Cinema--
The Charlestown Jail Scene in "Prince of Players"

The IMDb website remembers the 1955 film production, "Prince of Players" as a

tragic and sentimental story that depicts the early career of the 19th century American actor, Edwin Booth with some mention of the events leading to the assassination of President Lincoln by Edwin's brother, John Wilkes Booth. In the film, Edwin's days in the spotlight dwindle shortly after his brother is caught and killed for assassinating Lincoln.

The film is largely based upon the life of Edwin Booth, and provides little dramatization of his brother's life, the infamous assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.  The screenplay for "Prince of Players" was based upon the popular (but apparently not annotated) historical narrative, Prince of Players: Edwin Booth (1953), by Eleanor Ruggles.   The film starred Richard Burton as Edwin Booth, John Derek as John Wilkes Booth, and Raymond Massey--famous for his portrayal of Lincoln and Brown in other films--as their tragic father and acting forebear, Junius Brutus Booth.  The film says little about the mounting crisis over slavery, but conveys sufficiently that Edwin was loyal to the Union, while his infamous brother became a bitter defender of the South.   The movie somewhat drags along because, mainly it's a story about a 19th century Shakespearean actor's career, his brief marriage to a wife who died in 1863, and how he overcame his personal demons as well as the shame brought upon the Booth family by his fanatical brother's assassination of Lincoln.  The film does not show or even mention that the real Edwin Booth actually saved Robert Lincoln, the eldest son of the President, from a near fatal accident at a train station in Jersey City, NJ, in 1864.  Nor does it give much detail about Edwin Booth's prestigious career in New York City, that lasted into the early 1890s.

Obviously, my interest in "Prince of Players" is the scene when Edwin Booth is urged to reach out to Wilkes Booth by their worried sister, Asia.  Without context, the film portrays the two concerned siblings in a stage coach, where Edwin stops in an unnamed town to find John.  The aberrant actor is portrayed in a bar, making some kind of a political speech about the necessity of Brown's hanging.   In the story, Edwin had excelled his ambitious brother in acting, while John Wilkes had found a new calling in political subversion.  The former, seeking to save his brother from political folly, thus offers John an opportunity to co-star with him on the London stage.  To this, John Wilkes Booth says, "I want to show you something," and leads his brother outside of the bar, where they can see the shadow of Brown pacing in jail cell through a barred window.  (In reality, the side of the jail faced a street, not a bar.)

John Wilkes:  "There he is, John Brown.  Look at him, Ned, pacing up and down his cell, dreaming of an army with banners that will come to rescue him.  But it is not coming." 

Edwin:  "Why do you hate him so, a man you have never known?" 

John Wilkes: "Hate him?  I don't hate him.  In his own way he is a great man.  But to destroy greatness is to partake of greatness.  Shakespeare knew that.  Remember, Ned, when he had Brutus say to Caesar, 'Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods'? Shakespeare never wrote drama like this.  John Brown will die tomorrow.  Not play acting at death, but to rise for the applause as the curtain falls.   Swing by his neck as the sun comes up in mortal anguish.  Listen to those voices--not supers [supernumeraries] in the wings, real men, whose voices are real.  That sound could fill this land with agony.   Ned, there must be more glory to life than bowing and smirking to an audience--more fame than a well spoken Hamlet.  There's a mortal drama beginning to be played out here that's worth a thousand Hamlets.  That's the stage to play upon, Ned.  The smell of life and blood in your nostrils.  Waiting for your cue until destiny speaks the line. . . ."

At this point, Booth is summoned back into the bar, and bids his brother farewell.

Of course the scene is fictional.  Not only did Edwin not meet his brother at Charlestown on the night before Brown's hanging (Thur., Dec. 1, 1859), but Booth had come to town under the auspices of a Richmond militia group and was in uniform.  Although he was hardly incognito, he was "acting" like a soldier in uniform.   Interestingly, however, Moss Hart's screenplay preserves something of the warped admiration that Booth later expressed for Brown.  Although the proslavery actor wanted the abolitionist to die, even risking his acting job to travel to Charlestown to observe the Old Man's death, he did feel Brown was admirable for his bravery.  Hart's script puts the words of "greatness" in Booth's mouth, insinuating that Booth's desire to destroy greatness would ultimately lead the actor to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

According to Ruggles' book, Booth’s sister, Asia, recalled that her brother John had witnessed the hanging of Brown and “felt a throb of anguish as he beheld the old eyes straining their anxious sight for the multitude he vainly thought would rise to rescue him.”  Asia later recalled that John Wilkes told her, “Brown was a brave old man; his heart must have broken when he felt himself deserted.” (Prince of Players: Edwin Booth, p. 119)   As David Reynolds has recently observed:

In a letter of December 1864, shortly after Lincoln was elected to a second term, Booth wrote bitterly of the president: “He is standing in the footprints of old John Brown, but no more fit to stand with that rugged old hero—Great God! No. John Brown was a man inspired, the grandest character of this century!” (Reynolds, "John Wilkes Booth and the Higher Law," The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2015)

This is where Hart's screenplay insinuates his own view of Lincoln's greatness rather than reiterating Booth's actual sentiment.  As Reynolds would have us understand, Booth did not feel that being part of the deaths of both Brown and Lincoln was to "partake of greatness."  Quite in contrast to Brown, whom Booth recognized as fundamentally profound, the man who finally assassinated Lincoln thought his victim was coarse, vulgar, and disgraceful.

On the other hand, Booth himself misread Brown as having been disappointed in hope of rescue on the day of his hanging, and that he felt deserted.   Like so many other Virginians, Booth was fed propaganda about Brown--his supposed disappointment in the loyalty of local blacks and his last minute desire for rescue being two inventions of the Virginia press.  Neither was true--Brown was quite aware that local black people had shown great enthusiasm, and if he was disappointed in blacks, it was in the free black leadership of the North.  Nor was Brown hoping for rescue as he mounted the gallows (at eleven o'clock in the morning, not at sunrise as stated in the film).  To the contrary, if Brown entertained the possibility of being rescued, he did so only briefly at the onset of his capture. It quickly became clear that he would not be rescued, and he seized upon this hopeless situation with a surprising joy and contentment.  He consistently decried and refused any suggestion from visitors and allies of a rescue.  The man who stood on the gallows in Charlestown was actually quite calm, satisfied, and only looked upon the crowd with one stated regret: that the authorities had not permitted the general public to attend his execution.

In the end, "Prince of Players" at least put one profound truth into the mouth of John Derek's John Wilkes Booth: certainly Shakespeare never wrote drama like this.

Feature--
The Anti-Brown "Union" Meetings, December 1859

In Freedom's Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia, one theme that I have presented in the aftermath of the abolitionist's death is the often overlooked "Union Meetings" that took place in the North in December 1859.  These "Union Meetings" were essentially an expression of the conservative political element of the North, particularly fueled by the interests of capitalists and the propagandized working class men who supported them.

Cutaway from the "Grand Union Meeting" Program,
New York City, 17 Dec. 1859

At the heart of these meetings was economic self-interest, since slavery's stolen wealth flowed into the industrial North and energized the economy of great cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston among others.  Of course, these meetings were explicitly racist as well, since the political and economic interests of capitalism in this period were obviously tied to the continued oppression of black people under Southern bondage.

An artist for the NY Illustrated News captured
this image of the "Union Meeting" in New
York's Academy of Music, 17 Dec. 1859

Following Brown's death, Northern capitalists began to worry that the South would find its much desired excuse to secede from the Union, especially states like South Carolina and Virginia which had entertained secession for years.  Northern racism, well documented in Leon Litwack's fine book, North of Slavery, is a matter of history; but the "Union Meetings" were the fullest manifestation of the Northern white man's contempt for abolitionism, particularly focused on John Brown, and resentful of those antislavery voices that celebrated him as a martyr for freedom.

The first "Union Meeting" took place in Philadephia's Jayne Hall, referred to as the "Grand Union Mass Meeting," on Wednesday, December 7, only five days after Brown's hanging.  In this meeting, the white audience called for the hanging of abolitionist Wendell Phillips, and the enslaved black population were referred to as "savage hordes." The following day, December 8, another "Union Meeting" took place in Boston's Faneuil Hall, where disunion was loudly lamented and Brown's execution was applauded.

But perhaps the most notable gathering took place in New York City, on Monday evening, December 19, in Manhattan's notable Academy of Music.  New York's "Grand Union Meeting" filled the house to overflowing, and the turn out was so strong that smaller meetings spilled out onto the streets around Union Square and 14th Street.  In 1859, the Academy of Music was the largest opera house in the world, with its peculiar horseshoe shaped seating and gas lights.  Inside, a band played patriotic songs and Union messages were posted on great signs, along with flags of the USA.  Yet the majesty of the great throng, with its distinguished guests and martial music only thinly belied the sheer racism and selfish interests of the business community, which called for unity with the South.  At best, the various speakers appealed to the "pupilage" of the black man under the white man, and the necessity of allowing the South handle black slavery and emancipation in its own way.

Outside, burning torches and barrels lit the streets as speakers harangued Brown's memory and called for solidarity with the South.  With the city's dark streets now set ablaze with lights, fireworks lit the sky as people thronged to a number of platforms to hear the anti-Brown tirades.  Periodically, the cheers and huzzahs were punctuated with cannon fire, which startled horses and in some cases led to carriage accidents on Manhattan's busy streets.

An artist for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper captured this scene
outside of NY's Academy of Music during the "Great Union Meeting"

As Horace Greeley, the antislavery editor of the New York Tribune, concluded afterward, the "Great Union Meeting" movement was based "chiefly, to promote Southern trade, and, as a means to that end, to denounce the Republican party and uphold the Pro-Slavery party." Greeley observed, too, that nothing was said about the interests of free labor, nor the threat of slavery's expansion as upheld by proslavery Southern leaders.

The "Union Meetings" that took place in the Northeast were symptomatic of the racist and conservative political investment in slavery that is often overlooked when Southern slavery is discussed.  John Brown and his abolitionist contemporaries were well aware of the ties of greed and prejudice that bound the wealthy men of the North and South, and that the exploitation and oppression of black people by Southern slaveholders was supported by racist greed in the North.  As prisoner Brown told the reporter, Simpson Donavin, "The North and the South will each have to share in this suffering and sacrifice. Both are guilty. The North profited most in the inauguration of the infamy and has shared largely in the profits which have arisen from slave labor."


Almost before Brown could be lowered into his grave, the wealthy white interests of the North proved his words correct by these disgraceful "Union Meetings," supporting slavery and calling for a unity of blood and greed.  However, much to the disappointment of Northern capitalists, the Southern slaveholders understood their greed, and disdained them almost as much as they did abolitionists.


With the election of the first Republican President of the United States in 1861, the South cut off its Northern partners and declared itself a nation.  John Brown would not have been surprised at the bloodletting that followed.

===========
If you're interested in the "Union Meetings," see Freedom's Dawn, Chapter 19--LD

Passingly--
Controversial?

The editor of the blog of the Franklin County Historical Society of Chambersburg, Pa., was kind enough to make mention of my two John Brown books in the notice below (27 Jun.)  However, the editor adds, "DeCaro is viewed by some as a controversial character," and then provides a link to this very blog, where my "opinions on current events" and my "defense of Brown" are to be found.   I'm used to seeing Brown referred to as controversial, but I guess defending him makes one by default controversial as well.  Of course, whoever the "some" may be who take me as controversial are welcome to their opinion.  Still, I do appreciate the Franklin County editor's notice.--LD

 Louis DeCaro, Jr. ‘s books Freedom’s Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia and John Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from Charlestownhave been published by Rowman & Littlefield (www.rowman.com; 1-800-462-6420) . The first is priced at $45.00 and the second at $60.00; however, the books can be purchased at reduced prices (Freedom’s Dawn $31.50; John Brown Speaks $42.00) until December 31, 2015 by using the Promo Code 4S15DECARO. Freedom’s Dawn examines the rise of John Brown’s legacy andJohn Brown Speaks is a collection of Brown’s writings after his capture at Harpers Ferry. DeCaro is viewed by some as a controversial character; his opinions on current events and his defense of Brown are reflected in his blog

White Supremacy Speaks--
Brown Called "Homicidal Maniac" on Anti-Immigrant Website, Compared to Dylann Roof by Dissident Right-Winger

Following the racist killing spree of Dylann Roof in Charleston last week,  John Derbyshire--who identifies himself as "a novelist, pop-math author, reviewer, and opinion journalist" on his own website, has taken to opining about John Brown on the blog of an organization called V-DARE. Derbyshire apparently Tweets @ "DissidentRight," so you can pretty much guess where this is going. Derbyshire, whose website images resemble a mug shot, has contributed to the National Review, has written numerous articles and published six works of fiction and "pessimistic conservative" writing, and even has his own podcast, "Radio Derb."

Dissident Right-Winger John Derbyshire
has compared Dylann Roof to John Brown

The V-DARE organization, upon whose blog Derbyshire has opined, evidently draws its name from the story of Virginia Dare, the first North American born white settler (b. 1587).  Dare and her mother were among a British colony on Roanoke Island, off of the North Carolina Coast, often referred to as "The Lost Colony" after all of its residents were discovered missing without explanation in 1590.  Legends grew up about Dare, including a myth that a Native medicine man had transformed her into a "white doe."  Of course, it is more likely that she was taken and subsumed within a native community.  And therein lies the significance of V-DARE, whose editor, Peter Brimelow, is the author of Alien Nation: Common Sense about America's Immigration Disaster.  V-DARE is an alternative, not mainstream, conservative website for white people who advocate "patriot immigration reform and the voice of the historic American nation."   V-DARE wants to push back against "pro-amnesty" policies toward immigrants and advocates "your principles"--meaning, I assume, the fanatical prejudices of white racists and xenophobes.

As far as the racist murders in Charleston, Brimelow wrote on the V-DARE website that he appreciated how the writers on V-DARE were waiting "to see what actually happened."  According to one of his contributors, in fact, what "really happened" was that the killer Dylann Roof was driven to this extremist crime by the abuses of the liberals, who just talk too much about white privilege and the Trayvon Martin case.  Poor little armed brat.  He was driven to shooting nine black people in a church because of liberal propaganda.

To such opinions, our Long Island conservative commentator, Mr. Derbyshire, added his two cents the other day, writing on the V-DARE blog (Jun. 21), under the title, "John Brown, An Earlier Homicidal Maniac Who Wanted 'To Start a Civil War.'"

John Brown was an ardent abolitionist.  He was also, like Dylann Roof, a homicidal maniac.  That latter fact does not invalidate abolitionism.  Was Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party responsible for John Brown’s crimes? 

Crazy people can believe non-crazy things.  I bet Charlie Manson believes that 2+2=4, that Tuesday comes between Monday and Wednesday, that water will wet us and fire will burn, etc.  You can’t function in the world at all unless a majority of your beliefs are true. 

As my Marxist friends used to tell me back in Cold War days, when I pointed out the horrors of Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, etc.: “An idea is not responsible for all the people who hold it.” 

John Brown is a fascinating figure, as lunatics go.   I re-acquainted myself with him earlier this month at Harper’s Ferry. . . .  Prior to that I knew him mainly from George MacDonald Fraser’s, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord.

"The Derb" apparently is not so much of a right-winger that he believes in restoring slavery, and he apparently thinks Abraham Lincoln was the hero of the antislavery cause, which is a typical brain fart among Republicans and conservatives.  The point of these remarks appear to be that even though Brown was right about slavery, he was still crazy and homicidal--the antislavery idea not being responsible for the men like Brown who embraced it, along with the good conservatives like Lincoln, who had to be dragged into doing anything about slavery.

It is obvious enough that whatever else Mr. Derbyshire knows (and I have no doubt that he knows a lot of stuff), by his own admission, he knows nothing about John Brown except what he apparently learned from those questionable "authorities" who work for the National Park Service at Harper's Ferry.  Besides that, "The Derb" has read the essential book on John Brown--a piece of fiction by MacDonald Fraser.  Laugh out loud.

It is no surprise that the Derbyshires and Coulters of this world dismiss John Brown.  They are as out of touch with the antebellum and antislavery history of this nation as they are from the oppressed and marginalized of this nation.  Great minds think alike, and apparently so do prejudiced ones.  Yet, it is ultimately befitting that Brown's enemies and critics can be found in association with such views, especially the kind espoused by white reactionaries and bigots on V-DARE--the kind of people that build their politics on racial prejudice, and then rationalize a discourse after the fact from their own darkened hearts and minds.

More immediately, Mr. Derbyshire is simply misinformed and ignorant.  Comparing Brown to the depraved and malicious Roof, who showed himself like some malignant KKK afterbirth, capable of murdering Christian black people in church, is beyond ridiculous.  The comparison has no substance, except in the godless mind of an aging dissident leftover from the golden age of "America"--you know, the good old days, when white people called themselves "Native Americans" and killed the real ones, while cursing immigrants and debating whether blacks had sufficient intelligence to live apart from their kind tutelage.

Extra, Extra!

Freedom's Dawn Published this Month

I'm happy to announce that Freedom's Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia will be released this month.  Readers can download a discount flyer pdf by clicking on this link.  The two-page flyer features an order form that you may use to get a 30% discount from the publisher's price for both Freedom's Dawn and its forthcoming companion volume (due out in August), John  Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from Charlestown.  You're also invited to visit the Freedom's Dawn Facebook page to get a preview of the cover.

A Point of Clarity--
The Historical Values of this Nation, not John Brown's Legacy, Are "Complicated" 

In the weeks following the 215th birthday celebration of John Brown, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise (12 May 2015), a newspaper published in the vicinity of the abolitionist's farm and gravesite, featured an insert soliciting reader responses.  The "web poll" states that Brown "left a complicated legacy when he was hanged in 1859," and then asked readers if "on the whole," they were "in favor of what he did."  This is a point I've addressed on this blog before, and one which I recently discussed in my brief presentation at the birthday celebration in Lake Placid as a guest of the organization, John Brown Lives!

The notion that Brown was a "complex" man, or that his legacy is "complicated" has no real substance for any one who is willing to tell the truth about the history of slavery and the United States.  Indeed, what is "complicated" is the way in which white society has treated slavery.

The facts are that this nation was built on chattel slavery, that both the North and South grew rich on stolen black labor, and the constitution of our nation contained with it the provision for this gross injustice.  The facts are that the vast majority of whites in the "free states" were indifferent to the human rights of enslaved people, and that a dense culture of racism formed throughout white society as a result of black chattel slavery.  The facts are that even a majority of people who claimed to be "anti-slavery" were against the brutal system in theory, but were far more willing to tolerate it rather than see the nation split over it.  Black people never had but very few actual allies among the whites, and the only reason why slavery was ended was because the South was so determined to pull out of the Union, and the North was in large part unwilling to let the South, its profits, and the Union be taken away by the slave holders' rebellion.  The facts are that many whites did not oppose slavery until it became clear that the Civil War had to resolve the issue of slavery once and for all, and it was only the circumstances of the war that finally drove white society to resolve the defeat of the South and the end of chattel slavery.

This 1865 image mocks the defeated rebel leader,
Jefferson Davis (in female attire).  Although Davis
was not Brown's "hangman," the artist understood
that it was the nascent spirit of the Confederacy
that had executed Brown in 1859
(Library of Congress image)

Yet having defeated the rebels, the North shortly reinstated the rebels, allowed many of them to run for and take public office, and exacted no political penalty from them for the rebellion.  The rebel leader, Jefferson Davis, served but a short time in jail and was freed.  Only one so-called Confederate officer was hanged, and that was because of his criminal role in the case of the hellish Andersonville Prison, were many Union soldiers died cruel deaths.  Not only were former rebels allowed to rejoin the Union with but a mere slap on the wrist, but within a decade of the end of the war, blacks were essentially sold back into the power of white supremacy in the South and the long reign of terror, the Klan, and the rise of Jim Crow all came forth because of the "complicated" nature of white society in regard to black people.

These are not popular words, but they should be written because the notion that John Brown was complicated is such a farce, a kind of straw man that some whites continually raise up and knock down for reasons that can only speak to the need to further evade the truth--whether or not they even realize it.  People are not stupid, so the fact that they never arrive at the plain facts of history suggest a problem of the heart more than the intellect.

When was John Brown ever complex, and where is his legacy "complicated"?  Brown was always for human rights, always against slavery, always for black equality, always against slavery's brutality, always ready to fight slavery's terrorists, always trying to find a way to destabilize and undermine the "arrant whore" of chattel slavery.   Where is the "complicated" nature of his legacy?  Is it his minimal resort to violence?  Why is this so complicated for a  nation of white people who glorify violence in their history of domestic and foreign wars?  Is his belief in the Christian gospel "complicated" because he was no pacifist?  But the vast majority of self-professing Christians in this nation have never been pacifist, and the vast majority of Christians in this nation have condoned wars and military actions that resulted in far worse atrocities than Brown ever accomplished in killing five proslavery thugs.

Why is the legacy of Brown so "complicated"?   The answer is that it is not.  The answer is that the legacy of the United States--born as a slaveholding democracy--was a walking contradiction from the start.  Where in the world can one find people like Thomas Jefferson--full of the ideas of liberty, freedom, and equality, a "liberal" in the classical sense, and yet also a racist and slave holder?  Is that not "complicated"?   The same applies to George Washington and so many others.   What of Lincoln, no slave holder to be sure, but one quite willing to subordinate the rights of blacks to the priorities of white society.  Why do we not hear of Lincoln's "complicated" legacy?  Why is it that the man with the most single-minded commitment to ending slavery and promoting human rights is branded "complicated"?

The answer is because the public mind of this nation has yet to come to terms with its own nation's guilty history, the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of its national heroes and founders, and the flawed and failing manner in which it has repeatedly dealt with the rights of minorities.  To the lying mind, truth is always "complicated," while the liar finds comfort in the entangled half-truths and deceptions of its own making.

The Adirondack Daily Enterprise is asking the wrong question in its "web poll."  The question the editor of that paper should be asking is, "Was John Brown right in trying to arm enslaved people to win their freedom?"  I would not be surprised, of course, that many would respond in the negative. After all, this is the United States, a complicated place.

More from the North Country--

PBS Report by Derek Muirden--Your Editor Interviewed; the Bogus Claim of HF's Seized Weapons

Derek Muirden of the Mountain Lake (NY) affiliate of PBS was on the ground at the John Brown Farm on John Brown Day last week, and kindly included an interview with me in his report.  The video is posted below--just look for the guy referred to as "Louie."  I should add, for the sake of clarity, that while I appreciate Mr. Muirden's fine report, I do not agree that Brown intended to seize the guns from the Harper's Ferry armory.  I cannot blame him, because this is one of those hackneyed claims that has adhered to the raid narrative since 1859. I take up this false claim in my forthcoming Freedom's Dawn.  

To the contrary, guns were not taken from the arsenal, but it seems rather that they were guarded to prevent others from getting to them.  Brown afterward clearly stated that he did not want the arsenal weapons because he brought superior firearms with him to Harper's Ferry, the Sharp's repeating rifles were five-times as effective.  The seizing of the armory was purely a political demonstration (he said so) and the reason for it is likewise provided in my forthcoming book.  

If Brown were trying to seize the arsenal weapons, where were the wagons to load them?  Where is the evidence that he took these rifles when he had ample opportunity to do so? The answer is no evidence exists of the kind.

In reality, the notion that the arms were to be seized for the slaves comes from sensationalist, propagandistic claims made by proslavery reporters.  These false claims bolstered Sen. James Mason's mission to use his 1860 senatorial committee investigation to impugn Brown and exploit the raid in order to interrogate and ensnare antislavery leaders in the North.   It is a point of history that besides Brown's sheer denial that he was interested in the arsenal stores, none of the Harper's Ferry weapons were removed and loaded throughout the entire, extended occupation of the Ferry by Brown and his men.  One wagon was brought into the Ferry by Brown, but it was already loaded with Brown's supplies.  If he were trying to seize the arsenal weapons, where were the wagons to load them?  Where is the evidence that he took these rifles when he had ample opportunity to do so?  The answer is no evidence exists of the kind.  Indeed, the only valid testimony to be believed is that a couple of Brown's men opened a couple of cases and looked at the rifles--so did Brown invade Harper's Ferry to seize two cases of rifles?   The facts are plain enough if you can get beyond the hackneyed press reports from the proslavery side, which unfortunately many historians have not discerned.

You can also read more about the John Brown Lives! event in a report by my friend, Naj Wikoff, in Thursday's (14 May) Lake Placid News.   Naj also provides an excerpt from my succinct presentation, as follows:

Certainly John Brown, as the single-minded man on the right side of history, who has been dismissed time and time again, keeps coming back. Why? Because you can't bury the truth, because his life was not a life of reinvention, because if you study his life you see that he is really the same man throughout. He did not believe slavery would be uprooted simply by moral suasion. John Brown saw that every road to ending slavery was blocked by power. He felt it had become something that had to be resisted. 

The government was on the side of the slaveholder. There was no hope for peaceful emancipation. There was only one man in 1859 who took action, and that was John Brown. He is significant to us because he really represents the ideas and principles that we say we believe in, but often times we as a nation to this day continue to have a double standard and a mythology about what our country is. John Brown does not allow that mythology to exist. He demands that we revisit the history of our country and tell the truth.

Lastly, for the record, Mr. Muirden's closing quote of Bruce Olds fairly well illustrates the most extreme anti-Brown view in contemporary culture.   However, Olds is not to be taken seriously in and of himself as a narrator of Brown's life, not even in fictional terms. Like many novelists who tamper with historical figures, he screws up royally.  But unlike novelists such as Russell Banks, Olds lacks even a basic sense of fairness, rationalizes his putrid narrative in the name of postmodernism, and is really a character assassin.  Only the malignant fringe of Brown haters would take the work of Bruce Olds seriously, and despite its association with postmodernity, Olds' novel represents one of the last cries of the defeated view of Brown that reigned throughout most of the 20th century.

--LD

A Gravestone Selfie

John Brown Day 2015--
A Visit to the North Country

Pan Shot--The John Brown Farm: to the left, the Joseph Pollia statue (1935) of John Brown; center, the tent for the program; to the right, the great rock, the grave site, and the Brown farm house

I haven't been able to visit the John Brown Farm and burial site in Lake Placid, NY for a good many years, mainly because my academic obligations generally have me seated at Nyack's all school graduation ceremony on the same day.  This year, thanks to the forthcoming publication of my two John Brown books, I was able to get some time off and join the annual observance of Brown's birthday, now made possible through John Brown Lives! a non-profit organization that supports human rights and social justice issues in honor of the abolitionist.  JBL's indefatigable leader, Martha Swan, the founder and guiding spirit of the organization, kindly included me as part of this year's program, which remembered Brown and the late Yusuf Abdul Wasi Burgess, an activist and environmentalist who died late last year.  Besides the moving program in remembrance of Burgess, the featured speakers were Dr. James Carter, who was among those who marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965, and yours truly.  You can find press accounts of the day on JBL's face book page.

From the field--

UPDATE: MAXSON FARMHOUSE REDIVIVA!

H. Scott Wolfe

Last month, while returning from a sojourn at the old collective community of Amana, Iowa, I instinctively decided to pause in what I call “John Brown Land”...the little village of Springdale. I, of course, felt compelled to pay my respects at the site of the Maxson farm...that obscure locale (yet of such immense importance to the Old Man’s story) that I have so (too) frequently discoursed upon in these columns.

The Maxson monument with its new 
neighbor, 19 April 2015 (Wolf photo)

Normally, as one approaches the farm from the west, the summits of the numerous grain bins, barns and equipment sheds become visible long before one reaches the spot. So, as my consort and myself passed the “North Liberty” graveyard, (still a mile distant from our destination), I suddenly blurted: “Something is amiss out there!” “Uh-huh,” she yawned. “Seriously,” I shouted, “there is something different about those roofs at the farmsite!” “Uh-huh,” she sighed, as she continued to peruse a brochure on eastern Iowa antique shops.

All was tension (at least on MY part), as I pulled up astride the Maxson monument near the roadside. It was then that I let loose with: “Holy ************!,” and promptly received a brief lecture upon both my choice of nouns and their close relationship to the ultimate destination of my questionable soul.

There, a mere thirty yards distant, sat a freshly-minted, sprawling residence of the “McMansion” style of architecture...still unoccupied, the stickers still clinging to those brand-spanking-new Anderson windows. The garage, where soon the Nissan will find shelter, sat where the old, cast-iron windmill had stood. (This generated another ejaculation from yours truly, for that windmill had appeared in many of the Depression era photographs of the original Maxson house, then in shambles.)

The New "Maxson" Farmhouse--Yikes! (Wolf photo)

Alas, the site is no longer pristine. And those visions of drilling men in an open field are much more difficult to conjure. In my personal fantasies, I had always dreamed of someone procuring the property...building a replica of the Maxson farmhouse...and exposing the stone foundation of the original (which still lies beneath a machine shed)...to create a true historic site. “If I ever win the lottery,” I would say....(But chances of this were indeed slim, in that I have never purchased a lottery ticket in my life.)

But now we have what appears to be suburban Springdale. A latter-day family of Cleavers will occupy the site...and, hopefully, send Wally or the Beaver over to the granite monument to clear the obscuring weeds...and spare these old hands from those pesky blisters.

Progress.....Don’t ya love it?

====

H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois Public Library.  A veteran researcher of archives and historic sites, he has generously contributed a variety of informative and insightful pieces to this blog since 2011.  His seasoned, storied, and celebrated correspondence is published under the column, "From the Field," and is popular with the readers of this blog.

"Hmmph" Department
Lecompton's Historic Hall of Shame Carries on the Tradition in a New Play

According to Hay's Post (18 Apr.), the Associated Press reports that Constitution Hall in Lecompton, Kansas, is going to feature a new play about John Brown on May 3, 2015.  According to the AP report, the play is entitled, "John Brown: Widow Maker," and will be performed by The Lecompton Re-enactors, an acting troupe that will bring to life the story of Mahala Doyle and Louisa Wilkinson. Doyle and Wilkinson were the unhappy widows of two of the notorious Pottawatomie five, slain by free state radicals under the leadership of John Brown on May 24, 1856   The killings are popularly referred to as a "massacre," although it was a preemptive strike in a politically charged civil conflict, in which the plan of proslavery conspirators to kill the Browns was thwarted by the strategic strike along the Pottawatomie creek.  Five men were killed, all of which were directly involved in an illegal proslavery conspiracy to aid invading "ruffians" and direct them against leading antislavery settlers--especially the abolitionist Brown family.

Proslavery Enthusiasm, Lecompton 1856

The AP report typically refers to the Pottawtomie killings in keeping with the hackneyed historical narrative, which claims the killings were a "retaliation" for the attack on Lawrence, Kansas, by proslavery thugs on May 21.  While the assault on Lawrence was the context for the Pottawatomie attack, Brown and his men struck with far more urgency, knowing that the fall of Lawrence to invading proslavery thugs would soon be followed by an attack on the free state settlement at Ossawatomie and its vicinity.  By strategically removing the Doyles (a father and his two young adult sons), Wilkinson, and Sherman, the strike by radical free state people at least detained the plot to invade Osawatomie, which was nevertheless accomplished later that year.  More importantly, those who had plotted and targeted the Browns were eliminated, with the net effect that hubris and presumption on the part of proslavery militants in that area was dramatically undercut to the advantage of free state settlers.  While white society's historical remembrance of the Pottawatomie incident tends to reflect a "White Proslavery Lives Matter" attitude, in reality the strike was a minimalist and strategic and exhibited none of the "collateral damage" of proslavery terrorism in the territory.

As to the story of Mahala Doyle and Louisa Wilkinson, we should be clear that making them sympathetic figures in a dramatic re-enactment is somewhere between "Mob Wives" and "The Real Gestapo Housewives of Berlin."  Mahala Doyle passively supported her husband and sons in their murderous plot, but when it backfired on them, she scolded her doomed husband and sons for their "devilment."  Barely literate, Doyle allowed herself to be used as a tool by proslavery activists in Missouri, who helped her prepare a sarcastic letter which was duplicated and sent to Brown in jail after his defeat at Harper's Ferry in 1859.   Brown seems never to have received Doyle's letter (see my forthcoming Freedom's Dawn), although he may have heard about it since proslavery people leaked it to the public, and it was known about Charlestown where the Old Man was incarcerated. Brown expressed no regret for the killings and always maintained they were necessary.   Later in life, Doyle added deception to her resentments by feeding into the animus of Brown's posthumous detractor, David Utter.  Essentially, Doyle never told the truth about her husband's criminal activities, and in later life fabricated his innocence and victimization.  Wilkinson similarly lied about her husband in official affidavits made in 1856 by proslavery politicians, portraying him as a peaceful settler.  But Wilkinson was a fervent proslavery activist and was heartily joined in the conspiracy to eliminate the Browns and drive out antislavery settlers in his neighborhood.  Their plight was naturally portrayed in the most sympathetic terms by the proslavery element, and unfortunately the mainstream of white society has bought that portrayal wholesale.

Lecompton Constitution Hall

The fact that a play branding Brown a "widow maker" being conducted in a miserable house of ill repute like the Lecompton Constitution Hall seems fitting.  The Lecompton hall was the political home of the proslavery Lecompton Constitution, a racist document in origin and revision, albeit thankfully never enforced as law thanks to the work of antislavery radicals in Kansas.  While one may appreciate the historical importance of preserving sites from Kansas history, Lecompton's Constitution Hall is a hall of shame to anyone who reads history right-side up.  That it should be used to present a play where Brown is portrayed as a "widow maker" suggests that the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree."  Rather than producing dramatic and educational material that shows that slavery and its minions were the real widow-makers, this F-Troop production wants to present sentimentality and sympathy for the hearth and home of racists and conspirators.  The unfortunate widows Doyle and Wilkinson had human reason to weep, but I wonder if they would have wept had the blood of Brown and his sons been spilled all over the Kansas soil?  I wonder if they would have wept if slavery had triumphed and imported more victims into the new territory?  I doubt it.

If you haven't gotten my point, then my comments on the Hays page will sum it up for you:

An interesting angle--a play about the wives of two proslavery terrorists, both women afterward lying in misrepresenting their late husbands as innocent victims. If one doesn't want his wife to end up a widow, it's probably not a good idea to go into proslavery terrorism as a family business.

UPDATE 26 APRIL 2015

See Jan Biles, "Lecompton Reenactors to state new play: Production focuses on widows associated with infamous [sic] abolitionist." Capital-Journal online [Topeka], 25 April 2015

Reflection--
Harper's Ferry and the Hinges of History

Montage sketch recalling Brown’s trial, Richmond Dispatch, 22 Dec. 1901

I went through his effects which were found at the old house in Maryland he occupied, and there I found a map of Virginia and the adjoining Maryland, giving the number of slaves and white men in each county and district.  If John Brown had got into the mountains there is no telling how extensive that raid might have been.  Unquestionably a certain proportion of the slaves would have run away. 

 Alexander Boteler, Virginia State Congressman (1859-62), from an 1882 interview 

Because of the vast amount of misinformation, propaganda, and bias in the popular narrative on John Brown's raid, few people actually appreciate how close the nation came to experiencing a south wide liberation movement in 1859. While counterfactual history writing is speculative, it is not speculative to point out that the facts of history show

(1) that Brown could have made a retreat into the mountains with a starting group of several hundred enslaved people;

(2) that the US army was too small to have launched any kind of counter strategy;

(3) that any kind of resistance, whether from militia or federal forces would not have been able to stop Brown's movement once it began to move in the mountains since it would not have involved conventional warfare;

(4) that Brown's movement likely and easily would have grown and spread, being added to daily by more and more runaways;

(5) that such a movement would have spread through the South in a matter of months, connecting to areas where there were already incidents of uprising and underground railroad activity, attracting many enslaved people, free blacks, and other disenfranchised people of color as it moved into the southwestern slave states;

(6) that antislavery whites militants and sympathetic Southerners would have been increasingly drawn to join or support the movement as it grew and expanded; and

(7) that slaveholders across the South would have been panicked and the normal operations of the demonic "institution" would have been destabilized,  and would not have been able to prevent such a movement since it was not intended primarily as an insurrectionary war as a "grand rescue."

In short, on the smallest of hinges--Brown's failure to get out of Harper's Ferry on time in the early morning of October 17, 1859--the history of the nation turned toward eventual civil war. Had he made his escape after several hours in Harper's Ferry, the outcome of history might have been quite different, and the US might have developed a far more revolutionary and egalitarian orientation, rather than a conservative and segregationist orientation. But history is made of such hinges, turning this way or that, and many a story might have easily gone in a different direction based upon one decision, action, or mistake of judgment.--LD

A NYC Minute--

A Brief JB Reunion on Broadway

Actor Ian Barford flanked by
the biographers 

Author, Author!  All Step Back and Give
Me a Photo Op with EC

Last week, Michele and I had the pleasure of seeing a performance of the smash hit, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," a British play that is now doing quite well here in the States. I'm no theater critic, but the play was tremendous and really exceeded all that I had heard about it. 

What made the experience the more enjoyable was that my good friend and fellow JB enthusiast, Ian Barford, is one of the lead cast members of the Broadway production.  Ian and I strolled the streets of Harper's Ferry on the 150th anniversary of the raid, making film and talking into the night about the Old Man, his raiders, and the failure that became successful in its own way.  In a sense, that conversation has never really ended, although there was no time for such chatter following the play, when Ian welcomed us at the stage door to greet him.

Happily, we were shortly joined by Evan Carton, author of the masterful, Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America, who was also at the play with his family.  Recall that the film rights for Patriotic Treason have been purchased for a proposed movie starring Giancarlo Esposito as Fred Douglass and Ed Harris as the Old Man, and we hope that the screenplay writer will be as fair and thoughtful as Dr. Carton.  

From the Field--

“THE EXECUTION TO-DAY”:

An Editor's (Ambivalent) Commentary On  John Brown

H. Scott Wolfe 

       Nearly thirty years ago, no doubt in a fit of questionable behavior, the local luminaries saw fit to install me as the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois Public Library. For those of you who might be familiar with this metropolis, you may recall it as the home of a fellow by the name of Ulysses S. Grant. For true devotees of history, it may also be known as the scene of one the great mineral rushes of the 19th century (“Galena” is the Latin name for lead sulfide, the principle ore of that heavy metal); or as the once principal Mississippi River port between those villages of St. Louis and St. Paul. 

        Today, we are a community of 3,500 souls which, because of our heritage and state of preservation, draws nearly a million visitors per annum to stroll our picturesque streets and drop coins into the tills of our industrious capitalists. Some of these sojourners, at least those with a passing interest in history or genealogy, often stumble into my library sanctum sanctorum, where I am able to satisfy their research needs...or, at least, invent something that is so plausible that it passes for scholarly erudition.

        The heart of our archival resources consists of an extraordinary newspaper collection. In fact, we possess a complete file of Galena papers stretching back to the distant year of 1834. Needless to say, this collection is of supreme value to me...for, within seconds, I can illuminate our patrons on everything from the Courthouse speech of Frederick Douglass in 1854 (the first abolitionist speech ever delivered in this strongly Democratic town); to the details of how someone’s great-granddaddy managed to drown himself in a farmhouse cistern in 1877.

        On quiet days, I find myself constantly paging through these newspapers. I am frequently indexing them. . . noting incidents that may be of interest to future visitors. Or I might simply immerse myself in the atmosphere of times long past. Such was my situation during this past week. The wind chills were minus 20 degrees outside my office...and the only potential visitor was the ghost of Admiral Peary.  So I found myself perusing a Galena Daily Advertiser from late 1859.  And, on the second page, I happened upon an editorial entitled simply: “THE EXECUTION TO-DAY.”

* * * * *

        “An event is appointed to transpire to-day. . . that will engross largely the thought and conversation of the people of the whole country. A man named John Brown. . . is to be hung at Charlestown, Jefferson county, Virginia. . . .”

        

The Editor: H. H. Houghton
(Wolfe image)

        So began the paper’s editor, a man with the alliterative name of Horace Hoskins Houghton.  A native Yankee from Vermont, Houghton had spent his life as a printer, journalist and poet. Of a wandering bent, he had plied his trade in his native State, in New York, in Louisville, Kentucky (where he “did not like the atmosphere of slavery”) and St. Louis (where he shared a landlord with the martyr Elijah Lovejoy).

        Houghton, in an autobiographical account, commented on his residence in the slave State of Missouri: “One of the first subjects that came up at the table was to sound me as to my views of slavery. I expressed myself in the moderate Vermont style. The conversation soon grew into a heated discussion. Although I know I had the best of the argument, yet others had the might on their side, and this decided me in the belief that I was too sincere an opponent of slavery, in every feeling of my soul, to make it agreeable for me to live, or attempt to live, in a slave State.”

        So by the mid-1830s, Houghton removed to Galena, and began an association as newspaper editor and publisher that was to endure until 1863. A staunch Whig/Republican in his politics, he exhibited quite liberal propensities in what was essentially, due to its links with the Mississippi River, a Southern town in Northern Illinois. An example of his personal eccentricity was his employment of Henry Wagoner, a black man, as a printer in his Galena newspaper shop. Wagoner, who is a story in himself, was later (1857) to meet John Brown, serve as a correspondent for Fred Douglass’ Paper. . . and, when the Old Man conducted the liberated Missouri slaves through Chicago in March of 1859, was the man who sheltered the fugitives there.

        Following the Civil War, and particularly after the 1868 election of his friend and fellow Galenian Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency, Houghton was the beneficiary of political spoils. The President first appointed him to a consulship in the Sandwich Islands (i.e. Hawaii), and then the Postmastership in Galena itself. He died there in the spring of 1879, “poor but honest,” a motto “he maintained to the last.”

* * * * * 

        As I began to peruse Houghton’s editorial, I was immediately struck by its ambivalence in regard to John Brown. I had initially expected, due to the editor’s liberal, anti-slavery mindset, a hymn to the Old Man’s martyrdom. What I actually discovered was a heavy dose of his “moderate Vermont style.”

        He began by defending Brown’s actions in Kansas, in words reminiscent of frequent commentary by Blogmaster DeCaro:

The Editorial
(Wolfe image)

        “His name was known in connection with certain bold actions during the civil war in Kansas. He had there drawn the sword under circumstances which were justifiable, if defensive war is ever to be justified as we believe it sometimes is, and report says he wielded it effectively. The bold action of Brown, and a few like him, ended a civil war that had in effect been cherished by the Administration of the General Government of the United States. . . . As far as Brown and those who acted with him in Kansas were concerned, their action was simply exercised for the public defence. They were only defending their own homes and rights from bands of lawless marauders. His cause was just and benevolent, and one in the defence of which he had a right to risk his own life with a view to save the lives of others. If misfortune came to the invaders of Kansas, as at Ossawatomie, it simply followed as the reacting force of wrong. . . . The ruffians whom he repelled had no right whatever -- except the right of simple power -- to make war on the peaceable citizens of Kansas. The action of Brown was that of DEFENCE...”

        But then Houghton contemplated the issue of Harpers Ferry:

        “Can the same thing be said in application to his action, in conception and result, in the purpose that culminated in Harpers Ferry? On this point, we are sure, hangs the whole moral force and enduring effect of the action for which he this day pays the penalty of his life...”

        Houghton’s answer is not to justify Brown’s actions, as in Kansas, but to attack Brown’s motives at Harpers Ferry. Thus, his sentiments here are liable to provide Blogmaster DeCaro with recurring nightmares:

        “John Brown is a cool and deliberate man in time of danger. . . .We shall be surprised if he does not manifest equal coolness today in the last hour and moment of his life. This, of itself, will not give great moral force or effect to the character of the man, for the worst of men have sometimes died coolly, and just as coolly have they borne themselves in times of danger as he did. . . .        “He is sustained by religious enthusiasm. No one doubts that Brown thought he was doing right at Harpers Ferry. His thinking so did not make it so. Conscience  may be educated to embrace a wrong. He sees a warrant for it in the principle of Christianity , which makes us to regard our neighbor’s welfare as our own. Then, to reverse the order and apply the rule, we must regard ourselves as well as we do our neighbor, or we do ourselves injustice. Did not Brown violate the law of right in this last particular? He sacrificed the life of his own best friend, to wit: that of himself, in a manner and under circumstances which, if justified by the teachings of Christ, we do not see it plainly...”

        Then Houghton’s crucial point, a delineation of DEFENSIVE and AGGRESSIVE war:

The author displays the newspaper,
Houghton's Galena Daily Advertiser
(Wolfe image)

        “In Kansas he was acting on the defensive. He shot down those who were seeking his own life, perhaps, and the lives of others. At Harpers Ferry he was acting on the aggressive. He was molesting those who would not have molested him, had he not first commenced the war upon them. When we heard of a Free State man being shot down in Kansas because he was one, we felt something like a willingness to take his place; but on the contrary, we have a decided antipathy to being one to help fill the ranks of the company who fell with Brown. . . . Nor have we seen any one who craves such peculiar office, nor do we expect to find them plenty hereafter, while common sense is as common as we hope to see it. . . .        To-day, as remarked above, John Brown is to be executed. Had he not shed the blood of others at Harpers Ferry, or had he not deliberately armed for such a contingency; or had he not been the undoubted aggressor, his chance of being regarded as a martyr hereafter would have been much greater than it is now. . . .”

        The editor concludes:

        “This Harpers Ferry affair is a serious one. It was managed badly enough by Brown, but still worse by the authorities of Virginia. What another day will bring forth, will soon be known, but the anticipation of its probable events and their influences in the above regard, are not pleasant.”

* * * * * 

        Thus speaks the liberal as conservative. The Vermont moderate. Well, the “probable event” he mentions turned out to be the Civil War. And that was “not pleasant.”  But the consequences of sectional turmoil, at the time of his editorial, could not be known to Horace Hoskins Houghton, resident of Galena, Illinois.

-----------------

H. Scott Wolfe is the Historical Librarian of the Galena, Illinois Public Library.  A veteran researcher of archives and historic sites, he has generously contributed a variety of informative and insightful pieces to this blog since 2011.  His seasoned, storied, and celebrated correspondence is published under the column, "From the Field," and is popular with the readers of this blog.

Bulletin Board--

National Abolition Hall of Fame Presents. . .

Take Note--
The Press and Misinformation on John Brown

According to an Associated Press (AP) report dated Feb. 23, the city of Charles Town and the Eastern Panhandle Transit Authority are negotiating a deal to provide transportation for the city's John Brown history tour.   If the agreement is struck, the agency will also take participants from Charles Town to Harpers Ferry. Charles Town, where John Brown was jailed, tried, and hanged in 1859, has been providing a historic tour of sites related to Brown since 2014.

The AP report concludes with the following sentences: Brown attacked a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859. He had planned to seize weapons and start a revolution to end slavery. The uprising was quashed within 48 hours. He was tried and executed in Charles Town for treason.

While this brief AP report is of passing interest, it is worth noting how the concluding three sentences function to extend the errors of John Brown authors (I won't call them scholars) who in turn have functioned to yield confusion, misinformation, and error in their narratives about John Brown's raid. For but three sentences, this AP summary contains a number of errors and something of a slight that is totally misplaced.

First, John Brown did not seize the armory in order to take the armory weapons.  

This has become a virtual mantra among John Brown "experts," tour guides, historians, journalists, and anyone else with an opportunity to publish an opinion about the Harper's Ferry raid.  The trouble is, it's wrong.

As the record shows, only one or two cases of rifles were even examined throughout the whole time of Brown's occupation of the armory and town of Harper's Ferry.  None of the testimonies of Brown's captives, especially the armory employees, shows that he had an interest in the rifles.  Indeed, he posted guards at the arsenal.   For as long as he stayed (too long) in Harper's Ferry, he did not take the arms.  I address this more extensively in my forthcoming Freedom's Dawn, along with his real intention for seizing the armory, and the most plausible explanation based upon evidence.   The notion of Brown seizing the arsenal to get the weapons is based upon slave holders and Virginia politicians like Senator James Mason, who portrayed Brown as an insurrectionist and inflamed fears of an uprising allegedly attempted by Brown.  This was propaganda and fiction.   To those who insist that Brown meant to take the weapons, my challenge is clear: prove it by fact.  He did not bring wagons to load them, made no attempt to load them, and explicitly stated (repeatedly) that he did not want the Harper's Ferry weapons.

Second, Brown did not intend to start a "revolution."  

He nowhere employed such language, and was quite aware of the political significance of "revolution" as well as "insurrection."  The best language--based on interviews with him--to describe his intention is "rescue."  His strategy was to lead as many enslaved people away as possible and support them in their movement to evade capture and swell the numbers of those who would join them across the South.  Brown hoped to collapse the operations of slavery without igniting a full blown revolution or uprising; he understood what was at stake, and hoped to make his movement as fluid, defensive, and evasive as possible.

Third, as there was no "uprising," it was not "quashed within 48 hours."

The phrasing of the AP remark suggests Brown's effort was so feeble that it was crushed "within 48 hours."  This is hardly the case.  In fact, Brown afterward pointed out to Governor Henry Wise that despite having inferior numbers and being accused of taking on an impossible venture, he had held Harper's Ferry for nearly two days before the forces of Virginia had been able to stop him.  The incredible thing about the story of the raid is not that it was "quashed" so easily, but rather that Brown was able to embarrass Virginia and hold a town with only a handful of men.  This point is made notwithstanding the fact that Brown violated his own plans and tactically failed by remaining in town.  The defense of Harper's Ferry was not a battle that Brown should have engaged; but the fact that he did, it is still interesting that it took both local militia and the marines to finally "quash" his actions.   This is in part due to the fact that Brown and his men had superior weapons, another reason why he had no interest in seizing the arsenal contents of inferior rifles.

Finally, he was tried and executed in Charles Town for treason.

Brown was found guilty of murder, insurrection, and treason by a jury of slave holders in a court presided over and overseen by the proslavery interests.  The facts show that the charge of murder is weak, that Brown neither authorized nor knew of any act of murder.  Further, in reaction to the raid, the people at Harper's Ferry were far more guilty of committing acts of murder.  A number of the raiders were killed in cold blood out of malice, including an execution style killing by the son of the Prosecutor Andrew Hunter.   The younger Hunter's act of homicide was revealed during testimony although he was never brought to trial.

Brown consistently denied his role as an insurrectionist and the facts bear this up.  However, slave holders made no distinctions insofar as he was endeavoring to free their enslaved "property."  Any act of armed effort to liberate enslaved people was deemed "insurrection," although the nature of insurrectionary violence is distinct, and Brown clearly wanted to avoid insurrectionary violence--that is, the categorical killing of slaveholders and their families, whether in armed conflict or not.  Brown was no Spartacus, not withstanding the famous allusion made by Victor Hugo.

Finally, the idea that Brown was guilty of treason was a device of Brown's prosecutors.  His defense sought to overturn the charge, but Hunter and the State of Virginia pushed the idea that because Brown had received legal protection, technically, as a guest of the state, then any act of subterfuge against Virginia could be called "treason."  The authority on the trial, Brian McGinty, says the point was arguably true, and conservatives in the North supported the treason conviction.  However, in the most logical sense, the charge of treason was self-serving for Virginia to kill Brown.  It signified how the State of Virginia had already endeavored to supersede the federal power, and such a charge reflects the hubris of the slaveholders that ultimately led to secession.  Indeed, Brown had broken the law to liberate men, while they would commit insurrection and treason against the government in 1861 for the most ignoble reason of keeping men and women in slavery and profiting from their labor and stolen bodies.

It is a point worth noting, that even an unidentified AP writer can continue to miseducate the public with only a few short, ill-informed and prejudiced lines.