Standing Lincoln, Kneeling Black--
A "Worship, Full and Supreme": Frederick Douglass Remembers Abraham Lincoln

I 

A Statue of Limitations

On April 14, 1876, Frederick Douglass delivered the keynote address for the unveiling of Freedman's Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington D.C.   It was the centennial year of U.S. independence and although emancipation and the end of the Civil War were only a little more than a decade before, the nation had turned heartily toward the celebration of independence with little thought of the end of slavery.  According to history blogger Josh Brown, the lavish, expansive Philadelphia Centennial Exposition had been "more about the future than the past, heralding the nation’s triumphant recovery and dynamic growth since its bloody civil war."   Yet the Philadelphia Exposition reflected the larger attitude of white America in that little mention was made of black emancipation and Reconstruction.1

The April 14 event that same year was obviously attuned to remembrance of Lincoln's assassination, which took place on the same date in 1865.  Perhaps the Freedman's Memorial statue is familiar to most people, with its legendary image of a standing Lincoln with a kneeling black man at his feet.  In the right hand of Lincoln is the Emancipation Proclamation, while his left hand is salvifically extended over--but not touching--the gratefully obeisant black man.   Douglass himself disliked the statue.  Although he said nothing about it in his address, he was overheard saying that “it showed the Negro on his knee when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom.”2  What makes Douglass's remarks all the more profound is the fact that the Freedman's Memorial statue was the only image manifested in what had been a larger plan in tribute to black freedom.  Josh Brown informs us that the original plan--primarily funded and supported by blacks--was an ambitious exhibit that was to be executed by New England sculptor Harriet Hosmer.  This planned memorial had attracted the interest and support of black war veterans, but also white liberals who were excited to see a memorial commemorating "the African-American experience from slavery to freedom, culminating with the figure of a black soldier brandishing a rifle."  This was a radical concept, especially in the 19th century, and perhaps it's no wonder that it never came to fruition despite serious efforts to attract more support.   "Moving through a succession of plans and artists, the designs grew more fragmented and unfocused," writes Brown.  

II

The Ideals of Black Obeisance

Ultimately, all that came of this worthy plan was the standing Lincoln-kneeling black man, a statue executed by sculptor Thomas Ball.  The portrayal of the liberated black man was boastfully authentic, having been based upon the photographic image of a real person, a former slave named Archer Alexander.3  But as Douglass himself recognized, it was anything but the image that had been intended, showing the progress of blacks from slavery to militant self-emancipation.  The black man in the Freedman's Monument is not a strong soldier who has fought for black liberation as much as for the Union.  Instead, the preferred image is of black servile gratitude--the exchange of "Massa" for the Christlike mythology of the so-called Great Emancipator.   Historians may be quick to point out that toward the end of his life, Lincoln entered the fallen Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia, and was greeted by grateful former slaves, including one black man who knelt before him.  If I'm not mistaken, however, Lincoln had the good sense to be embarrassed by the man's posture and admonished him to stand.  Not so in the Freedman's Monument, which suggests Lincoln, like Jesus, receiving the worship of a true believer while bestowing his grace upon the kneeling black.  

Of course this is an image that warmed the hearts of white people then and probably still resonates with emotional affirmation for many whites today.  Generally speaking, white society has always assumed that blacks should be grateful for any kindness showed to them, while at the same time, white society long feared (and perhaps still does) the image of strong black men with guns, even when they were fighting on the same side.  In 1863, when Douglass had his first meeting with Lincoln, he was informed by the President (in Douglass's words) that "the wisdom of making colored men soldiers was still doubted," and that "their enlistment was a serious offense to popular prejudice."  Lincoln himself believed that since blacks had "larger motives" to enter the army, they should "be willing to enter the service upon any conditions," which apparently meant not being armed, not being paid the same as white soldiers, and not being afforded the same protections as whites when taken as prisoners of war.4  To be sure, there is a complex of friendly/useful black images embedded in the mind of white society, from black maids to mystical-therapeutic characters, all of which come to the aid of troubled white heroes and heroines.  But at the core of these images is the paradigm of the black man kneeling before the Jesus of "American" Civil Religion.  In post-Civil War terms, for blacks to have refused to bow before Lincoln would have been much like early Christians refusing to offer an oblation to the genius of Caesar.  Treason.

III

Lincoln and Messianic Mythology

In today's New York Times (11 Feb. 2012), a museum review by Edward Rothstein highlights a $60 million "transformation" of Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.  There has been a museum there devoted to Lincoln for years, but now there will be a 10-story building called the Ford's Theater Center for Education and Leadership next to the Peterson House, across the street from Ford's Theater, where Lincoln died.  Whatever else the Center will offer, it will feature an "extensive exhibition" about Lincoln and his times, with a special focus upon the assassination--a exhibit consisting of "careful narrative, well-chosen images, and informative touch screens."  It also features a 34-foot tree-like sculpture comprised completely of books about Lincoln.5  While this is completely consistent with the larger scope of Lincoln's portrayal in U.S. history, as well as the fact that we have entered the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, it is also indicative of the reverential mythology of Lincoln the slain messiah of the nation and the "Great Emancipator" of black people.  Yet the question remains whether all of this Lincoln adoration is grounded in history.

The messianic Lincoln mythology is undoubtedly a phenomenon of nationalistic self-interest, although it also represents the cooperation and collaboration of 19th century white liberals as well as the black community following Lincoln's assassination.  Historian Leon Litwack writes:

Despite the disappointment over Lincoln's lenient amnesty program, his misplaced confidence in southern Unionists, and his "moderate" experiments in state reconstruction, the assassination of the President silenced his black critics and threw a stunned black community into deep mourning, as though it had lost its only white friend and protector.  The President's initial doubts about the wisdom of emancipation and the enlistment of blacks were not forgotten, his equivocations on civil rights ignored, his schemes of colonization, expatriation, and reconstruction forgiven.6

Litwack goes onto describe how black people fell into place, mourning for the dead Lincoln and declaring him a martyr.  One black newspaperman declared Lincoln "the only President who ever had the courage to acknowledge the true manhood of the negro," concluding that he was "the greatest earthly friend of the colored race."7  In a scene that anticipates naive blacks weeping over the assassinated John F. Kennedy ninety-eight years later, The Freedman (a white antislavery publication) noted one elderly black woman crying unabashedly as the President's funeral cortege passed through New York City.  Wringing her hands and weeping, the tearful woman kept lamenting aloud, "He died for me, he died for me!"  The story was entirely pleasing to the white Christian editors of The Freedman, who turned the incident into a black love fest for Lincoln:

How many thousands of her race have felt and said the same,--"He died for me!" and may truly have added, "How we loved him while he lived, and how precious is his memory now that he is dead!"  Yes; you loved him.  Why?  Because he so loved your people that he was willing to die for them.  If President Lincoln could have foreseen his death, do you not think he would cheerfully have given himself a sacrifice to the cause of liberty and justice?  I think he would. . . .I do not believe he would have hesitated or shrunk back in the least.   You have reason, yes, we all have reason, to honor and love the name of Abraham Lincoln.

As if this weren't enough, the editor goes all the way to the cross: "Do you not think of Jesus, the blessed Son of God, our Redeemer and Saviour?  He suffered for us.  He died for us.  Do our tears fall when we think of his great love?"8  Obviously there was a missionary agenda in the article since The Freedman was published by a Christian antislavery organization, The American Tract Society.  However, the redemptive language was clearly deliberate--at least as deliberate as Emerson's "gallows glorious" rhetoric had been drawn to connect John Brown to Christ after his hanging in 1859.  But Emerson was no evangelical and the cross represented moral example, not blood propitiation to him.  The evangelical ratification of Lincoln as the greater Christ figure of the Republic at best demoted John Brown to the role of John the Baptist, his biblical doppelganger.  With the martyred Lincoln freshly enshrined in the glories above, Old Brown was now reinterpreted as the one who had gone before Lincoln, making straight the path before the coming Lord. Brown's brief stint as Jesus was over.  He was now, at best, co-martyr with Lincoln; but all of the energies of antislavery society now began to move toward the apotheosis of Lincoln far above Brown.

This is evident in the same issue of The Freedman, its lead article picturing a woodcut engraving of the popular Matthew Brady photograph of the President and his youngest son, Tad, at his side.  The grief of the nation is quite evident in these words, but also the inclination to enshrine the dead Lincoln in a salvific aura, especially for black people:

And of all the people in this nation, none feel the blow more deeply than the freed men and women, who, by the firm, strong, just hand of Abraham Lincoln have just been recued from the iron grasp of the oppressor.  He was your EMANCIPATOR, your FRIEND.  God raised him up, and gave to him alone, of all the good and great men of our land, the privilege and honor of unbinding your fetters, and bidding you go free.  This one act will cover his name with distinction and glory, and make his memory sweet and precious to you forever.9

IV

The Gospel According to Frederick Douglass

In light of the mythology of Lincoln the messianic emancipator, it is interesting how Frederick Douglass is often referenced in relation to Lincoln, and yet his actual criticism of the President is rarely discussed by historians and journalists.  To be sure, Douglass did appreciate the President, as it were, always making lemonade from the lemon that had been served up to black people in the person of Lincoln.  Despite his distaste for the Freedman's Monument and his in depth criticism of Lincoln as a benign racist and paternalist, Douglass did honor him as the man who ultimately became the instrument of breaking down the prison house of slavery through the might of the federal government.  "[F]or no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him," Douglass had concluded, "but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.”  Why was Lincoln "doubly dear"?  Douglass's rationale is clear: assuming white supremacy, he was still appreciative that despite Lincoln's white priorities, he ultimately addressed the issue of slavery by wedding it to the concept of saving the Union--something that he had not first upheld.  Notwithstanding his actual political record, Douglass maintained that "it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement" resulting in the end of slavery.  As the foremost leader of white people, he was thus able to use the power of white society in the North to crush the power of the slavocracy.  Furthermore, Lincoln, while hardly free of racial prejudice, was at least devoted to the end of slavery, Douglass concluded, and it was his constitutional disdain for human bondage that made Lincoln a redeemable figure in his eyes.10

But if historians and journalists merely concentrate on the best face that Douglass could put on the President, they do a great disservice to the truth.  For it was also the witness of generous Frederick Douglass that weighs heavily against Lincoln in the broader judgment of humanity and history.  Let Douglass's words from the same address ring out, loud and true, as to the real nature of Abraham Lincoln "the Great Emancipator":

. . .Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model.  In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.  He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.  He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. . . . 

Speaking to white people in the audience, Douglass is even more pointed:

Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow citizens, a preeminence in this worship at once full and supreme.  First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude.  You are the children of Abraham Lincoln.  We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by force of circumstances and necessity.11

It is a mark of the genius of Douglass (in my opinion, the most brilliant figure in 19th century U.S. history) that he could expose the truth of Lincoln so drastically without failing to appreciate how the President had inadvertently stumbled into history as a useful tool of freedom despite himself.  Douglass was kind, but there is no deception in his words.  He was likewise truthful in uplifting John Brown as the man who could die for the slave in contrast to himself, the man who could live for the slave.  The truth of Douglass's doctrine was substantial, although in the case of John Brown, it counterbalanced a drama of two men with very different ideas and plans.  Of course, Douglass was not looking for a white messiah, and his own ego as a leader should not be missed by the historian either.  Yet a comparison of Douglass's words regarding John Brown and Abraham Lincoln would lead us to conclude that it was the latter who fell short of the former with respect to black emancipation.

The worship of Lincoln, "full and supreme," continues as the staple of "American" history.  Although he died like an emperor seated in a theater box while watching a comedy, one would think that Lincoln had died on Calvary, and that from the wound in his head there had flowed blood and water--the redemption of the nation and the life giving stream of the emancipated slave.  This is a far cry from the way that John Brown is remembered.  While we hardly need to make a messiah of either man, it is interesting that between the two of them, it was Brown who set out to die if need be, from the onset of his liberation struggle.  Between the two of them also, it was Brown who died like a martyr--surrounded by his enemies, with all the powers of the state against him, and with prayer, not laughter, on his lips.  

Notes

      1 Josh Brown, “Another View of the ‘Statue of Emancipation.’” Picturing History (Jul. 10, 2010).  Retrieved from: http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1045
      2 Ibid.
      3 Ibid.  Josh Brown seems to have derived his information from the Kirk Savage's book, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998/99.
      4 The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford: Park Publishing, 1881; rpt. Seacaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1983), pp. 352-53.
      5 Edward Rothstein, "Lincoln Museum, Acts II, the Morning After the Death," New York Times (11 Feb. 2012), C1, 5.
      6 Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Knopf, 1979), 527.
      7 Ibid.
      8 "He Died For Me," The Freedman [Boston: American Tract Society] (July 1865), p. 32.
      9 "Abraham Lincoln, Our Emancipator," The Freedman, p. 1.
     10 The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, pp. 494-95, 497-98.
     11 Ibid., 492-93.

Note This:
John Brown Gets an Honorable Mention in Lincoln Play, "Necessary Sacrifices": A Note from Greg Artzner of Magpie

Greg Artzner & Terry Leonino--Magpie!

Terry and I received complimentary tickets to see "Necessary Sacrifices", the two-hander about Lincoln & Douglass at Ford's Theater in DC last Saturday and we were pleased to hear that they included the exchange between Douglass and Lincoln regarding John Brown in which Lincoln, post Emancipation Proclamation, proposes that Douglass lead an expedition that was a dead-ringer for Brown's subterranean passway idea. As Lincoln spoke, I leaned over to Terry and whispered, "He sounds just like John Brown" (whom he had dismissed as a mad man in act 1). Well, lo and behold, the next words out of Douglass's mouth were "Do you know who you sound like?" "No. Who?" "John Brown."–Greg

http://www.magpiemusic.com

Local Legacy:
Pieces of History

While the 84-year-old Litchfield resident may not have led a raid at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., nor was he hanged for treason by the United States government, Neidt and his predecessors spent their lives preserving the memory of a famous Torrington abolitionist who did.



In 2004, Neidt passed that multigenerational legacy to elated officials of the Torrington Historical Society in the form of artifacts that were lovingly preserved by his grandfather Albert Neidt, and father William Neidt.

"My grandfather worked in a mill, but a group of men asked him if he would go work at the John Brown house," Edward Neidt explained. "They said ‘We’ll pay you that same amount you’re making here."

 And Albert Neidt did just that, effectively establishing the Neidt family’s dedication to the man many now call a martyr for the abolition of slavery.

John Brown was born in 1800 on a vast parcel of farmland along what Torrington has named John Brown Road. Following his death in 1859, the Brown homestead became an international attraction and evolved into one of Connecticut’s first museum houses.

Much to the disappointment of the world, the John Brown house was completely destroyed by fire in 1918 - but not before Albert and William Neidt retained a handful of artifacts that were presented Friday to historical society president David Bennett and executive director Mark McEachern.

"I’m 84. My daughters don’t want these things," Neidt said. "I can’t think of a better place for them to go."



Thanks to Neidt, an original guest book cataloging the names and dates of early 20th century visitors to the John Brown site, in addition to hand-forged metal nails and a piece of the homestead’s interior paneling, will forever be preserved in the historical society’s permanent collection.

But the most unique, and perhaps most valuable piece presented by Neidt were blueprints of the John Brown homestead - drafted from memory in 1938 by Neidt’s father, who lived in the house through his early teens.

"These are the only documents in existence that the show the floor plans of the John Brown house," McEachern said. "There are no photos - this is it."

According to McEachern and Bennett, the well-preserved blueprints and accompanying artifacts will remain on the premises of the historical society for use in future exhibits, courtesy of the "Neidt Collection."

Source: "John Brown Artifacts Donated to Torrington Historical Society." The Register-Citizen [Torrington, Conn.], 3 Feb. 2012.

Quote Note
Author Richard Boyer on John Brown

". . .my admiration for the old man grows the more I see and learn of him.  I do not think him a fanatic nor do I see him as a religious nut.  I think of him as representative of the best of his age and time who did a job that needed to be done.  I do not feel in the least patronizing towards the Old Man.  On the contrary he seems to me one of the very greatest of Americans, in some aspects greater even than Washington or Lincoln.  He acted almost alone and a little in advance of the events he helped to forward.  Washington and Lincoln were not alone and advanced on the crest of great popular movements.  And neither acted with such immediacy as Brown and one can't help but admire a man who hits out and acts while everyone is talking."

Source: Richard O. Boyer, Twin Falls, Idaho, to Boyd B. Stutler, Charleston, West Va., August 8, 1955, RP01-0276E-F, Boyd B. Stutler Papers, West Virginia State Archives.

The Art of Profundity:
How Should We Remember John Brown? A John Hendrix Postscript

      "John Brown has been a source of controversy for more than 150 years.  In difficult times, men were forced to make difficult choices.  When faced with the horrors of slavery, John could not bear the thought of inaction. . . . His decision to wage war on slavery in America made him an outlaw and ultimately cost him his life.  But I think that his role in American history is often misunderstood.

      "Today it is hard to grasp the immense sense of desperation felt by John and people like him during the time in Kansas still referred to as 'Bleeding Kansas.'  On those barren plains there were no laws, no protection for families, and no hope for justice.  While reading about those events, I often asked myself, if I saw my neighbors threatened, my family terrorized, and my dearest friends hauled away in chains, what would I do?  Would I strike back against injustice?
     "As I continued to study the life of John Brown, I began to admire him because he would not make a truce with injustice.  Now, no man is perfect, and John was no exception.  His ambitious plan to free the slaves was a spectacular failure.  But though the United States1 hanged him as a traitor, I feel we must not dismiss him as a madman.  Terrorists crave destruction and turmoil, and the seed of John's rebellion was compassion. . . ."
       "John was a devout believer in Christianity.  He used the Bible's words--that men are loved and valuable to God--as a holy plumb line.  When he held this truth up against the crooked world, he knew things should be different.  I was astonished to read about John's belief that black people should not just be free but equal, which was an idea far outside mainstream abolitionism in the antebellum United States.  His passion for freedom was undisputed.  Frederick Douglass said of John Brown: 'His zeal in the cause of my race was greater than mine.  I could live for the slave, but he could die for him.'
      "We should remember John Brown because he was not afraid to fight for the freedom of an oppressed people to which he did not belong.  John was not a vigilante.  The goals of his crusade were never mayhem, self-glorification, or personal vendetta, but freedom for all who were persecuted.  It is difficult to say if his was against slavery was simply 'right' or 'wrong.'  Ultimately, John Brown's contribution was not freedom itself, but an unbridled vision of conviction."

     1 Brown was not hanged by the government of the United States, but by the State of Virginia.  However, James Buchanan, the President of the United States in 1859, could have insisted on trying Brown in a federal court since Brown had attacked a federal armory.  Instead,  he opted to favor pro-slavery interests and handed Brown over to Virginia.  So we can say that the Executive Office of the federal government essentially threw Brown to the wolves in allowing Virginia to try him, among other things, as a traitor to the State.  In the long run, this is probably more true, since Brown's intentions were hardly revolutionary with respect to overthrowing the federal government.--LD

John Hendrix, Author's Note, John Brown: His Fight for Freedom (New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2009), pp. 38-39.

Faith Matters--
Is John Brown Stigmatized Because of His Faith?

In 2009, John Hendrix, author and illustrator of the superb young people's book, John Brown: His Fight for Freedom (New York: Abrams Books, 2009), made this observation in a blog interview:

To me, he is a true civil rights hero. And most people think he is a lunatic. We have this popular image of him as an insane loony who killed people with some flawed notion of his own importance, who was punishing innocent civilians because of his religious beliefs. When you really read what he believed and why he was brought to his actions--you see just how unique he was in his own era. A true visionary, and he has been minimized because I think most people are uncomfortable with people who are strongly motivated by religious ideas. So, as a person who shares the faith of John Brown, I feel as though he deserves a more accurate account of his life.1

More recently, Hendrix reiterated this perspective in a podcast interview in New York city, when he stated:

John Brown is a fascinating hero in our country who happened to be a crazy Christian believer.  And so he has been marginalized in my opinion because of his radical faith, not so much because of his violence.  They like to pin it on the violence, but I think if the faith was not there, I don't think we would see it the same way. . . .It's not my mission to rescue his Christianity, but I can't help but think about it.2

Although I think political perspective is bound up in the basis for Brown's cultural demonization, I believe John is correct, and probably more so now than even fifty years ago when the onus of Brown's "violence" tended to be placed on his alleged insanity.  As the two most recently published books on Brown show, secular scholars tend to connect his faith to his "violence."  He is not simply a terrorist, but a religious terrorist.

      1 "John Hendrix Interview Adventure Series 3." Interviewed by Chad W. Bickerman (Mar. 11, 2009).   Mishaps and Aventures.  Retrieved from: http://cwdesigner.blogspot.com/2009/02/john-hendrix-interview-adventure-series.html


      2 John Hendrix interview by Sam Weber,  Episode 13, Your Dreams My Nightmares (WSVA radio.com).  Retrieved from: http://yourdreamsmynightmares.com/post/15733033001/your-dreams-my-nightmares-episode-013-an

Slander Mistaken for History:
John Brown in Robert Jewett & Ole Wangerin’s Mission and Menace

Mission and Menace: Four Centuries of American Religious Zeal (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008) is Robert Jewett and Ole Wangerin’s text on U.S. religious history, covering the period 1607 to 2007.  We understand that no historical survey will be entirely up to par in every segment or detail.  Generalists do one thing, specialists another thing.  So while I cannot fault Drs. Jewett & Wangerin too much for flummoxing the John Brown story, I cannot let them get away with it either.

Blaming Calvinists for Violence

Under the suggestive heading, “The Rise of Religiously Motivated Violence” (p. 118), Jewett and Wangerin blame “a predominately Calvinistic public in both the North and the South” for heightened violence, mob violence and skirmishes.   This is a gross generalization.  It would have been more appropriate for them to write, “a predominately white Anglo-Saxon Protestant public.”

"Without the Shedding of Blood"

Then Jewett and Wangerin introduce John Brown’s actions in Kansas and Virginia as the “definitive expressions of zealotry in the northern part of American culture.”  They point out that Brown’s favorite scriptural slogan was Hebrews 9:22, “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins,” and add: “which in fact was not intended to encourage violence against evildoers” (p. 119).

This is simply skewed.  It is true that Brown often quoted Hebrews 9:22, but never as a justification for violent acts against “evildoers.”  Brown believed that slavery was a national and corporate sin of the nation, and that the biblical sin of blood remission (judgment) applied as much to corporate sin as to individual sin.  He believed that because slavery was such a great evil, God’s judgment would fall upon the nation—that it would exact a costly judgment.  He once went so far as to say that it would be better if an entire judgment perished than for the nation to be destroyed in divine judgment.  This may have been hyperbole, but it is important to understand that Brown believed God’s judgment upon the nation was inevitable.  He wasn’t speaking of his own “violence,” but the righteous judgment of the divine.  In this he was no different from many others, who sensed the great cloud of guilt that hovered over the nation.  Even the slave master Thomas Jefferson once declared, “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

To skew John Brown even further, Jewett and Wangerin say that Brown “felt that the only way for the sin of slavery to be atoned—and for the nation to be redeemed—was to annihilate slave owners.”  This is a spurious notion that has no bearing in the historical record.  Brown did not want to annihilate slave owners; he was only willing to kill slave owners in self-defense, but he had no plan or intention to “annihilate” slave masters in an insurrectionary fashion.   Once again, people are so accustomed to hearing misinformation about Brown that this kind of error becomes incorporated into history books.

Pottawatomie, Again

To no surprise, Jewett and Wangerin see the Pottawatomie killings of May 1856 as “terrorist killings,” and mistakenly say Brown denied participating in the killings “when national atonement failed to transpire” (p. 119).  Once more, they are not only ignorant of the historical record, but are biased by the bad information that they have received in their preparation.  Clearly, they have no idea that the terrorists in Kansas were the pro-slavery thugs who threatened peaceful free state people, murdered five free state men, and planned on a violent seizure of the territory in spite of the democratic process.  They do not know that the five thugs killed by Brown’s men at Pottawatomie were collaborating with terrorists and plotting the deaths of the Browns and others.  Certainly, Brown had no thought that the killings would bring redemption for the nation; he was simply cutting off a conspiracy at its root—especially because there was no recourse to protection from the law in war-torn Kansas territory.

Harper’s Ferry Raid

As this segment is little more than a reinterpretation of a popular “historical” fiction, it is no surprise that Jewett and Wangerin's take on the Harper’s Ferry raid is corrupted.  They call the raid a “farcical affair” because it was “poorly planned and executed.”  They go so far as to say that the raid was so poorly contrived that “the anticipated slave uprising could not possibly have occurred.”  Jewett and Wangerin conclude that “Brown’s disdain for rational planning was perfectly consistent with the impulse of hot zeal,” that Brown set aside planning in the belief that anything God willed would succeed regardless. (p. 120)

Of course, Jewett and Wangerin have no knowledge of the story and are really dealing in 20th century caricatures.  The fact is that Brown planned the raid exceedingly well: he knew the details of the armory operation, knew that it had no military guard and little security; he made contact with black communities and individuals in the vicinity in advance; he knew which slave masters in the area to seize as hostages, and seems to have known the number of black males under bondage of these men; he brought superior weapons to Virginia than the Virginians held, including those manufactured at the armory; he knew the layout of Harper’s Ferry, and the appropriate time to move.  There was nothing farcical, inadequate, or “poorly contrived” about his plans for the raid.

However, Brown did fail to execute his plans, and he admitted this himself.  Yet his failure to follow through on his plans indicts his judgment, not the plan itself.  The only mistake that Brown made at Harper’s Ferry was the worst one he could have made: he delayed.  The kind of raid he had in mind would have been most successful if executed with rapidity and precision; he accomplished this going into the town, but failed to finish in the same manner.  He really did err.  But the point here is that failure does not make a plan farcical, just as sometimes even poor planning may be successful for unanticipated reasons.

Poison Roots, Poison Fruits

Jewett and Wangerin’s brief history book treatment of John Brown is terrible.  It reflects ignorance and prejudice.  But more so, it represents their naïve trust in some of the worst source material in 20th century John Brown historiography.   Whenever one reads a history book, one should always check out the bibliography and notes first, because the sources used will largely determine the nature of the work in most cases.  In this case, their source texts are corrupt, or at least suspect: Robert Penn Warren’s 1961 book, The Legacy of the Civil War; C. Van Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (1960); and Allan Nevins’ Prologue to the Civil War (1950).  Poison roots lead to poison fruits: These works represent the height of the unofficial anti-Brown movement in the U.S. academy of the mid-20th century.  Warren was a neo-Southern patriot who built his career on an anti-Brown screed written in the 1920s; Woodward was a Southern historian with his own biases against Brown, and Nevins despised Brown and slandered him in the name of “scientific history.”  None of them were biographers of Brown.  None are recognized or trusted in Brown scholarship today.  Even back in the mid-20th century, Boyd Stutler, the greatest John Brown student, recognized the great degree of prejudice displayed in their writings.

One more sad thing about Jewett and Wangerin’s work on Brown is that it was written in the 21st century though based upon outdated, prejudiced sources.  Couldn't they have updated their sources, maybe do some research before slandering the man?  Perhaps the burden of this work was so great that Jewett and Wangerin figured that they could get by with leftover books in the library.  Or perhaps Jewett and Wangerin just hate John Brown and don’t care to learn the truth.  Regardless, the segment on Brown in Mission and Menace is some of the worst stuff I’ve seen on Brown in this era, and should be avoided at all cost.  This book will undoubtedly mislead readers who depend upon it as a source for historical understanding.  I definitely urge students of U.S. religious history to either avoid this book, or read it with great reservation.

If Drs. Jewett and Wangerin ever read this entry, I would suggest that they ponder the relevance of observing the Golden Rule toward those who are dead as well as those who are alive.  John Brown at least deserves to be treated fairly, especially by Christian authors in a text on Christian history.

Relic of Sorrow--
Remembering the Black Lynching Victims of the South

I came upon this item in a file, no doubt recovered years ago during one of my happy research forays, but unfortunately forgotten.  It does not apply to the John Brown story, but its relevance speaks for itself.  This poem, written by Charles Fred White, is headed by "Afro-American," which seems only a reiteration of the publication's title, Afro-American, dated September 1900 (p. 245).  We should not forget that after the undoing of Reconstruction, with the cooperation of the Republican Party, white terrorism was fully unleashed upon black people in the South, and for decades thereafter the violent, murderous white lynch mob reigned.

Many of us are familiar with the poignant song, "Strange Fruit," made famous in 1939 by the legendary Billie Holiday.  (As a side note, my late father, after having heard her recording of "Strange Fruit," and having no knowledge of her otherwise, referred to her quite appropriately in Italian as "Madonna Dolorosa.")  "Strange Fruit" originated as a poem by Abel Meeropol and appeared first in a Leftist publication in that era.

Yet Meeropol's poem was hardly the first to address the outrageous racist violence that beset black people for so many years in between the end of Reconstruction and the developments pertaining to Civil Rights nearly a century later.  Charles Fred White's poem was written to be sung as well, but quite bitterly to replace the lyrics of the patriotic anthem, "My Country 'Tis of Thee."   It's a song worth singing, if only in remembrance of the many men and women who died as victims of terrorism in a nation--a nation whose literary and scholarly leadership, even in the 21st century, cannot stop talking about John Brown being an "American terrorist."  No wonder black people fundamentally distrust the "American" narrative so often celebrated by the "majority."

O, country, 'tis of thee,

Land of the Lynching Bee,*

Of thee I sing.

How long will this base wrong

Pollute thy freedom song?

Perpetrated by a thong

Of heartless fiends.

My native country, thee,

How I long to be free!

Thy name to love.

I long to see the time

When this most heinous crime

Will be changed to deeds divine,

Like those above.

Let wailings swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees:

"God's will be done."

Let mortal souls awake--

Let all that breathe partake--

This spell of crime to break,

Ere the nation's gone.

O gracious God, to thee,

In thine all-wise mercy,

We now appeal!

May this land soon be brought

Out of this doom it's wrought;

For long, in vain, we've sought

Freedom to feel.

* One might expect this to have read, "Lynching Tree."  But there is no error of transcription here.  In fact, "bee" works very well, particularly in the traditional sense of a "bee" being any kind of social gathering, often including competition, and associated with an old English word associated with neighborly help among farmers.  Thus the "Lynching Bee" reflects how entire communities throughout the South were complicit, directly or indirectly, in mass murder, even genocide against black people.

And yet there is no end to this obsession among white writers and scholars about "John Brown and violence," "John Brown and terrorism," etc.  It seems to me that there are much bigger targets to hit when it comes to the themes of violence and terrorism in "America," especially since mistreatment of non-whites is so pervasive in U.S. history.  Yet it is Old John Brown who remains the favorite target of white writers, to be singled out as the defining paradigm.  I guess that's because the handful of largely contemptible white people who died as a result of his actions just matter more.


"You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."

The Perennially Unfinished Business of Biography--
Two Responses to Midnight Rising (with comment)

Review by Jean Libby, independent researcher and scholar

Tony Horwitz, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Confederates in the Attic (Pantheon, 1998).  He delivers the details of the event and the people in it by choice or by chance in a narrative that weaves the documentary base into reality.  Not since Stephen Benet’s epic John Brown’s Body (Doubleday, 1928) have the streets of Harpers Ferry on October 16 – 18, 1859, been so vividly portrayed.  Like Benet (who is effectively invoked in section breaks) the author Tony Horwitz has a strong background in the Civil War.                                                  

His work as a war correspondent serves him well, as the John Brown raid is a battle which was intended to be a larger movement (or invasion) gone wrong.  The raid became larger with John Brown’s unflinching insistence on freedom and citizenship for enslaved Americans.  Placing Brown’s plan in the context of world history of small, dedicated and well-equipped forces the raid makes sense.  Horwitz’s knowledge of the terrain—gained on the ground with the expertise of National Park Service ranger David Fox and NPS historian Dennis Frye—focuses his writing with extensive research notes and clarifies the story so often told in miserable confusion.

Horwitz leads us down the same road to Harpers Ferry that John Brown and his men took from the Kennedy Farm in Washington County, Maryland, on October 16, 1859.  The road begins in Sharpsburg, where three years later Confederate forces under the commands of officers who captured John Brown in Virginia would march in the uphill direction toward the creeks and fields that resonate in American Civil War memory—Antietam, the Dunker Church, and South Mountain.

I took that road in the midnight hours of October 16, 1978, which was one of the few occasions that the calendar date is on Sunday night, as it was in 1859.  There was no walking path across the bridge; our National Park Service AWOL guide had a key to unlock the entry gate to the trestles, and knew the train schedule because we would have been knocked into the Potomac had one greeted us in either direction.  On the same road the same Dennis Frye who guided Tony Horwitz and the conference attendees at the 150th raid anniversary in Harpers Ferry in 2009 walked along.  He was a history student at Shepherd University working part time at the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in 1978, where he is now the Chief Historian.  I learned the terrain from his father, John Frye, a ranger on the C & O Canal and longtime archivist at the Western Maryland Room at the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown.

This reviewer, among others, is generously credited for research contribution in the acknowledgements.  I had the recent happy experience to be introduced by the author at a book-signing in Menlo Park, California , and make an announcement of local history programming about, and with descendants of John and Mary Brown.  “’Am I Not John Brown’s Daughter?’ Annie Brown in the Civil War” will be presented by Alice Keesey Mecoy at the Sunnyvale Public Library on March 7, 2012.

The mothers, wives, and sweethearts of all the raiders are expanded with the sources.  With the participation of Professor Phil Schwarz in Virginia, the story of Harriet Newby, whose love letters to Dangerfield reveal the immorality of slavery, moves forward in Midnight Rising by Tony Horwitz.

General readers receive the respect of making their own judgements from Tony Horwitz.  As it should be, I do not agree with all his characterizations of John Brown.  The subject is balanced, and covered well with the documents.  One of the best sections is Brown’s trial and courtroom behavior. This is brought to life by the author’s journalism background and style.  It is the author’s originality in writing that makes this history move.  Whether read comparing the well-organized chapter notes to the text or straight through with Tony Horwitz’s journalistic structure and rhythm, it is a true to life meeting with John Brown on that rainy midnight of October 16, 1859.  Jean Libby

Jean's full review can be read by clicking on the following link:
http://www.alliesforfreedom.org/files/Midnight_Rising_Review.pdf

*    *    *

Letter from Larry Lawrence, Chairman, John Brown Society

New York City
December 1, 1859

For full distribution in the John Brown world.

The position of The John Brown Society on the book on John Brown by Tony Horwitz, entitled, Midnight Rising.

Tony Horwitz is a talented writer, and has written a very readable book on John Brown.

The problem with his book is that he is wrong on Harpers Ferry and on Pottawatomie -- still the two most controversial aspects of the revolutionary career of John Brown.  He lags behind the judgment of scholars like David Reynolds and Lou DeCaro on both events.

His book could have been much better if he had consulted and learned from these two already published John Brown scholars and researchers.  He had ample opportunity to gain from their prior work, and he failed to take advantage of that opportunity.

I do not have the time, due to other more pressing personal and political concerns, to go into a detailed treatment of this book.  Lou DeCaro speaks for me on this matter, and I defer to his highly educated opinion in relation to the book by Mr. Horwitz, as I have deferred to his opinion in many other areas related to the life of my old hero.  Lou continues to do valuable and serious research on John Brown.

Happy Holidays to all in the John Brown community

[signed]

Larry Lawrence

*    *    *

I appreciate the contributions of both my friends and associates, Jean Libby and Larry Lawrence, who have devoted their lives in different ways to advancing the historical remembrance of John Brown and promoting a sound understanding of his life and work in the cause of justice.  I posted their responses to Tony Horwitz's book together coincidentally, although I feel somewhat constrained to add remarks about both.  Jean is understandably impressed by the rich detail and writing of the book, particularly the manner in which Tony recreated the unfolding drama of the Harper's Ferry raid in 1859.  As a lifetime researcher on Brown, the raid, and Brown's black allies, she is appreciative of his work overall, preferring to relegate criticism of Tony's treatment of Brown to others.  Certainly, there is a great deal understated in her remark that she does not agree with all of his characterizations.  Without negating her objectivity and appreciation of the book's positive narrative qualities, I would suggest that what is primarily important is the question of John Brown and his actions, for this is ultimately why the book was written.  It is one thing to recreate the mayhem of Harper's Ferry during the raid, or the drama of the courtroom during John Brown's trial.  It is quite another thing to characterize John Brown for the ages--or at least, for the next generation or two.

I likewise appreciate the interest on the part of Larry Lawrence to respond.  Although Larry is not a biographer, he is perhaps the most well read student of John Brown, 19th century U.S. history, and the political history of the U.S. that I've ever encountered.   Larry knows the John Brown literature and its history, and he monitors and studies the academic and cultural developments relating to the Old Man's story with an eagle eye.  Unlike Jean, Larry is far more critical of Tony's book, particularly in his characterization of Brown in Kansas and Virginia.  Notwithstanding his deference to me and to David Reynolds, I wish that he might have addressed the book in some detail reflecting his knowledge.  Furthermore, I think we should not forget the important contribution of Robert E. McGlone, whose John Brown's War Against Slavery deserves far greater recognition and attention--especially since it seems that Tony likewise has flown in the face of McGlone's sophisticated historical assessment of John Brown in Kansas and Virginia.  On the other hand, I do not think that Tony's approach to Brown, like it or not, is due to any lack of consultation or research.  His is an informed and deliberate opinion, and Tony is quite aware of the contemporary scholarship on themes like the Pottawatomie killings and the Harper's Ferry raid.  To the contrary, like the rest of us, he has his own presuppositions and objectives, and they are quite manifest in Midnight Rising.  I believe a number of his contentions are highly problematic; certainly, his perception and understanding of the man who died at Charles Town, Virginia on December 2, 1859 is significantly different from mine.

Yet the writing of John Brown biography is perennially unfinished business--every generation produces writers of great stature like Tony, and writers of considerably lesser stature (like me).  However, the last word on Brown has never been published, and the debate continues.

Season's Greetings
He Would Have Loved It

This photograph appeared in the April 1898 edition of Peterson's Magazine, noting the following under the cutline, which reads: "Present Occupants of the John Brown Homestead, Torrington, Conn."

A negro family now occupies the house at Torrington, Conn., where John Brown was born, May 9, 1800.  It seems a strange coincidence that after a half century this historic house should be occupied by people of the negro race, for whom the old hero gave his life.  The view is from a photograph by H. D. Barker.

Certainly the Brown family would have been pleased that an African American family lived under their former roof.  Certainly it was not uncommon for black people to visit and stay under John Brown's roof during the days of his life--from little known, even forgotten, people to some of the most famous names in 19th century black history dined and rested in the home of John Brown.

The home in which John Brown was born was built in 1776 and purchased by Owen Brown in 1799.  Owen kept his family in this house until removing them to Connecticut's western reserve lands in Ohio in 1805, when John was obviously quite young.  The Torrington Brown homestead was made a landmark in 1901, but burned down in 1918.  I do not have sufficient information about the circumstances surrounding the fire and its origins, and whether it was occupied at the time.  One hopes that the fire was not the work of some or another hooded fraternity, the likes of which typically despise the memory of John Brown.

Side Note--
What Sumner Wrote About Stephen Douglas

Sen. Charles Sumner

In 1874, Elias Nason published a biography of Charles Sumner, an anti-slavery senator from Massachusetts.  Sumner is often remembered for the episode in which he was brutally attacked and beaten in the Senate chamber, in May 1856, by Preston Brooks, a South Carolinian.  Brooks was outraged at the inflammatory and insulting speech that Sumner had given in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act--a speech which derided South Carolinian slave masters and Senator Andrew Butler of the same state.  Brooks, being Butler's nephew, sought revenge by nearly bludgeoning Sumner to death after pinning him down at his desk in the senate chamber.  John Brown considered Sumner a martyr, visited the recuperating senator in 1857, and reverently examined his blood-stained coat.  Contrary to hackneyed historical narratives, the Sumner beating had nothing to do with Brown's actions in the Pottawatomie killings of May 1856.

Stephen Douglas,
The Little Stinker

In preparation for his Sumner bio, Nason requested information from James Redpath who--among many other things--was Brown's authorized biographer and a leading antebellum journalist and author in the service of the antislavery cause.  Redpath wrote a letter to Nason on April 10, 1874, now in the Stutler Collection, which included a brief description of one of the slave masters' greatest political champions, Stephen A. Douglas.  Douglas, the so-called "Little Giant" is famously remembered as Abraham Lincoln's political nemesis.  But Douglas was more so the nemesis of enslaved black people, just as he was the author of legislation that both pacified and strengthened slave masters.  Most notably, Douglas was the mastermind behind the Compromise of 1850, which unleashed a ruthless revision of older slave "rendition" legislation--the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.  The Fugitive Slave Law reduced the entire nation to slave territory in effect by giving the Slave Power the right to pursue, arrest, and return fugitives, and by granting greater incentives to judges to rule in favor of slave masters.  Douglas also supported the racist Dred Scott Decision of the Supreme Court in 1857, which infamously declared that blacks had no rights that whites were bound to respect, and which negated any claim to freedom on the part of slaves relocated to free states with their masters.  Of course, these developments further galvanized the abolition movement, adding to its numbers, and leading people like John Brown to the realization that only political violence could end such a deeply entrenched and empowered "institution" like chattel slavery.

On the personal side, Sumner's brief description of Douglas (relayed by Redpath) is interesting, if not amusing:

Of Stephen A Douglass, (then a very great man in then popular estimation,) [Sumner] said: "Douglass, in private life is a brutal vulgar man without delicacy or scholarship; he is filthy in his person; he always looks as if he needed clean linen & sh[oul]d be put under a shower bath.

 So, not only did the politics of the "Little Giant" stink.  He stunk too.

Old News--

Thaddeus Stephens on John Brown in 1859

. . . .A good joke about Harper's Ferry is laid to the door of Thaddeus Stephens.  He was talking of the "invasion" at a Washington hotel, the other evening, with a Southern friend.  Southern waxed hot, and declared that John Brown, "d--n him,["] deserved a dozen hangings.  "Yes," said Thaddeus, in his solemn, drawling style, "you are right; he deserved hanging.  He only brought 17 men; if he had brought thirty he would have settled the Slavery question forever."

Original Source: "Miscellaneous News," Independent Republican [Montrose, Pa.], Dec. 15, 1859, p. 2

Photo Contendere:
The Browns of eBay?

Thanks to the ever vigilant Scott Wolfe, our friend in the field and roving historical detective, we are made aware of a current eBay item on sale, purported by its owner/seller to be a set of daguerreotypes from the 1850s of our man Brown and his family.  According to the eBay description the “Image Shows fantaical [sic] anti slavery religious zealot John Brown with his wife Mary Ann, oldest son John Brown Jr and 5 more of their children.”

In fact, while the items for sale may be authentic mid-19th century daguerreotypes, they are clearly NOT images of John Brown the abolitionist and his family.  The owner/seller probably is aware that there is good reason to doubt their authenticity, but makes quite an effort to rationalize selling the dags as John Brown pics:

"Likeness of the elderly man to John Brown has been compared to known authentic photographs some of which are shown below. You might find a number of men in old daguerreotypes that bear a vague resemblance to john brows [sic]. However the chances are very slim that the wife would also look like John Brown's wife, and that the couple would also have a large family with all the children looking like the children of John Brown. Historical records state that John Brown took a second wife of substantially younger age, which is also shown in this picture. All total John Brown is said to have fathered 20 children. most known images of Brown show a beardless gaunt face. At the end of his life he has a long beard and a more healthy looking face. This rare image shows an intermediate beard growth." 

Hilarious.  Of course, the comparison may have been made between Brown family daguerreotypes and these items, but the question is whether the comparison proves or fails—and the answer is that they fail.  The pretense that these images conform to certain criteria—a younger wife, large family, and family resemblance—is clearly rationalization on the part of the owner/seller, who is trying to unload an anonymous set of daguerreotypes at quite a profit.  In fact, although we do not have many images of the family, it is clear that this eBay family are not Browns; the younger woman bears no resemblance to Mary Brown, and the children do not correspond to the Brown family for that time period in sex or age.

Most laughable is the owner/seller’s attempt at explaining the facial hair of the elderly man in his daguerreotype as John Brown with “intermediate beard growth”!  Not only does the man in this image not look like John Brown (nor does the hair resemble Brown’s hair at any time as far as we know), but this “intermediate beard growth” is all wrong.  It seems his beard was gray from the first time he grew it, which was around 1858, and it never appeared like the whiskers of the old man in this daguerreotype.  Some also know that at the time of the Harper’s Ferry raid, for instance, Brown was not wearing his legendary long, gray beard.  His whiskers were cropped short, but were never “intermediate” as shown in this image.  This just isn't John Brown, and shame on the owner/seller for trying to make of this an honest sale, when it is far from it.

Needless to say, if you are going to spend $5000 this Christmas for a John Brown stocking stuffer, this is not the item.  You may do better getting a deal on some loose John Brown whisker hairs or possibly a chunk of wood from his gallows.

Osawatomie Notebook:

Word and Act: Theodore Roosevelt, Barack Obama, and John Brown

Now, with this second period of our history the name of John Brown will forever be associated; and Kansas was the theatre upon which the first act of the second of our great national life dramas was played.
                                                Theodore Roosevelt, August 31, 1910, Osawatomie, Kansas

Pres. Obama waves at Osawatomiens
from the presidential limo
Pete Souza-White House

This past week (Dec. 4) I noted that President Obama was scheduled to speak at Osawatomie, Kansas, at the site of John Brown’s heroic conflict with pro-slavery terrorists, and the site where Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was invited to speak at the dedication of the Osawatomie historic site on August 31, 1910.  Although the occasion became a kind of starting point for his bid for the 1912 Presidency under the banner of his own new third party, his original intention for speaking in Kansas was to promote the most progressive or liberal form of Republican politics at a time when the party was split between conservatives and “insurgent” progressive Republicans.  Roosevelt wanted to be the guiding spirit of the Republicans and promote his liberal Republican ideas; but the plan backfired when his speech drew criticism for identifying his campaign with Brown.  In fact, according to historian Robert LaForte, Roosevelt’s speech “evoked a wide variety of responses. It was labeled ‘Communistic,’ ‘Socialistic,’ and ‘Anarchistic’ in various quarters; while others hailed it ‘the greatest oration ever given on American soil.’"1 

Theodore Roosevelt in Osawatomie, 1910
Dike Dickerson photo-Kansas Historical Society

Roosevelt had originally come into office as a result of the death of President William McKinley, who was mortally wounded by an assassin in September 1901.  Roosevelt served out the McKinley term, was reelected in 1904, but failed to gain the nomination for the 1912 election due to a split in the Republican Party that left William Howard Taft the party’s victor.  In 1911, Roosevelt founded his own third party, the Progressive Party, and finally came in second place to Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the Presidential election, leaving Taft, his Republican rival and former friend, in third place.

Part I: Theodore Roosevelt Makes a Speech

The 1910 Osawatomie speech is known as “The New Nationalism” speech and is considered one of the great orations in the history of the politics of the United States.  Roosevelt began the oration by citing that the history of the nation was marked by two great crises, the first at its founding and the second in the Civil War.  Roosevelt’s references to Brown, Lincoln, and the Civil War made it a compelling treatment of the nation’s recent history; it had only been fifty years since John Brown was hanged in Virginia, and barely a half-century since the end of the war.  Yet it was not a history lecture, but a savvy politician’s address reflecting Roosevelt’s political agenda. “I do not speak of this struggle of the past merely from the historic standpoint,” Roosevelt declared. “Our interest is primarily in the application to-day of the lessons taught by the contest a half a century ago.”  The hopeful candidate declared that it was almost useless to “pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises.”  He considered it “half melancholy and half amusing” to consider how the nation “in company with John Brown, and under the lead of Abraham Lincoln,” fixed the problems of their own era, while the people of his own era were denouncing “those”—meaning himself—“who are trying to meet the problems of the twentieth century in the spirit which was accountable for the successful solution of the problems of Lincoln’s time.”2

Kansas HistoricalSociety

Roosevelt: Lincoln over Brown

It is no surprise that Roosevelt’s references to John Brown invoked strong criticism.  Many people hated Brown in 1910 as they do today.  By 1910, the age of the so-called “Black Republicans” was long gone and the nation had repented of its 19^th century passion for black liberation and equality.  The Great White Nation had already resumed business-as-usual, Reconstruction lay in ruins, and the former slave and his children were now under the heel of segregation laws and violent racism.  It was the era of flagrant, non-stop lynching, and John Brown’s reputation was suffering the disparaging revisions of a society that increasingly had grown hostile toward black people and their claim for justice.  Furthermore, by this time, the memory of Lincoln had been canonized, and the martyred sixteenth President had become the messianic figure of the nation, while John Brown was increasingly being written off as an extremist fanatic. 

One thing that is interesting about Roosevelt’s speech is that despite the criticism it drew, his references to Brown were fairly consistent with the article that he afterward published in self-defense.  In that article, "The Progressives, Past and Present," published in The Outlook magazine (3 Sept. 1910), Roosevelt was extremely measured in praising John Brown in order to make it clear that he followed Lincoln, and held Lincoln as the real savior of the nation.  Yet Roosevelt had said as much in his Osawatomie speech the month before by citing the leadership of Lincoln and making Brown only a complement to the slain President at best.  To Roosevelt, John Brown’s Kansas was not an ideal, but useful:  “It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom; . . . In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts.”3 

The Long, Liberal Hand of Oswald Garrison Villard

If Roosevelt was consistent in elevating Lincoln far above Brown, he was also careful not to give Brown any praise.  In fact, LaForte reveals that one of the speechwriters, William Allen White, was determined to “limit” Roosevelt’s comments about Brown.  Why?   In order to placate the most famous John Brown biographer of that time, Oswald Garrison Villard.

Oswald Garrison Villard

We should recall that in 1910, Oswald Garrison Villard was the newly reigning John Brown scholar, and his acclaimed book, John Brown: A Biography Fifty Years After, was still a novelty on bookstore shelves.   Villard had already used his considerable influence to bury W.E.B. DuBois’s eloquent biography of Brown in bad reviews in 1909—making sure that the black scholar did not steal his thunder before his book was released the following year.  The grandson of pacifist William Lloyd Garrison, Villard was something of a limousine liberal (his Southern wife didn’t let black people enter through their front door) with a fanatical devotion to pacifism and a quiet contempt for John Brown.  The Garrisons were noble, but the great abolitionist’s heirs were a proud lot.   Oswald Garrison Villard inherited money, owned newspapers, and resented John Brown as the man who had inadvertently stolen his grandfather’s glory.  

Villard promoted his own biography of Brown as the most advanced modern work of scholarship, and in many respects it was exactly that.  Yet it was also heavily biased and carefully written to both praise and damn John Brown as a murderer.  In fact, it was Villard who brought the “truth” of the Pottawatomie killings to the 20^th century reader in graphic condemnation of Brown as a kind of oxymoron—a principled murderer.  Having amassed an unprecedented body of research, nevertheless Villard manipulated the evidence to produce his work of “friendly fire” against Brown—and he did so with devastating effect.  Brown’s reputation, although already under fire from lesser writers since the later 19^th century, now came increasingly into disfavor in “mainstream” (read: white) society.  His subjective abuse disguised as pristine scholarship provided ammunition for a whole array of anti-Brown writers well into the 20^th century.4

In 1910, Villard was thus a notable activist and author, and certainly he flexed considerable muscle in all matters pertaining to John Brown.  According to LaForte, Villard “was afraid that Roosevelt in characteristic half-knowledge would describe the ‘old fanatic’ in terms so favorable that Villard's interpretation would be set back about 30 years.”  Just as he had stymied poor DuBois in 1909, the long, liberal hand of Villard now was manipulating Roosevelt, successfully persuading him to “confine his remarks about Brown.” As a result of this self-interested subterfuge, Roosevelt mentioned Brown only in two incidental references, which surprised the editor of the local newspaper, the Osawatomie Graphic, who expected “more than a mere cursory mention” of the Old Man of Osawatomie and Harper’s Ferry.  One attendee spoke of the speech stating that Roosevelt had dedicated a monument to John Brown without mentioning his name.5

Part II: Barack Obama Makes a Speech

As many of you know, I have roots here. I'm sure you're all familiar with the Obamas of Osawatomie. Actually, I like to say that I got my name from my father, but I got my accent – and my values – from my mother. She was born in Wichita. Her mother grew up in Augusta. Her father was from El Dorado. So my Kansas roots run deep.                                   President Barack Obama, December 6, 2011, Osawatomie, Kansas

Pres. Obama in Osawatomie: Never Mentioned JB
Julie Denesha/Getty

This past Tuesday, President Obama went to Osawatomie, Kansas to speak.  It was already evident that making this speech in Osawatomie was no coincidence, but certainly the President’s remarks made it clear that he was drawing a historical parallel in his contest with conservative Republicans.   In his speech, the President cited Theodore Roosevelt’s stand as a friend of the free market as “the greatest force for economic progress in human history,” but also one necessarily bound to “rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest.” The President pointed out that Roosevelt had come to Osawatomie in order to lay out “his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. “‘Our country,’ he said, ‘means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy … of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.’"  Clearly, the President was establishing his current mission as a revision of Roosevelt’s Progressive Republican brand of politics, thus identifying the current opposition of the Republican Party as being the expression of abusive capitalism.   Likewise, President Obama was careful to point out that Roosevelt was called a “radical,” “socialist,” and “communist” by his detractors, although the platform he fought for has benefited our society in many respects.6  In other words, Roosevelt was right and so is Barack Obama.

Interestingly, one blogger for the New York Times observed the President’s witticism, “I have roots here. I'm sure you're all familiar with the Obamas of Osawatomie,” by which he overstated the fact that he does have Kansas roots on his mother’s side of the family.  “By emphasizing his family’s history on the United States mainland, which is less familiar to the public than his Kenyan ancestry and his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia,” the blogger concluded, “Mr. Obama tried to tie his background to that of the mainstream middle class.”7

Historical Indifference?

Whether or not one agrees with President Obama, it is obvious, then, that his inspiration for the Osawatomie platform was the parallel drawn between Roosevelt’s political challenge of one hundred years ago, and his own forthcoming run for reelection against a hard Republican opposition.  Taken at face value, it would seem the President has no interest in John Brown, and that his presence in Osawatomie was only due to the fact that Roosevelt had gone there in 1910. 

At first blush, it might seem that the President was indifferent, perhaps even unaware of the significance of Osawatomie and the John Brown epic.  For instance, one knowledgeable writer in the Hartford [Conn.] Courant noted yesterday that he found it peculiar that President Obama made no mention of John Brown in his Osawatomie speech last week.  “Being passionate about history and the American idea,” writes Bill Hosley, “I was astonished that the president, his staff and the mainstream media overlooked why Theodore Roosevelt, or anyone else, travels to visit Osawatomie.”  Hosley goes on to write that the President “could have delivered his speech anywhere,” such as the Theodore Roosevelt national historic site in Oyster Bay, N.Y.  But as clever as it was to link his message with Roosevelt’s 1910 address, “to go to Osawatomie and ignore the history that brought Roosevelt there in the first place is disrespectful. . . .”8

Strong words, but I confess that I found them somewhat persuasive at first. 

"Osawatomie" tribute in Osawatomie,
the 1970s publication of the Weather Underground

Then I noted an interesting article on a right-wing website, Big Government, in which the author does the typical song-and-dance about President Obama’s ties to “terrorists” Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, including a downloadable copy of a 1975 version of Osawatomie, a publication whose title was inspired by that group’s heroic perception of John Brown.   I have seen this kind of stuff before, including the supposed similarity between President Obama’s campaign logo and the old circular insignia of the Weather Underground, and references to the President’s early association with Ayers and Dohrn.  Of course it’s nonsense, and even if it were true, I think it’s a matter of conservatives straining out gnats and swallowing camels.  (By the way, I ate a slice of pizza while seated next to Bernadine Dohrn in Lake Placid, N.Y. in late 2009, during a John Brown sesquicentennial conference.  She seemed quite a lovely person, and if she likes “Old Osawatomie,” I certainly won’t hasten to condemn her.)

The Audacity of Hope-ful Republicans

Yet the conservative writer provided some unintentional assistance to me, at least by giving me pause to reconsider President Obama at Osawatomie.  Indeed, an excerpt from his article is worth quoting at length:

[T]he choice of Osawatomie may be more significant than the Roosevelt conceit or Obama’s maternal family roots.  Osawatomie was the site of a historic battle between abolitionist John Brown and pro-slavery forces (who were backed by the Democrats of the age). Though Brown’s men were defeated, his audacious tactics earned him the nickname “Osawatomie.” Obama may have chosen deliberately to cast his struggle against “the rich” in the same emotive terms. Obama alluded to Osawatomie in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, in discussing his Kansas ancestors (p. 12): “. . . Kansas had entered the Union free only after a violent precursor to the Civil War, the battle in which John Brown’s sword tasted first blood.”  Obama also cited John Brown as one of his historical inspirations in his second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. In a passage that almost anticipates the radical themes of this week’s speech, he writes (p. 97):

The best I can do in the face of our history is remind myself that it has not always been the pragmatist, the voice of reason, or the force of compromise, that has created the conditions for liberty… It was the wild-eyed prophecies of John Brown, his willingness to spill blood and not just words on behalf of his visions, that helped force the issue of a nation half slave and half free.

Obama conspicuously neglected to mention Osawatomie’s history in his speech on Tuesday, but the town is clearly important to Obama’s personal identity, as well as to the way he understands his political destiny. Given that Kansas is not a swing state, the choice of setting likely had more to do with the symbolism of Osawatomie Brown than electoral votes. In Obama’s revision of history, the Republicans are the slave-owners, the villains in “the defining issue of our time.”
 . . . . It’s highly unlikely that Obama was channeling Bill Ayers on Tuesday or sending a “dog whistle” to the extreme left. He is not shy about siding publicly with the radicals of the Occupy movement and evoking their rhetoric, and did so in the speech itself.  Yet the very choice of Osawatomie, a symbol beloved by the earlier generation of radicals that mentored Obama, is a reminder that his present radicalism has a deep–if largely ignored–history.  It also seems to confirm that Obama sees himself as the leader and instigator of an internal struggle among Americans. No matter how much Democrats complain about Republican charges of “class warfare,” Obama’s apparent decision to evoke the symbolism of Osawatomie in launching an attack on the wealthy is a reminder that he, in fact, relishes the fight and believes he will win even if his views are presently those of a radical minority. Like John Brown, he is prepared to sacrifice himself for the sake of his goals–even if, unlike Brown, Obama fights to restrict freedom instead of expanding it.9

Of course, the things that bother this conservative writer are of no concern to me, and I have no interest in getting my John Brown blog entangled in debates reflective of a political system that evokes neither charm nor conviction in my soul.  (I should mention, however, that there is a palpable contempt in the unceasing manner in which conservatives refer to the President simply as “Obama.”  Dead presidents may be so repeatedly referenced, but it seems to me that our sitting President of the United States deserves to be referred to as “President Obama” at least a few times in such an article.  The author’s consistent reference to “Obama” sounds like just another way of saying, “this n----r,” and I find it viscerally offensive.)

Roots and Radicalism

On the other hand, although the writer makes these observations in contempt, they are helpful in demonstrating that President Obama very likely cared much more about speaking in Osawatomie than we realized.  Unlike Theodore Roosevelt, President Obama may actually be a quiet admirer of John Brown, as two references in his books suggest, as well as his cultural ties to Kansas.  Particularly, I think the writer’s observation that “the very choice of Osawatomie, a symbol beloved by the earlier generation of radicals that mentored Obama” is probably true.  I also suspect that beneath the shining “American” armor of political necessity, President Obama may have a “radicalism” rooted in history—particularly a history of admiring leaders who instigated “an internal struggle among Americans.” 

Of course, I do not read this as a negative or diminishing evaluation.  It suggests that while President Obama probably avoided any mention of John Brown in order to save himself the headache of being attacked by right-wingers all over again, he may actually have had a greater enthusiasm for speaking in Osawatomie, Kansas, than even President Theodore Roosevelt had in 1910.  President Obama might have cited John Brown in his speech, after which he would have been obligated to placate angry white people across the nation, possibly even back-peddle to do damage control.  Instead, my sense is that he simply overlooked Brown.  Perhaps that’s cowardice, or just common sense.

To be sure, it is doubtful that he made the decision to omit mention of Brown on his own.  For a President or a presidential candidate, word and act are often matters of political expedience, not clarity.  President Obama was probably advised to do so—although I doubt it was the current reigning biographer of Brown who warned the President not to mention John Brown.  Yes, it’s possible that the White House is aware of Tony Horwitz’s new book and decided that it was best for the President not to get entangled with the controversial Subject of Midnight Rising—especially since Tony tends to extend the Villardian image of Brown as a well-intended murderer into the 21^st century.  Still, it’s interesting that on the day that President Obama was speaking in Osawatomie, Tony Horwitz was giving an author’s John Brown speech in Kansas City.10  Too bad they couldn’t have gotten together for a post-speech book chat. 

© 2011 by L. DeCaro Jr.

Notes

            1 Robert S. La Forte, “Theodore Roosevelt's Osawatomie Speech,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 32:2 (Summer 1966): 187-200.  Retrieved from the Kansas Historical Society website (Topeka, Kan.) on 11 December 2011 from:

http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-historical-quarterly-theodore-roosevelt-s-osawatomie-speech/13176.

            2 Theodore Roosevelt, “New Nationalism Speech” ([31 August] 1910).  Retrieved from Teaching American History.org (Ashland University: Ashland, Oh.) on 11 December 2011 from:

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=501.

            3 Ibid.

            4 See my essay, “Black People’s Ally, White People’s Bogeyman: A John Brown Story,” in The Afterlife of John Brown, edited by Andrew Taylor and Eldrid Herrington (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 11-26.

            5 LaForte, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Osawatomie Speech.”           

            6 “Full text of Barack Obama's Speech in Osawatomie, Kansas,” The Guardian [U.K.] (6 Dec. 2011).  Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/07/full-text-barack-obama-speech.

            7 Ashley Southall, “In Kansas, Obama Relishes His ‘Deep’ Roots,” New York Times (6 Dec. 2011).  Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/in-kansas-obama-relishes-his-deep-roots/           

            8 William Hosley, “Obama Fails To Note John Brown's Battleground,” Hartford Courant (10 Dec. 2011).  Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from: http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-op-hosley-obama-ignores-john-brown-1210-20111210,0,1775988.story.

            9 Joel B. Pollak, “Obama’s Osawatomie Speech Echoes Symbols of Occupy Wall Street, Abolitionism–and the Weather Underground,” Andrew Breitbart Presents Big Government (8 Dec. 2011).  Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from: http://biggovernment.com/jpollak/2011/12/08/obamas-osawatomie-speech-echoes-symbols-of-occupy-wall-street-abolitionism-and-the-weather-underground/

            10 Hosley, “Obama Fails To Note John Brown's Battleground.”