Archetypes:
Louis Ransom's Portrait Paradigm: The Story Behind Ransom's John Brown on His Way to Execution

by Dot Willsey*

In 1857 an obscure portrait painter named Louis Ransom opened a studio on busy Genesee Street in downtown Utica. Three years later Ransom would stun his friends and others from Central New York when he completed his life-sized and life-like depiction of John Brown being led to the gallows.

Warren F. Broderick, Archivist Emeritus New York State Archives, will present an illustrated program on Ransom and his famous painting at 1 p.m. Sunday, June 12 at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro during the 19th Annual Peterboro Civil War Weekend.

The landmark depiction of Brown on the Charlestown court house steps became the favorite image of Brown among abolitionists, in part because of Ransom’s controversial inclusion of Brown “kissing the Negro baby.” The painting’s history following its completion was most noteworthy. Its brief exhibition by P.T. Barnum in New York City in 1863 led in part to the onset of the infamous draft riots. The scene on the court house steps in 1859 is now known primarily from two lithographed versions of this painting created by the firm of Currier and Ives. The monumental painting itself received shabby treatment from Oberlin College and is believed to have been destroyed.

"Its brief exhibition by P.T. Barnum in New York City in 1863 led in part to the onset of the infamous draft riots."

The son of a millwright in rural Herkimer County, Louis Ransom (1831-1926) executed many portraits in his long career and some classical and religious tableaux as well. This Renaissance man was also a debater, civic leader, writer, and an inventor who first proposed a self-propelled street car. During his life Ransom resided in four states; in New York he called Salisbury, Little Falls, Utica, Lansingburgh, and Stratford his home.

John Brown On His Way to Execution,
1863 lithograph of the Ransom
portrait, no longer extant

Research conducted in a number of original sources has revealed much new information on Louis Ransom and his work. In a collection of family photographs in the Herkimer County Historical Society a previously unknown signed carte de visite of John Brown, bearing a cryptic inscription, was discovered. Determining how this photograph was obtained by the artist, and deciphering the meaning and origin of the inscription, constitutes another intriguing aspect of the Louis Ransom story.

Except for brief entries in artist dictionaries and footnotes in John Brown biographies, now for the first time the story of Louis Ransom and his master work can be told. Louis Ransom’s studio in Utica was directly across from the asylum in Utica where Gerrit Smith was being treated in December 1859. There is reason to believe that there may be a connection to Smith and the distribution of photographs made by the family after Brown’s funeral.

At the June 12 program Broderick plans to give a brief general overview of Ransom’s life and career and concentrate on the John Brown painting–how and why he created it, and its complicated history leading to its destruction. Broderick will also deal with the discovery of the photo in Herkimer and how Ransom would have acquired it, as well as a discussion of the elements found in the panting itself, such as the kissing incident. Broderick will conclude with an analysis of the short-term and lasting effects caused by the painting and its exhibition, and legacy left behind by Ransom.

Warren Broderick is an historian and archivist by profession and is involved in art history, researching artists associated with Troy and Rensselaer County, New York, between 1800 an 1950. He lives in Lansingburgh a few blocks from the place where Ransom maintained a studio which held the John Brown masterpiece between 1862 and 1874. He is co-author of Pottery Works (1995) and numerous journal articles on local history, specifically relating to history American ceramics, early American literature and folklore, regional history, and Native American studies. He is Editor of a new edition of Granville Hicks’s Small Town (1946), reissued in 2004 by Fordham University Press. He is also active in land preservation, geographic information systems, and natural resource protection in Rensselaer County.

The Annual Peterboro Civil War Weekend is an educational and fundraising event sponsored by the Town of Smithfield, the Smithfield Community Association, and private donors. The 12th U.S. Infantry hosts the military and domestic encampments. 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.

Saturday, June 11 hours are 10 am – 5 pm, and Sunday, June 12 from 10 am – 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. Saturday may be paid at the door. Parking is free. For more info, contact 315.684.9022.  www.civilwarweekend.sca-peterboro.org

--Dot Willsey is the President of the National Abolition Hall of Fame, Peterboro, N.Y.

Source: Dot Willsey, “Famous Painting Legacy Unfolds,” Madison County Courier [Chittenango, N.Y.], 30 May 2011

From the Field--
FARMER MAXSON’S NEWEL POST: A PIECE OF HISTORY
by H. Scott Wolfe*

I revisited the spot last week, and it remains a difficult place to find for the uninitiated. I speak of the site of the farm of William Maxson.  I approached the community of Springdale, Iowa from the east, traveling upon Cedar County Road F44. This bucolic thoroughfare is rather grandiosely called “The Herbert Hoover Highway,” for it continues on to West Branch, the birth and burial place of our 31st President.

Springdale itself encompasses no more than the equivalent of three city blocks…perhaps thirty residences, old and new. A squat United Methodist Church is its only public building. The 21st century whizzes by on Interstate 80, within sight to the south, while the village appears much as it was described in the 1890s: “A quiet retreat from the turmoil of money making, political strife and daily papers.” Today it seems to exist as a mere tree-shaded interlude, before pressing on the gas toward the Hoover sites and perhaps a lunch of “Herb’s Heaper” pizza at a West Branch tavern.
No clues emanate from Springdale to reveal its storied past as a staunch Quaker bastion of abolitionism…and the training ground for the soldiers of John Brown’s Provisional Army of the United States.

APPROACHING THE MAXSON FARMSITE: 

The Maxson monument is beneath the trees 

in the left distance. Photo by H. Scott Wolfe

Turning on County Road X40, I proceeded north between expansive cornfields, the tiny seedlings just beginning to appear the faintest green. Amidst the field to my left, I could see the cluster of conifer trees which mark the location of the Springdale Friends Cemetery. Here are buried a host of people whose lives touched that of John Brown, their stories of stirring times and famous men seemingly present in the somber whisper of the prairie winds.

And then back to the east on 280th Street, an urban-sounding name for an unpaved country road…its only pedestrians being an occasional ground squirrel or woodchuck. No matter what your speed, a gritty rooster-tail of rock dust chases behind your vehicle. On the left, another cemetery…this one prophetically named “North Liberty.” Its tallest monument is barely visible from the road. At its base is inscribed MAXSON.

Upon reaching Hayes Avenue, I again turned north…more dust, and cattle eye me from an overgrazed pasture to my left. And finally, a crude driveway leads to a disordered collection of farm buildings…five silver grain bins, a metal pole barn, a wooden machine shed, the skeletal remains of an old windmill, muddy corrals churned by innumerable hooves. Typical Iowa farm country…cows and corn.  But what is concealed in the tall grass by the roadside? Next to the metal post displaying fire number “1779.” A hint of red granite is barely visible beneath a robust sycamore tree. At the risk of chiggers and voracious mosquitoes, I parted the grass stalks to reveal a bronze plaque. A plaque which reads:

“HERE WAS THE HOME OF WILLIAM MAXON [sic], A STATION ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, WHERE JOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE RECRUITED AND TRAINED 11 MEN FOR THE ATTACK ON HARPER’S FERRY”

And poetic words from Whittier:

“…LET SOME POOR SLAVE-MOTHER WHOM I HAVE STRIVEN TO FREE, WITH HER CHILDREN, FROM THE GALLOWS-STAIR PUT UP A PRAYER FOR ME….”

THE NEGLECTED MAXSON MONUMENT, 

May 21, 2011. Photo by H. Scott Wolfe

This neglected marker, erected by the Iowa Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1924, reveals that this is no ordinary farm yard. This is hallowed ground…a crucial link in the chain of events that led inexorably to Harper’s Ferry.

It was 1839 when William Maxson and Ebenezer Gray became the first to settle these fertile uplands west of the Cedar River. A decade later, Maxson replaced his log cabin with a substantial six-room farmhouse. Built in the “cottage style,” it was “a one-story structure, 24 x 38, with a roomy attic, and an annex on the north side, 16x 20. The wood work was of native walnut, with hand carved pieces at the door and window frames, and with lath split from the native oak.” The house was constructed of stone, covered with proportioned amounts of gravel, sand and lime…and was often noted as the oldest “grout” or “cement” house in the State of Iowa.

THE MAXSON MONUMENT IN BETTER DAYS, ca. 1990

The Gray farmhouse, seen in the background, has since 

been torn down and replaced by a cornfield. 

Collection of H. Scott Wolfe

William Maxson himself, said a chronicler, was “endowed with great natural ability,” was “a deep thinker,” and “was fearless in the expression of his views.” He was a stalwart lover of liberty and his fellow man, “not alone in word, but in deed.” Of Quaker ancestry, he was not, in fact, a practitioner of that nonviolent creed. So when in late December 1857, two covered wagons carrying ten of John Brown’s disciples rumbled into his farm yard, William Maxson had no qualms about sheltering these “well tried men…all of them pledged to stand by the work.”

John Brown had recruited the men in Kansas during the previous autumn. They had rendezvoused at Tabor, in southwest Iowa, with the intention of traveling eastward to Ashtabula County, Ohio…where they would be given “the benefit of a winter’s training in military matters.” December was a bitterly cold month, as the party literally walked across the snowy prairies, sleeping in the wagons or abandoned buildings along the way.

On the 29th, Brown and his comrades reached Springdale. He had hoped to sell his teams and wagons, and then proceed via the railroad from nearby West Liberty. But money was tight, the effects of the Panic of 1857 extending to the furthest boundaries of the nation. So he decided to board, and train, his men at that antislavery enclave, while he continued eastward to meet with his financial and moral supporters. And William Maxson, his farm conveniently isolated and his freethinking philosophy amenable to military training, was willing to accommodate the recruits at the “reasonable” rate of $1.50 each, per week.

A REUNION AT THE MAXSON HOUSE, ca. 1900

Original photographic postcard in collection of H. Scott Wolfe

The names of these men are familiar to those who know both the Chatham Constitutional Convention and the Harper’s Ferry raid: Brown’s son Owen; Aaron D. Stevens; John H. Kagi; John E. Cook; Richard Realf; Charles W. Moffett; Luke F. Parsons; Charles P. Tidd; William H. Leeman…Kansas veterans all. And Richard Richardson, an escaped slave from Lexington, Missouri. Four additional men were to be recruited in Springdale during that historic winter: the Quaker brothers Edwin and Barclay Coppoc, and Steward Taylor and George B. Gill, both residents of West Liberty.

A regular routine was soon instituted, consisting of “study, military exercise and labor.” Aaron Stevens, the notorious “Colonel Whipple” of Kansas (and a cashiered soldier formerly of the First United States Dragoons), was appointed drillmaster. His text was the “Manual of the Patriotic Volunteer,” which had been assembled by the English adventurer Hugh Forbes…the man first hired by Brown to provide military instruction. There were sessions of gymnastics and company maneuvers…along with sham battles and drilling (“each man was provided with a hickory drill sword”) in the meadow to the east of the farmhouse. One observer noted: “The passer-by often looked with wonder at the uncommon spectacle in that quiet, peaceful neighborhood of Quakers, who preached and practiced only the peaceful arts.”

THE MAXSON HOUSE IN DECLINE: The 

collapsing east facade.  Photo taken Feb. 16, 1934 

by the Historic American Buildings Survey

Tuesday and Friday evenings were regularly set aside for debates. The men created a “mock legislature,” which governed the mythical “State of Topeka.” Stevens and Kagi were the “lions” of these occasions, sometimes arguing throughout the night. Bills were introduced, referred, and voted upon. One session involved the creation of a State Seal, which was described as “a cannon mounted on a carriage, an African standing on the cannon holding in his right hand a drawn sword, supporting in the left a banner with the inscription ‘Justice To All Mankind.’” At another, on a less serious note, John Cook was formally censured for “hugging girls in the Springdale Legislature.”

Other long winter evenings were devoted to visiting the neighbors and “flirting with the pretty Quaker girls,” who considered the men “an important addition to their quiet society.” Tidd scandalized one…and Charley Moffett met the woman he would someday marry.  Cook and Realf, both “of a literary turn,” lectured at nearby schoolhouses.  And long discussions were held in the Maxson parlor. Owen Brown’s diary lists an eclectic assortment of topics such as: the definition of sin; the philosophy of Northern lights; the good or bad effects of tobacco, opium and adulterated liquors; the state of the national treasury; Nicaragua; Shakespeare; mesmerism; Thomas Paine; the commerce of Asia and Japan; how to sight rifles; and the chief end of man’s existence.

John Brown returned to Springdale on April 27, 1858…and the men departed for Ohio, Canada and their ultimate date with history. “Before quitting the home of Wm. Maxson, where they had spent so long a time, each of Brown’s men wrote his name in pencil on the wall of the parlor, where the writing could at a time quite recent be seen by the interested traveler.” Yes, the Maxson farmhouse continued to have a history all its own.

THE MAXSON HOUSE SITE TODAY: 

now occupied by a farm machinery shed. 

(Photo by H. Scott Wolfe, May 21, 2011)

I first visited Springdale in the early 1980s, my only guide being a crude map which had been printed in an old Iowa historical journal. I walked the two cemeteries and then anxiously set off to find the site of the Maxson farm. Having previously consulted the sources, I was aware of the existence of the 1924 DAR monument…and knew that the house itself had been torn down in 1938. But I needed to “walk the ground,” and determine exactly where that noble residence had once proudly stood.
Once arrived, the scene was quite different from today. Yes, the same odd assortment of farm buildings lined the muddy drive…but the red granite monument sat, not in a welter of weeds and grass, but in the well-manicured front lawn of a substantial two-story farmhouse. I knocked on the door, hoping to gain information on the location of the old Maxson place…but there was no answer. Temporarily stymied, I then thought of Herbert Hoover.

West Branch, Iowa, the Quaker town five miles to the west, is also the site of the Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. Could their archives contain local history materials? Perhaps dealing with the neighboring villages of Springdale and Pedee? It was worth the attempt, and I soon found myself conducting my very first research at such an august institution.

It was a rude awakening. I was virtually strip searched, conducted to a seat, and allowed the use of a single pencil and sheet of paper. A camera swung precariously above, making sure that I did not run off with any of Herb and Lou’s love notes. But the archivist was exceedingly friendly and helpful, even providing me with a folder specifically dealing with John Brown. It contained an article about the demolition of the Maxson house…some interesting images…and a copy of a letter written by George Gill, one of the Springdale recruits. It was a productive visit.

While departing, I inquired whether there might be someone in West Branch who had first hand recollections of the Maxson place. After all, the year 1938 was not THAT remote. The response was instantaneous: “Why, Margery Gray. Would you like me to call her?”

Within ten minutes I was firmly implanted on the couch at the Gray residence on North 6th Street. The place was the prototype of the Grandma’s house…Victorian clutter, a wealth of handmade quilts…and that unmistakable odor, a blend of baked cookies and cold cream.

“So you are interested in John Brown,” said my hostess.
“Yes I am,” I responded, “particularly the old Maxson farmhouse north of Springdale. Do you remember it?”
“Very well,” she said, “it was my late husband’s homeplace. He helped to tear it down back in the thirties.”
Well, that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. But then I settled in for what can be termed Margery’s Soliloquy.

In 1890 the Maxson farm had been purchased by James W. Gray, a direct descendant of Ebenezer Gray the old settler…and Margery’s father-in-law. Her husband, Robert, had been born on the farm in 1896, in the very house I had knocked upon earlier in the day.  During their residency, the old Maxson house had been the scene of frequent reunions, both of the Gray and Maxson families, and of surviving veterans of the Kansas struggle. An account of an 1898 event quickens the imagination:

As I mingled today with the surviving friends of John Brown on ground made sacred by the tread of the feet of martyrs forty years ago, I heard the recital of their recollections of the little band who here prepared for the tragic enterprise that was to shake slavery’s hold and leave a permanent record upon all American history and this particular portion of Cedar County…The exercises were held in front of the old Maxson house among the great cedars planted by its builder nearly fifty years ago. The stars and stripes waved above us; portraits of old John Brown, Wm. Maxson, Edwin and Barclay Coppock looked down on us from the trees; (and) on the table were the Sharp’s rifle and revolver carried by Coppock in the Harper’s Ferry campaign.

But as the years passed, the house began to deteriorate. The curious, particularly the relic hunters, began to weaken it even more. Wrote one Cedar County historian: “The relic hunter is making sad havoc of what remains…The old house yet suffers when some visitor from far away is determined to carry off an entire window casing to make for himself a cane. The choicest of black walnut was used to finish the windows and doors and these casings furnish the best of souvenirs….”

By the late 1930s, the Gray family became concerned about the structure’s dangerous condition. So, despite the fact that the State of Iowa had actually approved a plan for the preservation and restoration of the house, the teetering remains were pulled down and hauled away. The cellar, the old “slave tunnel” of Underground Railroad lore, was utilized as a dumping ground.  Today, the house site is occupied by a wooden machine shed…filled with decaying equipment and the bright green and yellow of John Deere tractors.

“So your husband actually helped to take it down?,” I asked. “Yes indeed, let me show you something.” And Margery disappeared into the next room. She returned with what can only be described as the world’s ugliest lamp. The stem appeared to be composed of a turned piece of wood…trailing a long electrical cord…and topped with a 1950s patterned lampshade which could only be described as of the “delirium tremens school” of design.  “And what is that?,” I inquired. “This is the only thing Bob kept from the Maxson place. He made it himself from a piece of the walnut newel post of the stairway.”

And indeed it was, as I closely examined it. It was turned walnut, with a pair of light colored inlays…each a representation of the Maxson house itself. “Someone in Bob’s family put those inlays in,” she said. And around the base was inscribed: “John Brown 1857-8.” That historic winter.

I was flabbergasted, but recovered quickly. Having been born and raised in a capitalist country, I phrased my question carefully: “Mrs. Gray, I came to Cedar County to study the Maxson farm and view the site for myself. I had no idea that such an artifact as this existed before your kind invitation for me to come and visit. But I have to ask you, (DEEP BREATH) would you consider selling your lamp?”

Puzzlement. I rushed with the follow-up: “I will offer you $X for it…AND I will take you out to the best steakhouse in West Branch, Iowa.” (BREATH NOW BEING HELD) “Oh, it’s doing nothing but gather dust. And in that you are so interested in the Maxsons, you may buy it,” she responded. (GREAT SIGH OF RELIEF)

FARMER MAXSON'S NEWEL POST  

with image of William Maxson. 

Photo by Nancy Wolfe

So Mrs. Gray and I had a copious dinner at one of those classic Iowa “cook your own steak” restaurants. And when I left West Branch for home, I made one more trip out to the site of the Maxson farm. With the newel post occupying the passenger seat, I must say that this visit was more closely related to a religious pilgrimage…a fragment of the “True Cross” at my side.

In my notebook I had a copy of a poem written by Lydia Maxson, a daughter-in-law of William Maxson. And I paused to read these lines from "The Old Gravel House":

“A hero with his God-sent band,
Unheeding threats or frowns,
Across thy threshold planned and wrought,
And gained a martyr’s crown.”
“And thou, old house, that in thy prime,
Saw freedom’s dawning day,
No fears of clanking chains and strife,
Shall mock at thy decay.”
“Old House! We’re standing in thy shade,
That shadow made sublime,
Through solemn years and memories,
Of strange and wondrous times.”

H. Scott Wolfe

* H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois, Public Library District. We are pleased to introduce him as a correspondent and contributor, noting his many years of grassroots research on John Brown, the Harper's Ferry raiders, and related themes.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I have seen many items fashioned from the wood of the Maxson farmhouse, from a set of clothing buttons to the case of a grandfather’s clock. A complete door can be viewed today in the permanent collection of the Civil War Museum in Kenosha, Wisconsin…a door panel, in the small historical museum in West Branch, Iowa.


SUGGESTED SOURCES:


Irving B. Richman, John Brown Among the Quakers. Des Moines: Historical Department of Iowa, 1894.
Jeannette Mather Lord. “John Brown – They Had a Concern,” West Virginia History, Vol. XX, No. 3 (April 1959).
John Brown in Cedar County. Tipton, Iowa: Cedar County Historical Society, Tipton, Iowa, n.d.

In Response--
Jean Libby on Dennis Frye; An Apology from Me

Along with her response to yesterday's blog entry, "Gods, Generals, and Park Historians,"my dear friend Jean Libby has also sent me an informative and helpful criticism, which I post below. For the record, where I stand to be corrected, or if I have been unfair, I would not hesitate to either admit my error or apologize. It is fundamentally a contradiction to use this John Brown blog in a manner unfair or unjust, given the character and conduct of the Old Man himself.

Response from Jean Libby via email, 31 May 2011

Dear Lou -- here are the basic points of my comments for your article about Dennis Frye.

1. Dennis was born and raised in western Maryland, in Washington County, near the Kennedy Farm. He and his family are members of the Church of the Brethren, called Dunkers, an antislavery and pacifist people who often face prejudice because they retain their beliefs and culture of independence. John Brown was welcomed by the Brethren and invited to speak at their church.

2. Although I agree with Brown's motives for the raid, these motives transcended his actions and his failure. He could not control his men, who went against orders and shot two men running away in fright when confronted. The first man to die by the hand of Brown's raiders was Hayward Shepherd, a free black man. He suffered terribly all night from the gunshot wound in his back.

3. I believe the failure of Brown's raid and arming the local slaves with Harpers Ferry rifles was caused by his indecision after the murder of Hayward Shepherd and the lack of expected support by abolitionists. These are the same abolitionists that the white southerners expected would soon follow. According to Boyd Stutler, the local blacks also expected their arrival and were setting signal fires on the farms and escaping in substantial numbers. They did not believe that John Brown would start a liberation movement without backup.

4. It is truly unfair to call Dennis Frye unqualified as a John Brown scholar. For as long as I have known him (which is since 1978, when he was a history student) he has filled a part-time position at the Western Maryland room at the Washington County Free Library which has an extensive primary and published resource collection on the John Brown raid. His father, John Frye, developed that collection. John Frye is still active at the library and giving tours about the locations of the events at nearly age eighty. I consider John Frye my greatest teacher, and mentor. We do not share the same viewpoint about John Brown. We do have the same viewpoint about how history should be done, the importance of the understanding of the terrain and the inclusion of what everyone is doing.

5. You are correct that the National Park Service is anti-Brown. This can be seen in their new handbook of the raid, which may have been what you were reading in the bookshop in 2009. This perspective goes much higher in NPS than Dennis Frye. If you look at that book, you will not find any named editors or authors. I believe that many of the interpreters at Harpers Ferry do not have this perspective. Some have it worse. I also believe that my regular presence doing research has changed this anti-Brown perspective somewhat through the years. We respect each other.

6. Helping the documentary film company Kenner Films make "John Brown's Holy War" is not evidence of sharing their perspective. I helped them too, a conservative estimate of my contribution is 80 to 100 hours, mostly telephone calls when I was on break at my evening history classes. They expected me to answer detailed questions without consulting any files, and they did not want to read anything themselves. They asked for my help as someone who understood the raid, and John Brown. They said they were representing PBS and American Experience. That is surely a good reputation for documentary presentation. I was told that I couldn't see the final product until release because of academic freedom. Nevertheless if you are going to blame Dennis Frye for the final product then you had better blame me too.

====

My response:

First, Jean, thank you for intervening with insight and correction. However, I'm afraid that my approach is perhaps worse than I realized due to confusion and failure to check my facts, which is sometimes the outcome of hastily done efforts and work done out of frustration.

Let me be clear that not only was I wrong about Mr. Frye, but I was mistaken as to his character and work, certainly in the greater part of what I wrote. I am very regretful of this error.

As you have written, we agree that the National Park Service people are anti-Brown. Another knowledgeable reader has also written: "I too have overheard tourist-directed orations at Harpers Ferry NHP...and, for me, the "unstudied prejudice and bias" is a perpetual given."

However, much of my focus on Mr. Frye was unjust and erroneous, not only because of the points you bring to light in his favor, but also because he is NOT the National Park Service person who aided Kenneth Carroll in his infamous psychological postmortem on the Old Man. That man happened to be one Bruce Noble, a NPS "historian." Although, as you say, you--and probably I--do not agree with Mr. Frye regarding John Brown, he has been unfairly characterized by me in this blog and I both regret it and apologize for it. I am especially regretful because Mr. Frye is from the Brethren movement, which is a tradition related to the congregation and church which I pastor (Brethren in Christ).  

Having owned up to my error, let me therefore make the following statement:

1. I apologize to Mr. Frye and my readers for the inaccurate and unfair characterization of Mr. Frye found on this blog. I will pull the article and edit it and keep an admission of error and an apology for the original version. This is only fair.

2. I sustain my fairly harsh judgment of the National Park Service at Harper's Ferry. I do not think they deal justly or truthfully with the Old Man and I regret that such people are in control of information to the extent that they have poisoned the thinking of many visitors, tourists, and students over many years so that a warped and prejudiced anti-Brown sentiment continues to be advocated by so-called experts.

3. While I do not doubt that the response of Virginians toward the raid is historically important and indicative of the heightened paranoia of slave masters in the South, I do not agree with Mr. Frye that the Harper's Ferry raid initiated the Southern "reaction" in light of Kansas. Historians have wrongly marked the "beginning" of the Civil War as a result of the Harper's Ferry raid, and Southerners have historically benefited from this by pointing to the raid as a justification for opposing "northern aggression." In fact, the South was always the aggressor, and Kansas proves this point. John Brown was, in fact, responding to Southern aggression and the South's reaction to the raid cannot be properly assessed without also taking into consideration the militancy and preparations for war that preceded the Southern response to Harper's Ferry.

4. You're absolutely correct that neither you nor Mr. Frye (nor Margaret Washington, for that matter) should be held accountable for that dreadful  production, "John Brown's Holy War." When we consult for films, etc., we really do not know how our input will be used.  However, we should review what you said and what Mr. Frye said in that documentary.

John Brown in the News--
Gods, Generals, and Civil War Military Historians

On May 21, 2011, the State of Virginia convened its "2011 Signature Conference" on the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission at Virginia Tech. To no surprise, the conference centered upon military strategy, which is he overwhelming theme in discussions of the Civil War throughout the U.S. The reason for this is not too hard to discern: many Civil War buffs, North and South, are not interested in the politics of the Civil War because the politics of the Civil War are bound up with the “hard stuff” of U.S. history. To engage in a truthful investigation of the Civil War means the historian has to engage issues of racism, justice, and the actual realities of a white supremacist culture (and subcultures) that directly or indirectly profited from the literal blood, sweat, and tears of four millions of human beings reduced to chattel by law.

Civil War: Game versus Reality

The realities of the Civil War are just too hard and often too embarrassing to engage--especially for Southern scholars, not a few of which continue to evade the truth of their forebears’ injustice by claiming the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, but rather that the North had conducted a “war of aggression.” Of course, we know the North did not enter the war to “free the slaves,” and the North in large part had no more love for black people than did the South. But the reality is that the Union and the Confederacy were conflicted over slavery and how to manage it. Southerners wanted to manage slavery to their maximum economic advantage, including expansion into new territory and widening the "slave space" and its profits. Lincoln wanted to manage it by limiting it to its established domain and then hopefully phasing it out over a period of time while perhaps deporting black people altogether. These were the two contrasting political visions that entered the theater of civil war in 1861.  Black freedom was a concern only for black people and a small number of white allies, none of which had any direct impact on antebellum policies.

In contrast, most people today who claim an interest in the Civil War today are focused upon military strategy. The military narrative is always fascinating and has a worthy place in the labor of historians. Unfortunately, in the case of the Civil War, however, military history has become the means by which many can evade the political realities of the antebellum, war, and post-war chapters of U.S. history. To Status quo "Civil War military history" does not ask the hard questions about the political and moral questions behind the war, but tends to glorify and sensationalize “the blue and the gray.”

Civil War Military History often
focuses on the war as game, without
observing the principles at stake

"Surely, the Bitterness of Death is Passed"

Civil War military history enables the stylization and glorification of the Grants as well as the Lees, regardless of their political views.   As such, popular Civil War military history provides a sterile, amoral way of viewing the war.  It is sterile and amoral because it offends no one and allows everyone to sustain personal loyalties without actually revisiting the meaning of the war for the nation at the time.  By rehearsing army movements and battles and by romanticizing the troops and their leaders, Civil War history becomes a sacred football game where both sides were “the good guys.”  In this way, we can feel for both the Blue and the Gray because they were all just good soldiers fighting in the name of God and conscience for what they believed was right.  "Surely the bitterness of death is passed." In such a context, the morality of history is replaced by sentimentality: every general is a hero and every soldier is a martyr, no matter what they represented to four million enslaved Africans.  Of course, the "football" side of Civil War military history is most pronounced in the arena of Civil War re-enactors--men who delight in dressing up as soldiers and recreating the battles of the war in mock conflict on the field.  They are the most sincere and "practical" expression of what scholars and historians do in texts, roundtables, and conferences on Civil War military history year after year.  Yet when all is said and done, none of this has added light or understanding to our collective interest as a nation regarding the obscene violence and wickedness that possessed the soul of this nation under the name of chattel slavery.  No wonder so many scholars cannot understand John Brown.  They have no heart even to begin such a study.

Gods, Generals, and Park Historians

John Brown scholars who have visited Harper’s Ferry have good reason to believe that the pronounced view of the National Park staff is hostile toward the Old Man. In 2009, I spent a couple of hours (due to a glitch in my appointment schedule) waiting in the Harper’s Ferry guest center/book store, where the tour buses make regular stops to pick up and drop off tourists. While I sat, thumbing through some books and materials on display, I listened with interest to the leading voice among the Park staff as he provided orientation and information to inquiring visitors. Frankly, I was appalled at the unstudied prejudice and bias that came across that counter.  I have come to the conclusion that the Harper’s Ferry National Park people must have something of a love/hate feeling for Brown. They love him because he has given Harper’s Ferry its reason to exist. John Brown is their bread-and-butter.

Dennis E. Frye

In the case of the 2011 Signature Conference, perhaps the most likely person to be pressed into service for a talk on John Brown was Dennis E. Frye.  Mr. Frye is no small fry in the world of Civil War military history (pun intended). Most notably, Frye is the Chief Historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, and he has lent his view of Brown to a number of efforts involving Brown, and has led a national battlefield preservation organization that has since become the Civil War Trust. He has authored a number of books and many articles, and his most recent book is Antietam Revealed. As a specialist on the Civil War, Frye has served as a battlefield guide for National Geographic, the Smithsonian Institution, and has contributed to many academic and scholarly forums. He is has also been a “talking head” on television documentaries and series, most notably as the associate producer and historical consultant for the movie “Gods and Generals.”

The Southern Perspective Revisited

Artifacts versus Facts

Mr. Frye deserves every respect and salutation for his successful career and contributions, but I do take issue to some points of his presentation as reported in the May 30th edition of the Kingsport, Tennessee, Times News on line, Mr. Frye addressed the Virginia Tech conference along the lines of a Southern view of John Brown’s raid. This is a worthwhile theme, yet one wonders to what extent Mr. Frye has not only captured the sentiment of antebellum Virginians, but also manifested it in his attitude and analysis of Brown. Unfortunately, a transcript of his speech is not available, only a brief excerpt by the Times News. Citing the beginning of the war, he portrayed the Southern perception that the South “had been assaulted, the south had been invaded, the south had been raped,” and that “the worst of the worst that the United States had to offer, in the opinion of a southerner, actually came to Virginia manifested in human form. The abolitionist John Brown." After reading Brown’s famous last written words ("I John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood"), Frye declared that

For Virginians who had had their citizens murdered in the John Brown raid, who had had their property stolen in the John Brown raid, who had had their state invaded by abolitionist [sic], black and white, in the John Brown raid, armed men coming into Virginia, attacking a defenseless town in the night, on a Sunday, those words of John Brown had nothing to do with prophecy with regards to slavery. But had everything to do about rousing the blood of the south.

And again:

For a Southerner[,] the crimes were perpetrated by abolitionist[s]. For a southerner the crimes were the conspirators who supported John Brown and indeed if there was to be blood shed let it happen. “We will welcome you to our soil with bloody hands and hospitable graves,” is how James L. Kemper would report to the Virginia assembly in the aftermath of the John Brown raid. So indeed they prepared for blood, they did prepare for possible war. We today refer to it as Homeland Security. And in fact that's what southerners thought and expected. More John Brown's [sic], more abolitionist, more invaders.

I read these remarks as going beyond “objectivity” on the part of Mr. Frye, who portrays the feelings and sentiments of antebellum Southerners--especially Virginians, toward John Brown.  Evidently, he is also opining at to the meaning of John Brown.  By making an association between antebellum preparations for war and present day Homeland Security, Mr. Frye is making a problematic alignment of the pro-slavery argument (which demanded that Brown be equated with a murderous brigand) with “our way of life” (to use former President Bush’s terms).  And what was “our way of life” to antebellum Virginians?  Was it not frank white supremacy—“democracy” for white people, especially white property owners?  Was it not a "democracy" premised on the enslavement of African people—theft of their labor, possession of their bodies, and the right to do so for as long as the slave master desired?  Is this really a comparison that Mr. Frye wants to make without some kind of qualification or differentiation?   Doesn't Mr. Frye realize that to invoke terrorism and "Homeland Security" without acknowledging that slavery itself was premised on the threat of terrorism is itself an indictment of his perspective?

The Southern "War of Aggression" began in Kansas,
long before the fall of Fort Sumter

Genesis: Harper's Ferry or Kansas?

Another error of Mr. Frye’s presentation is the passing reference, “So indeed they prepared for blood, they did prepare for possible war.” The idea that Southern political leadership did not “prepare for possible war” until the John Brown raid is a fallacy. Brown himself knew what many Northerner leaders knew--namely, that the leaders of the South had been preparing for civil conflict for years prior to the Harper’s Ferry raid. Recall the early 1859 "interview" that journalist William Addison Phillips had with Brown in Kansas, as recounted in a trustworthy 1879 article in The Atlantic Monthly:

[John Brown] told me that a war was at that very moment contemplated in the cabinet of President Buchanan; that for years the army had been carefully arranged, as far as it could be, on a basis of Southern power; that arms and the best of the troops were being concentrated, so as to be under control of its interests if there was danger of having to surrender the government; that the secretary of the navy was then sending our vessels away on long cruises, so that they would not be available, and that the treasury would be beggared before it got into Northern hands. All this has a strangely prophetic look to me now; then it simply appeared incredible, or the dream and vagary of a man who had allowed one idea to carry him away. I told him he surely was mistaken, and had confounded everyday occurrences with treacherous designs.

"No," he said, and I remember this part distinctly, -- "no, the war 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."

The "Southern" view of
Brown has long been
the conventional view
among U.S. historians

As Brown observed, the bellicose posture of the South was already quite evident in the mid-1850s, when a great deal of Southern money and manpower was poured into the Kansas Territory. In fact, the notion that the Civil War “began” at Harper’s Ferry is the Southern perspective itself, and this is the view that Mr. Frye conveys since he is evidently a retooled antebellum Southerner in heart.

Quite to the contrary of the Southern thesis as exemplified by Mr. Frye’s interpretation, the Civil War actually began in the Kansas territory in 1855-56. Likewise, the initial aggressors were Southerners, not Northerners, nor the Union itself. Militant pro-slavery forces poured in from the depths of the South, across the Missouri state line and into the Territory. This is the genesis of the Civil War in terms of military history or any history. To suggest that John Brown was a de facto terrorist whose actions merited some kind of antebellum “Homeland Security” is patently wrong.

"Principles of Right and Wrong"

Historians are human and we all bring our presuppositions to bear upon the work before us. None of us can attain to complete objectivity and none of us can escape error, just as none can escape criticism. Yet there is a difference between history that is shaped by presupposition and human error and history that is shaped by prejudice.  This was precisely the point that Brown made to Phillips in 1859, that the crisis facing the nation was a question of "principles of right and wrong," though politicians and leaders had become "besotted" with questions of power and pride, national and regional. The same applies to how historians portray that terrible epoch of slavery and war.

This is a revised version of the article originally appearing under this title.  In the original, yours truly drew some unstudied and unfair conclusions, and in this version I have endeavored not only to correct  matters of error, but to make clear my regret for any undo offense created in the process.  Although I certainly differ with Mr. Frye, he was wrongly characterized in the original article.  The Old Man would be the first to rebuke me were I to fail to make this right.  Readers may note my follow up article dated 1 June.--LD

From the Field--
IN SEARCH OF MOSES HALLOCK

by H. Scott Wolfe*

I am perhaps the last surviving mortal to regularly utilize a road map. I was so engaged…while sitting beneath the bronze statue of the pre-assassinated President William McKinley which graces the old Massachusetts mill town of Adams. (The martyred President had visited that community twice, assuring his constituents of his support for the protective tariff and his disdain for those dastardly European imports.)  My wife sat contentedly beside me, having just conducted a successful raid upon a local antique shop…blissfully unaware that I was mulling a descent upon yet another benchmark in the life of John Brown. As my finger traced the sinuous Route 116 through the Berkshire highlands of Hampshire County, it fell upon the town of PLAINFIELD. And when the name of the Reverend Moses Hallock came to mind, the decision was made.

The story is familiar to all those who seek to know John Brown. It was the spring of 1816 when young Brown was admitted to membership of the Congregational Church in Hudson, Ohio…this after making a “formal profession of religion” and becoming a “convert to Christianity & ever after a firm believer in the divine authenticity of the Bible.”

Later that same year, Brown, in company with his brother Salmon and a Hudson friend named Orson M. Oviatt, traveled to Connecticut to seek counsel from the Reverend Jeremiah Hallock. Beset with a religious zeal, the young tanner was contemplating entering the ministry and yearned for advice upon what educational preparation would be required to do so. There was talk of entering Amherst College, but first, because of Brown’s spotty education in the Ohio Western Reserve, it was suggested that he enroll in a preparatory school…specifically, in the classical school at Plainfield, Massachusetts overseen by Jeremiah’s brother, the Reverend Moses Hallock.

Jeremiah Hallock

The brothers Jeremiah (1758-1826) and Moses (1760-1837) Hallock loom like granite pillars of the Congregational faith. The former, known as the “Godly Pastor,” labored at West Simsbury (now Canton), Connecticut for nearly forty years…and the latter, at Plainfield, Massachusetts for over forty-five years.  Both had served briefly in the American Revolution, but their principal service was as soldiers of the Lord. Both were “laborers in the great revival of the work of God,” and “the one object of both was the glory of God in plucking sinners as brands from the burning, and raising them to heaven.”

Jeremiah had once been the practical and spiritual mentor of Owen Brown, father of John Brown. Young Owen had lived with him “at different times,” receiving much in the way of “good instruction and good examples.” And when Owen married Ruth Mills, Hallock had performed the ceremony, feeling “all the anxiety of a parent that we should begin right.” Said the groom, “He gave us good counsel, and, I have no doubt, with a praying spirit.” Now, the very same Jeremiah Hallock had given good counsel to their son John.

"Hallock Memorial School," Plainfield, 

Mass. (Photo by H. Scott Wolfe)

The Reverend Moses Hallock had established his Plainfield Academy in 1793, both to supplement his meager pastoral salary and to provide educational opportunities for local young people. During his thirty-one years as “Headmaster,” 304 students matriculated at his school…30 of whom were young ladies. Hallock beamed with pride over the fact that 132 went on to enter college, 50 became ministers of the gospel, and 7 ventured forth as “missionaries to the heathen.” Among his more prominent students were the editor and romantic poet William Cullen Bryant…and Marcus Whitman, physician, missionary and pioneer of the Oregon Trail.

The curriculum was rigorous, consisting of the study of grammar, rhetoric, mathematics and the Latin and Greek languages. Many of the students, residing in the Master’s own household, received solid preparatory educations at an expense “little exceeding one dollar a week.”

During the late summer or early autumn of 1816, John Brown and his two companions enrolled at the Reverend Hallock’s Academy. Brown took to his studies with “diligence.” The Master’s youngest son, Heman Hallock, remembered him as “a tall, sedate, dignified young man,” who “had been a tanner, and relinquished a prosperous business for the purpose of intellectual improvement.”

It is fascinating to contemplate the young John Brown at a New England classical school…particularly after his rudimentary education in Ohio. By his own admission, he had been “sometimes sent to School,” where he found the activities of running, jumping and knocking off “old seedy Wool hats” as “the only compensation for the confinement & restraints” of the schoolhouse.

The term “culture shock” comes to mind as one pictures a youth whose practical experience embraced the tanner’s and currier’s trades…now struggling with the more cerebral tasks of absorbing the Greek alphabet or Latin declensions.  But the stay was brief, for within a few months the three students transferred to the Morris Academy in Litchfield, Connecticut…to study under the Messrs. Weeks and Vaill. This too was short lived, for an “inflammation of the eyes,” perhaps the result of overstudy, sent Brown back to the tannery in Hudson…and his potential career upon a wholly new course.

The drive through the hills of western Massachusetts is a beautiful one. Majestic hemlocks lined Route 116, and periodically one passed tranquil wetlands, the trees reflected in still waters. It was mid-April, and snow lingered on the shaded, north-facing slopes. And then one enters the small community of Plainfield, perched on a southern spur of the Green Mountains.

Congregational Church and Town Hall, Plainfield, Mass.

(Photo by H. Scott Wolfe)

The place seems the imagined prototype of a New England village. The residents have obviously been allowed to paint their public buildings any color they desire…as long as it is white. There is a stately Congregational Church (ca. 1840s), whose towering steeple is golden-tipped and weather-vaned…a Greek Revival Town Hall…and a sprawling frame structure shared by the “Shaw Memorial Library” and the “Hallock Memorial School,” a latter-day monument to the teacher of John Brown.

My wife, like most females, possesses that recessive gene which allows them to calmly ask strangers for directions. So we were soon within the town cemetery, just north of the highway. It was only a matter of moments before I found the final resting place of the Reverend Moses Hallock. This tall slab of marble no doubt provided a local stonecutter with a bad case of writer’s cramp, for the inscription is lengthy…but also of interest, and I provide a transcription:

THE REVEREND MOSES HALLOCK

Born Brookhaven, L.I., Feb. 16, 1760

Reared by Godly parents, Goshen, Ms

Graduated Yale College 1788

Ordained and installed first Pastor of the church in Plainfield, July 11, 1792

Ministered to a confiding and united People 45 years

Died July 17, 1837 aged 77

At 70 he requested a colleague, having Received to the church 358 members

Instructed 304 pupils 50 became ministers 7 Missionaries

A man of patriarchal simplicity, integrity, sincerity, kindness. Without an enemy.

He loved, studied, preached, exemplified the Bible and Gloried in the Cross.

The burial place of the Rev. Moses Hallock, Plainfield, Mass. 

(Photo by H Scott Wolfe)

At the funeral of Moses Hallock it was noted that “to the church at large he has been of eminent service, especially in the number of young men whose education he aided, and who are now employed in useful spheres in this and foreign lands.” Among those “young men” was John Brown. The recorded last words of the Reverend Hallock could very well have been uttered by his famous protégé: “From all I have done, and all my sins and short-comings, I wish to fly to Christ. I am nothing. Christ is all.”

* H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois, Public Library District. We are pleased to introduce him as a correspondent and contributor, noting his many years of grassroots research on John Brown, the Harper's Ferry raiders, and related themes.

Principal Sources:


1) Sanborn, Franklin B. “Life and Letters of John Brown,” Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1891
2) Yale, Rev. Cyrus, “The Godly Pastor: Life of the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock of Canton, Conn., to which is added A Sketch of the Life of the Rev. Moses Hallock of Plainfield, Mass.,” New York, American Tract Society, 1854.
3) My eyeballs.

Notable News--
The 5/9 –’59 Event: The First Annual John Brown Birthday Celebration in NYC

The 5/9-’59 event, which we hope will prove to be the first of an annual the celebration of John Brown’s Birthday, was held on the evening of May 9th at the Brecht Forum on West Street in Manhattan. The program was conceived and produced by Norman Marshall, an activist and actor who portrays Brown in the dramatic one-man play, John Brown: Trumpet of Freedom.

The program included music, poetry, and political-historical discussion, and an excellent performance by Mr. Marshall following the program. Music from the era of chattel slavery were performed: gospel vocalist Michele Sweeting sang John Brown’s favorite hymn, “Blow Ye the Trumpet”; Jeannine Otis, the Music Director of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, performed a work song. Poet Gwen Gunn presented a variety of poetry written about Brown, and Alice Kesey Mecoy—the great-great-great granddaughter of Brown—presented a fascinating discussion about the unfortunate reticence of many Brown descendants regarding their relation to the abolitionist. Mecoy herself did not know she was a direct descendant of Brown until she was a teenager, and was informed by a historian. A descendant through Brown’s daughter Anne Brown Adams, Mecoy’s family were not the only Brown descendants who hesitated to speak of the Old Man. One relative that she contacted for genealogical information was willing to help her provided Mecoy would promise never to contact her or raise the issue of John Brown again. Such was the impact of the negative psychological and political propaganda that prevailed in the later 19th and early 20th centuries that Brown descendants hide their ancestry in shame, although they have such good reason for pride and gratitude. The program was emceed by Bernard White, the Program Director Emeritus of WBAI radio, and featured a discussion by Ralph Poynter, an anti-racist activist and head of the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee. Also present for statements was our friend Larry Lawrence of the John Brown Society (NYC). 

Michele Sweeting sings

Brown biographer David Reynolds was on hand to discuss his latest book (see below) and reiterate his case for the posthumous pardon of Brown by the United States government. In response, it was my role to argue against the pardon. Of course, Dr. Reynolds and I are much closer in opinion than we are different when it comes to the positive role of Brown in U.S. history, and I salute his 2005 biographer has a singular force in breaking through the hard wall of academic snobbery and bias that has reigned from the middle of the 20th century. Dr. Reynolds raised the issue of a pardon at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid sesquicentennial in 2009 and I expressed my view at the time. So there was nothing new in our exchange at the Bretcht, and certainly it was no real debate. What follows is (most of ) the text of my statement, and then an excerpt from an email from Dr. Reynolds that fairly well states his view in response to my remarks.

* * * 

First, the reason and purpose for which Brown died was the struggle for black freedom and justice for the disenfranchised, oppressed slave. Those who would seek a pardon for John Brown are putting the cart before the horse, as the saying goes. John Brown would not want to be pardoned if the African people of the United States were still owed both an apology and/or some form of reparations from both the federal government as well as individual states that sustained slavery, and then the descendants of slave holders whose family estates were enriched by stolen black labor. 

It would be a mere and feeble gesture of sentimentalism to pardon John Brown when the United States government has never even issued an apology to the black people of this nation, whose ancestors were treated like animals and property by law of the land. As long as black people are fundamentally insulted by this nation, as long as the majority population pretends that slavery was an unfortunate parenthesis of ill-mannered behavior in an otherwise praiseworthy democracy, I doubt John Brown would want that government or its people to "pardon" him. Like Daniel the ancient Hebrew prophet and seer, Brown would say to the government, "Keep your pardon or give it to someone else." 

This nation owes black people, if nothing else, a flagrant, official, and definitive apology. Until the U.S. government acknowledges its terrible guilt and crime against humanity in terms of the so-called "peculiar institution" as well as the suppression and extermination of Native Americans and other territorial abuses largely based on the lust of slave holder expansionism, then I say John Brown can wait, and I don't think he'd object. 

Secondly, there is something inherently problematic about looking to the federal or state government of Virginia to pardon John Brown when both are historically complicit in crimes against humanity. Who are Uncle Sam and the Old Dominion to be dispensing pardons to freedom fighters like John Brown anyway? Given the fact that slavery was part of the U.S. constitution and that this government and its supreme court passed repressive, fascist laws pertaining to fugitive slaves and the Dred Scott Decision, asking federal and state governments to pardon Brown actually seems ludicrous. Indeed, the U.S. government and the State of Virginia should be petitioning to be pardoned by popular vote of African Americans. It would only be symbolic, but it would be more meaningful than if John Brown were pardoned. 

Lastly, to pardon John Brown would rob him of the moral-historical context of his self-sacrifice. To put it by way of illustration, I would no more want John Brown to be pardoned by Uncle Sam or the State of Virginia than I would have wanted Constantine to pardon St. Paul, who was beheaded by an imperial predecessor, that pig Nero. The force and integrity of St. Paul's martyrdom was his quintessential innocence over against the guilt and perversion of the emperor who ordered his execution. The same applies to John Brown and 19th century U.S. politics. To pardon him today would be like cutting him away from the moral-historical fabric in which his life and death had meaning. There is a sense in which John Brown is only John Brown as a man found guilty and condemned by what he called "this slave nation." 

John Brown was not bothered by the fact of dying at the hands of a guilty government. He did not care for the judgment of the nation or Virginia, only the judgment of God. As a believer in the atoning work of Jesus Christ and the evangelical and Reformed faith, John Brown had all the pardon he wanted at the Great Judgment Seat of Eternity. John Brown's legacy is bigger than the U.S. government's legacy, which is only political and self-serving to the rich and powerful of this land, something that Brown himself declared in his final statement to the court. Brown's legacy is likewise bigger than that of the Old Dominion, which is filled with the bones of slaves and the fools who would rather have had their sons die to keep slavery than set their slaves free. John Brown is an internationally loved and regarded revolutionary freedom figure. John Brown is loved today and has been loved down through the years, and he will be embraced by oppressed people and freedom fighters as long as this fallen world continues to produce oppressors and oppression. 

On Nov. 29, 1859, Brown wrote to Mary Stearns, the wife of one of his greatest supporters: 

I have asked to be spared from having any mock; or hypocritical prayers made over me, when I am publicly murdered: & that my only religious attendants be poor little, dirty, ragged, bare headed & barefooted, Slave Boys; & Girls; Led by some old greyheaded, Slave Mother. Farewell. Farewell.  

John Brown does not need a pardon. He is more than pardoned by the people who love freedom and hate oppression. What activist Yuri Kochiyama once wrote about Malcolm X can likewise be said of John Brown: he is both epic and epoch in person. His single life and sacrifice defies stone monuments and memorials; if he had a postage stamp or a great stone temple in Washington, D.C., it would likely mean he was little more than a political compromiser and creature of the wealthy (by the way, Malcolm X's postage stamp was not only poorly done, but it illustrates the very point I'm making here: Malcolm would hardly have cared if the U.S. Post Office put him on a stamp anyway, and in putting him on a stamp, he was "mainstreamed" and deprived of his revolutionary political identity. The fact that Brown's greatest memorial is a humble farmhouse nearly on the northern border of the U.S.A. (Lake Placid, N.Y.), overlooked and disregarded by most, marks him as an authentically epic figure in human history. The fact that he lived and died fighting slavery in the context of a nation that was flagrantly racist and unjust makes him the standard-bearer of slavery's antithesis in his era. 

Leave him to live and die in that era. Let him hang, despised and condemned, on that Virginia gallows. Pardon him and you will strip him of his victory. Take away his "guilt" by means of a governmental pardon and you will make him no better, no more valid, no more appreciated. The bigots, racists, and snobs who hate him will not suddenly embrace him. We who love him will not love him any more for a pardon from Uncle Sam or the Old Dominion. Do not pardon John Brown, nor seek to have him pardoned. Let him be, ever and always, a martyr--a witness for the oppressed! His Soul Goes Marching On! Happy Birthday, Old Man!

* * *

Excerpt of response by David S. Reynolds via email (10 May 2011):

For those who are already converted to John Brown’s cause, including most in the audience last night, Brown is far more meaningful if he remains unpardoned—that is, if he remains forever the brave foe of a wicked, slaveholding government. But, alas, there are very few Americans who view John Brown positively. In the history books, he is still relegated to a dismissive paragraph or two. Lou, I appreciate your saying that my book broke down walls, but I’m afraid that few professional historians take my view of Brown. We live in a democracy where majority rules, and the overwhelming majority of history books still depict John Brown as, at best, a well-intentioned fanatic and, at worst, a murderous madman. As a result, millions of schoolchildren are still learning to marginalize John Brown even as they continue to learn to idolize Lincoln. As I point out in my pro-pardon article in the Times, I think the nation should be aware of the true heroes of the past. I realize that pardoning John Brown is the very last item on Obama’s agenda—or rather, it’s not even on his radar screen--but I think it’s important to raise the pardon issue just to get pro-Brown sentiment in the air. If we don’t, Brown will forever remain sitting in his bad-boy corner, admired by a tiny handful like us but dismissed by everyone else.

I leave the readers to decide for themselves. Certainly there is merit on both sides of this “debate.”

Postscript

Finally, I should point out that Dr. Reynolds’ latest book, Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America (Norton) is newly released and has received excellent reviews:

“A wonderful history of what may justly be considered America’s national epic.”--Joan Hedrick, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life

“A provocative overview of the life and afterlife of one of American literature’s most important texts…Reynolds successfully repositions the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe as a major political work, crucial not just to the abolitionist movement, but as kindling for the Civil War and an important inspiration to the cultural discussions of race relations through most of the 20th century.”--Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Deeply researched and compulsively readable, Mightier than the Sword is both the definitive account of the strange but true career of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and a sweeping two-hundred year history of race in America.”--Debby Applegate, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

“In Reynolds’s gifted hands, Mightier than the Sword is nothing less than an intellectual feast.”
--Jay Winik, author of April 1865 and The Great Upheaval

“Reynolds is a virtuoso writer…A fitting tribute to the 200th anniversary of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s birth.”--Mike Harvkey, Publishers Weekly

For readers in the NYC metro area, Dr. Reynolds will be speaking about his latest book and other related themes at the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble, 2289 Broadway at 82nd Street on Wednesday, June 15th at 7 p.m. Come and support Dr. Reynolds and bring a friend.