Americas good terrorist, p.43
America's Good Terrorist, page 43
Historians wrestle with the issue of causation when attempting to explain events in history. This is certainly true in explaining Brown’s role in history and the issue of his mental health. The question of Brown’s sanity has never been answered conclusively. In the fall of 1859, between Brown’s conviction and execution, it was reported in the New York Times many Virginians claimed the plea that the Old Man was insane was “started by his friends in the North for the purpose of gaining time to outfit an expedition for this rescue.” Those who conclude Brown was insane cite 19th-century evidence that many of Brown’s relatives had mental illnesses. However, the vague and all-encompassing meaning of insanity in the Brown era included diseases such as epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, and the 19th-century affidavits—made mainly by Brown’s friends and relatives to save him from the gallows—cast doubt on the validity of those psychological observations. The many vague connotations of insanity are such that the term is not used diagnostically in modern medicine. Only in the modern legal world is an insane person defined, as a person not responsible for their behavior. Despite whatever character flaws Brown had, by today’s legal standards he was sane.
Historians still debate the issues of Brown’s sanity and his motives for his anti-slavery activities, including attempts to provide explanations for the killing and mutilation of the five pro-slave men in the Pottawatomie Creek massacre. Was it insanity, hatred of slavery based on moral convictions, spawned by his Calvinist religion or by psychological turmoil emanating from his childhood? Others have suggested that Owen Brown’s harsh treatment of his son might have led John Brown to vent his repressed hostility for his father on the slave-owner who also subjugated other humans. If he was insane, was it inherited or the result of traumatic life experiences, not only in childhood, but in adulthood? Brown withstood demoralizing loss with the deaths of his first wife and children, the murder of a son in Kansas, and extensive bouts of illness, including malaria.
He was described by many in the 19th century as a monomaniac, a term frequently used in that era. In the 1950s Allan Nevins made a similar assertion. According to Nevins, Brown had “reasoning insanity. On all other subjects but one—slavery and the possibility of ending it by one swift stroke… he was sane.” Among modern historians no one has addressed this issue more extensively, refuting a number of traditionally held views, than Robert McGone in his penetrating biography of Brown. More recently, David Reynolds articulates the prevalent view that Brown’s actions at Pottawatomie Creek were not that of a deranged man but must be considered in the context of the violence in Kansas as an act responding to the barbarity of the pro-slave forces. In summing up the confusing issue of assessing Brown’s sanity another of his biographers, Stephen B. Oates, concludes that when comparing Brown with others in the 1850s, including those for and against slavery and violence, it is difficult to tell “who’s mad.”
Newspapers, eyewitness accounts, and other sources on the raid buffet the reader with conflicting information. It can be difficult to know what to believe. The human proclivity for making black-and-white judgments of “good versus bad” and “right or wrong” has led defenders to see Brown’s actions as entirely justifiable, viewing Brown as a freedom fighter for the enslaved. Brown saw himself as sanctioned not only by divinity but also by the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence, as well as by the resulting liberation of two and a half million colonials in the Revolutionary War from the tyranny of Great Britain; he was freeing four million African Americans from the tyranny of human bondage. At the same time, Southerners who were paranoid about slave rebellions viewed Brown as an evil madman who was willing to take their property, and to do it in a way that would cost their lives. Moderate Northerners could understand Brown’s opposition to slavery but not his methods. Many assumed he must be mad. Over the years the printed pages about Brown depict him as either a benevolent crusader or a malevolent blot on the nation’s history.
Time has also influenced how Brown is viewed. Generations are removed from 1859 and from the immediacy of the consequences—real and imagined—of the Harpers Ferry raid. Lifestyles, values, and experiences are different, and there is a lack of understanding of mid-19th-century life that has shifted both the public and the historical view. Modern opinion has more in common with that of the minority view of abolitionist defenders of Brown than with the more prevalent condemnation of the insurrectionist that persisted in the 19th and most of the 20th centuries. The radical and violent abolitionist who was often called American’s first terrorist has had a shift in image, from a fanatical murderer to a benevolent figure whose courageous acts and death inspire admiration and recognition. Brown is now seen as having profoundly influenced the course of our history by bringing on the splintering of the nation into bloody civil war, terminating slavery, and sparking civil rights; as well as, less desirably, having influence as a mentor of modern terrorists.
After death Brown has gained a reputation of far greater success than he enjoyed in life. He is more viewed as a revolutionary who correctly fought for freedom of the oppressed—a view that understandably resonates with African Americans who award him hero status. In an era of political correctness and demand for the removal of all public display of statues, names and symbols considered tainted by slavery or segregation, the view of Brown being on the correct side of history has been enhanced. Modern Americans agree with Brown that slavery is reprehensible and intolerable. Admiration of his futile attack on slavery to rid the nation of something so repugnant, his explanation of his motives, his demeanor after capture, and his execution suppress condemnation of his methods that cost innocent lives. If the Harpers Ferry raid happened today it would be totally unacceptable, legally and in public opinion. Yet today the view of Brown has morphed to that of, at the very least, a “good terrorist.”
John Brown is a constant reminder of our struggle with the use of violence to resolve the plight of mankind when such action goes against the accepted norms of civilized behavior. Judging the past by present values and seeing our motives and values in the past—sometimes referred to as “presentism”—can hinder understanding of previous eras, and also gives each generation different perspectives that trigger the inevitable, continual rewriting of history. Our views of Brown are determined by our emotions as well as our minds. A clear perspective of Brown’s place in history is sometimes obscured by a veil covering the past, and it can be challenging to lift that veil to see history’s true face. What really happened remains inconclusive.
Bibliographical Comment
Materials used in preparing this volume are cited in detail in the endnotes. Materials, primary and secondary, are extensive and scattered over depositories across the US from one coast to the other. The press extensively covered events of the raid, making the newspapers of that time important grounds for research. One of the most valuable sources is the Boyd B. Stutler Collection of John Brown in the West Virginia Archives, accessible at www.wvculture.org/history/. The titles mentioned below were selected because they are generally accessible for further reading.
Brown has made a lasting impact upon Americans. Counter to his condemnation, he has been immortalized in statues, plays, poems, literature, art, movies, and song, and by organizations such as John Brown Heritage Associations and the John Brown Society. Biographies of John Brown and other works related to specific aspects of his life, his family, and the men who followed him continue to flow from presses. Interest in John Brown seems to never wane as new books appear with the coming of each year. A fine starting point would be Oswald Garrison Villard’s John Brown (1910), written half a century after the raider’s demise. Despite the work’s age, and despite newer research, the work’s detail and inclusion of primary material continue to make it in some ways the most complete biography of Brown. Villard’s work was the dominant study of the raider until the readable To Purge This Land with Blood (1970) by Steven B. Oates appeared. A number of recent biographies have competed for attention. Of these, John Brown’s War Against Slavery by Robert E. McGlone (2009) stands out as a revisionist and psychological study. David S. Reynolds’ John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (2005) proclaims the far-reaching influence of Brown and integrates his life with the lives of other significant figures of that era. Other more recent biographies include Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America (2006) by Evan Carton; Louis A. Decaro Jr., “Fire from the Midst of You”: A Religious Life of John Brown (2002), and Ted A. Smith, Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics (2015).
The first books on Brown were by sympathetic contemporaries and supporters. Despite their pro-Brown bias, they are useful in the study of Brown. The first was The Public Life of Captain John Brown (1860), by James Redpath, followed by The Life and Letters of John Brown (1891), edited by Frank B. Sanborn, and Richard J. Hinton’s John Brown and His Men (1894). Continuing a pro-Brown view is W. E. B. Dubois’ John Brown (1908). Robert Penn Warren in John Brown: The Making of a Martyr (1929) is critical of the abolitionist. An early and useful collection of material on Brown’s life is A John Brown Reader, edited by Louis Ruchames (1959); the more recent John Brown (1972), edited by Richard Warch and Jonathan Fanton, and Meteor of War: The John Brown Story (2004), edited by Zoe Trodd and John Stauffer, have a similar approach. The latter part of the 20th century saw a number of studies on Brown: Oates’s biography and his Our Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln, John Brown and the Civil War Era (1979); Man on Fire: John Brown and the Cause of Liberty (1971) by Jules Abels; Richard O. Boyer’s The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and History (1973); and the brief study by John Anthony Scott and Robert Alan Scott, John Brown of Harper’s Ferry (1988). A unique and comprehensive pictorial history is John Brown: “The Thundering Voice of Jehovah” (1999), by Stan Cohen. Addressing the issue of Brown’s sanity is “The Madness of John Brown” in After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection (1986), by James W. Davidson and Mark H. Lytle. For Brown’s role in the strife in Kansas during the1850s, see Thomas Goodrich’s War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854–1861 (1998), and Bleeding Kansas (2004), by Nicole Etcheson.
Dealing primarily with the raid on Harpers Ferry, at the top of the reading list should be Tony Horwitz’s Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (2011). A briefer account by National Park Service is John Brown (1980, 2009). Both editions are excellent overviews of the raid and aftermath. Other titles include Allan Keller’s Thunder at Harper’s Ferry (1969); The Raid (1953), by Laurence Greene; Six Years of Hell (1996), by Chester G. Hearn; and John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry: A Brief History with Documents (2008), by Jonathan Earle. “Recollections of John Brown’s Raid” (1883, 1885), by Alexander R. Boteler is reprinted in John Brown’s Raid at Harpers Ferry (n.d.). Other contemporaries’ and press views about the raid are found in Bob O’Connor’s The Perfect Steel Trap: Harpers Ferry 1859 (2006). An individual Southern view of the raid is presented in I Rode with Stonewall (1961), by Henry Kyd Douglas. Important documents in attempting to figure out what happened during the raid are The Select Committees of the Senate (1860) reprinted in The Michigan Historical Reprint Series. Virginia Ott Stake authored a useful volume, John Brown in Chambersburg (1977).
For information on individuals pertinent to the Brown saga consult the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892); Sarah Bradford’s Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People (1886); Craig M. Simpson’s A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (1985); John A. Wise, The End of an Era (1899); Kate C. Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (2005); Jeffery Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, The Secret Six and a Theory of Slave Violence (1982); Edward J. Renehan Jr., The Secret Six (1995); and Companions in Conspiracy: John Brown & Gerrit Smith (1996) by Chester G. Hearn. An interesting study of Brown’s most flamboyant raider is the well-researched John Brown’s Spy: The Adventurous life and Tragic Confession of John E. Cook (2012) by a professor of law, Steven Lubet. He tells the story of the man some called the most impressive of Brown’s men in The “Colored Hero” of Harpers Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War Against Slavery (2015). Stonewall Jackson’s widow’s massive Memoirs of “Stonewall Jackson” (1895) contain interesting material, as do Douglas Southall Freeman’s R. E. Lee (vol 1, 1934) and “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me” (2001), edited by John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper. Bonnie L. Schultz’s The Tie That Bound US: The Women of John Brown’s Family and The Legacy of Radical Abolitionism (2013) represents—along with Lubet’s book—the trend for more detailed research of those around the raider leader.
The role of African Americans in the raid is discussed by Jean Libby, in Black Voices from Harpers Ferry (1979) and John Brown Mysteries (1999); she refutes the prevailing view that “slaves refused to fight with Brown in support of their liberty.” The issue is also addressed by academic Benjamin Quarles’s Allies for Freedom & Blacks on John Brown (1974). Osborne P. Anderson, an African American member of Brown’s raiding party, who escaped, wrote a not-altogether-accurate account entitled A View from Harper’s Ferry (1861). It was reprinted in 2000 accompanied by essays by three African American civil rights crusaders. Pertinent information is also available in Prophets of Protest (2006) edited by Timothy P. McCarthy and John Stauffer; Migrants Against Slavery (2001) by Philip J. Schwarz; and a textbook classic by John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (1947).
The trial and execution are covered in Robert De Witt’s The Life, Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown, Known as “Old Brown Of Ossawatomie,” with a Full Account of the Attempted Insurrection at Harper’s Ferry (1859). Brown’s trial is admirably covered in John Brown’s Trial (2009) by Brian McGinty. An eyewitness account is The Capture and Execution of John Brown (1906), written by Elijah Avey. The trial and execution of two black raiders is traced in The Capture, Trial and Execution of John A. Copeland Jr and Shields Green (2003), by the Jefferson County Black History Preservation Society.
The legacy of Brown has received much attention, especially recently: see Merrill D. Peterson, John Brown: the Legend Revisited (2002); the wide-ranging collection of responses to Brown’s raid found in The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (2012), edited by John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd; John Brown Still Lives!: America’s Long Reckoning with Violence, Equality, and Change (2011), by R. Blakeslee Gilpin; and His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (1995), edited by Paul Finkelman.
Information about the history of the area of the raid and trial can be found in Millard K. Bushong’s A History of Jefferson County West Virginia (1941); Dolly Nasby’s Then & Now: Harpers Ferry (2007); Harpers Ferry Houses (2008), by Stowell Architects; Mike High’s The C&O Canal Companion (2000); and A Walker’s Guide to Harpers Ferry West Virginia (1995), by David T. Gilbert. Merritt Roe Smith’s Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (1977) is a superb and important work.
Books on terrorism are numerous. Two stand out as starting points: The Terrorism Reader (2007), edited by David J. Whittaker; and Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind(1998), edited by Walter Reich.
Endnotes
Chapter One: The Making of a Terrorist
1 Joseph Barry, The Strange Story of Harper’s Ferry with Legends of the Surrounding Country (Martinsburg, W. Va.: Thompson Brothers, 1903), 6–10 (hereafter cited as Story of Harper’s Ferry). National Park Service, John Brown Raid (Washington, D.C., 1973), 15; Merritt R. Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, 1977), 146–50, 328–32. In 1858 the 400 workers at the Harpers Ferry armory produced 8,581 rifled muskets (M1855) and 1,719 percussion rifles (M1841 & M1855). Earlier resentment of the government insistence upon uniformity in work habits of armory workers led to the “Clock Strike” of 1842. Unlike those at Harpers Ferry, workers at the Springfield armory in Massachusetts embraced technological changes, in part to out-produce their Virginia rivals.
2 See Barry, Story of Harper’s Ferry, 4–46; Laurence Greene, The Raid: A Biography of Harper’s Ferry
3 (New York: Holt, 1953), 1–78; and Smith’s Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology, 24–50. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. by William Peden (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina, 1955), 325.
4 New York Times, October 20, 1859.
5 Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, October 21, 1859; Steven Lubet, John Brown’ s Spy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012), 41–4; Richard Warch and Jonathan F. Fanton, eds., John Brown (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 2–5; James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), 49; David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War and Seeded Civil Rights (N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 74–7.
6 James W. Davidson, Mark H. Lytle, After the Fact (N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2d ed., 1986), 169–71.
7 Letter, Anne Brown Adams to Garibaldi Ross, December 15, 1887, The Gilder Lehrman Collection Online Exhibition.
8 The Good News Bible (N.Y.: Thomas Nelson Pub. 3rd. ed., 1976), 269–70 (Judges 7); Louis A. Decaro, Jr., “Fire from the Midst of You”: A Religious Life of John Brown (N.Y.: New York University Press, 2002), 20–4, 30–6; Werner Keller, The Bible as History (N.Y.: William Morrow and Co., 1958), 163–4; Judges 7, King James Bible, (Philadelphia: The National Bible Press, n.d.); Stephen B. Oates, John Brown (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1970), 197, 395; James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), 203. John Brown’s favorite hymn, “Blow Ye the Trumpet Blow,” was based on one of Gideon’s tactics. The hymn was later played at Brown’s funeral.
