of Brown’s abolitionist crusade in Kansas Territory. 

Grady Atwater is the administrator of the John Brown State Historic Site in Osawatomie, Kansas

Source: Grady Atwater, “Kagie a loyal lieutenant at John Brown’s Side.”  Osawatomie Graphic online [Osawatomie, Kan.] (May 19, 2010)

Closed For Now: State Budget Delayed, Brown Farm Shut Down 

The late Charles (37X) Kenyatta, associate of Malcolm X, poses

in front of the John Brown farm house in April 1999 (photo by 

L. DeCaro Jr.) 

Beginning today (May 17), New York is shutting down or keeping closed dozens of parks and historic sites because of the budget crisis.  That means the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid, along with other New York state parks are being closed.

The John Brown Farm, located just outside Lake Placid, is usually open for tours and other programs by May 1 but will remain closed for now, according to caretaker Brendan Mills. "We were holding out hope that the budget would be passed and we could open, but they had to go ahead with that," Mills said.

Most employees at the affected parks and historic sites are being transferred to facilities that will remain open, although Mills said he will continue to work at John Brown Farm and the site's grounds will remain open.

Mills admits he's frustrated that he can't do his job, "I want to give tours to their public," he said.  "I want to do my job to the fullest. We're just waiting for a budget."

The state budget, due April 1, is more than six weeks late.

State Parks spokesman Dan Keefe said the 55 New York parks and historic sites that will be shut down or won't open for the season are the same ones Gov. David Paterson slated for closure or service reductions back in February. Although the Senate and Assembly have voted to restore $11.3 million in parks funding Paterson wanted to cut, lawmakers have yet to adopt a state budget. "So at this point we have no alternative but to go forward with the [closure] plan," Keefe said.

He said there is a chance some of the parks or historic sites could reopen for the season if state lawmakers adopt a budget that restores funding for them.

Based upon “State parks out of time as budget delay continues,” North Country Public Radio on line (May 17, 2010).

Khalid Akikiiki Gamba: "Let's Never Forget John Brown"

Last Sunday marked John Brown's 210th birthday. After enduring a month of states celebrating the Confederacy, let's hear it for abolitionist John Brown.

Brown was born on May 9, 1800. When he took over Harpers Ferry on Oct. 16, 1859, he was not only drawing attention to the crime of slavery, he was also trying to provide the spark for a slave rebellion. It was a direct challenge to slaveholders everywhere and to white supremacy.

And even after he was tried and convicted of treason against the state of Virginia, even as he awaited the gallows, he did not relent.

"You may dispose of me easily, but this question is still to be settled -- the Negro question -- the end of that is not yet," he said. Prophetically, he added: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

Brown's willingness to give his life for equality and freedom puts the lie to all the efforts to recast the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression" and to sugarcoat the honoring of the Confederacy with such slogans as "Heritage, Not Hate."

We blacks know in our bones that Confederate History Month is nothing more than the glorification of white supremacy. We shouldn't stand for it. Neither should any American who believes in the words of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal."

The glorification of the Confederacy is mostly about white resistance to black advances

Let's never forget John Brown. Let's never forget the other abolitionists, black and white, who campaigned against slavery. Let's make sure that their stories are told in our national parks and on the markers and monuments and at the battle sites that serve as tourist attractions for Civil War buffs.

The glorification of the Confederacy is mostly about white resistance to black advances, white resentment at the erosion of white privilege. It's been that way since the 1880s and 1890s.

We should not forget that even during enslavement and the war people of African descent fought back. There were the five black men among Brown's raiding party -- Lewis Leary, Dangerfield Newby, Shields Green, Osborne Perry Anderson and John Anthony Copeland Jr. -- along with the 16 white men who followed Brown to Harpers Ferry.

The fight to protect white privilege goes on. We have to fight back by being honest about the history of our republic. And we have to tell all our stories.

Khalid Akikiiki Gamba (a.k.a. Kevin Alexander Gray) is the author of the recently published books,  Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics and The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.

Source: Kevin Alexander Gray, "Keep fighting white privilege.” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on line (May 16, 2010)