Conversation
John Brown: Patriot or Terrorist?
John Brown (1800-1859) was born into a deeply religious family in Connecticut and moved
to Ohio when he was five. He made his living variously as a farmer, tanner, and land
speculator; he fathered six children with his first wife, who died in childbirth, and thirteen
with his second. He was always a committed abolitionist who, despite significant financial
difficulties, contributed to antislavery causes, gave land to fugitive slaves, and
participated in the Underground Railroad. In his fifties, he and five of his sons went to
Kansas to fight pro-slavery forces. During what became known as the Pottawatomie
Massacre and the Battle of Osawatomie, Brown assumed the role of abolitionist leader
and led violent attacks against proponents of slavery. When he returned from Kansas, he
began raising money to support his plan to free slaves in Virginia. On October 16, 1859,
at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, Brown led a raid on the federal arsenal, motivated by his belief
that the system of slavery could only be overthrown by arming the slaves themselves.
Many of the twenty-one men with him were captured or killed, including two of his sons,
and Brown was imprisoned, tried, and hanged within a few months.
Whether the raid at Harpers Ferry can be said to have caused the Civil War is a
matter of continuing debate, but there is strong agreement that it was a catalyst. John
Brown’s often-quoted last words predicted the brutal conflict that followed: “I, John
Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away
but with blood.” From the beginning, responses to Brown have been polarized, from
Southern denunciations of him as a deranged zealot to Northern endorsements of him as
a heroic prophet. African American leaders including Frederick Douglass, eulogized him;
poets, such as Langston Hughes and Robert Hayden, memorialized him; and W.E.B.
Dubois wrote a laudatory biography. Nonetheless, the violence of his methods—despite
an indisputably noble cause—has been called into question, and the accusations,
particularly after September 11, 2001, that he was a “terrorist” have intensified the
controversy surrounding his reputation and legacy more than 150 years after his death.
Sources
John Brown, Last Speech (1859)
John Brown, Last Letter to His Family (1859)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Letter to John Brown (1859)
Henry David Thoreau, from A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown (c. 1882)
Ken Chowder, The Father of American Terrorism (2000)
Robert E. McGlone, The “Madness” of John Brown (2009)
David Reynolds, Freedom’s Martyr (2009)
Tony Horowitz, The 9/11 of 1859 (2009)
Last Speech
JOHN BROWN
John Brown gave this speech at the conclusion of his trial, about a month before his
execution in Charlestown, West Virginia.
I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.
In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, -- the design on my part to
free slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when
I went into Missouri and took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them
through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to do the same thing again, on a
larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of
property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.
I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I
interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the
truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case), -had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf
of any of their friends -- either father, mother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class -- and
suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man
in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
The court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed
here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things
whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to
"remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction.
I say, I am too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have
interfered as I have done -- as I have always freely admitted I have done -- in behalf of His despised
poor, was not wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the
furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and
with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and
unjust enactments. -- I submit; so let it be done!
Let me say one word further.
I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the
circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. I feel no consciousness of my guilt. I
have stated from the first what was my intention, and what was not. I never had any design against
the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any
general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of any
kind.
Let me say also, a word in regard to the statements made by some to those connected with
me. I hear it has been said by some of them that I have induced them to join me. But the contrary is
true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one of them but
joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense. A number of them
I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they came to me; and that was
for the purpose I have stated.
Now I have done.
(1859)
Questions
1. Clearly, John Brown knew his death sentence would not be changed; in fact, many argue
that he wanted to die a martyr. What, then, is the chief purpose of this speech?
2. What does he mean by the phrase “a clean thing of that matter” (par. 2)?
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
In paragraph 3, Brown offers a series of qualifications (“Had I interfered…had I so
interfered”) to support an assertion. What is his point? Do you find his support sufficient
for the claim?
In what way does he call on religion? Does he refer to “the law of God” (par. 4) to justify
his actions? Does he ask forgiveness from a higher power?
Which allegations does he admit to? Which does he deny?
What ethos does Brown establish in this speech? Cite specific words and images he uses
to develop his persona.
How would you describe the tone of this speech?
Last Letter to His Family
JOHN BROWN
Brown wrote the following letter to his children and second wife from Charlestown
Prison two days before his execution.
Charlestown, Prison, Jefferson Co. Va. 30th Nov. 1859
My dearly beloved wife, sons, and daughters, every one
As I now begin probably what is the last letter I shall ever write to any of you, I conclude to write
to all at the same time. I will mentions [sic] some little matters particularly applicable to little
property concerns in another place. I yesterday received a letter from my wife, from near
Philadelphia: dated November 27th, by which it would seem that she has about given up the idea of
seeing me again. I had written her to come on; if she felt equal to the undertaking; but I do not know
as she will get my letter in time. It was on her own account chiefly, that I asked her to stay back, but
I do not know if she got my letter in time. At first I had a most strong desire to see her again, but
their appeared to be very serious objections; & should we never meet in this life, I trust that she will
in the need be satisfied it was for the best at least, if not most for her comfort. I enclosed in my last
letter to her a Draft of $50, Fifty Dollars from John Jay made payable to her order. I have now
another to send her from my excellent old friend Edward Harris of Woonsocket Rhode Island for
$100, One Hundred Dollars; which I shall also make payable to her order. I am waiting the hour of
my public murder with great composure of mind, & cheerfulness; feeling the strong assurance that
in no other possible way could I be used to so much advantage to the cause of God; & of humanity;
& that nothing that either I or all my family have sacrifised or suffered: will be lost. The reflection
that a wise, & merciful, as well as just, & holy God: rules not only the affairs of this world; but of
all worlds; is a rock to set our feet upon; under all circumstances; even those more severely trying
ones: in which our own follies, & [w]rongs have placed us. I have now no doubt but that our seeming
disaster: will ultimately result in the most glorious success. So, my dear shattered; & broken family;
be of good cheer; & believe & trust in God; “with all your heart; & with all your soul; for he doeth
All things well.” Do not feel ashamed on my account; nor for one moment despair of the cause; or
grow weary of well-doing. I bless God; I never felt stronger confidence in the certain & near
approach of a bright morning; & glorious day; then I have felt; & do now feel; since my confinement
here. I am endeavoring to “return” like a “poor prodigal” as I am; to my Father: against whom I
have always sined [sic]: in the hope; that he may kindly, & forgivingly “meet me: though: a verry
[sic] great way off.” Oh, my dear wife & children would “to God” you could know how I have been
“travailing in birth” for you all: that no one of you “may fail of the grace of God, through Jesus
Christ”: that no one of you may be blind to the truth: & glorious “light of his Word”; in which life;
& immortality; are brought to light. I beseech you every one to make the Bible your dayly [sic] &
Nightly study; with a childlike honest, candid, teachable spirit: out of love and respect for your
husband; & father: & I beseech the God of my fathers; to open all your eyes to a discovery of the
truth. You cannot imagine how much you may soon need the consolations of the Christian religion.
Circumstances like my own; for more than a month past; convince me, beyond [sic] all doubt
of our great need: of something more to rest our hopes on; than merely our own vague theories
framed up, while our prejudices are excited; or our Vanity worked up to the highest pitch. Oh, do
not trust your eternal all uppon [sic] the boisterous Ocean, without even a helm; or Compass to aid
you in steering. I do not ask any of you; to throw away your reason; I only ask you to make a candid,
& sober use of your reason: My dear young children will you listen to this last poor admonition of
one who can only love you? Oh, be determined at once to give your whole heart to God; & let
nothing shake; or alter, that resolution. You need have no fear of REGRETING [sic] it. Do not be
in vain; and thoughtless: but sober minded. And let me entreat you all to love the whole remnant of
our once great family: “with a pure heart fervently.” Try to build again: your broken walls: & to
make the utmost of every stone that is left. Nothing can so tend to make life a blessing as the
consciousness that you love; & are beloved: & “love ye the stranger” still. It is ground of the utmost
comfort to my mind: to know that so many of you as have had the opportunity; have given full proof
of your fidelity to the great family of man. Be faithful unto death. From the exercise of habitual love
to man; it cannot be very hard: to learn to love his maker. I must yet insert a reason for my firm
belief in the Divine inspiration of the Bible: notwithstanding I am (perhaps naturally) skeptical.
(certainly not, credulous.) I wish you all to consider it most thoroughly; when you read that blessed
book; & see whether you can not discover such evidence yourselves. It is the purity of heart, feeling,
or motive: as well as word, & action, which is everywhere insisted on; that distinguishes it from all
other teachings; that commends it to my conscience: whether my heart be “willing, & obedient” or
not. The inducements that it holds out; is another reason of my conviction or its truth: &
genuineness;that I cannot here omit; in this my last argument, for the Bible Eternal life: is that my
soul is “panting after” this moment. I mention this; as a reason for endeavoring to leave a valuable
copy of the Bible to be carefully preserved in remembrance of me: to so many of my posterity;
instead of some other thing: of equal cost. I beseech you all to live in habitual contentment with
verry [sic] moderate circumstances: & gains, of worldly store: & most earnestly to teach this: to
your children; & Children’s, Children; after you: by example: as well: as precept. Be determined to
know by experience as soon as may be: whether Bible instruction is of Divine origin or not; which
says; “Owe no man anything but to love one another.” John Rogers wrote to his children, “Abhor
that arrant whore of Rome.” John Brown writes to his children to abhor with undiing hatred, also:
that “sum of all villainies;” Slavery. Remember that “he that is slow to anger is better than the
mighty: and he that ruleth his spirit; than he that taketh a city.” Remember also: that “they being
wise shall shine, and they that turn many to righteousness: as the stars forever; & ever.” And now
dearly beloved Farewell To God & the work of his grace I comme[n]d you all.
Your affectionate husband and father, John Brown.
(1859)
Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
In this letter, Jon Brown writes to his entire immediate family rather than to any one
individual, even his wife. How does this collective audience influence the content of his
letter?
What point is Brown making in this sentence: “Circumstances like my own; for more
than a month past; convince me…Vanity worked up to its highest pitch” (par.2)?
Brown frames much of this letter in terms of the teachings and the “consolations of the
Christian religion” (par. 1). Which elements does he emphasize?
What practical advice does he impart in the letter?
What warnings does he make?
How would you define the legacy Brown wishes to pass on to his children?
Letter to John Brown
FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was the author of many poems, including “Bury
Me in a Free Land” (1858), and the novel Iola Leroy (1892). Born to free parents in Baltimore,
she taught at Union Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio, and was a popular lecturer for the
American Anti-Slavery Society. After the raid on Harpers Ferry, she wrote letters and raised
money on behalf of the captured men and their families. The following open letter was
published in a number of newspapers and was reputedly smuggled into Brown’s prison cell.
Kendallville, Indiana, Nov. 25.
Dear Friend: Although the hands of Slavery throw a barrier between you and me, and it may not be
my privilege to see you in your prison-house, Virginia has no bolts or bars through which I dread to
send you my sympathy. In the name of the young girl sold from the warm clasp of a mother’s arms
to the clutches of a libertine or a profligate,--in the name of the slave mother, her heart rocked to
and fro by the agony of her mournful separations,--I thank you, that you have been brave enough to
reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race. You have rocked the bloody Bastile;
and I hope that from your sad fate great good may arise to the cause of freedom. Already from your
prison has come a shout of triumph against the giant sin of our country. The hemlock is distilled
with victory when it is pressed to the lips of Socrates. The Cross becomes a glorious ensign when
Calvary’s pale-brown sufferer yields up his life upon it. And, if Universal Freedom is ever to be the
dominant power of the land, your bodies may be only her first stepping stones to dominion. I would
prefer to see Slavery go down peaceably by men breaking off their sins by righteousness and their
iniquities by showing justice and mercy to the poor; but we cannot tell what the future may bring
forth. God writes national judgments upon national sins; and what may be slumbering in the
storehouse of divine justice we do not know. We may earnestly hope that your fate will note be a
vain lesson, that it will intensify our hatred of Slavery and love of freedom, and that your martyr
grave will be a sacred altar upon which men will record their vows of undying hatred to that system
which tramples on man and bids defiance to God. I have written to your dear wife, and sent her a
few dollars, and I pledge myself to you that I will continue to assist her. May the ever-blessed God
shield you and your fellow-prisoners in the darkest hours. Send my sympathy to your fellowprisoners; tell them to be of good courage; to seek a refuge in the Eternal God, and lean upon His
everlasting arms for a sure support. If any of them, like you, have a wife or children that I can help,
let them send me word. …
Yours in the cause of freedom,
F.E.W
(1859)
Questions
1. What ethos does Frances Ellen Watkins Harper establish in the first two sentences? Cite
specific language and images to support your response.
2. What does she mean with her allusion to Socrates in this sentence: “The hemlock is
distilled with victory when it is pressed to the lips of Socrates”?
3. What is the likely effect of Harper’s religious references—both on Brown and on the
readers at the time?
4. How does Harper characterize the violent methods of Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry?
5. What is (or are) the purpose(s) of Harper’s letter?
From A Plea for Captain John Brown
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Henry David Thoreau delivered this speech in Concord, Massachusetts, two weeks after
the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. His unequivocal defense and admiration of Brown stood
against popular opinion of the time, much of it mirroring the characterization by the
abolitionist newspaper the Liberator as “a misguided, wild, and apparently insane effort.”
The following excerpt is the final third of the speech.
"All is quiet at Harper's Ferry," say the journals. What is the character of that calm which follows
when the law and the slaveholder prevail? I regard this event as a touchstone designed to bring out,
with glaring distinctness, the character of this government. We needed to be thus assisted to see it
by the light of history. It needed to see itself. When a government puts forth its strength on the side
of injustice, as ours to maintain slavery and kill the liberators of the slave, it reveals itself a merely
brute force, or worse, a demoniacal force. It is the head of the Plug-Uglies. It is more manifest than
ever that tyranny rules. I see this government to be effectually allied with France and Austria in
oppressing mankind. There sits a tyrant holding fettered four millions of slaves; here comes their
heroic liberator. This most hypocritical and diabolical government looks up from its seat on the
gasping four millions, and inquires with an assumption of innocence: "What do you assault me for?
Am I not an honest man? Cease agitation on this subject, or I will make a slave of you, too, or else
hang you."
We talk about a representative government; but what a monster of a government is that where
the noblest faculties of the mind, and the whole heart, are not represented. A semi-human tiger or
ox, stalking over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot away. Heroes have
fought well on their stumps when their legs were shot off, but I never heard of any good done by
such a government as that.
The only government that I recognize,--and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how
small its army,--is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes
injustice. What shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land
are enemies, standing between it and those whom it oppresses? A government that pretends to be
Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!
Treason! Where does such treason take its rise? I cannot help thinking of you as you deserve,
ye governments. Can you dry up the fountains of thought? High treason, when it is resistance to
tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever
recreates man. When you have caught and hung all these human rebels, you have accomplished
nothing but your own guilt, for you have not struck at the fountain-head. You presume to contend
with a foe against whom West Point cadets and rifled cannon point not. Can all the art of the cannonfounder tempt matter to turn against its maker? Is the form in which the founder thinks he casts it
more essential than the constitution of it and of himself?
The United States have a coffle1 of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them
in this condition; and Massachusetts is one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.
Such are not all the inhabitants of Massachusetts, but such are they who rule and are obeyed here.
It was Massachusetts, as well as Virginia, that put down this insurrection at Harper's Ferry. She sent
the marines there, and she will have to pay the penalty of her sin.
Suppose that there is a society in this State that out of its own purse and magnanimity saves all
the fugitive slaves that run to us, and protects our colored fellow-citizens, and leaves the other work
to the government, so-called. Is not that government fast losing its occupation, and becoming
contemptible to mankind? If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect
1
A group chained in a line—usually referring to animals, prisoners, or slaves.—Eds.
5
the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform
menial or indifferent services. Of course, that is but the shadow of a government who existence
necessitates a Vigilant Committee. What should we think of the Oriental Cadi 2 even, behind whom
worked in secret a vigilant committee? But such is the character of our Northern States generally;
each has its Vigilant Committee. And, to a certain extent, these crazy governments recognize and
accept this relation. They say, virtually, "We'll be glad to work for you on these terms, only don't
make a noise about it." And thus the government, its salary being insured, withdraws into the back
shop, taking the Constitution with it, and bestows most of its labor on repairing that. When I hear it
at work sometimes, as I go by, it reminds me, at best, of those farmers who in winter contrive to
turn a penny by following the coopering business. And what kind of spirit is their barrel made to
hold? They speculate in stocks, and bore holes in mountains, but they are not competent to lay out
even a decent highway. The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by
the Vigilant Committee. They have tunnelled under the whole breadth of the land. Such a
government is losing its power and respectability as surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel, and
is held by one that can contain it.
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave
ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to
him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish
him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to
pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man,
culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare courage, and
devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man. It may
be doubted if there were as many more their equals in these respects in all the country—I speak of
his followers only—for their leader, no doubt, scoured the land far and wide, seeking to swell his
troop. These alone were ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed. Surely they were
the very best men you could select to be hung. That was the greatest compliment which this country
could pay them. They were ripe for her gallows. She has tried a long time, she has hung a good
many, but never found the right one before.
When I think of him, and his six sons, and his son-in-law, not to enumerate the others, enlisted
for this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to work, for months if not years, sleeping and
waking upon it, summering and wintering the thought, without expecting any reward but a good
conscience, while almost all America stood ranked on the other side—I say again that it affects me
as a sublime spectacle. If he had any journal advocating 'his cause,' any organ, as the phrase is,
monotonously and wearisomely playing the same old tune, and then passing round the hat, it would
have been fatal to his efficiency. If he had acted in any way so as to be let alone by the government,
he might have been suspected. It was the fact that the tyrant must give place to him, or he to the
tyrant, that distinguished him from all the reformers of the day that I know.
It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the
slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by
slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such
will be more shocked by his life than by his death. I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in
his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer
the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.
At any rate, I do not think it is quite sane for one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about
this matter, unless he is continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A man may have other affairs
to attend to. I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these
things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of
petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the
2
A Muslim Judge who rules based on Islamic religious law. Also spelled Qadi—Eds.
gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of
this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that
the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and
revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or
shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers
were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.
The same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will clear it again. The
question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you use it. No man has appeared in America,
as yet, who loved his fellow-man so well, and treated him so tenderly. He lived for him. He took up
his life and he laid it down for him. What sort of violence is that which is encouraged, not by soldiers,
but by peaceable citizens, not so much by laymen as by ministers of the Gospel, not so much by the
fighting sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker men as by Quaker women?
This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death,--the possibility of a man's dying. It
seems as if no man had ever died in America before; for in order to die you must first have lived. I
don't believe in the hearses, and palls, and funerals that they have had. There was no death in the
case, because there had been no life; they merely rotted or sloughed off, pretty much as they had
rotted or sloughed along. No temple's veil was rent, only a hole dug somewhere. Let the dead bury
their dead. The best of them fairly ran down like a clock. Franklin,--Washington,--they were let off
without dying; they were merely missing one day. I hear a good many pretend that they are going
to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They haven't
got life enough in them. They'll deliquesce 3 like fungi, and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the
spot where they left off. Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began. Do you think that
you are going to die, sir? No! there's no hope of you. You haven't got your lesson yet. You've got to
stay after school. We make a needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no
life to take. Memento mori4! We don't understand that sublime sentence which some worthy got
sculptured on his gravestone once. We've interpreted it in a grovelling and snivelling sense; we've
wholly forgotten how to die.
But be sure you do die nevertheless. Do your work, and finish it. If you know how to begin,
you will know when to end.
These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man's
acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words
that do. It is the best news that America has ever heard. It has already quickened the feeble pulse of
the North, and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart, than any number of
years of what is called commercial and political prosperity could. How many a man who was lately
contemplating suicide has now something to live for!
One writer says that Brown's peculiar monomania made him to be "dreaded by the Missourians
as a supernatural being." Sure enough, a hero in the midst of us cowards is always so dreaded. He
is just that thing. He shows himself superior to nature. He has a spark of divinity in him.
10
"Unless above himself he can erect himself,
How poor a thing is man!"
Newspaper editors argue also that it is a proof of his insanity that he thought he was appointed
to do this work which he did,--that he did not suspect himself for a moment! They talk as if it were
impossible that a man could be "divinely appointed" in these days to do any work whatever; as if
vows and religion were out of date as connected with any man's daily work; as if the agent to abolish
3
Liquefy specifically due to decomposition and decay.—Eds.
Latin. “Remember you will die.” An object or piece of art that reminds the audience of the
inevitability of death.—Eds.
4
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slavery could only be somebody appointed by the President, or by some political party. They talk
as if a man's death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success.
When I reflect to what a cause this man devoted himself, and how religiously, and then reflect
to what cause his judges and all who condemn him so angrily and fluently devote themselves, I see
that they are as far apart as the heavens and earth are asunder.
The amount of it is, our "leading men" are a harmless kind of folk, and they know well enough
that they were not divinely appointed, but elected by the votes of their party.
Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung? Is it indispensable to any Northern
man? Is there no resource but to cast this man also to the Minotaur? If you do not wish it, say so
distinctly. While these things are being done, beauty stands veiled and music is a screeching lie.
Think of him,--of his rare qualities!--such a man as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand;
no mock hero, nor the representative of any party. A man such as the sun may not rise upon again
in this benighted land. To whose making went the costliest material, the finest adamant; sent to be
the redeemer of those in captivity; and the only use to which you can put him is to hang him at the
end of a rope! You who pretend to care for Christ crucified, consider what you are about to do to
him who offered himself to be the savior of four millions of men.
Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that
point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life
of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step
towards its own dissolution. Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government
wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men
to be good, if they are not good? Is there any necessity for a man's being a tool to perform a deed of
which his better nature disapproves? Is it the intention of law-makers that good men shall be hung
ever? Are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit? What right have you
to enter into a compact with yourself that you will do thus or so, against the light within you? Is it
for you to make up your mind,--to form any resolution whatever,--and not accept the convictions
that are forced upon you, and which ever pass your understanding? I do not believe in lawyers, in
that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own
ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a
human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases. Business men may arrange that among
themselves. If they were the interpreters of the everlasting laws which rightfully bind man, that
would be another thing. A counterfeiting law-factory, standing half in a slave land and half in free!
What kind of laws for free men can you expect from that?
I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character,--his immortal
life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years
ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends
of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.
I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all the country should be
hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a
prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as his death.
"Misguided"! "Garrulous"! "Insane"! "Vindictive"! So ye write in your easy-chairs, and thus
he wounded responds from the floor of the Armory, clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of
nature is: "No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge
no master in human form."
And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing his captors, who stand over him:
"I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity, and it would be
perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you willfully and wickedly
hold in bondage."
And, referring to his movement: "It is, in my opinion, the greatest service a man can render to
God."
20
"I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify
any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the
wronged, that are as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God."
You don't know your testament when you see it.
"I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people,
oppressed by the slave power, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful."
"I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the South, prepare yourselves
for a settlement of that question, that must come up for settlement sooner than your are prepared for
it. The sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed
of now; but this question is still to be settled,--this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet."
I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject;
the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration
of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present
form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then,
and not till then, we will take our revenge.
(1859)
Questions
1. In the opening six paragraphs, how does Henry David Thoreau characterize the
government? How does he lead to his final statement, “Such a government is losing its
power and respectability as surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel, and is held by one
that can contain it” (par. 6)?
2. Why does Thoreau assert that hanging the men, including Brown, for their part in the raid
was “the greatest compliment which this country could pay them” (par.7)?
3. What point is Thoreau trying make when he states, “I speak for the slave when I say, that
I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots nor
liberates me” (par. 9)?
4. Thoreau makes extensive references to the New Testament in this speech. How would these
references likely appeal to the audience of his time?
5. Identify three accusations that had been leveled at Brown. How does Thoreau respond to
each? How effective is he in challenging each?
6. What does Thoreau mean by this statement: “I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead
not for his life, but for his character—his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause
wholly, and is not his in the least.” (par. 20)?
7. What is the reasoning that leads Thoreau to conclude that Brown’s execution was
“necessary” (par. 21)?
8. What is the effect Thoreau achieves by quoting Brown’s own words so extensively in the
last section of the speech?
25
The Last Moments of John Brown
THOMAS HOVEDEN
An influential Irish Painter of everyday scenes and human figures, Thomas Hovenden
(1840-1895) was commissioned by New York Businessman Robbins Battell to paint what
became known as The Last Moments of John Brown (1882). This work, which is currently
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inaugurated a series of paintings by Hovenden
dealing with American history and culture, including Breaking Home Ties (1890),
considered his masterwork.
Questions
1.
How is Brown depicted in this painting? As a viewer of his “last moments” in this work,
how would you remember him? Cite specific details to support your resonse.
2.
3.
What visual allusions do you find in the painting? What do they add to your interpretation?
Some believe that Thomas Hovenden read the following account that appeared in the New
York Tribune on December 5, 1859:
On leaving the Jail, John Brown had on his face an expression of calmness and
serentity characteristic of the patriot who is about to die with a living
consciousness that he is laying his lfie down for the good of his fellowcreatures…As he stepped out of the door a black woman, with her little child in
arms, stood near his way. The twain were of the despised race, for whose
emancipation and elevation to the dignity of children of God, he was about to lay
down his life…He stopped for a moment in his course, stooped over, and, with a
the tenderness of one whose love is as broad as the brotherhood of man, kissed
the [the child] affectionately.
Even though historians doubt that the account is accurate (for example, civilians, such as
the woman and baby, were not allowed in the area of Browns hanging because of rumored
plans for escape), how does Hovenden’s painting capture the tone of the description?
The Father of American Terrorism
KEN CHOWDER
Ken Chowder is an award-winning filmmaker who wrote the documentary John Brown’s
Holy War. This article appeared in American Heritage magazine (February/March 2000);
the following excerpt is the final section, which focuses on the raid on Harpers Ferry.
But what about that Harpers Ferry plan—a tiny band attacking the U.S. government, hoping to
concoct a revolution that would carry across the South? Clearly that was crazy.
Yes and no. If it was crazy, it was not unique. Dozens of people, often bearing arms, had gone
South to rescue slaves. Secret military societies flourished on both sides, plotting to expand or
destroy the system of slavery by force. Far from being the product of a singular cracked mind, the
plan was similar to a number of others, including one by a Boston attorney named Lysander
Spooner. James Horton, a leading African-American history scholar, offers an interesting scenario.
“Was Brown crazy to assume he could encourage slave rebellion?...Think about the possibility of
Nat Turner well-armed, well-equipped....Nat Turner might have done some pretty amazing things,”
Horton says. “It was perfectly rational and reasonable for John Brown to believe he could encourage
slaves to rebel.”
But the question of Brown’s sanity still provokes dissension among experts. Was he crazy? “He
was obsessed,” Bruce Olds says, “he was fanatical, he was monomaniacal, he was a zealot,
and...psychologically unbalanced.” Paul Finkelman disagrees: Brown “is a bad tactician, he’s a bad
strategist, he’s a bad planner, he’s not a very good general—but he’s not crazy.”
Some believe that there is a very particular reason why Brown’s reputation as a madman has
clung to him. Russell Banks and James Horton make the same argument. “The reason white people
think he was mad,” Banks says, “is because he was a white man and he was willing to sacrifice his
life in order to liberate black Americans.” “We should be very careful,” Horton says, “about
assuming that a white man who is willing to put his life on the line for black people is, of necessity,
crazy.”
Perhaps it is reasonable to say this: A society where slavery exists is by nature one where human
values are skewed. America before the Civil War was a violent society, twisted by slavery. Even
sober and eminent people became firebrands. John Brown had many peculiarities of his own, but he
was not outside his society; to a great degree, he represented it, in its many excesses.
The past, as always, continues to change, and the spinning of John Brown’s story goes on today.
The same events—the raid on Harpers Ferry or the Pottawatomie Massacre—are still seen in totally
5
different ways. What is perhaps most remarkable is that elements at both the left and right ends of
American society are at this moment vitally interested in the story of John Brown.
On the left is a group of historical writers and teachers called Allies for Freedom. This group
believes that the truth about the Harpers Ferry raid has been buried by the conventions of history.
Its informal leader, Jean Libby, author of John Brown Mysteries, says, “What we think is that John
Brown was a black nationalist. His ultimate goal was the creation of an independent black nation.”
The Allies for Freedom believes, too, that far from being the folly of a lunatic, Brown’s plan was
not totally unworkable, that it came much closer to succeeding than historians have pictured. Libby
thinks that many slaves and free blacks did join the uprising—perhaps as many as fifty. Why would
history conceal the fact of active black participation in Harpers Ferry? “The South was anxious to
cover up any indication that the raid might have been successful,” Libby says, “so slaves would
never again be tempted to revolt.”
Go a good deal farther to the left, and there has long been admiration for John Brown. In 1975
the Weather Underground put out a journal called Osawatomie. In the late 1970s a group calling
itself the John Brown Brigade engaged in pitched battles with the Ku Klux Klan; in one
confrontation in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979, five members of the John Brown Brigade
were shot and killed. Writers also continue to draw parallels between John Brown and virtually any
leftist who uses political violence, including the Symbionese Liberation Army (the kidnappers of
Patty Hearst in the 1970s), the Islamic terrorists who allegedly set off a bomb in the World Trade
Center in Manhattan, and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
At the same time, John Brown is frequently compared to those at the far opposite end of the
political spectrum. Right-to-life extremists have bombed abortion clinics and murdered doctors;
they have, in short, killed for a cause they believed in, just as John Brown did. Paul Hill was
convicted of murdering a doctor who performed abortions; it was, Hill said, the Lord’s bidding:
“There’s no question in my mind that it was what the Lord wanted me to do, to shoot John Britton
to prevent him from killing unborn children.” If that sounds quite like John Brown, it was no
accident. From death row Hill wrote to the historian Dan Stowell that Brown’s “example has and
continues to serve as a source of encouragement to me....Both of us looked to the scriptures for
direction, [and] the providential similarities between the oppressive circumstances we faced and our
general understandings of the appropriate means to deliver the oppressed have resulted in my being
encouraged to pursue a path which is in many ways similar to his.” Shortly before his execution Hill
wrote that “the political impact of Brown’s actions continues to serve as a powerful paradigm in my
understanding of the potential effects the use of defensive force may have for the unborn.”
Nor was the murder Hill committed the only right-wing violence that has been compared to
Brown’s. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was a frontal attack on a U.S. government building,
just like the Harpers Ferry raid. Antiabortion murders, government bombings, anarchist bombs in
the mail—nearly every time political violence surfaces, it gets described in the press as a part of a
long American tradition of terrorism, with John Brown as a precursor and hero, a founding father
of principled violence.
He gets compared to anarchists, leftist revolutionaries, and right-wing extremists. The spinning
of John Brown, in short, is still going strong. But what does that make him? This much, at least, is
certain: John Brown is a vital presence for all sorts of people today. In February PBS’s The
American Experience is broadcasting a ninety-minute documentary about him. Russell Banks’s
novel Cloudsplitter was a critical success and a bestseller as well. On the verge of his two hundredth
birthday (this May 9), John Brown is oddly present. Perhaps there is one compelling reason for his
revival in this new millennium: Perhaps the violent, excessive, morally torn society John Brown
represents so aptly was not just his own antebellum America but this land, now.
(2000)
10
Questions
1. In the opening paragraphs, Ken Chowder discusses the debate over John Brown’s sanity.
What conclusion does he reach?
2. According to Chowder, how does “the left” in the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries view Brown? How does “the right” view him?
3. Ultimately, why does Chowder believe that, on his two-hundredth birthday, Brown remains
“oddly present” in the American consciousness?
From The “Madness” of John Brown
ROBERT E. MCGLONE
Associate professor of history at the University of Hawaii, Robert McGlone is the author
of the biography John Brown’s War against Slavery (2009). The selection that appears
here was taken from an article in the Civil War Times in October 2009.
[A]s Brown himself understood, the claim that he was “insane” threatened the very meaning of his
life. Thus at his trial he emphatically rejected an insanity plea to spare him from the hangman. When
an Akron newspaperman telegraphed Brown’s court-appointed attorneys in Richmond that insanity
was prevalent in Brown’s maternal family, Brown declared in court that he was “perfectly
unconscious of insanity” in himself.
As Brown understood it, the “greatest and principal object” of his life—his quest to destroy
slavery—would be seen as delusional if he were declared insane. The sacrifices he and his
supporters had made would count for nothing. The deaths of his men and the bereavement of his
wife would be doubly tragic and the attack on Harpers Ferry robbed of heroism, its purpose
discredited.
In letters to his wife and children, Brown acknowledged that his raid had ended in a “calamity”
or a “seeming disaster.” But he urged them all to have faith and to feel no shame over his impending
fate.
While his half-brother Jeremiah helped gather affidavits supposedly attesting to Brown’s
“monomania,” or-single minded fixation on eradicating slavery, John’s brother Frederick went on a
lecture tour in his support. Neither Jeremiah nor anyone else in John Brown’s large family
renounced the raid.
When it comes to Brown’s war against slavery, the question of his mental balance must
nevertheless be addressed. By the time of the Harpers Ferry raid, some of his contemporaries had
already begun to question his sanity. As they insisted, was not the raid itself evidence of an
“unhinged” mind? Wasn’t Brown “crazy” to suppose he could overthrow American slavery by
commencing a movement on so grand a scale with just 21 active fighters?
No one can doubt that Brown sought to elevate the status of African Americans. Throughout
his adult life, he conceived projects to help them gain entry into the privileged world of whites. As
a youth he helped fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad; as a prospering farmer and town
builder, he proposed adopting black children and founding schools for them. In 1849 he moved his
family to North Elba, N.Y., to teach fugitives how to maintain a farm.
He held a two-day convention in Canada to secure the participation of fugitive American blacks
in his planned war on slavery. He wrote a declaration of independence on their behalf. He respected
and raised money for “General” Harriet Tubman and called his friend Frederick Douglass “the first
great national Negro leader.” Yet to the extent that in his projects he envisioned himself as a mentor,
leader or commander in chief, Brown’s embrace of egalitarianism was, paradoxically, paternalistic.
He solicited support from blacks for the war against slavery but not their counsel in shaping it.
Despite that, his black allies never called seizing Harpers Ferry crazy. Although Brown had been
hanged for his actions, Douglass insisted the raid had lit the fire that consumed slavery. Brown chose
to open his war against slavery at Harpers Ferry, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1909, because the capture
5
of a U.S. arsenal would create a “dramatic climax to the inception of his plan” and because it was
the “safest natural entrance to the Great Black Way” through the mountains from slavery to freedom
in the North.
Harpers Ferry wasn’t Brown’s first foray onto the national stage. In 1857 his band of men had
killed several proslavery settlers in “Bleeding Kansas,” hacking to death five men along
Pottawatomie Creek with short, heavy swords. Scholars differ on whether the killings should be
considered murders or acts of war following the proslavery sack of Lawrence just days before. I
have found evidence that Brown and his sons saw their attack as a kind of preemptive strike against
men who had threatened violence against freestaters. But to understand is not necessarily to justify
or excuse. How a deeply religious man could commit such an act is a question one cannot ignore in
assessing Brown’s mind.
Du Bois understood that Brown’s recourse to violence in killing “border ruffians” in Kansas
and his attempt to seize the armory at Harpers Ferry in order to arm slaves had caused “bitter debate
as to how far force and violence can bring peace and good will.”
But Du Bois, a co-founder of the NAACP, did not think slavery could have been ended without
the Civil War. He concluded that “the violence which John Brown led made Kansas a free state”
and his plan to put arms in the hands of slaves hastened the end of slavery. Du Bois’ book John
Brown was a “tribute to the man who of all Americans has perhaps come nearest to touching the
real souls of black folk.” African-American historians, artists and activists have long eulogized
Brown as an archetype of self-sacrifice. “If you are for me and my problems,” Malcolm X declared
in 1965, “then you have to be willing to do as old John Brown did.”
Blacks’ reverence for the memory of Brown has not inspired those mainstream historians
uncomfortable with Brown’s reliance on violence. The belief that he may have suffered from a
degree of “madness” has echoed down through the decades in Brown biographical literature. In his
popular 1959 narrative The Road to Harpers Ferry, J.C. Furnas argued that Brown was consumed
by a widespread “Spartacus5 co
mplex.”
But Furnas also found that “certain details of Old Brown’s career” and writings evidenced
psychiatric illness. Brown might have been “intermittently ‘in­sane’…for years before Harpers
Ferry,” Furnas speculated, “sometimes able to cope with practicalities but eventually betrayed by
his strange inconsistencies leading up to and during the raid—his disease then progressing into the
egocentric exaltation that so edified millions between his capture and death.”
Careful historians like David M. Potter reaffirmed the centrality of the slavery issue in his
posthumously published synthesis The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, but even Potter conceded that
Brown “was not a well-adjusted man”—despite the fact many abolitionists shared his belief that the
slaves were restive.
In 1970 historian Stephen B. Oates sought to bridge the rival biographical traditions by
depicting Brown as a religious obsessive in an era of intense political conflict. Oates’ Brown was
not the Cromwellian warrior of early legend builders. Nor was he the greedy, self-deluded soldier
of fortune of debunkers.
He was a curious, somewhat schizoid amalgam of the legend builders’ martyr and his evil
doppelganger. This Brown possessed courage, energy, compassion and indomitable faith in his call
to free the slaves. He was also egotistical, inept, cruel, intolerant and self-righteous, “always
exhibit[ing] a puritanical obsession with the wrongs of others.”
Oates was doubtful that historians might ever persuasively identify psychosis in a subject they
studied. He repudiated historian Allan Nevins’ belief that Brown suffered from “reasoning insanity”
and “ambitious paranoia,” but he declared that Brown was not “normal,” “well adjusted” or “sane”
either (later dismissing these terms as meaningless).
But reference to Brown’s “glittering eye”—a telltale mark of insanity in 19th-century popular
culture—invited Oates’ readers to conclude that Brown was touched with madness after all. Finding
5
Spartacus (109-71 BCE) was a gladiator who led a slave uprising against the Roman Republic.—
Eds
10
15
in Brown an “angry, messianic mind,” Oates straddled the two biographical traditions. For three
decades, his portrait of Brown has perpetuated the image of mental instability.
Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Why did Brown address and deny the charges that he was “insane” rather than using
insanity as a defense?
What arguments claiming that Brown was mentally unbalanced does Robert E. McGlone
discuss?
How does he address and refute these arguments (from question 2)?
How effective do you find prominent African Americans’ testimony as evidence to
establish Brown’s testimony?
What are the “rival biographical traditions” (par.15) historian Stephen B. Oates attempts
to correct? How does his interpretation seek to “bridge” them?
Freedom’s Martyr
DAVID REYNOLDS
David Reynolds, professor of English and American studies at the City University of New
York, is the author of the biography John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed
Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (2005). This essay appeared as an
op-ed piece in the New York Times in 2009.
It’s important for Americans to recognize our national heroes, even those who have been despised
by history. Take John Brown.
Today is the 150th anniversary of Brown’s hanging — the grim punishment for his raid
weeks earlier on Harpers Ferry, Va. With a small band of abolitionists, Brown had seized the federal
arsenal there and freed slaves in the area. His plan was to flee with them to nearby mountains and
provoke rebellions in the South. But he stalled too long in the arsenal and was captured. He was
brought to trial in a Virginia court, convicted of treason, murder and inciting an insurrection, and
hanged on Dec. 2, 1859.
It’s a date we should hold in reverence. Yes, I know the response: Why remember a
misguided fanatic and his absurd plan for destroying slavery?
There are compelling reasons. First, the plan was not absurd. Brown reasonably saw the
Appalachians, which stretch deep into the South, as an ideal base for a guerrilla war. He had studied
the Maroon rebels of the West Indies, black fugitives who had used mountain camps to battle
colonial powers on their islands. His plan was to create panic by arousing fears of a slave rebellion,
leading Southerners to view slavery as dangerous and impractical.
Second, he was held in high esteem by many great men of his day. Ralph Waldo Emerson
compared him to Jesus, declaring that Brown would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”
Henry David Thoreau placed Brown above the freedom fighters of the American Revolution.
Frederick Douglass said that while he had lived for black people, John Brown had died for them. A
later black reformer, W. E. B. Du Bois, called Brown the white American who had “come nearest
to touching the real souls of black folk.”
Du Bois was right. Unlike nearly all other Americans of his era, John Brown did not have
a shred of racism. He had long lived among African-Americans, trying to help them make a living,
and he wanted blacks to be quickly integrated into American society. When Brown was told he
could have a clergyman to accompany him to the gallows, he refused, saying he would be more
honored to go with a slave woman and her children.
By the time of his hanging, John Brown was so respected in the North that bells tolled in
many cities and towns in his honor. Within two years, the Union troops marched southward singing,
5
“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul keeps marching on.” Brown
remained a hero to the North right up through Reconstruction.
However, he fell from grace during the long, dark period of Jim Crow. The attitude was,
who cares about his progressive racial views, except a few blacks? His reputation improved a bit
with the civil rights movement, but he is still widely dismissed as a deranged cultist. This is an
injustice to a forward-thinking man dedicated to the freedom and political participation of AfricanAmericans.
O.K., some might say, but how about the blotches on his record, especially the murders
and bloody skirmishes in Kansas in the 1850s? Brown considered himself a soldier at war. His
attacks on pro-slavery forces were part of an escalating cycle of pre-emptive and retaliatory violence
that most historians now agree were in essence the first engagements of the Civil War.
Besides, none of the heroes from that period is [sic] unblemished. Lincoln was the Great
Emancipator, but he shared the era’s racial prejudices, and even after the war started thought that
blacks should be shipped out of the country once they were freed. Andrew Jackson was the man of
his age, but in addition to being a slaveholder, he has the extra infamy of his callous treatment of
Native Americans, for which some hold him guilty of genocide. John Brown comes with “buts” —
but in that he has plenty of company. He deserves to be honored today.
For starters, he should be pardoned. Technically, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia would have
to do this, since Brown was tried on state charges and executed there. Such a posthumous pardon
by a state occurred just this October, when South Carolina pardoned two black men who were
executed 94 years ago for murdering a Confederate veteran.
A presidential pardon, however, would be more meaningful. Posthumous pardons are by
definition symbolic. They’re intended to remove stigma or correct injustice. While the president
cannot grant pardons for state crimes, a strong argument can be made for a symbolic exception in
Brown’s case.
By today’s standards, his crime was arguably of a federal nature, as his attack was on a
federal arsenal in what is now West Virginia. His actions were prompted by federal slavery rulings
he considered despicable, especially the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. Brown was captured
by federal troops under Robert E. Lee. And the Virginia court convicted him of treason against
Virginia even though he was not a resident. (He was tried in Virginia at the orders of its governor,
probably to avert Northern political pressure on the federal government.)
There is precedent for presidential pardons of the deceased; in 1999, Bill Clinton pardoned
Henry O. Flipper, an African-American lieutenant who was court-martialed in 1881 for misconduct.
Last year, George W. Bush gave a posthumous pardon to Charles Winters, an American punished
for supplying B-17 bombers to Israel in the late 1940s. In October, Senator John McCain and
Representative Peter King petitioned President Obama to pardon Jack Johnson, the black boxing
champion, who was convicted a century ago of transporting a white woman across state lines for
immoral purposes.
Justice would be served, belatedly, if President Obama and Governor Kaine found a way
to pardon a man whose heroic effort to free four million enslaved blacks helped start the war that
ended slavery. Once and for all, rescue John Brown from the loony bin of history.
(2009)
Questions
1. What occasioned this essay?
2. David Reynolds asks, in paragraph 3, “Why remember a misguided fanatic and his absurd
plan for destroying slavery?” What is his answer?
3. Reynolds asserts that Brown “did not have a shred of racism” (par. 6). To what extent do
you find this an important defense of his actions?
4. Which counterarguments does Reynolds address? Identify two and discuss how effectively
you believe he concedes and refutes them.
10
15
5.
6.
7.
Why does Reynolds believe it is important to establish that “Brown considered himself a
soldier at war” (par. 9)?
How does Reynolds support his claim that a posthumous presidential pardon for Brown
would be appropriate and significant? To what extent do you agree?
Reynolds ends by calling for the “rescue” of Brown from the “loony bin of history.” Does
this characterization undermine or emphasize his argument? Explain your response.
The 9/11 of 1859
TONY HOROWITZ
Award-winning reporter Tony Horowitz has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for
Advanced Study at Harvard University and a visiting scholar at Brown University. Midnight
Rising, a biography of John Brown, won the 2012 William Henry Seward Award for
Excellence in Civil War Biography. This essay appeared as an op-ed piece in the New York
Times on the same day as the previous piece by David Reynolds. Horowitz is responding
to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a civilian rather than a military court; the decision was
subsequently overturned.
ONE hundred and fifty years ago today, the most successful terrorist in American history was
hanged at the edge of this Shenandoah Valley town. Before climbing atop his coffin for the wagon
ride to the gallows, he handed a note to one of his jailers: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that
the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
Eighteen months later, Americans went to war against each other, with soldiers marching
into battle singing “John Brown’s Body.” More than 600,000 men died before the sin of slavery was
purged.
Few if any Americans today would question the justness of John Brown’s cause: the
abolition of human bondage. But as the nation prepares to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who calls
himself the architect of the 9/11 attacks, it may be worth pondering the parallels between John
Brown’s raid in 1859 and Al Qaeda’s assault in 2001.
Brown was a bearded fundamentalist who believed himself chosen by God to destroy the
institution of slavery. He hoped to launch his holy war by seizing the United States armory at
Harpers Ferry, Va., and arming blacks for a campaign of liberation. Brown also chose his target for
shock value and symbolic impact. The only federal armory in the South, Harpers Ferry was just 60
miles from the capital, where “our president and other leeches,” Brown wrote, did the bidding of
slave owners. The first slaves freed and armed by Brown belonged to George Washington’s greatgrandnephew.
Brown’s strike force was similar in size and make-up to that of the 9/11 hijackers. He led
21 men, all but two in their 20s, and many of them radicalized by guerrilla fighting in Bleeding
Kansas, the abolitionists’ Afghanistan. Brown also relied on covert backers — not oil-rich Saudis,
but prominent Yankees known as the Secret Six. Brown used aliases and coded language and
gathered his men at a mountain hideout. But, like the 9/11 bombers, Brown’s men were indiscreet,
disclosing their plan to family and sweethearts. A letter warning of the plot even reached the
secretary of war. It arrived in August, the scheme seemed outlandish, and the warning was ignored.
Brown and his men were prepared to die, and most did, in what quickly became a suicide mission.
Trapped in Harpers Ferry, the raiders fought for 24 hours until Robert E. Lee ordered marines to
storm the building where the survivors had holed up. Ten raiders were killed, including two of
Brown’s sons, and seven more hanged. No slaves won their freedom. The first civilian casualty was
a free black railroad worker, shot in the back while fleeing the raiders.
This fiasco might have been a footnote of history if Brown had died of his wounds or been
immediately executed. Instead, he survived, and was tried under tight security in a civilian court in
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Charles Town, near Harpers Ferry. Rather than challenge the evidence, or let his lawyers plead
insanity, Brown put the South on trial. Citing the biblical injunction to “remember them that are in
bonds,” he declared his action “was not wrong, but right.”
“If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of
justice,” he said, “and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of
millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments
— I submit; so let it be done!” He was hanged a month later, before a crowd that included John
Wilkes Booth, who later wrote of the “terroriser” with a mix of contempt and awe.
Brown’s courage and eloquence made him a martyr-hero for many in the North. This
canonization, in turn, deepened Southern rage and alarm over the raid. Though Brown occupied the
far fringe of abolitionism — a “wild and absurd freak,” The New York Times called him — Southern
firebrands painted his raid as part of a broad conspiracy. An already polarized nation lurched closer
to violent divorce. “The time for compromise was gone,” Frederick Douglass later observed. “The
armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union, and the clash of arms
was at hand.” This was exactly what Brown had predicted in his final note.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is no John Brown. The 9/11 attack caused mass, indiscriminate
slaughter, for inscrutable ends. Brown fed breakfast to his hostages; the hijackers slit throats with
box cutters. Any words Mr. Mohammed may offer in his own defense will likely strike Americans
as hateful and unpersuasive. In any event, the judge probably won’t grant him an ideological
platform.
But perhaps he doesn’t need one. In 1859, John Brown sought not only to free slaves in
Virginia but to terrorize the South and incite a broad conflict. In this he triumphed: panicked whites
soon mobilized, militarized and marched double-quick toward secession. Brown’s raid didn’t cause
the Civil War, but it was certainly a catalyst.
It may be too early to say if 9/11 bred a similar overreaction. But last night President Obama
vowed to increase our efforts in Afghanistan — one of two wars that, eight years on, have killed
nearly twice as many Americans as the hijacked planes. The nation, beset by the wars’ burden, will
continue to find its domestic and foreign policy options hobbled.
Show trial or no trial, terrorists sometimes win.
(2009)
Questions
1. What is the effect of Tony Horowitz’s characterization of Brown as “the most successful terrorist in
American history” (par. 1) even before he states Brown’s name? Do you think he assumes his readers
would agree with him, or is he deliberately trying to provoke them?
2. What “parallels” (par 3.) does Horowitz claim between John Brown’s raid in 1859 and Al Qaeda’s
assault in 2001? What differences does he acknowledge?
3. Why does Horowitz believe that the raid, which he calls a “fiasco,” “might have been a footnote of
history” (par. 7) if Brown had not had a public trial and execution?
4. Why do you think the reference to John Wilkes Booth (par. 8) strengthens or weakens Horowitz’s
argument?
5. Finally, what is the purpose of Horowitz’s argument? Include consideration of the final sentence in
your response. To what extent do you believe he achieve his purpose?
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