Photo-history--

This photograph was published in Peterson's Magazine for April 1898, showing black residents of the house in Torrington, Conn., where John Brown was born in 1800.  The house was destroyed by fire in 1919.

In Response--

What Makes History Interesting: Steven Lubet Responds

In the previous installment of this blog, I was pleased to feature a review ("The John Cook Book," 15 Jan.) of Steven Lubet's new book, John Brown's Spy: The Adventurous Life and Tragic Confession of John E. Cook.  The review is by H. Scott Wolfe, a research librarian from Galena, Ill., and an aficionado on matters of Brown and his raiders, who is also a friend and regular contributor to this blog.  The other day, I was happy to hear from Steven Lubet, who would like to respond to some of the issues raised by Mr. Wolfe, and I'm happy to post the thoughtful response that follows.--LD

H. Scott Wolfe has decidedly mixed feelings about my book, John Brown’s Spy: The Adventurous Life and Tragic Confession of John E. Cook, which he recently reviewed on this blog.  He had kind words (which I appreciate) for the chapters dealing with Cook’s escape from Harper’s Ferry and his subsequent capture and trial, which comprise the latter two thirds of the book.  On the other hand, Wolfe did not care at all for the opening chapters on Cook’s early life, which he considered too speculative.  I would never attempt to change a reviewer’s mind, but Wolfe’s critique – which he presented as a guide to “all future historians and biographers” – actually provides an interesting opportunity to discuss the ways in which historians approach probabilities, inferences, and deductions from the available sources.

Wolfe’s primary complaint about JB’s Spy was my use of what he calls “conditional verbs and adverbs,” which he considers out of bounds.  To Wolfe, there is no place in history for probabilities or likelihoods, and he admonishes writers to stick strictly to “the facts.”  As I will explain below, any product of such Wolfean discipline would be shallow and unenlightening. 

All histories and biographies seek to answer two questions:  What happened? And why?  The second question necessarily involves some degree of speculation.  Historical reasons, motivations, causes, and objectives – on both individual and broader scales – are inevitably ambiguous, indistinct and obscure.  In the absence of a diary – or even if we had one – who can say what first caused Abraham Lincoln to oppose slavery, or Stephen Douglas to tolerate it?  There are many opinions, but there is no definitive answer.  And it is much harder to reconstruct the early life of someone such as John E. Cook, who was obscure until eight weeks before he died at the young age of thirty.  To get at the reasons behind Cook’s actions, therefore, one obviously must look at the era in which he lived and the people and events surrounding him.  That is why so many biographies are subtitled “the life and times.” 

So much for the general case; now let’s consider a specific example.  Wolfe was deeply troubled by my discussion of Cook’s adoption of abolitionism, given my observation that there is “no precise record” of his conversion to the cause.  Lacking such a record, I turned to the political and social forces that were sweeping the nation at the time, including their impact on the neighborhoods in which Cook worked and lived.  Wolfe says this amounted to a “virtual Hurricane Sandy of speculations,” but in fact I drew only measured and supportable conclusions from the available information.

Here is what we know:  Cook was living in Brooklyn in 1854, working as a law clerk.  In addition to his job – for which he showed little aptitude – his main pursuits were writing poetry for young women and practicing with firearms.  According to his employer, Cook had shown no interest in abolition.  Then, in September 1855, Cook departed New York for Kansas, where he joined the Free-State militia.  Those are the facts, but why did he do it?  The question comes naturally, and I admit of course that the answers are unavoidably somewhat speculative – but that is what makes history interesting.

Henry Ward Beecher

 And so, I point out that Henry Ward Beecher was at that very time preaching abolition from the pulpit of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, while recruiting “emigrants” for the anti-slavery crusade in Kansas.  Yes, I do infer that Cook “would have been drawn” to Beecher, but that is not much of a conjecture.  Beecher was, in the words of his biographer, “the most famous man in America,” and almost nobody passed up the opportunity to hear him speak.  People traveled hundreds of miles to hear Beecher, while Cook lived nearby in Brooklyn.  Moreover, Beecher was a Connecticut Congregationalist, as was Cook, so it is no great leap to conclude that Cook sometimes would have attended Beecher’s sermons.  Would any Congregationalist in Brooklyn have stayed away from Plymouth Church? 

But wait, there’s more.  The pastor at a nearby Dutch Reformed church (attended by Cook’s sister and brother-in-law, with whom he was living) blamed Cook’s abolitionism on “radical preachers” who spread “diabolical resentments” over slavery.  Although the pastor did not name any particular radical preacher, the most prominent and outspoken of them all, and the one closest at hand, was Henry Ward Beecher.  And finally, it is undeniable that Beecher inspired thousands of young men, mostly New Englanders like Cook, to join the war in Kansas.  “Beecher’s bibles” – that is, rifles in the hands of Free Staters – were famous for a reason. 

I explained all of that in JB’s Spy, before reaching the very modest conclusion that Cook was influenced by Beecher.   That is something similar to suggesting that Lady Gaga was influenced by Madonna (or Chris Rock by Richard Pryor), even if one cannot verify attendance at a specific concert.  I suppose I could have omitted Beecher from the book, leaving Cook’s motives and influences completely unknown, but that would have been a disservice to readers who – pace Wolfe – are interested in the context of the story.

Wolfe supports his minimalist view by invoking the wisdom of the old television series Dragnet, in which Sgt. Joe Friday always requested “just the facts, Ma’am.”  Perhaps that was a suitable modus operandi for a fictional cop on a twenty-two minute television show, but it is not the way that detectives operate in real life.  In an actual police investigation (a subject of which I have some professional knowledge), the facts are just the starting point.  Witness interviews generate inferences and deductions, which develop into theories, which then lead to narratives.  Any cop who limited an investigation to the so-called facts would quickly be out of a job.

A similar situation confronts historians, making probabilities and inferences both permissible and unavoidable when writing about the past.  As a stylistic matter, of course, it might be that John Brown’s Spy made too frequent use of conditional adverbs.  If so, it was only because I attempted to draw a bright line between established facts and well-supported (and clearly identified) suppositions.  A book that neglected such context would be a list, not a biography.  In any case, I hope that others will read John Brown’s Spy and reach their own conclusions.

Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor of Law, Northwestern University

H. Scott Wolfe Replies [30 Jan.]:

The Father Of The Wolfean Discipline Responds

In Defense Of The “Minimalist” Viewpoint

           

           I appreciate the contribution of Dr. Lubet, in taking the time to respond to my recent review of his book: John Brown’s Spy, and, also, Dr. DeCaro’s posting of our opposing viewpoints. For if there were no differences in opinion, we would not have horse races.

            First, to satisfy my gargantuan ego, I must state that I revel in the honor of being the namesake of the newly coined “Wolfean discipline” of historical research…despite its “shallow and unenlightening” devotion to facts.

            Granted, the early life of John E. Cook lacks a cornucopia of primary source materials. And I would not question the way some historians “approach probabilities, inferences and deductions.” And true, those inferences and deductions can develop into “theories” and “narratives.”

            But there resides the danger…particularly in the case of John Brown historiography. Ever since the gibbet tightened, there has been an eternal deluge of deductions and inferences…which have evolved into narratives that bear no resemblance to FACTS.

            There is really nothing enlightening about speculation. It may stimulate the imagination or open up new realms of possibilities. But it doesn’t tell you what happened. And for this founder of the Wolfean discipline, there is always room for more facts…and very little for additional “probabilities and likelihoods.” It is for our peers in the field to decide which is more useful in documenting the life (and times) of The Old Man.

                                                                                   

H. Scott Wolfe

P. S. Perhaps the most painful aspect of Dr. Lubet’s response, at least to this son of a County Sheriff, was his deprecation of that icon…that role model…of law enforcement, Sergeant Joe Friday. Please don’t tell me he was “fictional,” and that he did not illuminate how “detectives operate in real life.” The next thing the Professor will be telling us is that Dan Mathews of “Highway Patrol” was a faker. And after I have been wearing this fedora for so many years!! 10-4!-H.S.W.

From the Field--

THE JOHN COOK BOOK:

A Thrilling Adventure in the Speculative Use

of the Conditional Verb Tense

by H. Scott Wolfe*

Well, the holidays are over, and Santa’s sleigh has disgorged a number of gifts for yours truly, the epitome of the unworthy. Of course there was the requisite case of “Moose Drool Brown Ale,” brewed in my college town of Missoula, Montana, and necessary for the physical alignment of my brain cells and the proper lubrication of my aging joints. And, in addition, Old Saint Nick provided me with a generous armful of the more recent publications relating to Old John Brown.

The first to be drawn from the stack was an eagerly anticipated volume written by Steven Lubet, a Professor of Law at Northwestern University. Entitled John Brown’s Spy: The Adventurous Life and Tragic Confession of John E. Cook [Yale University Press, 325 pp.] it seeks to tell “the nearly unknown story of John E. Cook, the person John Brown trusted most with the details of his plans to capture the Harper’s Ferry armory in 1859.” And, oh yes, it also seeks to tell the story of the “full confession that earned a place in history’s tragic pantheon of disgraced turncoats.” In other words: Benedict Arnold, move over….

Now, as I have indicated in prior posts, I have devoted decades to the pursuit of the lives and deaths of the men of John Brown’s “Provisional Army.” These soldiers are much more than historical window dressing…their individual stories provide much insight into the varied motivations central to the antislavery cause. But alas, virtually all are but mere twinkling stars…totally dominated by the intense sunlight of their Commander in Chief, John Brown. Admirably, Lubet himself recognizes that Brown’s men were not merely “spear carriers,” and have “seldom been described …as independent moral actors.”

Biographical accounts of these twenty-one soldiers are rare. There has been a slim volume produced in regard to the life of their Secretary of War, John Henrie Kagi. Tony Horwitz, in his book “Midnight Rising,” briefly introduces the men with some useful annotation as to primary sources. But, all in all, John Brown’s soldiers remain essentially ignored. So when I heard of a new full-scale biography of Captain John Edwin Cook, I jumped at the chance…and Santa delivered.

Daguerreotype of John E. Cook
Kansas State Historical Society Collection

This biography can be divided in two parts…based upon the components of its subtitle: Cook’s “Adventurous Life,” and Cook’s “Tragic Confession.”  But as I began to delve into the book, I soon discovered that it is short on adventure…and long on confession. To be perfectly honest, the story of Cook essentially begins on page 96.

The early pages outline Cook’s upbringing in Haddam, Connecticut…his brief occupation as law clerk and needle salesman…along with a survey of his varied character traits. Lubet touches all of the Cook-stereotypical-bases: the politically connected Yalie;  those long, blonde curls surrounding an “effeminate face;” the consummate lady killer; the crack-shot with pistol and rifle; and, especially, his “Loose Lips Sink Ships” persona.

It is when the story reaches the origins of Cook’s adherence to the antislavery cause…and his eventual removal to Kansas…that Lubet assembles one of the most extensive aggregations of conditional verbs and adverbs ever before seen on this planet. I have never seen the like since I once paged through an unabridged dictionary during high school detention. His book actually states that there is “no precise record” of Cook’s antislavery conversion, but that does not preclude a virtual Hurricane Sandy of speculations.

Cook was “no doubt inspired” by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, a man to whom he “certainly would have been drawn.”  He was “surely also attracted” to the social life of Beecher’s Plymouth Church. “It would not be surprising if” Cook gave shooting demonstrations. The imprisonment  of the Amistad slaves, thirty miles from Haddam, “may have been” Cook’s first exposure to the meaning of slavery. His racial awareness “could only have been” heightened by the Kansas Nebraska Act. Lubet eventually speculates that Cook’s emigration to Kansas occurred because he was “within earshot” of Beecher’s call for men to support the antislavery cause.

Portrait of Cook, Frank Leslie's
Illustrated News, Nov. 18, 1859

The first half of the book is replete with such conditional musings. “He may have planned”….”It may be that he”…”It is quite possible that he”…”He must have been aware of”….”He might very well have been.” The deluge persists with torrents of “likelys,” “evidentlys,” and “probablys” bouncing off my historical umbrella. That act was “entirely possible”…He “could not have” performed in that manner…It “had to be” his intention.

I’m sorry folks, but being elderly enough to remember the television police drama “Dragnet,” I have always been a proponent of Sergeant Joe Friday’s admonition to all future historians and biographers: “Just the facts, ma’am.” No probablys…No evidentlys…No likelys. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

*****  

The book’s Reader’s Digest-version of the Kansas conflict and John Brown’s actions therein is, I regret to report, also quite weak and harvests freely the spoiled fruit from the Tree of John Brown Misinformation. Once more we are regaled with that miraculous message of Sumner’s caning, which reached The Old Man on the plains of eastern Kansas…through the instrumentation of some ancestral “Fed Ex Overnight.”…and thereby sent him off in a “crazy” state to Pottawatomie Creek.  Did Brown really rout “a large contingent of United States cavalry” at the Battle of the Spurs? And was the Old Man to be found roaming the streets of Harper’s Ferry, adorned with “the heavy white beard by which he is now usually characterized?”

And Lubet’s seeming fascination with Cook’s physical appearance and sexual libido often takes charge of the entire story.  Even his initial interview with his Chambersburg lawyer is described as “almost erotic.” His natural attraction to women…spurred by a female-dominated upbringing…is undeniable. Yes, he impregnated a woman during the Springdale winter (He was not the only one. Brown’s men were not celibate priests, but rather, red-blooded American boys.) and underwent a shotgun wedding while residing near Harper’s Ferry. But true history need not be bent to fit the story. The winter lectures at district school houses near Springdale were frequent activities…enjoyed by all of Brown’s trainees…and were not merely vehicles to allow Cook “to court his students’older sisters.” And Cook’s supposed leap through a window at the Kennedy farmhouse, facilitated by the fact that he was “already adept at silently climbing in and out of bedroom windows,” is pure sarcasm, not biography. Perhaps it’s a shot at humor, but the gun jammed.

*****  

Historical marker of Cook's capture, Mont Alto, Pa.

(photo by H. Scott Wolfe, 2006)

Now you may remember that when I formerly produced a review of Horwitz’s Midnight Rising, I began with several questioning remarks…such as I have in the paragraphs above. But then I mellowed, and complimented the work as a whole. Such is the case with Lubet’s “John Brown’s Spy.” The holidays may be over, but their aura of good will and benevolence still surround me. And gossamer strands of altruism still cling to my notably stooped shoulders.

I mentioned above that this book essentially begins on page 96. It is here, with the post-Harper’s Ferry capture of Captain John E. Cook, that the author finally finds firm footing amidst the shifting sands of his subject’s life. And this makes perfect sense…for the story of Cook’s capture, rendition, confession and trial more soundly strike the “sweet spot” on the keyboard of a Professor of Law at Northwestern University.

It is in the final chapters that the story of John Edwin Cook reaches its fascinating climax. The documentation is also richer, with admirable usage of excellent sources ranging from the “Memoirs” of  Alexander McClure, the ill-starred antislavery attorney who took charge of Cook in Chambersburg; to the interviews with Jenny Kennedy Cook,  who was compelled to endure the trauma of being married to the second-most hated man in the State of Virginia.

These chapters of the book are also good history because they are based upon a great story. From the moment that Cook stumbled from the woods into the hands of local bounty hunters…to his Keystone Kop-like opportunity for escape in Chambersburg…to his rendition to the State of Virginia…the book begins to capture the reader and say: “Guess what will happen next?”

Cutaway from sketch of Cook and fellow raider,
Edwin Coppoc, in their Charlestown jail cell
(New York Illustrated News, Dec. 24, 1859)

And then there is the story of Cook’s famous “Confession.” This strange, evolving document was created through the machinations of two fascinating characters…both Northern proslavery Democrats (“doughfaces,” was the derogatory term in use at the time). One was Cook’s own brother-in-law, Ashbel Willard, the Governor of Indiana…and the other was Daniel Voorhees, trial lawyer, honey-tongued orator, and soon destined to become one of the most annoying stones in the shoe of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. These men, with the assistance of prosecutor Andrew Hunter, induced Cook to pen a full confession…the purpose of which was twofold.

First, by coming clean with his own involvement AND identifying prominent moral and financial backers in the North, it was hoped that Cook could receive leniency in his sentencing from Virginia Governor Wise. And second, his legal team sought to have his trial transferred to a Federal court in Staunton, Virginia…where the long arm of the national government would be able to issue subpoenas to question the really big fish to be fried: men such as Fred Douglass, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Gerrit Smith…all implicated in the confession itself.

But all such legal and political wrangling went for naught. Yet the trial of John Cook is to me the most fascinating of all the others held in the Court House in Charlestown. It certainly was the most dramatic of any held for the Harper’s Ferry conspirators…John Brown included. The Old Man wanted to die. John Cook wanted to live. Martyrdom to the cause held no charms for him. But the result was the same…he was convicted and sentenced to hang…and all hopes for a commuted or lessened sentence were futile.

 Cook was a despised man, particularly in Jefferson County, where his trial was held. He was “one of the deepest dyed villains that ever planted foot upon the soil of our State…whose hospitality he has basely violated…” He was the spy…the sneak…the recreant.  He had ingratiated himself with the local populace…married one of their daughters…broken bread at their tables…and even plinked tin cans with the great-grand nephew of George Washington himself. So the chances of John Edwin Cook receiving a reduced sentence in the State of Virginia were about equal to the chances of General William Tecumseh Sherman being later popularly elected as Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia.

*****

So what is Cook’s legacy? He certainly appears to be one of the least likable of the members of Brown’s Provisional Army. His sincere commitment to the antislavery cause is often questionable. His early lawyer, Alexander McClure, called Cook “a sincere fanatic, with mingled humanity and atrocity strangely unbalancing each other…” Lubet himself considers him more of a “thrill seeker” than a “do-gooder.” Perhaps the most apt description was anonymously given in the Jefferson County Register of Deaths, following Cook’s execution on December 16, 1859.  It simply lists his occupation as “adventurer.”

* 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.  

Postscript: A Room with a View

Not having read John Brown's Spy, I am particularly grateful for Herr Wolfe's contribution.  However, I did happen to note one interesting oversight on the part of author Lubet that is worth noting here, if only because failing to do so might rob the narrative of a most poignant moment.  Lubet rejects the description provided by James Redpath (in his biography of Brown)which states that Cook had an unobstructed view of Brown's hanging from the window of his jail cell.  According to the Redpath book, Cook "watched his old Captain until the trap fell and his body swung into mid air, when he turned away and gave vent to his feelings."  Lubet disdains this "poignant vignette," saying that it never happened, and pointing out that Cook even wrote a letter about the hanging and never mentioned that he watched it, "--which in any case would have been impossible from his cell." (See Lubet, p. 254 and note 10, citing Redpath, Life of Captain John Brown, p. 404).

Actually, it is more likely that Professor Lubet is wrong in this case, and that the "poignant vignette" is worthy to preserve as part of the narrative.

To be sure, it is interesting that Cook did not mention that he had seen Brown's hanging, but the fact that he made no mention of it in one instance of writing does not itself disprove that he had seen it from a distance.  More to the point, Lubet fails to observe that Redpath's remarks on page 404 were not his own words, but actually are enclosed in quotation marks.   Unfortunately, Redpath did not provide a citation for the quotation, although in this case it was from the New York Tribune--evidently a very reliable source, since the Tribune had an undercover journalist in Charlestown with good access to the jail.  This journalist reported many details that otherwise would have been denied to anti-slavery northern newspapers.  Interestingly, though, Redpath omitted some parts of the report, including some key descriptions that provide explanation of Cook being able to see the gallows from his jail cell window.   In fact, the report says that the place of  Brown's execution was not more than a half mile from the jail; it also says that “from the windows of his cell in the second story . . . Cook had an unobstructed view of the whole proceedings.  He watched his old Captain until the trap fell and his body swung into mid-air, when he turned away and gave vent to his feelings.” (“John Brown’s Invasion.  Further Interesting Incidents of the Execution,” New York Tribune, 6 Dec. 1859, p. 6.)   The jail in Charlestown in Brown's day was a two-story house with rooms made over as jail cells.  Cook and the other raiders, with the exception of Brown and Stevens, were incarcerated on the second floor of the jail.  To err is human, and historians are humans.   However, as we have seen somewhat recently, when it comes to the theme of John Brown, some scholars may confuse cynicism with objectivity, while others may dismiss the studied but sympathetic scholar as a mere panegyrist. Lubet seems to be a conscientious scholar, and armed with Herr Wolfe's review, I look forward to finally reading this fine book.--LD

Watching "The Abolitionists"--
Brown and Calvinism Caricatured--Again

The segment on John Brown is nicely dramatized, but it's the same old stuff about how business failure clouded his sense of God's leading, etc.  Then to top it off, the clip with R. Blakeslee Gilpin babbling about John Brown and Calvinism.  Speaking in the historical present tense, Gilpin says:

"Brown is drifting just further and further into a very deep and dark relationship with God.  He's always trying to discern what God wants for him.  That's really what Calvinism is all about, you're eternally in sin, you're just constantly trying to get out of it like a drowning man."

I'm sorry folks.  I don't want to be mean.  I'm sure R. Blakeslee Gilpin is a fine fellow and a bright one at that.  But I've read and reviewed his recent book, John Brown Still Lives! which is a cultural study of Brown, featuring a number of very interesting chapters.  However, the very worst part of the book are the opening biographical chapters--really some of the worst writing on Brown that I've seen in my years as a student of the man.

Now this.

First, the story line of how Brown's business life took a nose dive and devastated him is just worn out gossip.  Brown faced two phases of business disappointment.  The first phase from the economic upheavals of the late 1830s and into the early 1840s resulted in personal bankruptcy.  Brown made something of a comeback by the mid-to-late 1840s when he distinguished himself as an expert of fine sheep and wool and aligned himself with Akron magnate, Simon Perkins, Jr.  These disappointments did not ultimately discourage him or his faith.

The second disappointment was the failure of the Perkins and Brown wool commission operation in 1849.  Yet even though this venture failed, Brown and Perkins continued their partnership, as the former did quite well in cultivating the Perkins flocks and farms.  Their collaboration lasted until 1854, and although Brown hardly moved on as a rich man, he was not ruined and there is not the slightest evidence that this had any negative impact on his spiritual life.

So the storyline in "The Abolitionist", as it regards John Brown so far, has misrepresented the man.  I dread to think what's next.

As far as Gilpin is concerned, Brown never drifted into any dark relationship with God.  There is nothing in his letters, family testimony, or any other evidence that suggests the scenario that Gilpin has contrived.  This is yet another case when a historian substitutes imagination for facts.  As a student of John Brown's life and letters, I am more than annoyed that this kind of poorly studied, sophomoric improvisation get presented by a "talking head" simply because he moves in elite academic circles.

Second, this description by Gilpin of what Calvinism "is all about" is just atrocious.  Any Calvinist past or present would be outraged by the kind of ignorance and bias revealed in this statement.  As one who embraces Calvinism, I would have to say that Gilpin knows nothing about the theology or the experience of evangelical Calvinism.

I dread to think what "The Abolitionists" is going to do with Brown in Kansas and beyond.

Here we go again.

Bio-logy--

John Brown Studies Past, Present, and Future

It almost goes without saying that in the century and a half since his death, the abolitionist John Brown has been the subject of a good many books and articles.  To be sure, the Brown bibliography—including everything in print from the best studies and biographies to the very worst screeds and fiction—cannot rival the number of books written about Abraham Lincoln.  Yet even the professional gatekeepers of “American history” cannot deny that the controversial abolitionist has enjoyed a popular come back in the 21st century that has now become prominent in the academy as well.  For more than a decade now, there has been a steady stream of books about Brown, including four biographies, a number of valuable cultural studies, essay collections and readers, as well as novels and illustrated books for young people.  While a number of these works are problematic to say the least, nevertheless they bear witness to the upsurge of interest in Brown.

            Whatever the biographer may conclude about Russell Banks’ fictive interpretation of the Old Man in Cloudsplitter (1998), there is no doubt that this successful novel both signaled and enabled a sea change in popular thought about Brown.  Indeed, Cloudsplitter probably did for John Brown what Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” movie did for the popularization of the Muslim activist in the late 20th century.  Of course, in both cases (and I can attest to this first hand as a student of both leaders), the undercurrents of interest in Malcolm and Brown were already quite vital, and it is not always easy to determine when novels and movies have inspired trends or when they are simply manifestations of what is already at work in society.  Neither can we be certain that for all the popular appeal created by biographical novels and films they do not also undermine real historical understanding in the long run, since they typically revivify their stories as much as they skew them in the name of art.  Then, perhaps they also tend to both stimulate and satiate the popular appetite for history at the same time.   Regardless, Cloudsplitter was a boon to the rising popular interest in Brown that had ripened by the time of the sesquicentennial of the Harper’s Ferry raid in 2009.  Certainly the kind of popular sympathy for Brown did not exist when a former generation commemorated the centennial of the Harper’s Ferry raid in 1959.
       

Boyd B. Stutler
(1889-1970)

Yet as important as novels and movies may be in popular culture, the academy has its own ways of thinking. Certainly by the mid-20th century, the prominent attitude toward Brown among leading historians was negative. Historians like Allan Nevins, C. Van Woodward, and David M. Potter really knew little about Brown, although this did not stop them from banishing him to the margins of history as little more than a mentally unstable troublemaker.  Meanwhile, the two most knowledgeable scholars in the John Brown field, Boyd B. Stutler and Clarence S. Gee, were a magazine editor and a clergyman, respectively.  Stutler, a very conservative man in political and social concerns, took academic prejudice against Brown in stride, but privately lamented the misrepresentations of Nevins and other renowned academics of the day, somewhat facetiously referring to them as the “scientific historians.”  Still, it is quite telling that Stutler advised and assisted both Oswald G. Villard in correcting and revising his supposedly definitive 1910 biography, and Stephen B. Oates in preparing his supposedly definitive 1970 biography.  While the Villard and Oates biographies remain important works for the historian, in a sense they also frame the relatively thin and worthless academic contributions to John Brown studies during the 20th century.

Thomas Vince

       
Even after the appearance of Oates’ landmark biography, To Purge This Land With Blood, the wealth of research in John Brown studies largely remained in the hands of grassroots and local scholars throughout the rest of the century.  This is evident in the case of two young associates of Stutler and Gee, Thomas Vince and Edwin Cotter.  Vince, an archivist and community historian in Hudson, Ohio, and Edwin Cotter (d. 2001), for many years the supervisor of the John Brown Farm in Lake Placid, New York, did more ongoing, on-the-ground research than contemporary academics.  Both Vince and Cotter were not only knowledgeable generalists in the study, but also became specialists in specific areas of Brown’s life by amassing knowledge of community history and documentation that far outstripped the work of professional historians.  Other local historians have likewise done significant research on Brown even to the present time, and these researchers, many of them librarians or people affiliated with local historical societies, represent vital streams of research almost completely removed from the academy.  (I dare not fail to mention that I have periodically featured articles by Scott Wolfe, an independent scholar and research librarian in Galena, Illinois, as well as articles by Grady Atwater, the superintendent of the John Brown cabin in Osawatomie, Kansas.)

Jean Libby

Historically speaking, another notable figure is Jean Libby, a photographer and college teacher from Palo Alto, California, who has worked mainly in the milieu of local historians in her study of the Harper’s Ferry raid.  In the 1970s, Libby actually did field research in Jefferson County, (by then) West Virginia, including the oral traditions of whites and blacks reflecting the direct impact of Brown in 1859.  In so doing, she overturned the popular notion of the non-involvement of enslaved people in the Harper’s Ferry raid, revived and contextualized Osborne Anderson’s vital black witness, A Voice from Harper’s Ferry (1861), and buttressed her arguments with actual research.  Libby has subsequently studied original documents and daguerreotypes of Brown in a manner far beyond what any pure bread academic has done.  Her contributions are unparalleled, and the academy heretofore has offered nothing even close to this kind of in depth, ongoing research.

        
Given the conventional hostility and lack of adequate scholarship in the academy regarding John Brown, one must appreciate the impact made when David S. Reynolds, a professor of English and American Studies at the City University of New York, published his breakthrough biography, John Brown Abolitionist, in 2005.  While Reynolds was not the first scholar to publish a full biography of Brown in the 21st century, his work received immense and immediate attention, and deservedly so.  While John Brown Abolitionist was not without some problems, its strengths are considerably more important.  Portraying the abolitionist as “the man who killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded Civil Rights,” Reynolds turned the tables on the conventional 20th century academic portrayal of John Brown, rendering him a flawed hero, but far more a hero—a man in advance of his times, a racial egalitarian in an age of flagrant white supremacy, whose life and death can no longer be filed away under conventionally dismissive categories.

To be sure, Reynolds cannot be credited for single-handedly bringing about a John Brown revolution among scholars.  A great deal of thinking and writing was already underway for years prior to the publication of John Brown Abolitionist.  Historian Robert McGlone had been working in John Brown studies for decades, and his important biography, John Brown's War Against Slavery—which finally appeared in late 2009—was undertaken in part as a response to Stephen Oates’ acclaimed 1970 biography.  Other scholars had undertaken the John Brown theme following Oates, and perhaps the leading spirit in this regard was Paul Finkelman, a professor of law and history who has edited two collections of scholarly writing on Brown, the first and most notable being His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (1995).  Finkelman also spearheaded a notable scholarly conference on John Brown at the Mount Alto campus of Penn State University in July 1996, "John Brown: The Man, the Legend, the Legacy"—perhaps the first sign that academia was awakening to the fact that the Old Man could not be so easily dismissed.

The Mont Alto Conference,
1996

While the Mount Alto conference had its inevitable share of screeds and “terrorist” papers, it pointed toward the immediate future of John Brown scholarship.  A number of its attendees published books on John Brown in the first few years of the 21st century, thus proving that interest in Brown had already come to a head by the time of the Reynolds biography.  Yet it was John Brown Abolitionist that proved to be muscular enough as a work of scholarship to break through academic barriers of prejudice and misinformation, and lyrical enough to become the banner text of a new era.  In a sense, every new biography and study of John Brown in the 21st century will be considered against the backdrop of Reynolds’ text and interpretation, and no narrative of the abolitionist will escape the long shadow of John Brown Abolitionist, just as most writing on Brown in the 20th century could not help but reflect the importance of Oswald Garrison Villard’s 1910 biography.

Nevertheless, none of this suggests that the John Brown study has been exhausted.  We are far from the point, as we are in the case of Abraham Lincoln, where one may justifiably sigh aloud at the appearance of yet another new book.  While the Lincoln narrative has been exhaustively parsed like a Greek verb in a seminary classroom, Brown’s narrative begs more work in almost every facet of the story, from his less exciting early life and business efforts to his militant anti-slavery efforts in Kansas and Virginia.  Works like Brian McGinty’s John Brown’s Trial (2009) and Steven Lubet’s John Brown’s Spy (2012) have demonstrated what can be accomplished by working in heretofore unexplored areas of the story.  Indeed, notwithstanding McGlone’s belated but formidable John Brown’s War Against Slavery, the McGinty book on the historic trial of the abolitionist may prove to be the single most important contribution to a sadly neglected but central category of John Brown biography.  I have hardly been exhaustive in this article--there have been other quite notable works published in recent years that have likewise contributed to the forward movement of John Brown scholarship, a noteworthy contribution being Evan Carton's very popular biography, Patriotic Treason.  I may not agree with significant aspects of his book, Midnight Rising, but Tony Horwitz should also be saluted as for demonstrating the vitality and influence of the Old Man's story in our own time.  This is a good time for John Brown studies, and we are looking forward to what 2013 may bring.

To all my readers, I wish a most happy and studious new year!

Abe on John, Fred on Abe

"Old John Brown has been executed for treason against a state.  We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong.  That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason.  It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right."  Abraham Lincoln, December 2, 1859

"It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, 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."  Frederick Douglass, April 14, 1876

"The Tribunal": A New John Brown Reader!

Following Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising, the release of yet another acclaimed John Brown book, The Tribunal, may suggest that the Old Man may be getting more attention than all the Civil War sesquicentennial can attract, even with the release of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln."  It is almost as if--and I write this with a great measure of delight--historians cannot get beyond 1859.  This time around, the publication of The Tribunal promises to be a wide lens blockbuster in which the editors, John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd, have returned with what promises to be a definitive reader.  I have not yet gotten my copy, but I'm happy to report that our friend and fellow biographer, David Reynolds, has written a good review in The Wall Street Journal, excerpted here. "The Tribunal," Reynolds writes,

"demonstrates just how central John Brown was to the cultural and political life of his time. Included in the book are powerful writings about Brown by some of the century's most notable people: Walt Whitman, Henry Ward Beecher, Jefferson Davis, Herman Melville, Stephen Douglas, Louisa May Alcott, Victor Hugo and Karl Marx, to name a few. Brown's name echoed among thousands of average folk too. Little wonder that Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was inspired by a tune sung by Union troops as they tramped southward that contains the memorable words: "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, / But his soul is marching on." 

The Tribunal doesn't whitewash Brown. To the contrary, it recognizes his flaws and provides a broad sampling of just criticism. But it reveals as well that those most hostile toward Brown were pro-slavery types who felt threatened by his forward-looking views. Some of Brown's strongest defenders were people like Thoreau, who had formerly espoused nonresistance but who came to realize that only violence could uproot an institution so deeply entrenched as slavery. . . .  There are a few unfortunate omissions in The Tribunal, such as a letter and an article in which the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had formerly gained fame for her portrayal of the nonresistant slave Uncle Tom, signaled a turnaround when she praised Brown for attacking slavery "with fire and sword." But, all in all, Mr. Stauffer and Ms. Trodd should be commended for making available so many documents that were formerly hard to find and that reveal so much about this key figure in American history. The Tribunal confirms what has become increasingly clear in recent years: To understand America fully, we would do well to reflect on John Brown—on what he stood for and the ideals he embodied for some of the nation's deepest thinkers." (David S. Reynolds, "The Other Great Emancipator."  The Wall Street Journal, 3 Dec. 2012)

The book is a whopping 570-pages and looks like an embarrassment of riches with respect to post-Harper's Ferry statements about John Brown.  Harvard University Press can hardly be exaggerating when it declares that Stauffer and Trodd "have assembled an impressive and wide-ranging collection of responses to Brown’s raid: Brown’s own words, northern and southern reactions, international commentary, and reflections from the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Represented here are all the figures one would expect to see (Lincoln, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass), many surprises (John Wilkes Booth, Karl Marx, Giuseppe Garibaldi), as well as free and enslaved blacks and white citizens. The result is a book that views Brown from multiple vantage points."

The publisher's website continues:

The Introduction describes the panic that Harpers Ferry created in the South, splitting the Democratic Party along sectional lines and altering the outcome of the 1860 presidential election. Without Brown, it speculates, the Civil War and emancipation would have been delayed by another four years—probably more—which in turn might have disrupted emancipation movements in Brazil, Cuba, and even Russia. The Tribunal is essential reading for anyone interested in the Civil War era and the history of social protest movements."

I provide here the entire table of contents, which is most impressive, and includes a substantial amount of Brown's own writing in Part 1.

Part I: In His Own Words
“Sambo’s Mistakes,” 1848
“League of Gileadites,” January 15, 1851
“Dear Wife and Children, Everyone,” June 1856
“Old Brown’s Farewell,” April 1857
“To Mr. Henry L. Stearns,” July 15, 1857
“Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” May 8, 1858
“A Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of the United States of America,” 1859
“Interview with Senator Mason and Others,” October 18, 1859
“Last Address to the Virginia Court,” November 2, 1859
“Prison Letters,” October–December, 1859

John Stauffer, Harvard University

Part II: Northern Responses
Horace Greeley, “Tribune Editorial,” October 19, 1859
Boston Courier, “A Lesson for the People,” October 20, 1859
Illinois State Register, “The ‘Irrepressible Conflict,’” October 20, 1859
Anonymous, “To the Clerk of Court, Charlestown,” October 23, 1859, and “To Friend Wise,” December 2, 1859
The Patriot, “The Harper’s Ferry Affair,” October 26, 1859
Lydia Maria Child, “Dear Captain Brown, ” October 26, 1859, and “The Hero’s Heart,” January 26, 1860
E.B., “To John Brown,” October 27, 1859
Joshua R. Giddings, “The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection,” October 28, 1859
Friends’ Review, “The Riot at Harper’s Ferry,” October 29, 1859
Salmon P. Chase, “To Joseph H. Barrett,” October 29, 1859
New York Evening Post, “A New Version of an Old Song,” October 29, 1859
Henry Ward Beecher, “The Nation’s Duty to Slavery,” October 30, 1859
Henry David Thoreau, “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” October 30, 1859, and “The Last Days of John Brown,” July 4, 1860
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Courage,” November 8, 1859, and “Remarks at a Meeting for the Relief of the Family of John Brown,” November 18, 1859
Frederick Douglass, “Capt. John Brown Not Insane,” November 1859
Edmund Clarence Stedman, “How Old Brown Took Harper’s Ferry,” November 12, 1859
William Dean Howells, “Old Brown,” November 1859
John Andrew, “Speech at Tremont Temple,” November 18, 1859
Charles Langston, “Letter to the Editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer,” November 18, 1859, and “Speech in Cleveland,” December 2, 1859
Theodore Parker, “To Francis Jackson,” November 24, 1859
Henry Clarke Wright, The Natick Resolution, December 1859
Albany Evening Journal, “The Execution of John Brown,” December 1, 1859
“Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland Resolutions,” November 29 and December 2, 1859
Henry Highland Garnet, “Martyr’s Day,” December 2, 1859
J. Sella Martin and William Lloyd Garrison, “Speeches at Tremont Temple,” December 2, 1859
Fales Henry Newhall, “The Conflict in America,” December 4, 1859
Anne Lynch Botta, “To Henry Whitney Bellows,” December 6, 1859
Wendell Phillips, “Eulogy for John Brown,” December 8, 1859
Edward Everett and Caleb Cushing, “Speeches at Faneuil Hall,” December 8, 1859
Charles Eliot Norton, “To Mrs. Edward Twisleton,” December 13, 1859
Charles Sumner, “To the Duchess of Argyll,” December 20, 1859
John Greenleaf Whittier, “Brown of Ossawatomie,” December 22, 1859
Thomas Hamilton, “The Nat Turner Insurrection,” December 1859
William A. Phillips, “The Age and the Man,” January 20, 1860
Louisa May Alcott, “With a Rose That Bloomed on the Day of John Brown’s Martyrdom,” January 20, 1860
Stephen Douglas, “Invasion of States,” January 23, 1860
Richard Realf, “John Brown’s Raid,” January 30, 1860
Abraham Lincoln, “Address at the Cooper Institute,” February 27, 1860
William H. Seward, “The State of the Country,” February 29, 1860, and “The National Idea,” October 3, 1860
John S. Rock, “Ninetieth Anniversary of the Boston Massacre,” March 5, 1860
William Henry Furness, “Put Up Thy Sword,” March 11, 1860
Carl Schurz, “The Doom of Slavery,” August 1, 1860
Pennsylvania Statesman, “Old Brown’s Argument,” October 20, 1860
Lucretia Mott, “Remarks to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society,” October 25, 1860
Osborne P. Anderson, A Voice from Harper’s Ferry, early 1861

Part III: Southern Responses
Henry Wise, “Comments in Richmond, Virginia,” October 21, 1859
Republican Banner and Nashville Whig, “The Harper’s Ferry Riot,” October 24, 1859
Robert Barnwell Rhett, “The Insurrection,” October 31, 1859
Richmond Daily Enquirer, “A Suggestion for Governor Wise,” November 2, 1859
Southern Watchman, “The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection,” November 3, 1859
D.H. Strother, “The Late Invasion at Harper’s Ferry,” November 5, 1859, and “The Trial of the Conspirators,” November 12, 1859
Sarah Frances Williams, “To My Dear Parents,” November 7 and 11, 1859
Margaretta Mason, “To Lydia Maria Child,” November 11, 1859
Arkansas Gazette, “The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection,” November 12, 1859
Richmond Whig, “Editorial,” November 18, 1859
Natchez Courier, “Forewarned, Forearmed,” November 18, 1859
Mahala Doyle, “To John Brown,” November 20, 1859
Edmund Ruffin, “Resolutions of the Central Southern Rights Association,” November 25, 1859, and Anticipations of the Future, June 1860
Susan Bradford Eppes, “Diary,” October–December 1859
Amanda Virginia Edmonds, “Diary,” November and December 1859
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “Dear Friend,” November 25, 1859, and “The Triumph of Freedom—A Dream,” January 1860
Thomas J. Jackson, “To Mary Anna Jackson,” December 2, 1859
John Preston, “To Margaret Junkin Preston,” December 2, 1859
Raleigh Register, “The Execution of John Brown,” December 3, 1859
Moncure Conway, “Sermon,” December 4, 1859
Reuben Davis, “The Duty of Parties,” December 8, 1859
Anonymous, “A Woman’s View of a Woman’s Duty in Connection with John Brown’s Crimes,” December 11, 1859
Andrew Johnson, “Remarks to the Senate,” December 12, 1859
James A. Seddon, “To R.M.T. Hunter,” December 26, 1859
Anonymous, “Old John Brown, a Song for Every Southern Man,” ca. December 1859
Mann Satterwhite Valentine, “The Mock Auction,” 1860
George Fitzhugh, “Disunion within the Union,” January 1860
C.G. Memminger, “The South Carolina Mission to Virginia,” January 19, 1860
Alexander Boteler, “Speech on the Organization of the House,” January 25, 1860
John Tyler, Jr., “The Secession of the South,” April 1860
National Democratic Executive Committee, The Great Issue to Be Decided in November Next, September 1860
Howell Cobb, “Letter to the People of Georgia,” December 6, 1860
William Gilmore Simms, “To a Northern Friend,” December 12, 1860
John Wilkes Booth, “Philadelphia Speech,” December 1860
Richard K. Call, “To John S. Littell,” February 12, 1861
James Williams, “To Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux,” February 1861

Dr. Zoe Trodd, University of Nottingham

Part IV: International Responses
The Times, “Editorial,” November 2, 1859
Joseph Barker, “Slavery and Civil War,” November 1859
L’Univers, “Editorial,” November 24, 1859
Cyprian Kamil Norwid, “To Citizen John Brown” and “John Brown,” November 1859
Victor Hugo, “A Word on John Brown,” December 2, 1859; “To M. Heurtelou,” March 31, 1860; and “To the Memory of John Brown,” October 21, 1874
Ottilie Assing, “John Brown’s Execution and Its Consequences,” December 1859
Harvey C. Jackson, “An Address to the Colored People of Canada,” December 7, 1859
Glasgow Herald, “The Outbreak at Harper’s Ferry,” December 19, 1859
Aberdeen Journal, “A Martyr or a Criminal?” December 21, 1859
Manchester Examiner and Times, “The Execution of John Brown,” December 24, 1859
Harriet Martineau, “John Brown; South’s Political Posturing,” December 24, 1859, and “The Puritan Militant,” January 28, 1860
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, “Captain John Brown,” December 25, 1859
Caledonian Mercury and Daily Express, “A New Year’s Reverie,” January 2, 1860
Anti-Slavery Reporter, “The Harper’s Ferry Tragedy,” January 2, 1860
Argus, “A Revolt in America,” January 10, 1860
Karl Marx, “To Friedrich Engels,” January 11, 1860
Feuille du Commerce, “John Brown,” January 21, 1860
Joseph Déjacque, “To Pierre Vésinier,” February 20, 1861
William Howard Russell, “Diary,” April 20 and August 17, 1861
J.M. Ludlow, “A Year of the Slavery Question in the United States (1859–60),” December 1862
Louis Ratisbonne, “John Brown,” February 1863
Giuseppe Garibaldi, “To President Lincoln,” August 6, 1863
W.T. Malleson and Washington Wilks, “Speeches to the Emancipation Society,” December 2, 1863
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, 1873
Hermann von Holst, “John Brown,” 1878

Part V: Civil War and U.S. Postwar Responses
Various Authors, “John Brown’s Body,” May 1861
Elizabeth Van Lew, “Occasional Diary,” 1861
Mary Boykin Chesnut, “A Diary from Dixie,” November 28, 1861
Wilder Dwight, “Letters,” July 30, 1861, and March 4 and 8, 1862
George Michael Neese, “Diary,” January 3 and 26, 1862
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Chiefly about War Matters. By a Peaceable Man,” July 1862
John Sherman, “To William Tecumseh Sherman,” September 23, 1862
Charlotte Forten, “Diary” and “Letter,” November 1862
Moncure Conway, The Golden Hour, 1862
Adalbert Volck, “Worship of the North” and “Writing the Emancipation Proclamation,” 1863
John H. Surratt, “Diary,” January 16 and 20, 1863
Anonymous, “John Brown’s Entrance into Hell,” March 1863
J. Sella Martin, “Speech to the Emancipation Society,” December 2, 1863
William Henry Hall, “Oration on the Occasion of the Emancipation Celebration,” January 1, 1864
John Wilkes Booth, “Remarks on Lincoln and Brown,” November 1864
Walt Whitman, “Year of Meteors (1859–60),” 1865
Joseph G. Rosengarten, “John Brown’s Raid: How I Got into It and How I Got Out of It,” June 1865
C. Chauncey Burr, “History of Old John Brown,” July 1865
Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, “Dear Mrs. H—,” July 27, 1865
Charles Sumner, “The National Security and the National Faith,” September 14, 1865
James Buchanan, Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion, 1866
Herman Melville, “The Portent (1859),” 1866
Gerrit Smith, “John Brown,” August 15, 1867
John Milton Hay, “Diary,” September 10, 1867
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., “How We Met John Brown,” July 1871
Henry S. Olcott, “How We Hung John Brown,” 1875
Colored Citizen, “Wanted, a Few Black John Browns,” January 4, 1879
Eli Thayer, “To G. W. Brown,” January 13, 1880
Frederick Douglass, “John Brown,” May 30, 1881
George Washington Williams, “John Brown—Hero and Martyr,” 1883
David N. Utter, “John Brown of Osawatomie,” November 1883
Mark Twain, “English as She is Taught,” April 1887
Frank Preston Stearns, “Unfriendly Criticism of John Brown,” 1888
T. Thomas Fortune, “John Brown and Nat. Turner,” January 12 and 29, 1889

Not having seen the book, my only concern is that the editors have provided solid citations and contextualization when necessary, something Professors Stauffer and Trodd did not do in their less successful prior John Brown reader.  However, they are thoughtful scholars and I am optimistic that The Tribunal will be an excellent resource for the John Brown shelf.  Certainly, Stauffer and Trodd deserve our salutation and best wishes at the completion of such a mammoth challenge.

In Remembrance: December 2, 1859

Music source: The Wailin' Jennys, "Long Time Traveler," Firecracker CD

John Brown Dead

The New-York Tribune, 3 December 1859, p. 6.

Slavery has killed John Brown.  We state the fact simply, and not by way of complaint.  We have discouraged all appeals by others than Virginians to the clemency of the Slave Power in the premises.  Slavery and John Brown were foes to the death; Slavery for the moment is victor, and the law of the exigency is a very old one, Va victis—We to the conquered!  John Brown defeated and a captive?  War has its necessities, and they are sometimes terrible.  We have not seen how Slavery could spare the life of John Brown without virtually confessing the iniquity of its own existence.  We believe Brown himself has uniformly taken this view of the matter, and discountenanced all appeals in his behalf for pardon or commutation, as well as everything savoring of irritation or menace.  There are eras in which death is not merely heroic but beneficent and fruitful.  Who shall say that this was not John Brown’s fit time to die?

“We are not of those who say, ‘If Slavery is wrong, then John Brown was wholly right.’  There are fit and unfit modes of combating a great evil; we think Brown at Harper’s Ferry pursued the latter.  We dislike Popery; yet we did not therefore feel justified evil, when we saw the Pope pass in ostentatious procession, in a palanquin born on the shoulders of men, surrounded by an armed legion and reverenced as a demi-god, to shy a stone at his head, much less point a pistol at his breast.  We have never felt at liberty, while in a Slave State, to do any act inconsistent with the laws and fixed polity of that State.  If any slaveholder introduces the topic, we respond to his suggestions; but we never begin the discussion.  And, while we heartily wish every slave in the world would run away from his master to-morrow, and never be retaken, we should not feel justified in entering a Slave State to incite them to do so, even if we were sure to succeed in the enterprise.  Of course, we regard Brown’s raid as utterly mistaken and, in its direct consequences, pernicious. 

“But his are the errors of a fanatic, not the crimes of a felon.  It were absurd to apply to him opprobrious epithets or wholesale denunciations.  The essence of crime is the pursuit of selfish gratification in disregard of others’ good; and that is the process opposite of Old Brown’s impulse and deed.  He periled and sacrificed not merely his own life—that were, perhaps a moderate stake—but the lives of his beloved sons, the earthly happiness of his family and theirs, to benefit a despised and down-trodden race—to deliver from bitter bondage and degradation those whom he had never seen.  Unwise the world will pronounce him—reckless of artificial yet palpable obligations he certainly was—but his very errors were heroic—the faults of a brave, impulsive, truthful nature, impatient of wrong, and only too conscious that ‘Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.’  Let whoever would first cast a stone ask himself whether his own noblest act was equal in grandeur and nobility to that for which John Brown pays the penalty of a death on the gallows. 

And that death will serve to purge his memory of any stain which his errors might otherwise have cast upon it.  Mankind are proverbially generous to those who have suffered all that can here be inflicted—who have passed beyond the portals of the life to come.  John Brown dead will live in millions of hearts—will be discussed around the homely heart of Toil and dreamed of on the couch of Poverty and Trial.  To all who have suffered for human good—who have been persecuted for an idea—who have been hated because of their efforts to make the daily path of the despised and unfortunate less rugged—his memory will be fragrant through generations.  It will be easier to die in a good cause, even on the gallows, since John Brown has hallowed that mode of exit from the troubles and temptations of this mortal existence. 

Then as to the ‘irrepressible conflict:’ Who does not see that this sacrifice must inevitably intensify its progress and hasten its end?  Thirty Millions of Americans—including the Four or Five Millions of Slaves—are talking and thinking of John Brown—of his daring, his purpose, his defeat, and his death.  How can the most hostile, the most stolid, suppress the questions—What was it that required the execution of John Brown?  How came such a man to die the death of a felon?  What is the Juggernaut that demanded this bloody sacrifice?  Admit that Brown took a wrong way to rid his country of the curse, his countrymen of the chains of bondage, what is the right way?  And are we pursuing that way as grandly, unselfishly as he pursued the wrong one?  If not, is it not high time we were?  Before censuring severely his errors, should we not abandon our own? 

Yes, John Brown dead is verily a power—like Samson in the falling temple of Dagon—like Ziska, dead, with his skin stretched over a drumhead, still routing the foes he bravely fought while he lived.  Time will doubtless make plain the object and effect of this sacrifice, and show the errors of Man overruled and made beneficent by the wisdom and loving justice of God.  So let us be reverently grateful for the privilege of living in a world rendered noble by the daring of heroes, the suffering of martyrs—among whom let none doubt that History will accord an honored niche to Old John Brown.”