From the Field:
“I Consecrate My Life…"

ENOCH LONG, ELIJAH LOVEJOY…AND JOHN BROWN

by H. Scott Wolfe  

“This monument commemorates the valor, devotion and sacrifice of the noble Defenders of the Press, who, in this city, on Nov. 7, 1837, made the first armed resistance to the aggressions of the slave power in America.”  Inscription, Lovejoy Monument, Alton, Illinois  

“Lovejoy’s tragic death for freedom in every sense marked his sad ending as the most important single event that ever happened in the new world.” Abraham Lincoln, 1857

Elijah Lovejoy Monument, Alton, Ill. Cemetery
Photo by H. Scott Wolfe

            During my ascent of the Mississippi River last November, I paused in Alton, Illinois to once again view the Elijah Lovejoy Monument. Perched upon a blufftop at the margin of the Alton Cemetery, this imposing memorial to the antislavery struggle never fails to spur me toward the contemplation of the sacrifices made by those engaged in that noble cause.

            In its center is a towering 93-foot granite shaft, topped by a 17-foot bronze statue of “Winged Victory.” The square pedestal at its base displays tablets bearing apt quotations of the martyred Lovejoy. This central shaft is flanked by a pair of “sentinel columns,” crowned by bronze eagles representing “the idea of a triumphant goal or consummation,” along with a pair of “chalices,” in the form of sculpted lions.

            The grave of Lovejoy is to be found about 100 yards within the cemetery proper. Surrounded by an iron fence, its marker consists of a substantial block of New England granite beneath a marble scroll…whose Latin inscription translates to: “Here lies Lovejoy—Spare him now the grave.”

            On the plaza of the Lovejoy Monument is a simple granite stone, inscribed with the names of the men who defended his printing press on that momentous November night in 1837. Among those names can be found that of Enoch Long.

******

            Thirty miles south of where I now tap the keys, reposes the tiny community of Sabula, Iowa. The promotional signboards call it Iowa’s only “Island City,” for the creation of the lock and dam system has surrounded the town with Mississippi River backwaters…thereby allowing vehicle access only by bridge and causeway.

Gravestone of Enoch Long
Photo by H. Scott Wolfe

            Meandering north of Sabula along the incongruously named 607^th Avenue, one reaches a remote cemetery named “Evergreen”…tightly squeezed between the murky waters of Joe Day Lake and the tracks of the Iowa, Chicago & Eastern Railroad. Within its coniferous bounds is a plain grave marker…a flat slab of marble blackened by the elements and beset with a coating of bright orange lichens. This stone marks the final resting place of Deacon Enoch Long, who died in Sabula on July 19, 1881 at the ripe old age of 91 years.

            Few people have heard of Enoch Long. The fame of his family is commonly reserved for his older brother, Major Stephen Harriman Long…the U.S. Army officer and explorer…whose expeditions through the Great Plains and upper Mississippi valley were crucial to American expansionism. Longs Peak, the 14,000 foot Colorado landmark, is named for him. But no lofty mountain bears the name of Enoch Long…just a simple stone set amidst the Iowa marshes.

            My first encounter with Enoch Long came while researching the pioneers of my own community: Galena, Illinois. Though a native New Hampshireman, Long had come early to frontier Illinois. During the late 1820s, he had spent several summers in this vicinity…mining lead. (“Galena” is the Latin word for lead sulfide, the principal ore of that heavy metal.) Miners of those bygone times would ascend the Mississippi in the spring and depart in the fall…this annual migration corresponding to that of the spawning sucker fish. (Thus the origin of the once prevalent nickname for Illinois: “The Sucker State.”) So many Missourians made this yearly trip that it was said that that State had taken an emetic…and these miners became known as “Pukes.” They were later to carry that appellation to the plains of “Bleeding” Kansas.

            Enoch Long became a permanent resident of Galena in the 1840s. City directories show him engaged in the lumber trade, both as a hired clerk and the owner of his own firm. Local sources also list him as a pillar of the Presbyterian Church, an Elder described as an honest and upright citizen who “never wronged any man out of a cent.”

            During the Civil War, Long moved his business across the big river to Sabula. And there, in my own mind anyway, the story ended. But then I encountered a local obituary for this esteemed citizen…and found the following, previously unsuspected, aspect of his colorful biography:

“Deacon Long was a very ardent antislavery man, and when Illinois was admitted into the Union as a State, he exerted all the influence he could command to make it a Free State. At the time of the great riot in Alton, in 1837, when Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered on account of his antislavery proclivities, Deacon Long was one of the parties who defended Lovejoy’s printing office… .

            My immediate reaction to this bit of intelligence can be summed up, simply, as: “shock and awe.”  It was time to hit the old historical trail for the full story of this “ardent antislavery man.”

            Upon his arrival in the infant State of Illinois, Enoch Long had settled in the community of Upper Alton, where he soon established himself in the grocery and coopering trades. Considered by his neighbors as “a man of considerable culture, a member of the Presbyterian church, (and) a Christian gentleman,” he quickly began to labor “on the side of morality and religion.” In May of 1820 he organized the second Sunday School ever to be established in Illinois, conducting it “almost alone” as both its superintendent and principal teacher. He also established Alton’s first temperance society, his support of such institutions always “constant and zealous.”

            But the“magnum opus” was his role in the construction of Upper Alton’s Presbyterian church. As a generous subscriber, trustee and member of the building committee, Deacon Long accomplished much “by direct labors and godly influence.” When the substantial stone edifice was completed, he donated “one of the finest bells ever made,” much remembered for its “remarkably pure tone and sweetness.” And, though deeply affected himself by the financial panic of 1837, Long assumed the payments for those church subscribers who could not meet their obligations. The grateful parishioners considered him “the one Christian who gave all that his Master called for.”

            Long also became a close friend of a young preacher who often led services in this Upper Alton church…and was a frequent guest in the Deacon’s home. His name was the Reverend Elijah Parish Lovejoy.

Elijah P. Lovejoy in
Appleton's Cyclopaedia of
American Biography

            A native of Maine, Elijah P. Lovejoy had graduated from Waterville (now Colby) College and removed to St. Louis, where he taught school and edited an anti-Jacksonian newspaper. Following a religious conversion, he returned to the East and enrolled in the Princeton Theological Seminary. Once licensed to preach, he returned to Missouri and was placed in charge of the St. Louis Observer, a reform organ of the Presbyterian church. He began to produce antislavery articles which elicited “great excitement and bitter feelings,” despite the fact that they were moderate in tone…calling for gradual emancipation and the colonization of the freed blacks.

            Reverend Lovejoy also antagonized Catholic St. Louis with angry tirades against “papists,” whose church he called the “Mother of Abominations.” He wrote that the Catholic church “was approaching the Fountain of Protestant Liberty” with “stealthy cat-like step” and “hyena grin,” seeking to “cast into it the poison of her incantations.”

            Under great public pressure to cease the publication of his antislavery beliefs (particularly after he protested the public immolation of a mulatto resident of St. Louis), Lovejoy prophetically declared: “I am ready, not to fight, but to suffer, and, if need be, to die for them.”  He chose to stand upon the platform of freedom of speech and the press, writing:

“I deem it, therefore, my duty to take my stand upon the Constitution…We have slaves it is true, but I am not one…I do, therefore, as an American citizen and Christian patriot, and in the name of Liberty and law and religion, solemnly protest against all of these attempts to frown down the liberty of the press and forbid the free expression of public opinions. Under a deep sense of my obligations to my country, the church, and my God, I declare it to be my fixed purpose to submit to no such dictation. And I am prepared to abide the consequences.”

           

The “consequences” were the destruction of his Observer office and its printing press. Soon thereafter, the Reverend Lovejoy removed across the river to “free state” Illinois and, in September of 1836, the first issue of the Alton Observer was printed. But his experiences in St. Louis had altered his philosophy to a more “ultra” position. Lovejoy now advocated the Garrisonian view of immediate, unconditional emancipation of the slaves.

            In July of 1837 he issued a public call for the creation of an Illinois Antislavery Society. His old adversaries in St. Louis declared: “Something must be done, and speedily.” In August, a mob attempted to assault Lovejoy…and again destroyed his press. In September, a replacement press was also cast into the Mississippi River.  “Frown down the liberty of the press,” indeed.

            In response to Lovejoy’s call for a State Antislavery Society, delegates met in Enoch Long’s Upper Alton Presbyterian Church in late October. To prevent the intrusion of proslavery men, forty constables, “good men and true,” were deputized…and among them was Deacon Long. Besides the creation of the Society, the delegates debated the future of Lovejoy’s Observer. They decided to order a new press, to be safely stored in the riverside warehouse of Godfrey, Gilman & Co. They also discussed, with the Mayor of Alton, the organization of a company “to resist by force, if necessary, any further efforts of mobs to destroy property or molest peaceful citizens.” About sixty men were enrolled, including once more, Enoch Long.

           

On November 6, 1837, the new printing press arrived and was placed on the third floor of the stone warehouse. The following day, twenty men gathered to protect the building. A vote was taken, and Enoch Long was chosen “Captain,” an honor due mainly to his prior military experience. (He had served briefly on the Niagara frontier during the War of 1812.)  The Captain immediately “assumed charge,” the doors of the warehouse were barricaded and defensive measures initiated. (Note: Can we not consider this fortress a harbinger of the armory engine house at Harper’s Ferry?)

Attack upon the Godfrey, Gilman & Co. Warehouse
in which Lovejoy was killed defending his printing press

            At 10 P.M. the mob, “with arms and hootings, with tin horns blowing, and plenty of liquor flowing among them,” had gathered to demand the surrender of the press. When denied, a shower of stones and bullets struck the warehouse…shattering its windows. A request to return fire was denied by Captain Long, who thought the sacrifice of life “unjustifiable and useless.” One of the mob was, indeed, later killed…and this infuriated the attackers all the more.

            They returned with a ladder, which was carried to the river side of the building, and flaming tar balls were prepared to set the roof on fire. Several of the guards, including the Reverend Lovejoy, were compelled to leave the warehouse to prevent men from ascending the ladder. A volley exploded from behind stacks of lumber on the levee, and Lovejoy was mortally wounded (“five balls entered his body”). He managed to make his way back to the warehouse “counting room,” where he soon died…his friend Enoch Long at his side.

            The roof flaming, and the mob threatening to blow up the building with a keg of powder, the defenders were offered safe passage if the press was relinquished. All resistance being useless, the offer was accepted…and another printing press (the fourth) was consigned to the Mississippi River. (Note: Enoch Long and his compatriots were later INDICTED for “unlawfully, riotously, and in a violent and tumultuous manner”…acting “against the peace and dignity of the People of the State of Illinois.” Mercifully, they were found not guilty.)

            Two days later, on what would have been his 35^th birthday, the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy was buried in an unmarked grave…after a “sad, almost silent funeral.” It was a simple service, where “no flowers were strewn upon his coffin” and “no remarks were made lest the mob should disturb the last rites.”  It was said “that the silence of death, under such circumstances, well became the burial of liberty.”

Yes, liberty hung in the balance…but there was not to be silence. The events in Alton were to reverberate far and wide…and, across the North, Elijah Lovejoy was mourned as a martyr of the antislavery cause….

Grave of Elijah P. Lovejoy (Photo by H. Scott Wolfe)

            In Boston, citizens gathered at Faneuil Hall to discuss the momentous events at Alton. One of the speakers, Massachusetts attorney general James T. Austin, defended the proslavery mob…comparing their actions to those of the patriots of 1776. A rebuttal was promptly given by Wendell Phillips, a son of privilege, who praised the actions of Lovejoy as a warranted defense of the principles of liberty. His eloquent response shocked his conservative peers…and horrified his relatives, who contemplated sending him to a sanitarium.

            In Springfield, Illinois, a young member of the State Assembly, Abraham Lincoln, spoke before the Young Men’s Lyceum upon the topic of “the perpetuation of our political institutions.” He decried “the ravages of mob law,” as demonstrated by “the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country.” Despite standing before an audience by no means sympathetic to Elijah Lovejoy, Lincoln warned that “whenever the vicious portion of the population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend upon it, THIS GOVERNMENT CANNOT LAST!”

Photo by H. Scott Wolfe

            And in Hudson, Ohio, Laurens P. Hickok, professor of theology at Western Reserve College, excitedly called for a meeting in the “old chapel-room,” where he related an account of the Lovejoy incident to the assembled faculty and students.

            The following day, the professor “rode all over the township,” inviting citizens to another meeting…to be held at Hudson’s Congregational church. There, in an eloquent speech, Hickok declared: “The crisis has come. The question now before the American citizens is no longer alone, ‘Can the slaves be made free?’ but, ‘Are we free or are we slaves under Southern mob law?’”

            Prior to the close of this meeting, a man “who had sat silent in the back part of the room, rose, lifting up his right hand, saying, ‘Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!’”

            The name of this man was John Brown. And this prophecy was every bit as prescient as that which was handed to the jailer of Charles Town.

H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois, Public Library District and now a regular correspondent and contributor to this blog. He has devoted many years of grassroots research on John Brown, the Harper's Ferry raiders, and related themes.

John Brown News

California Teenage John Brown Scholar in National History Day Competition

On Friday, March 9, 2012, Keegan McLean, a seventh grader in California, won the National History Day competition for his division. This year's theme is "Revolution, Reaction, and Reform," and Keegan's topic is John Brown. I was happy to be one of his resources for his project, a website that won him first place in his division.  Keegan will be competing in the State History Day competition in Riverside, California this month.  Congratulations Keegan!  Best wishes for the state and national competitions ahead.


Yesterday John Brown's Trial, Today Videoconferencing

CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Court officials from eight states and the District of Columbia will observe two mock trials in Charles Town next week to see how West Virginia provides language interpreters from afar.

A demonstration of the state's multi-cast videoconferencing unit is set for Thursday at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Charles Town. The historic building where abolitionist John Brown was convicted of treason in 1859 was chosen to show the system can work in any kind of facility.

Excerpted from Associated Press, "W. Va. Courts to Showcase Remote Interpreter System."  The Northwestern.org [Oshkosh, Wis.], 30 Mar. 2012


Harper's Ferry Raider Aaron Stevens Remembered

Lisbon Connecticut Historical Society

Aaron D. Stevens, who preferred his middle name, Dwight, was born on a farm on Route 169 in Lisbon in 1831. He worked on the family farm, becoming a passionate antislavery advocate in his youth. His cousin and close friend was Charles Whipple, whose name Stevens used by an alias later, during the conflict over the Kansas territory. His first departure from Connecticut was to fight in the Mexican War.  After returning home, Stevens again enlisted in the army, going west in 1851.  Following a conflict with an officer, Stevens was court-martialed and jailed in 1855.  Stevens shortly escaped and joined the free state forces in Kansas under Jim Lane, through which he--as Capt. Charles Whipple--made connections with John Brown.  Stevens later participated in Brown's famous Missouri raid in late 1858, in which eleven enslaved people were liberated and escorted across country and into Canada.  Stevens finally followed John Brown to Harper's Ferry in October 1859, where he was seriously wounded when the effort failed.  Stevens was jailed, tried, and convicted in the same Virginia court that condemned Brown.  Brown was hanged in December 1859 and Stevens followed him on the gallows in March 1860.  In his last letter to Jenny Dunbar, a young woman that he admired, Stevens wrote: “Slavery demands that we should hang for its protection. I regret nothing except I will not live to see this country free.”  He is buried near Brown in North Elba, N.Y., nearby Lake Placid.

Inspired by a somewhat flawed article by Richard Curland, "Historically Speaking: Lisbon man aided famed abolitionist."  The Bulletin [Norwich, Conn.], 24 Mar. 2012

Also see Tom Bosse's article on Aaron D. Stevens on the website of the Lisbon, Connecticut Historical Society

Ashtabula County History Program--

They Hid John Brown's Weapons in Ohio

According to a report in the Tribune Chronicle of Warren, Ohio, a descendant of John Brown’s associates in Ashtabula County made a presentation about the abolitionist last week.  The descendant is Linda Lipps, a great grand niece of Alexander Fobes, a brother-in-law of John Brown Jr.   The Fobes-Brown connection was based on the fact that Fobes and John Jr. married sisters, Eunicia and Wealthy Hotchkiss.  John Jr. and Wealthy were settlers in the Kansas territory in 1854, along with his brother Jason and family, and other sons of John Brown.  It was John Jr.’s letter of appeal for help in the spring of 1855 that brought his father to the territory with a wagon full of weapons.

According to Mrs. Lipps, her forebear, Esther Fobes, a sister of Alexander Fobes, was a lifetime resident of Ashtabula County, and died at age ninety-five.  She dictated many of her memories of Brown to her family members.  Inspired by these stories and knowledge of this connection to John Brown, Lipps has done research in local history about Brown and the raid.

This is an interesting story, coming as it does through the Fobes family line.  The Fobes not only had a connection to the Brown family through marriage, but some actually helped him by hiding his weapons in Ashtabula County in the months prior to the Harper’s Ferry raid in 1859.  According to Oswald Garrison Villard, Kansas rifles, pistols, and ammunition were shipped through Iowa to Ohio, where they were shuttled around a number of places in Ashtabula County, including a hiding space on the farm of E. Alexander Fobes in Lindenville, Ohio.  In 1909, Oswald Garrison Villard’s field researcher, Katherine Mayo, visited Ashtabula County and interviewed a number of surviving contemporaries of Brown.  One person, A. B. Noxon (a Fobes son-in-law) also recalled that E. Alexander Fobes and his cousin Franklin Fobes later helped John Brown Jr. move the weapons into Pennsylvania, where they were then shipped by canal to Brown.  The latter Fobes was a cooper by profession, and was the one who packaged the weapons in wooden containers, marking them, “Isaac Smith,” Brown’s pseudonym in Maryland and Virginia.  The weapons were finally freighted to Brown in Chambersburg, Pa., and moved by wagon to Brown’s Maryland headquarters. 

Apparently, Lipps’ attitude toward Brown is not new in her family.  According to the Mayo’s interview notes, Eunicia Fobes, John Brown Jr.’s sister-in-law, lived long enough to recount her family’s involvement with the Harper’s Ferry raiders. According to Mayo, Fobes recalled that the guns were hidden in a sugarhouse in the woods.  Fobes herself disliked John Brown, thinking of him as conceited because he seemed to think “himself capable of doing anything.”  Looking back over the years, the elderly Fobes thus recalled the famous Brown self-assurance and stubborn self-determination, a characteristic that we know about from other sources.  However, Fobes also resented Brown because he never paid them for holding the guns.  Apparently, she did not share the same convictions as the Browns.  "He seemed to think it our duty to contribute that to the cause,” she told Mayo. “It made me angry."   

Over one hundred years after that interview, her descendant has mixed feelings about John Brown too.  Although she believes him to have been “courageous,” she finds “his methods questionable.”  It is quite possible that her ambivalent attitude toward John Brown is part of the family’s legacy passed down over the generations:  When the Fobes family heard about the Harper’s Ferry attack, they did not support the idea.  Fobes relative A. B. Noxon told Mayo in 1909 that when news of the raid reached them in Ashtabula County, they thought Brown "injudicious and wrong." But they knew he would be hanged, and they were sympathetic. 

See Bob Coupland, “Gustavus couple share history,” Tribune Chronicle [Warren, Oh.], 11 Mar. 2012.  


And a Really Super
Postscript from Our Expert in the Field, Scott Wolfe

Just a note to comment upon the interesting posting in regard to E. A. Fobes of Lindenville, Ohio. It should be remembered that the Fobes farm was not merely the place that weaponry and other supplies were clandestinely kept....but also a rendezvous point for a number of the members of Brown's Provisional Army. In particular, William Leeman (who was to die at Harpers Ferry), Charles Wesley Moffett and Luke Francis Parsons spent a good deal of time at the Fobes place during late 1858 and early 1859. It was at this time (after the Chatham Convention) that the indiscretions of "drillmaster" Hugh Forbes necessitated a delay in Brown's plans...and the men had scattered about northeastern Ohio to find work. 

     Leeman was employed by Fobes for a significant portion of the summer, and the latter is mentioned frequently in his letters.  For example, in one dated 7/4/1858 to his sister Mattie, Leeman explains the tardy receipt of an epistle by writing: "...it was not directed to the care of E.A. Fobes which accounts for it not being forwarded to me...."

     Moffett also was employed in the vicinity.  In a letter from Luke Parsons to William Leeman dated 11/14/1858, the former writes: "...started for home a going by C. Moffatt...to see if he had heard from any of the boys. I stoped out in the road in front of his house and hollered, he came out and told me to go in. I would not, but he took holde of my hoarse and led him in the barn. So I went in and found E.A. Foabs and wife, Martha and Louisa there eating a roasted turkey...."

     Parsons also assisted Fobes. In two diary entries of 4 and 7 March 1859, Parsons writes: "A.E. Foabs and I gathered about sixteen barrels of sap. Charlie (Moffett) boiled all down in one day." And: "Helped Foabs gather sap and boiled it in the evening. Charlie and I went up to John Brown Jr's."

     All in all, E.A. Fobes is an exceedingly important character in the events leading up to the Harpers Ferry incursion. I'm glad you recognized him in the blog entry.

Best wishes,

Scott W.

* H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois, Public Library District and now a regular correspondent and contributor to this blog. He has devoted many years of grassroots research on John Brown, the Harper's Ferry raiders, and related themes.

Bloated Bloggers--

Blustering Al Benson versus John Brown

I used to get annoyed, even angry, at bloggers and other internet trollers who wrote malicious things about the Old Man.  The truth is that one could waste a lot of time sniping and fighting with self-assured idiots and racists over their remarks about John Brown because they frequently appear on line.  Of course I've learned that these people are speaking from their hearts first, not their intelligence.  They are hateful, prejudiced, and malicious in intent.  They are not people of reason or learning, so they do not merit engagement.  I've learned to ignore them.  Indeed, only a handful of anti-Brown critics bear any kind of notice, mainly because they write from positions of influence and intelligence, and for the most part they are academics who throw out insinuations and half-truths.  Right now I'm working on a piece about Otto Scott, a rabid anti-Brown author now deceased, that I'll be posting shortly.  Scott was malicious in intent, but he was a thoughtful and able writer despite his gross errors and racism, and should at least be dismissed at the intellectual level because his clever volume on Brown and the "Secret Six" is treated as the definitive work by neo-Confederates, crypto-racist Southern Calvinists, and other right-wingers with an agenda that includes bashing the Old Man.

Then there are people like Al Benson Jr., a man that I do not know and do not wish to know.  Benson has a blog called Revisedhistory and is currently on a rant against the Old Man that reveals a depth of ignorance and hatred that could only come from a neo-Confederate or someone who thinks like one.  I find it hilarious--a comedy of errors composed by someone intelligent enough to read, write, and keep a blog, but little more than that.

"Goop"

Benson's bluster is probably provoked by Tony Horwitz's recent publication, Midnight Rising, which has garnered more media attention on the Subject than anything we've seen in this era.  Whether or not Midnight Rising will have the impact upon scholars and historians that David Reynold's John Brown Abolitionist is another question.  Tony's book is written for a wider and more popular readership and has been marketed and promoted in an unprecedented manner, and although I have significant differences with him over key themes in the John Brown story, his reading of the Old Man is much closer to mine in comparison to people like Benson.  The latter's reaction suggests that extreme right-wing neo-Confederates just can't stand the amount of attention that Brown has gotten lately, and apparently Midnight Rising has Benson's prejudiced blood rising too.  This is what makes his harangue so hilarious, so entertaining. Benson's multi-part rant (which is still in process) has thus far two segments under the title, "John Brown-from business failure to terrorist and media hero."  He begins his diatribe with this profound declaration: "Much has been written about John Brown of Harpers Ferry, Virginia fame over the years.  And much of  it is historical and political goop."  Goop?

Re: Obama, of Course

After recounting some inane anecdote about how Kansans love John Brown (which is a generalization, by the way), he writes: "Why do you suppose that Obama went to Osawatomie, Kansas to give that speech awhile back?  That's John Brown territory and Obama knows it.  He was identifying with the crowd that thinks John Brown was the greatest thing since sliced bread."  This pretty much establishes the trajectory of Benson's writing: he doesn't know history and he's a reactionary bigot.  Actually, President Obama went to Osawatomie to speak because that's where Teddy Roosevelt spoke in 1910, fairly well exploiting the John Brown historic site to make a speech about his political objectives, and did so virtually without mentioning Brown in his speech!  Afterward, Roosevelt wrote an article diminishing Brown in favor of Lincoln to avoid being associated too closely with Brown.  President Obama never once mentioned John Brown either, which shows he was following Roosevelt's strategy more than identifying with the Old Man.

Consider the Source(s)

Benson fairly well seals it in the rest of the first entry, citing his two main sources: Otto Scott's twice published assault on Brown and the "Secret Six" and J. C. Furnas', The Road to Harper's Ferry.  In fact, both books are anti-Brown, and neither is based upon original research, nor does either have any value to John Brown scholarship.  To no surprise, these are the works that Benson cites for his information on Brown, although he clearly is aware of other published efforts.   But this kind of narrow prejudice and selective reading is what defines conservative and right-wing historical treatments, allowing people like Benson to scream "historical revision"--as if their narration of history is truth and everyone else's is just "goop."

The second installment of Benson's right-wing tirade is more of the same.  He starts with a reference to a review of David Reynold's book (I suppose Benson wouldn't want to dirty his Sadducee hands by actually picking it up and reading it), in which he laments that all "progressive" treatments of John Brown are "socialist," then some gratuitous references to "terrorists" like Che Guevara and Bill Ayres versus the noble Tea Party, with the conclusion, "You can see why John Brown looks so much better when socialists are running the country."

Benson's Bitterness

Benson's bitterness is seething and it is really evident that he's using his hatred of John Brown to vent his own warped hatred of the current Presidential administration and all things not right-wing.  The fact that right-wingers cannot distinguish between liberal capitalism and socialism is itself a sign that most of the anti-Obama "socialist" claptrap reflects the political and historical ignorance of the Right.  Benson is just too ignorant to reason with, but his blogging extravaganza is at least illustrative, which is why I'm spending time on it here.   While I'm hardly a spokesman for liberal politics, I cannot help but point out that it is liberals who have contributed the most intelligent, thoughtful, and reasoned political discourse, and without liberal scholars, there would have been no explosion of in depth research on slavery, abolition, and the histories of people of color that has taken place over the past forty years.  Benson fairly well highlights just how politically and historically stupid so many self-proclaimed conservatives happen to be.

Calvinism

Yet the heart of Benson's second segment is his vituperations against John Brown's Calvinist faith and Puritan legacy.  He writes:

I have also read, over the years, some comments by writers who actually considered people like John Brown and Thaddeus Stevens to be Calvinists! Where they came up with such flights of fancy I have no idea–maybe from the same people who blithely inform us that Abraham Lincoln was a Bible-believing Christian. One is as equally ludicrous as the other. But that seems to be the trend today. Demonize Christian Southerners and try to make agnostic and apostate Northerners look like Christian crusaders.

I don't know if Benson has read my religious life of John Brown.  I doubt his reading on Brown has gone beyond the Southern partisanship that he evidences in such words.  While I would agree that Lincoln has often been made far more a Christian than he was in reality, it is not "equally ludicrous" to say that Brown was a devout evangelical Christian and Calvinist.   By all accounts, Brown was as much an advocate of the Reformed doctrines of grace as was the errant Southern general, Thomas Jackson.  In fact, I have often said that apart from their view of slavery and "race," Brown and Jackson were cut from very similar cloth, and they have similar profiles as devout Christian men in the reminiscences of their followers and associates.  

Brown's upbringing in the Reformed Congregational church, with its deep roots in the English Reformation and the Great Awakening is a matter of history.  Nor was he a creature of the New Side and experimental evangelical movements of his era as some historians like to claim.  Brown was fairly conventional if not backward looking in his Reformed theology, so much so that liberal Christians like Franklin Sanborn and Thomas Higginson were the ones who recognized that Brown's religion was wed to the historic evangelicalism of the Protestant Reformation.  Brown made profession of faith in Christ at sixteen years of age and joined the First Congregational Church of Hudson, Ohio, although he was reared in a home as replete with evangelicalism as it was with anti-slavery doctrine.  He never withdrew his membership as a Congregationalist officially, although he widened his practice of worship to include other evangelical churches during his lifetime.  He was a voracious Bible student throughout his life, a constant gadfly to his sons' liberal and spiritualist tendencies, and even fairly good apologist for Calvinism over against advocates of Wesleyan-Arminianism.   His letters, while largely personal and occasionally motivated, reflect many personal references to his faith in Christ, his belief in Scripture, and his devout belief in the singular claims of Christianity upon humanity.  To deny this as does Benson is, frankly and flatly, prejudice. 

Bearded Fundamentalists

After making a mess of Brown's religion, Benson brings part two to a close by noting that Tony Horwitz  "noted that Brown was a terrorist," which probably is more a reference to a piece in the New York Times that Tony did a year prior to the publication of his book.  To be sure, Tony seems to believe that Brown was a religiously oriented terrorist, although he is more careful in how he frames his presentation in Midnight Rising, somewhat setting up the reader to draw that conclusion without proclaiming it himself.  Yet Benson objects to Tony's reference to Brown as a "bearded fundamentalist," concluding: "Let’s don’t try to tar the Fundamentalists with John Brown’s brush. That’s grossly unfair to them. Otto Scott’s comments about Brown’s theology, or lack thereof, show that Horwitz was off base on this point."

This is hilarious stuff.  It reveals nothing about Brown, but a great deal about Benson and his ilk, the ultimate historical revisionists.  These are the folks who are bent on making the antebellum South--so full of cruelty, rape, theft of labor, and heart-rending injustice--as if it were a land of godliness, piety, and biblical orthodoxy.  It is comical that a man with so little understanding of the historical facts, and one so dependent upon discredited and useless narratives, should enter such trash under the heading of historical revision without realizing his own role in the perpetuation of the slave master's revision.

I have no intention of reading Benson's next installment, nor will I revisit his blog.  But highlighting his folly should not only give us a good laugh.  Afterward it serves also as a sober reminder that John Brown is hated because what he represented challenged the forces of evil in places high and low.  As the gospel writer put it, "men love darkness rather than light" (John 3:19), and this romancing of the Old South is darkness.  Indeed, as Jesus said to the enemies of righteousness in his day, 'If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, 'We see,' your guilt remains" (John 9:41).

West Coast Update--
Jean Libby Writes

Much gratitude to all who made the program “Santa Clara County Connections to the Civil War” at the Sunnyvale Public Library on March 7 a public history event.

African welcome was created by Keisha and Peter Evans, the proprietors of Pan African City Alive!  in Sunnyvale (www.panafricancity.com), a community resource for all things Africentric that was appreciated by the audience of more than 100 people.

The welcome was notable for the sharing of an artefact of the John Brown raid, an 1853 Sharps rifle, by Mick Konowal, who is a senior attorney for Microsoft Corporation at their Washington state headquarters.  It had been owned (his name hand-engraved on the stock) by Dauphin Thompson.  It was taken from his hands at the time he was bayoneted to death by the U.S. Marines in the enginehouse at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859.  For 152 years the carbine was in the family of Major William Worthington Russell, as well as a pike that was identified by serial number as taken from the raid.

Many thanks to Tony Horwitz, the author of Midnight Rising; John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War (Henry Holt, 2011) for recommending me to Mick Konowal, and especially to the new owner of the artefacts for sharing his treasures in public history spirit.  Mick has a Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Washington and is a member of the Manuscript Society.  He can be reached at mkonowal@hotmail.com

Members of the South Bay and San Francisco Civil War Round Tables assisted with viewing the rifle.  (www.sbcwrt.org)  Larry Gonzalez of SBCWRT and Debbie Grace, re-enactor and cannon specialist, did the honors posts.

The John Brown Photo Chronology, authored and curated by Jean Libby is on view at the Sunnyvale Public Library until March 17.  I am very grateful to Bill Noyes and these organizations for workshops and installation.

John William Templeton spoke about the Underground Railroad in California, documentation for which begins in 1850 in San Jose.  John’s style is always interactive, and this program is no exception.  He spoke about Rev. Peter Williams Cassey, the first ordained Episcopal deacon of color in the West, connected with the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in San Jose, founded in 1863.   His interests and publications on black technology innovators in Silicon Valley (another name for the heart of Santa Clara County ) and jazz are welcome as well.  (www.Californiablackhistory.com)

‘Am I Not John Brown’s Daughter?’ Annie Brown in the Civil War, took on new meaning with the discovery of “ANNIE” etched secretly behind the sling bar on Dauphin Thompson’s rifle.  Annie was fifteen when she was with her father’s army at the Kennedy Farm in Maryland in the summer of 1859.  Dauphin and his brother William Thompson as well as Annie’s brothers Oliver and Watson Brown were all killed in the raid.  Her grief was alleviated a bit by becoming a teacher among freedmen at Fortress Monroe in Hampton Roads, Virginia in 1863, at Rolleston, the confiscated mansion of the former governor, Henry A. Wise.  Documentation grows to support this part of Annie Brown’s story.  Sources:  “Living Legacies of Harpers Ferry” by Sandra Weber of Pennsylvania in Civil War Times Illustrated, February 2005 and Robert F. Engs, Freedom’s First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia 1861-1890 (Fordham University Press, 2004). Thank you, Sandra, for your warm and excellent work (longtime John Brown Scholar).

Members of the Santa Clara County Historical and Genealogical Society, who also came to Mary Brown’s birthday party at the Saratoga Community Library on April 15, 2011, were back in Sunnyvale.  Special thanks to Mary Hanel at the Santa Clara City Library.  We look forward to including your presentation about Sarah Brown at Mary Brown and Her Daughters’ Homecoming in Saratoga at Hakone Gardens on September 25, 2012 (www.alliesforfreedom.org/Mary_Anne_Day_Brown_birthday.html).

Alice Mecoy, descendant of Annie Brown Adams, is scheduled to keynote the Saratoga Homecoming event in September.

The community audience included Mattie Tinsley from African American Heritage House in San Jose.

Journalism coverage is under the auspices of Create TV, who will have a broadcast on Channel 15 Comcast that includes interviews at Pan African City Alive! and the library event.  Thomas Libby, history columnist at California Lawyer Magazine, will follow up with the legal side of the New Almaden Quicksilver Mines and attempted seizure by President Abraham Lincoln in May, 1863, presented by Bill Noyes as the third portion of the program.   Bill's presentation is based on the work of R. Larry Comstock for SBCWRT.

Susan Denniston, administrative librarian at the Sunnyvale Public Library, and the staff made it all happen.  Thank you, Susan, for your flexibility and  making guns and elephants and even a giraffe right at home.

With gratitude and smiles,

Jean Libby
Allies for Freedom
www.alliesforfreedom.org
editor@alliesforfreedom.org

Take Note--
Most of What You've Heard about John Brown is Wrong

The John Brown that many people imagine is frankly wrong because they've been misinformed by years of prejudiced, poorly researched, and willfully deceptive accounts--virtual gossip.  After years of studying Brown close up, I can sketch the following list challenging twelve mistaken notions that typify Brown's popularly misrepresented legacy.  Remember, this is just a sketch.  There's more in depth and material substance if you wanted to expand many of these biographical items.

1.  Brown was "mad," insane, or mentally ill.

There is no documentation, evidence, or reason to conclude that Brown had any mental illness.  Unfortunately, Tony Horwitz somewhat graces the notion of Brown suffering from a manic or bipolar condition in his recent publication, Midnight Rising.  Although he recognizes the unreliability of posthumous psycho-historical analyses, it didn't stop him from trying to keep this useless discussion alive.  He even fictionalizes a bit when he says that Brown's letters show bipolar like swings--a claim that he does not prove and cannot prove because it just isn't so.  I've been collecting and studying Brown's letters for years and nothing of that sort can be seen in his writings.  Tony makes much of a few poorly contextualized references to insanity and monomania, but none of these references hold up under normal scrutiny.  There just isn't sufficient evidence that Brown was mentally troubled: Yet it seems many people will continue to hold Brown to an unfair standard--He is mentally ill, "wild eyed," and "crazy" because people want him to be, nothing more.  The real question is why do they continue to insist on this issue despite the lack of evidence?

2.  John Brown was a terrible businessman.

John Brown had misfortune in most of his business attempts.  This doesn't entirely mean he was a bad businessman.  Typically popular narratives isolate him from among other businessmen and from the economic context of the antebellum era.  It is assumed that Brown had the same opportunities and circumstances that businessmen do in our era.  Most popular narratives make no mention that there was no national currency, and from state to state monies differed; there were no limited liability corporations, no safety nets, etc. that business people enjoy today.  Then the economy itself was fractured, and the effect of the 1837 economic downturn ricocheted westward, so they hit Brown's region a couple of years later, further weighing upon him and many others with devastating impact.   In the sheep and wool business, most people never consider that his partner Simon Perkins was actually responsible too, and in fact he was probably a worse businessman.  Perkins inherited lots of money and lost most of it--and not with John Brown.  His brothers had to bail him out.  He blamed Brown after the fact since it was convenient to do so, but Perkins was really the weaker link in the firm despite being the investor.  Brown brought the "sweat" equity and management, and while he might have done better, he wasn't incompetent.   Historians tend to tell anecdotes about episodes suggesting Brown's business failings but they never examine the business history itself.  They seem unaware of the challenge Brown had taken on in opposing powerful wool manufacturers, and how they were determined to undermine his operations on behalf of the wool growers.  I'd venture to say that, all things being even, John Brown was a fairly decent businessman and would have probably done alright were it not for always having to face challenges beyond his power.  Bottom line, few if any have seriously studied his business history but they keep repeating the hackneyed claim that "John Brown was a terrible businessman."

3.  Failure in business drove Brown into radical antislavery action.

Nonsense.  Failure in business may have convinced him that he was never going to be a wealthy antislavery tycoon like Gerrit Smith, but he had a lifetime goal of laboring to undermine slavery.  The trajectory of his approach became more militant over the years, but the basis of this change was not his business history.  It is the history of the growing power of slavery, especially the virtual closing of all doors to possible antislavery reform in government following the Fugitive Slave Law and Dred Scott Decision in the 1850s.  Brown became more militant because proslavery power was becoming more and more bold and demanding.  Meanwhile the possibility of legal resolution of the problem increasingly declined.  It was the political and moral trajectory that one must follow to understand his increasing militancy, not any notion of personal failure.

4.  Brown went to Kansas to settle.

Wrong.  He only went to Kansas because his sons asked for help.  Although he became somewhat involved in the developments of Kansas, the reality is he was never a major player in Kansas free state leadership and really acted as a catalyst for abolitionism among a largely passive, moderate free state population.  Brown essentially went to Kansas to support his sons and was drawn into defense of the free state cause from terroristic invasion.  He never intended to stay in Kansas and--much to the dismay of some free state Kansans--by 1858, he had pretty much abandoned them for his own plans back east.  Brown's role in Kansas is famous and memorable, but it was a detour in his own intentions.

5.  Brown's plan to invade Virginia was a later development, born in the 1850s.

Some scholars have diminished the claim that Brown had planned on invading Virginia in some way from the late 1830s.  There is certainly solid evidence that he had some plan in mind in the late 1840s--even Frederick Douglass verifies that.  But there is reasonably good evidence that he had some idea of tampering with slavery in the South going back to the late 1830s and early 1840s.

6.  The Pottawatomie Killings of 1856 were terroristic.

This is probably one of the biggest, most ill conceived notions relating to Brown, but has been highly popularized.  While it is true that the Kansas material is hard to work through and questions may fairly well remain, it is interesting that many people jump to hard and fast conclusions.   My understanding of the killing of five pro-slavery men by Brown's men in 1856 is that these "victims" were collaborating with invading terrorists and had specific intentions to lead an assault on the Browns and their allies.  This is not speculation; there is sufficient evidence to argue confidently that the Pottawatomie killings were a preemptive strike.  Certainly the men killed were not simply killed because they were pro-slavery.  Brown interacted a lot with proslavery people in Missouri and Kansas territory without incident.  These five men (Wilkinson, Sherman, and three Doyles) were known as activists, collaborators, and conspirators.  Frankly, the Pottawatomie killings were a wartime matter and more a matter of counter-terrorism since the Browns had no resort to protection from the law.

7.  The Pottawatomie killings led to "Bleeding Kansas."

Nonsense.  The problem of violence in Kansas was introduced and sustained by proslavery thuggery.  Proslavery people started it, instigated it, and benefited from it until free state people began to fight back.  The invasions of 1856 by southern thugs and terrorists were not brought upon free state people because of John Brown.  While their rage may have been heightened by antislavery resistance, they were going to attack regardless, as the assault on Lawrence in May 1856 shows.  The proslavery force was intent on forcing Kansas into the Union as a slave state and since they were defeated in democratic terms, they were determined to use violence.  Proslavery militancy started the civil war in Kansas, which was also the unofficial start of the Civil War.  Don't blame Brown.  Blame your slave-owning great-great-great grandfather.  The slave power was expansionist and aggressive--spare us all the crap about "the war of Northern aggression."  Proslavery power was running roughshod over the nation long before 1861, and Kansas proves it.

8.  The Harper's Ferry raid and John Brown's plan.

Brown added the HF invasion later in his life.  His overall plan, which was supported by a wide range of people including Frederick Douglass, was to invade the south, used small bands of armed men operating from the mountains, and to make forays to gather enslaved people and lead them away.  It was not insurrectionary in the proper sense of the term since it was not based upon the idea of killing slave masters necessarily.  Brown's plan was a kind of moral via media--he wanted to destroy slavery by throwing the economic structure of slavery into a panic; he was willing to use force as it was necessary, but he had no intention of widespread killing or insurrectionary murder of slave masters as was done by Nat Turner, for instance.  Brown was targeting the system.  It seems he was looking for a kind of domino effect across the South--the more runaways there were, the more slaves would be sold deeper into the South, and the system would end in chaos.  This is what Brown inferred in his last written statement when he said that he had hoped that his plan could be accomplished "without very much bloodshed."

9.  The Harper's Ferry invasion was quixotic.

Although the HF raid was risky, it was not a hopeless plan as many continue to presume.  Brown studied antebellum armories (there were only two) and knew how easily they'd be taken.  HF was easily taken.  He knew when to strike HF the town and how to hold it effectively for a brief period of time.  While it seems he intended for it as a kind of political declaration of his movement, he also saw it as a rallying spot.  He held HF effectively until the morning after he invaded it.  Regardless of the reason, he made tactical errors in remaining too long in the town and in letting a train go through.  Had he simply moved with expedience, his resort to the mountains would have made it highly difficult for local militia and the yet meager U.S. army to apprehend his movement as a whole.  His campaign would have potentially gone on for months and even years, launched with notoriety from HF.  But his failure there in no wise dismisses the validity of his plan.  Contrary to Frederick Douglass, who did not know HF like Brown, it need not have been a "steel trap."  As Brown told Gov. Wise of Virginia, even with the presence of militia, he managed to resist for two days.  Had he sustained a means of escape, the whole story would have been different.

10.  Blacks did not respond to Brown.

This is nonsense.  Even moderate opinions based upon careful reconsideration of the evidence suggest that scores of blacks were already involved with Brown or present in/around the town at the time of the raid.  Brown's raider, Osborn Anderson, who was on the ground and an eyewitness, says local blacks were enthused and supported Brown and would have come out in great numbers.  Other evidence suggests many blacks had indeed come to join Brown but backed off when he got bogged down in fighting in HF.  Let us be clear: the fiction of black fear, indifference, or unwillingness is based upon slave masters.  It was the slave master version that was fed into the northern press, and the North embraced this view.  Many historians did too and continue to do so.  Yet none can offer a justification for ignoring Osborn Anderson, the eyewitness.  Jean Libby has shown that even in the wake of Brown's defeat, many blacks fled the county.  Whether they fled out of fear of retaliation (which I doubt) or frustration that the plan had gone awry, blacks were highly responsive to Brown.  Some set fires and poisoned livestock of the jurors in Brown's trial.   One of Brown's surviving raiders (Tidd) even said frankly that Brown was both pleased and surprised at the response, which means it was probably better than even he had expected.

11.  Brown received a fair trial.

Only superficially.  Brown was rushed to judgment in a trial presided, conducted by, and decided by slaveowners.  Brown's life was spared on a technicality of time and law, but there is no doubt that the Virginians wanted to kill him.  As Brian McGinty has shown, although Brown paid respect to the trial, his actual experience as a man seeking legal justice while on trial, he was constantly deprived of reasonable appeals and options that should have been afforded him--that would have been afforded him, had he been tried by the federal government instead of Virginia.

12.  Brown didn't kiss a black baby.

On the day of his execution, he probably kissed a white baby, possibly in the arms of an enslaved woman.  But he probably did kiss a black baby during his incarceration at Charlestown.  Don't ask me about this now because it's part of what I'm writing about.  But there's some truth in the legend.  Revision: Six years ago when I made this blog entry, I was still doing research for my book on John Brown's last days, which was published in 2015.  Based on what I found in doing this book, I would now say that Brown definitely kissed a white baby--the infant daughter of jailer John Avis, who probably was in the arms of his wife, Mary.  There was no black enslaved woman in the household.  However, I am still convinced that there is more to the "black baby kiss" than what has been allowed, even though Brown certainly kissed no black baby on the day of his execution as the legend portrays.  I would refer the reader to my book, Freedom's Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia for my take on what likely happened.--LD  14 July 2018

From the Field--

History for Sale: A Note from Scott Wolfe

Photo courtesy of H. Scott Wolfe

Interested in purchasing a Provisional Army shrine? Seeking to enjoy this snowless winter, I meandered over into an adjacent state today, to photograph the home and grave of Charles Wesley Moffett....Kansas freestate partisan...trainee at Springdale....delegate to the Chatham convention....and a Provisional Army member who ultimately chose love, not war.  Lo and behold, the place is for sale. You can have the farmhouse (built of lumber shipped by wagon from Iowa City) fashioned by Moffett's own hands....along with six acres of ground, for only a little over 75 grand. Not exactly New York prices, eh? I wish I were rich, and not merely good looking. It would be a grand base from which to study the boys.

From the field,

H. Scott Wolfe

* H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois, Public Library District and now a regular correspondent and contributor to this blog. He has devoted many years of grassroots research on John Brown, the Harper's Ferry raiders, and related themes.

Photo courtesy of H. Scott Wolfe

History Notes on Charles W. Moffett

"There were a good many colored men from Canada in the convention, and a good many from the United States in the convention. Fred Douglas[s] was expected, but finally at the last moment Fred backed down and didn't come. If any man has any idea that it was planned to go into the South for robbery and murder, or for treason against the United States, I would ask him to study that provisional government and see how we intended to govern the men that went in there."  Charles W. Moffett, Montour, Iowa, interviewed in "John Brown: A Reunion of his Surviving Associates," Topeka Capital (24 Oct. 1882), trans. in BBS RP02-0196 

Charles Moffett was born in 1827 in New York, and went to Kansas in 1855.  He was among those drilled in Iowa in John Brown's group.  He was heavily criticized for not joining JB at Harper's Ferry, but was prevented by "obligations from which he could not be released."* Notes from a letter of Amanda M. Sturtevant [Moffett's sister], to James Redpath, April 17, 1860, in Moffett, Chas. W. file, Box 12, Oswald Garrison Villard - John Brown Papers, Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscript Collection.


* Scott Wolfe informs me that these obligations pertained to Moffett having fallen in love with one Emma Manfull, whom he had met at Springdale, Iowa, while training with Brown's men.

A Little Leaven Leavens the Whole Leavenworth--

Kansas History Professor Remembers John Brown and Abe Lincoln

According to the Leavenworth [Kansas] Times online, Jonathan Earle, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas, spoke on the subject of Lincoln and John Brown yesterday (Feb. 20), addressing the University of Saint Mary's annual Lincoln program.

Earle recalled how candidate Lincoln visited Kansas in December 1859, at the very time that Brown was hanged in Virginia for his effort to liberate enslaved people.  Earle told how Lincoln spoke at Atchison on December 1, the day before Brown's hanging.  Earle reportedly declared: “I’ll come out and say it — if it weren’t for Kansas and a wild-eyed abolitionist named John Brown, Abraham Lincoln would never have been president."  There we go again with that "wild-eyed abolitionist" rhetoric.   I think I'm going to start prefacing every reference to Lincoln with, "that manic depressive."

According to Earle, Lincoln's political career had been doubtful until the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 brought him to the public eye as an outspoken critic of Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas.  Recall that it was Douglas’ plan to apply the ballot in decided the future of Kansas and Nebraska entering the Union as either free or slave states.  Lincoln's voice arose in objecting to the continuance of slavery's expansion. According to the Leavenworth Times, Earle said that following Brown's attack of Harper's Ferry, "anti-slavery Republican Party faced a political upheaval, with pro-slavery Democrats drawing comparisons between Republicans and John Brown. . . .Though not thought to be a major contender, Lincoln ascended in part because of the turmoil within the party following Brown’s actions. Earle also argued that Lincoln's speech in the town of Leavenworth, Kansas, "were the most forceful, morally grounded and provocatively delivered since his debates with (Stephen) Douglas in 1858.” 

In an amazing stunt of academic acrobatics, Earle admitted that Lincoln's "views on race, by most modern standards, would not likely to be considered 'enlightened,'" but yet "he was well ahead of the vast majority of Americans in his racial thinking, and showed a capacity to grow."

This is pretty predictable stuff coming from obeisant American historians, particularly those enlisted to blow hot air into the grandiose Lincoln blimp that is constantly flown overhead in this nation.   Notwithstanding Dr. Earle's competence in addressing Kansas themes, including John Brown's role in the territorial days of that great state, his little Lincoln trick is quite unconvincing.

Dr. Earle cannot have it both ways.  Either Lincoln's views on race were inadequate or they were "well ahead," and the fact is they were at best benignly racist.  Lincoln might be a lot of things, but "well ahead of the vast majority of Americans in his racial thinking" is not one of them.  Lincoln was certainly no racist ogre, the kind of which would hang a black man from a lamp post in Manhattan.  But there were a lot of benign white racists like Lincoln in his day--white men who indulged in racist jokes, enjoyed black-face minstrel shows, and referred to elderly black women as "auntie."  Yes, Lincoln was a nice guy--even John Brown's black Springfield friend Thomas Thomas knew Lincoln at one point and spoke kindly of him.  Frederick Douglass did the same.  But just because he was a nice guy and didn't express his racism in mean-spirited ways does not make him "well ahead."  

There were few white men who were "well ahead" of their countrymen when it came to race in the mid-19th century, and Lincoln wasn't in that circle.   But John Brown was at the center of it.  

Incidentally, Dr. Earle is the author of a nice little book about Brown, John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry: A Brief History with Documents, which he did in conjunction with the Bedford Series in History and Culture (edited by, among others, David Blight, our kind host at Yale University in 2009).  Earle's book is more than adequate, including a fairly written essay with notes, primary documents culled from published sources, a brief timeline and a bibliography.  As to the latter, I found it interesting--and a little disappointing--that Dr. Earle completely omitted any of my works from his bibliography, which suggests either that he slighted my work or that he knows nothing of my work--and in either case, he would look somewhat poorly for an American historian presenting himself as something of a John Brown authority.  However, I've been slighted before, both by John Brown "scholars" and Malcolm X "scholars," respectively, despite the real dearth of substantial, in depth scholarship on either biographical shelf.   However, I will turn the other cheek and salute Dr. Earle for bringing us a quality scholarly aid that will be useful for students and scholars for years to come.  I am happy to own one and have not stuck it behind on the shelf, as I have done with a number of "John Brown books" that do little but take up shelf space.

Source: Tim Linn, "KU Professor Speaks on Lincoln, Brown," Leavenworth Times.com (21 Feb. 2012).

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.