As ye deal with my contemners so with you my grace shall deal—Julia Howe
January 24, 2021 6:03 AM   Subscribe

161 years ago last month, convicted insurrectionist and incorrigible abolitionist John Brown (PDF) was put to death by the united Commonwealth of Virginia for masterminding his final attempt to ignite an American version of the Roman Republic's Servile Wars: the tactical raid on the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry, an intentional attack on the US Federal Government as a planned first step in unraveling a slave empire founded on notions of freedom.

The overall commander of federal forces, one then-loyal Colonel Robert E. Lee, adhering to his solemn oath to defend the Constitution against enemies and obey the orders of POTUS, concluded in his report that Brown was a “madman” and that no Black Americans could have helped him voluntarily, but must have been coerced; the two Black raiders who survived, but did not escape, were executed anyways.

Poet and philanthropist Julia Ward Howe (~16min Voice of America biography podcast, PDF transcript), condemned as a “classic leftist” (and... peach appreciator?) by some heirs of the Confederacy, re-wrote some lyrics of a song about Brown's death to be more about his cause and the ensuing national conflict. She was paid four dollars by The Atlantic.

The Black raiders were John Anthony Copeland, Jr., Shields Green, Lewis Sheridan Leary, Dangerfield Newby, and Osborne Perry Anderson; Newby and Leary were killed during the incident, Copeland and Green were executed, and Anderson escaped. In the aftermath, Newby's body was treated as was traditional.

Previously. Approximate pre-Howe beginning of John Brown's Body
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul's marching on.
He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord,
His soul's marching on.
First two stanzas of Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
Brown reportedly handed a final note to his jail guard on the morning of his execution, reading
I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.
Robert E. Lee would of course not meet the same fate as Brown for his own insurrection against the United States, despite having broken his military oath; instead, statues would be erected in his honor and schools and other public facilities, state and federal, would be named after him.
posted by XMLicious (65 comments total) 53 users marked this as a favorite
 
I knew nothing about Brown till I watched Ethan Hawke's excellent Showtime Series The Good Lord Bird. Here's The Guardian's review.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:11 AM on January 24, 2021 [7 favorites]


He was convicted of treason against the state of Virginia (it was logistically difficult to try him in federal court).

Also, John Brown and his family hacked a bunch of people to death in Kansas with broadswords. Look for less-murderous heroes.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:48 AM on January 24, 2021


Alternate lyrics (which I heard years ago from a then aging son of the south recalling his youth, but for which googlefu fails me):

"We shall hang John Brown from a sour apple tree."

Which no doubt is a rejoinder to additional verses Ms Howe almost certainly did not write:

"They shall hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree."

Catchy enough tune and line that Irish nationalists used it against British MP Joseph Chamberlain, or so James Joyce writes in Ulysses:

"We'll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sour apple tree."

Such a violent species are we.

(According to this, the song was not based on the more excitable John Brown, but on a young Scotsman of the same name.)
posted by BWA at 7:22 AM on January 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


Also, John Brown and his family hacked a bunch of people to death in Kansas with broadswords. Look for less-murderous heroes.
posted by Huffy Puffy


Eponysterical? Listen, you would be hard pressed to find any hero during the civil war period who wasn’t murderous or at least flawed. As the OP points out, Brown was hung as a traitor, while Lee was practically deified after the full on war in which he not only led thousands to their deaths, but did so defending the institution of slavery and in violation of his oath to the USA.

I don’t think I saw the word Hero anywhere in the OP describing Brown.
posted by natteringnabob at 7:30 AM on January 24, 2021 [22 favorites]


I don't think of Brown's actions in Kansas or Harper's Ferry as heroic, but more as an omen of what was to come.
posted by LionIndex at 7:33 AM on January 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


We should put statues of John Brown up to replace the Confederates.

John Brown knew how to punch... er, sword the equivalent of Nazis in his day.

#Hero
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 7:39 AM on January 24, 2021 [15 favorites]


The people John Brown and co killed were trying to expand the reach of human slavery in the United States. They would have bought and sold enslaved Africans and kept them as property given half a chance.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 7:46 AM on January 24, 2021 [25 favorites]


No, John Brown was absolutely bonkers. He's like saying Ted Kaczynski was right. We should not put statues of John Brown. I haven't seen the Showtime series but everything I've read about him was the epitome of extremist behavior. John Brown is the worst of being right and being wrong at the same time.

We shouldn't condone radicalism in any form.
posted by geoff. at 7:51 AM on January 24, 2021 [5 favorites]


Brown was hung as a traitor, while Lee was practically deified after the full on war in which he not only led thousands to their deaths, but did so defending the institution of slavery and in violation of his oath to the USA.
"I, Robert E. Lee, appointed a second lieutenant in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States."
Lincoln should have hanged each and every damned confederate officer and soldier, imprisoned anyone who provided material support to the white supremacist terrorists for 20 years, and seized all of their assets for reparations to the newly freed slaves.

Just imagine how great America would have been if Black people owned the south and we had purged the defeated blood of white supremacist treason from our nation?
posted by mikelieman at 7:58 AM on January 24, 2021 [31 favorites]


I’ve seen it argued that hanging Lee would have made him a martyr to the slavers, and hanging too many low-level soldiers is not how you rebuild a country after civil war.

The people who should have swung from a rope until dead were Jefferson Davis and the top 5-10 generals on Lee’s staff who prosecuted the war.

This is why I hope the insurrectionists at the Capitol get multiple volumes of The Book thrown at them. Decades in cages.

Because leaving those 6-11 nooses empty are why we have goddamned Confederate statues today.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:03 AM on January 24, 2021 [8 favorites]


We shouldn't condone radicalism in any form.

Spoken like someone whose life has never been endangered by moderate incrementalism.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:14 AM on January 24, 2021 [38 favorites]


Lincoln should have hanged each and every damned confederate officer and soldier

that's close to a million people - a million people who would have had absolutely no reason to surrender under those circumstances
posted by pyramid termite at 8:26 AM on January 24, 2021 [5 favorites]


"We shall hang John Brown from a sour apple tree."

A similar line was sung by an 1883 lynch mob who objected to a man called Lyman Dukes being acquitted in a Pennsylvania murder trial. "We’ll hang Lyman Dukes from a sour apple tree," they sang around his burning effigy. "Dukes will go down to Hades and the jury will meet him on the way". (Previously in Projects.)
posted by Paul Slade at 8:53 AM on January 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


No, John Brown was absolutely bonkers. He's like saying Ted Kaczynski was right.

This is only if you completely ignore all context which may serve to significantly differentiate the experiences and motivations of John Brown and Harvard grad Ted Kaczynski. Best to avoid argument by analogy in general, especially when the two subjects of the analogy were born 142 years apart. It's worse than useless.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:09 AM on January 24, 2021 [22 favorites]


Cloudsplitter is a fully imagined attempt to understand Mr. Brown.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:12 AM on January 24, 2021 [5 favorites]


We should not put up statues of John Brown...

John Brown already has one of the most impressive public memorial artworks of all time: that awesome and nightmarish mural in The Kansas State Capital Bldg.
posted by ovvl at 9:14 AM on January 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


Mod note: Hey there folks -- John Brown certainly has a complex legacy but no need to turn this thread into another current US Politics thread.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:19 AM on January 24, 2021 [4 favorites]


We need allies who are going to help us achieve a victory, not allies who are going to tell us to be nonviolent. If a white man wants to be your ally, what does he think of John Brown? You know what John Brown did? He went to war. He was a white man who went to war against white people to help free slaves. He wasn’t nonviolent. White people call John Brown a nut. Go read the history, go read what all of them say about John Brown. They’re trying to make it look like he was a nut, a fanatic. They made a movie on it, I saw a movie on the screen one night. Why, I would be afraid to get near John Brown if I go by what other white folks say about him.

But they depict him in this image because he was willing to shed blood to free the slaves. And any white man who is ready and willing to shed blood for your freedom—in the sight of other whites, he’s nuts. As long as he wants to come up with some nonviolent action, they go for that, if he’s liberal, a nonviolent liberal, a love-everybody liberal. But when it comes time for making the same kind of contribution for your and my freedom that was necessary for them to make for their own freedom, they back out of the situation. So, when you want to know good white folks in history where black people are concerned, go read the history of John Brown. That was what I call a white liberal. But those other kind, they are questionable.

So if we need white allies in this country, we don’t need those kind who compromise. We don’t need those kind who encourage us to be polite, responsible, you know. We don’t need those kind who give us that kind of advice. We don’t need those kind who tell us how to be patient. No, if we want some white allies, we need the kind that John Brown was, or we don’t need you. And the only way to get those kind is to turn in a new direction.

- Malcolm X
posted by ChuraChura at 9:23 AM on January 24, 2021 [60 favorites]


We shouldn't condone radicalism in any form.

Can't tell if serious or reductio ad absurdum of centrism.

Plenty of things to find fault with about John Brown -- that he failed, that his tactics endangered countless enslaved people, that his failure left something of a high-water mark for the white savior complex, etc. Still, it's hard to say that John Brown deserves any less honor than the slavers and genocidaires whose tributes may be found in almost every corner of the US.

Circling back to the Original Topic, I am curious about this Other John Brown who apparently gave rise to the original song. The WGBH article doesn't seem to have any citations -- anybody have further reading on this?
posted by Not A Thing at 9:24 AM on January 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


John Brown already has one of the most impressive public memorial artworks of all time: that awesome and nightmarish mural in The Kansas State Capital Bldg.

And the first Kansas album cover!
posted by Huffy Puffy at 9:27 AM on January 24, 2021 [6 favorites]


FYI: Robert Smalls is also available as a pretty much completely uncomplicated hero.

(And here's an amazing memory palace episode on Smalls... If you know nothing of him and want a lovely experience, skip the wikipedia page and listen to the podcast. It's only ten minutes!)
posted by kaibutsu at 10:00 AM on January 24, 2021 [7 favorites]


Sickening to see people in this thread saying abolitionist revolution is as bad as the worst of white-supremacist actors, based on some sort of "all violence is equally bad" argument.
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:13 AM on January 24, 2021 [29 favorites]



No, John Brown was absolutely bonkers. He's like saying Ted Kaczynski was right. We should not put statues of John Brown. I haven't seen the Showtime series but everything I've read about him was the epitome of extremist behavior. John Brown is the worst of being right and being wrong at the same time.
We shouldn't condone radicalism in any form.


Its a real life angry person vs calm Hitler!
posted by Iax at 10:18 AM on January 24, 2021 [21 favorites]


Sickening

While I tilt toward agreeing with this, as a reactive sentiment from a comfortable white Canadian, is it helpful for ongoing dialogue to frame it like this? I mean, how can we keep talking with each other, regardless of sides, if we're always staking out territory and demonizing the others first?

I've watched a couple of episodes of The Good Lord Bird and I'll say that it's challenging. It's rough and angry and the use of a text to "prove" and divide between ideas and people is gross and yet still so easy to find today. It's not easy to watch the hero answering the oppressors in their own kind of language, but how else do things change? Talk is cheap. (blahblahblah)

I just finished listening to the NYT 1619 podcast, and to Uncivil, and Scene on Radio's "Seeing White". As a Canadian I've read James Daschuk's Clearing The Plains and I'm working on Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian. All this is to work on myself; to get a clearer view of the oppression and violence that has been done here. It's literally the least I can do.

I'm not oppressed or racialized. My life is easy and violence-free. So I'm going to hold off on suggesting that someone whose life experience is racialized, and not easy, and not violence-free try to be calm and choose nicer heroes for my comfort.
posted by kneecapped at 10:42 AM on January 24, 2021 [7 favorites]


Via the wikipedia link for Osborne Perry Anderson, a printer and the only Black raider to survive and escape: A Voice From Harper's Ferry, the account he wrote of the event.
posted by trig at 11:06 AM on January 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:08 AM on January 24, 2021 [26 favorites]


The last museum exhibit I got to go to pre-covid was a show of Jacob Lawrence's work. His panels on John Brown (And relatedly, Toussaint Louverture) were powerful and informative.
posted by Maxwell's demon at 11:15 AM on January 24, 2021 [4 favorites]


I don't think of Brown's actions in Kansas or Harper's Ferry as heroic, but more as an omen of what was to come.
Flagged for Fantastic.
Heroic is key here as in the various historical views versus historical morality.
Heroic in 1859 might not mean heroic in 2021 for starters. As an omen most historians I've read see Harper's Ferry as hidden causus belli to justify rebellion using history, economic unity (slavery) and current law and the Declaration of Independence, which IMO was the open cement to both sides view. It is hard to be subjective with a thesis comparing The Servile Wars to the US civil war. It's just not workable in a footing grounded towards objectivity in a valuation of facts, historically.
The Declaration itself shows value over fact especially in current times perhaps Carr is correct in that " Somewhere between these two poles-'the North Pole of valueless facts and South Pole of value judgments still struggling to transform themselves into facts-lies the realm of historical truth"

it should be noted that Lee resigned, made all the right "Union together" noise, refused two appointments before rebelling against the country.
posted by clavdivs at 11:17 AM on January 24, 2021 [3 favorites]


We shouldn't condone radicalism in any form.
I guess we shouldn't condone the United States then, given that it was founded by men who raised a radical insurrection against the lawful British colonial authorites who received their powers by delegation from the British sovereign, King George III.
posted by wuwei at 11:39 AM on January 24, 2021 [8 favorites]


If you read The Good Lord Bird (the book is excellent), you will see a pretty accurate portrayal, which is that Brown was both crazy and heroic. Both a zealot and a vanguardist. He absolutely put enslaved people at risk in ways that was the height of arrogance.

Anyway, read the book. Frederick Douglass was complicated too.
posted by RedEmma at 11:50 AM on January 24, 2021 [8 favorites]


We shouldn't honor radicals like John Brown but we should put Harriet Tubman on the $20. After all, she was instrumental in, uh... [checks notes] funding, arming, recruiting, and planning the overall strategy to carry out the raid on Harpers Ferry.
posted by likethemagician at 11:53 AM on January 24, 2021 [34 favorites]


I guess we shouldn't condone the United States then, given that it was founded by men who raised a radical insurrection against the lawful British

Wrong term, wrong century.

"Radicalism (from Latin radix, "root") was a historical political movement within liberalism during the late 18th and early 19th centuries and a precursor to social liberalism. Its identified radicals were proponents of democratic reform in what subsequently became the parliamentary Radicals in the United Kingdom."

we should know condone denotes measures not aligned with ones moral view.
I condone the Chatrists but to what avail..
to not repeat that, here, now?
posted by clavdivs at 11:58 AM on January 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


"Be swift my soul to answer him!" still gets me misty. Let the destruction of racism be our modern crusade.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 12:12 PM on January 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


Sorry, my comment was poorly worded. I don't know why I worded it so strongly. John Brown is a very complex figure and comparing him to Ted Kaczynski was wrong. I was lead to believe that John Brown was deeply troubled and lead what amounted to a futile suicide attack that did nothing to end slavery. After reading more about him this afternoon I do not think it was entirely futile, but I do believe that he's been so heavily politicized even in his own time it is hard to get a clear portrait of him.
posted by geoff. at 12:36 PM on January 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


On the topic of the Union and abolitionism, I've always been entranced by Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic.
I knew of it principally because of its notoriety and the disdain with which my clergyfolk peers would talk about it.
"Ugh, 4th of July, time for civic religion and the damned Battle Hymn again."

Despite having a pretty deep handle on the history of American hymnody I'd no idea why it was written or to what purpose. After I learned why Julia Ward Howe wrote it I became obsessed with it.

I collect pre-Civil War and Civil War era periodicals - I'm fascinated with the way in which people described the prelude to the war and the war, itself, while they were living through it.

Last year I got my hands on my "white whale," - Volume 9 of the Atlantic, which contains the first edition printing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It is a good hymn and a good song - and for abolitionists like Howe who firmly believed that God makes revelation available to humankind "through," rather than "above" history, it is theologically rock-solid.

A photo of my treasure.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:58 PM on January 24, 2021 [23 favorites]


Possible tangent: I'm reading Andreas Malm's How to Blow Up a Pipeline. So far it's an argument in favor of violence against property as a useful tool for progressive change, pointing it out as part of the climate struggle. He doesn't see violence as the only tool (at least so far in the book), but an important one in the revolutionary toolkit, alongside civil disobedience and others.

Why I mention this: in historical arguments, Malm cites John Brown several times as a favorable example of violence - against both property and people - in a good cause.

(Again, apologies if this takes us too far afield)
posted by doctornemo at 1:11 PM on January 24, 2021 [5 favorites]


I took AP U.S. history in high school in a post Howard Zinn era, in a liberal coastal city, and we were taught that John Brown was crazy, and Robert e Lee was an honorable man
posted by CostcoCultist at 1:22 PM on January 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


I have No. 78. April, 1864...I just hate the serial does not have authors name on the work. NTL, 'Our Progressive Indepence' is worth a read."It is among the possibilities of the future that, in due course of time, the United States of America shall become to England what England has become to Saxony...An American millionaire may be anxious about the condition of his grandchildren, but a peer whose ancestors came in in with the Conqueror looks ahead at least as far as the end of the twentieth century"

Little lofty hey -ho reminding who who to side with.
posted by clavdivs at 1:31 PM on January 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


Brown's father had as an apprentice Jesse R. Grant, father of Ulysses S. Grant.

That is interesting.
posted by clavdivs at 1:39 PM on January 24, 2021 [7 favorites]


This was in the wikipedia article that Huffy Puffy used above as an argument against John Brown:
The news of the event had a deeper significance than appeared in the abstract atrocity of the act itself. ...It meant that the policy of extermination or abject submission, so blatantly promulgated by the Pro-slavery press, and proclaimed by Pro-slavery speakers, had been adopted by their enemies, and was about to be enforced with appalling earnestness. It meant that there was a power opposed to the Pro-slavery aggressors, as cruel and unrelenting as themselves. It meant henceforth, swift retaliation—robbery for robbery—murder for murder— that "he who taketh the sword shall perish by the sword."
People here saying John Brown was unsuccessful, or nuts. I cannot disagree more strongly. The fact that we still know the name of John Brown disproves that. This was a man who was willing to do the ugly thing in the name of trying to end something that is so obviously wrong. That is so rare. It is SO MUCH EASIER to say "the Republicans are bad, someone should DO SOMETHING."

On January 6, Republicans engaged in an act of war against the US. I, like many, am hopeful that we can use the rule of law, as well as diplomacy, to deal with that. But make no mistake, there is a good chance that the acts of January 6 will not be the end of the violence between two groups of people in the US. If this garbage continues, at some point the other side is going to need people with the courage of John Brown to stand up to the cowards who will kill them if given the chance.
posted by nushustu at 2:08 PM on January 24, 2021 [8 favorites]


And I don't wish to turn this into another US Politics thread, but I don't know how to even begin to talk about John Brown in 2021 and not use the lens of the past month (and several years really) as a backdrop.
posted by nushustu at 2:10 PM on January 24, 2021 [4 favorites]


Really good post; that first link is especially interesting.

I was raised as, and still am, a strong partisan of nonviolence, but I am not an absolute pacifist, and the story of John Brown is a good example of why. When I first learned about Brown, my mother, whose moral compass is incredibly strong, taught me that while his goals were just, his methods were deeply wrong. Even at the time this never sat quite right with me, and I think even she was influenced by the anti-Brown propaganda that painted him as a violent madman even over a century after his death. Even if Brown was mad, I think madness is perhaps the only rational response to living in a society that condones such a deep and clear evil as racialized chattel slavery. His strategy of violent revolution is not one I would choose, nor what I believe to be the best solution, but I will not condemn him and his allies for choosing revolutionary violence as a reaction to much greater, more horrific, institutionalized violence. Their choice to stand firmly against slavery as an institution and to work to directly free enslaved people is heroic, and I admire them for it. A few years ago, as an adult, John Brown came up again in conversation with my mother, and I made this case to her, and I think she was able to see that yes, any critical focus on Brown's violent methods set against the violent horror he was trying to end is at best a moral distraction.

It is indeed hard not to view John Brown through the lens of current events and modern history. Sadly, I think some of the QAnon cultists probably see themselves as like Brown. Not explicitly, in that I doubt many of them know much about him or would see him as a positive icon if they do, but rather I think they see their willingness to engage in violent insurrection in similar terms. If you genuinely believe that the government is controlled by a cabal of pedophiles who murder countless children in order to extract life-extending substances from their blood, and no political action can successfully end this terrible evil because all of the levers of power are controlled by the people you are fighting against, then perhaps violent insurrection seems like a necessary response against a greater evil. The difference, of course, is that American chattel slavery was real, an actual evil that destroyed millions of lives and rotted the soul of our nation in ways we still have yet to recover from. Whereas the QAnon conspiracy theories are obviously completely insane, and require the most outrageous mental contortions to accept. So while to me, John Brown is something of a tragic hero for choosing violence in opposition to greater violence, the QAnon cultists have chosen violence in response to a ridiculous fever dream, and while in my better moments I may muster enough sympathy to see them as tragic too, they remain unqualified villains for their choices.
posted by biogeo at 3:15 PM on January 24, 2021 [20 favorites]


I think the discussion about Brown is incredibly revealing about continuing racial politics in the U.S. You know that whether or not Brown seemed unhinged had everything to do with the fact that a bunch of white people thought it was not only okay but in many cases a positive good to enslave millions of Africans and their descendants.

All those slave holders, especially those who went to church and then assaulted enslaved people? That's some unhinged behavior, despite it being widespread and supported by the law.

Du Bois published a biography of Du Bois in 1909 that's worth a read.
posted by allthinky at 3:28 PM on January 24, 2021 [16 favorites]


There's a quote from Du Bois' biography that Zinn pulls for A People's History...

If his foray was the work of a handful of fanatics, led by a lunatic and repudiated by the slaves to a man, then the proper procedure would have been to ignore the incident, quietly punish the worst offenders and either pardon the misguided leader or send him to an asylum... . While insisting that the raid was too hopelessly and ridiculously small to accomplish anything .. . the state nevertheless spent $250,000 to punish the invaders, stationed from one to three thousand soldiers in the vicinity and threw the nation into turmoil.

I remember reading a history, I think it may have been Battle Cry of Freedom maybe, that claimed that John Brown wasn't really seen as a wild-eyed crazy man at the time of his imprisonment, but rather as an intelligent and eloquent, but uncompromising, activist. The "crazy guy" image came later, as Jim Crow coalesced and the brief period of (relative) interracial goodwill post-war faded.

Now, we're free to judge him from a modern viewpoint, but it's worth considering that the modern image of him has been influenced by a century of history textbooks that weren't exactly unbiased.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 4:18 PM on January 24, 2021 [10 favorites]


I've always been entranced by Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic.

It's a haunting and strangely compelling piece of music...

I guess we shouldn't condone the United States then, given that it was founded by men who raised a radical insurrection against the lawful British...

Hey, the old quip goes that George Washington was a terrorist with good PR!

The other guy with really good PR was the biggest damn Poser in American History, the loosing General who like to strut around tall on his pony like a hero, even though he lost his war because of his incompetence (as I mentioned in the last post about him here around a month ago...)

Perception is a funny thing. John Brown was not a subtle figure, but it's interesting see some more perspective on how perceptions around him are shifting.
posted by ovvl at 4:18 PM on January 24, 2021


More than half a million Americans died in the Civil War, probably a lot more. Slavery required violence and slavery was not going away without violence. Anyone who pays attention to history, especially post reconstruction history, can't miss how commited a large percentage of Americans are to the maintainence of white supremacy, even if it costs them money and peace. As for the connection to January 6th the losers were parading around with the confederate flags the same as last time.

Visiting John Brown's grave is on my extended bucket list.
posted by rdr at 4:20 PM on January 24, 2021 [14 favorites]


My point in making this OP had nothing to do with John Brown being a “nicer hero”. Heroic or not, the point is that the United States treats BIPoC insurrectionists, and white insurrectionists on the side of BIPoC—i.e. the Harper's Ferry raiders—quite differently from insurrectionists trying to overthrow the government for the sake of white supremacy—i.e. Robert E. Lee.

In the case of the former, draconian state violence and high-horse condemnation of disrupting “law and order” is dealt out, even in historical retrospect with hindsight understanding of how insidious and horrifying white supremacy was and is. In the case of the latter, all of the laws and the Constitution suddenly become invisible and it's “shucks, what can ya do?” If nothing else, non-heroic in 1859–1864 meant the same thing as non-heroic does in 2021.

Note that if we're going to sniff and turn our noses up, and disdain the Harper's Ferry raiders, to be consistent we really ought to be doing the same with Nat Turner, all Indigenous political leaders and activists and military commanders and combatants, etc. Unless, like Lee at Harper's Ferry, we hold only whites truly accountable for their actions.

> While I tilt toward agreeing with this, as a reactive sentiment from a comfortable white Canadian, is it helpful for ongoing dialogue to frame it like this? I mean, how can we keep talking with each other, regardless of sides, if we're always staking out territory and demonizing the others first?

If acknowledging that you're comfortable doesn't help you realize what you're saying, even when you're directing the proposal to “choose nicer heroes for [...] comfort” at others as comfortable and privileged as yourself, imagine saying the same things in Europe in 1934. Don't wait for the perfect messenger before you get in touch with your inner Samuel L. Jackson and repudiate blatant wrongs with all the divine wrath Julia Ward Howe did.

> It is hard to be subjective with a thesis comparing The Servile Wars to the US civil war. It's just not workable in a footing grounded towards objectivity in a valuation of facts, historically.

No such thesis was presented. My point in mentioning the Roman Republic's Servile Wars in the OP was that this is likely one historical pattern Brown would have related his insurrection goals to, conceptually and rhetorically. If, for example, you search HathiTrust for “john brown” “servile wars” you will find writing contemporary to the US Civil War even simply using “servile wars” as a synonym for “slave rebellion”.

> it should be noted that Lee resigned, made all the right "Union together" noise, refused two appointments before rebelling against the country.

Why should that be noted? It's almost like you're saying that because Lee asked “pretty please” for what he wanted in just the right way before betraying his oath to the Constitution, he deserved absolution from capital punishment even as a military oathbreaker and freedom-scripture-heresiarch, while the Harper's Ferry raiders didn't.

What wasn't notable about, say, Shields Green's insurrection? Which noises did he not make, to thus be non-notable in 2021 while you're arching your eyebrow about 1859 heroism and historical morality and omens and etymology?

And dayyyum Baby_Balrog, that is some treasure—in fact I'd go beyond treasure, American civil religion and all, and I'd say you should keep it in a reliquary like a piece of the True Cross or something.
posted by XMLicious at 4:45 PM on January 24, 2021 [16 favorites]


Wrong term, wrong century.
Really?

From Merriam-Webster, some of the accepted uses of the term radical
: very different from the usual or traditional : EXTREME
b : favoring extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions
c : associated with political views, practices, and policies of extreme change
d : advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs
It would seem my usage of radical to mean extreme or very different from traditional would be permissible. Slavery was legally permissible in parts of the United States at the time of John Brown's action. He favored "extreme changes in existing conditions" -- namely the abolition of slavery, which also would drastically change the property rights of slaveowners, by eliminating their property interest(s) in people.


we should know condone denotes measures not aligned with ones moral view.
From Merriam-Webster again:
: to regard or treat (something bad or blameworthy) as acceptable, forgivable, or harmless
Certainly under most conditions, most people view breaking the law as a bad or blameworthy action. So under most conditions, raising an illegal uprising against a sovereign's government would be considered bad or blameworthy.

clavdivs, you seem to be using some very idiosyncratic definitions in this thread, and I find that curious, and perhaps that should be "noted" as well.
posted by wuwei at 5:42 PM on January 24, 2021


The thing I found notable in the Behind the Bastards episode on John Brown was that Brown, unlike most abolitionists of his time, was happy to work beside and eat with former enslaved people. He was ahead of his time and our time in recognizing the humanity of the abused and the inhumanity of the abuser.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:45 PM on January 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


I'm reminded of Mark Twain's great musing on the Terror. "There were two 'Reigns of Terror,' if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the 'horrors' of the minor Terror"
posted by tavella at 8:05 PM on January 24, 2021 [6 favorites]


No such thesis was presented. My point in mentioning the Roman Republic's Servile Wars in the OP was that this is likely one historical pattern

Ok. Perhaps Brown used the servile wars as inspiration, wars that slaves stated in a plantation system derived from war. But it's not the war between the states, the us Servile Wars, Mr. Lincoln's war, or the most recent unpleastness is it.
To note that Lee did all the right things as a solder in order to free himself from a charge of treason is interesting. It's like he wanted to clear his name before he snaffled what ideas pretain to free whites for his own side,
to continue the same practice all the while, exercising thier rights. So sometimes facts shed light on to an event that is even more insidious.
Sheilds Green? You tell me, it's your post and comment. That the noise he made by his conviction and bravery drowns out Browns?
posted by clavdivs at 8:37 PM on January 24, 2021


I think Abigail Nussbaum's take on The Good Lord Bird stands in for my feelings on Brown himself:

I have no idea how accurate a depiction this is of the real Brown, nor do I really care. Unlike Erik, I don’t think it’s the job of historical fiction to teach us history—that’s what books and documentaries and even blog posts are for. Fiction is only ever about the moment in which it was written, and when a work of historical fiction deviates from real history, our question should be what its aim is in doing so. The Good Lord Bird, I think, wants us to feel exasperated with Brown. It wants us to find him faintly ridiculous—it’s notable, for example, that almost every black person Henry meets immediately realizes that he is a boy in a dress, while Brown (and the white people who follow him, whose perception of reality is guided by his) misses every sign of the obvious. And then it wants us to realize that he is nevertheless one hundred percent, indisputably, undeniably right.

There’s a scene near the beginning of the series that encapsulates the reaction the show keeps trying to draw out from us in its depiction of Brown. The previous episode included vicious, murderous attacks by Brown’s army on pro-slavers and their fellow travelers in Kansas, the capture and release of two of his sons, and multiple back and forths between Brown, pro-slavery militas, and Federal troops in the region. The entire experience has left Henry terrified, and Brown’s followers frustrated. Brown himself looks like a zealot and a dangerous fanatic, never more so than when he and his men encounter the officer who had previously captured his sons, and who, with a cool temper and gentlemanly reserve, offers to let Brown turn himself in. Brown, instead, starts railing about the inhumanity of slavery and the necessity of ending it once and for all. The officer listens with an increasingly strained, polite smile. And just at the point where it becomes clear how forbearing and patient he thinks he’s being, we also realize that he’s a monster. He knows that Brown is right about slavery. He knows that he is an instrument of an unjust system. But he doesn’t care enough to do anything about it, which makes him a pillar of society, and Brown a criminal.

posted by mightygodking at 8:37 PM on January 24, 2021 [10 favorites]


Really?
I know, right? Geoff clearing up his definition is my point, since he did, what you wrote is accurate.

"He favored "extreme changes in existing conditions" -- namely the abolition of slavery, which also would drastically change the property rights of slaveowners, by eliminating their property interest(s) in people."

So did my people want these things. The Quaker and abolitionists,They suffered, were marginalized but never submitted to an uprising were murders should happen. The paradox widens. A pinnale point in morality were Quakers accept and condone violence and war on a philosophical ground of their own choosing. Was that Radicalism, no, radical, yes.

raising an illegal uprising against a sovereign's government


as opposed to raising a legal uprising?
Historically, governments don't like that, perhaps they find the legal ones even more so. I'll take note on that.
Even Brown had his limits: "On March 12, 1859, Brown met with Frederick Douglass and Detroit abolitionists George DeBaptiste, William Lambert, and others at William Webb's house in Detroit to discuss emancipation. DeBaptiste proposed that conspirators blow up some of the South's largest churches. The suggestion was opposed by Brown, who felt humanity precluded such unnecessary bloodshed."
posted by clavdivs at 9:21 PM on January 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


John Brown was an uncompromising fanatic, and mad as a box of frogs. He was also a genuine American hero who was prepared to give his life for other people's freedom. "Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue", as Barry Goldwater said (even if he probably wouldn't approve of using it in reference to Brown).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 9:37 PM on January 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


Malcolm X put it really clearly. Why is the white man who committed murder and a civil uprising and tried to get more guns to arm others considered a madman because the people he wanted to free were black, while we lionize the Founding Fathers who participated in the Revolutionary War? Is the difference that one happened to be successful, while the other was not? Is that how we judge morality? Or do people think no one was killed in the Revolutionary War, or that soldiers were all volunteers and every one who was killed consented to it?

I genuinely don't understand how people can condemn John Brown if you believe in liberty.
posted by corb at 9:41 PM on January 24, 2021 [20 favorites]


(I should add the caveat: if you are educated about what John Brown actually did and believe in liberty, if you've heard the propaganda then it's very easy to believe him crazy.)
posted by corb at 9:42 PM on January 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


no one is condemning his cause, just his methodology. He planned this for years, ran in the highest circles, had extensive training and research. Is it ironic that Brown trained Grants dad. Both Grant and Brown worked in tanneries known for neurology problems, is that a factor. Brown was executed for a handful of murders while Grant got to be president as he was accused of muders at Cold harbor. No, Grant did what was sanctioned by Law even if it was hell. Brown thought he was sanctioned by God.
posted by clavdivs at 10:08 PM on January 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


Malcolm X put it really clearly
well yes but by his time, the thought of a white leader in his struggle is not really doable. David Walker echos this in 1829.
He's dead a year later, a year later Nat Turner which entrenched more pro slavery laws.
posted by clavdivs at 11:45 PM on January 24, 2021


Is it ironic that Brown trained Grants dad. Both Grant and Brown worked in tanneries known for neurology problems, is that a factor.

I'm sorry, what? This sounds like some sort of fever-dream deep cut of Lost Cause mythology.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 7:07 AM on January 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


We'd all like to hope, or imagine, that if we were alive back then we'd have been abolitionists. And most of us recognize that it's quite likely we wouldn't have been because your upbringing determiens a lot about you.

John Brown had his problems, his savior complex just to begin with. But I do not and cannot fault his use of violence.

When faced with a murderous, torturous, rape fueled, and in all ways utterly evil system such as slavery violence is not only the right response it is the only response any truly good or decent person can have.

There is no virtue in being non-violent when faced with such an evil. And I'd argue that there's a lack of conviction among those who don't employ violence to stop such evils if other means will not work.

To make a modern comparison, I'm 100% pro-choice. But I will say that IMO the only advocates of forced birth who have demonstrated that they truely, honestly, no exaggeration or hyperbole, believe abortion to be murder are the ones who have used violence. I think they're wrong, I'm opposed to them, but they are the only ones of their ilk who I can say appear to truly believe that abortion is murder.

Anyone who genuinely believed abortion to be murder but who limited thier response to voting for Republicans and maybe occasionally tossing a few dollars at a "pro-life" group is a monster. How could anyone decent believe that non-violence was appropriate in the face of a holocaust?

That most "pro-life" people denounce violence proves only that they don't actually, truly, believe abortion to be murder.

John Brown saw a situation of intolerable evil and unlike the cowards and mealy mothed "abolitionist" activists of his era he did what was right: he tried to kill the evil raping, murdering, torturing, scum who claimed to own other human beings.

I measure myself and my convictions against him, and others like him. And I do not measure up.

What does it say about me, as a human, as a person who claims to wish to do good, that I sit idly by while children are thrown into concentration camps and Black people are murdered for sport by the police? That my "opposition" to such things is limited to protesting and donations.

Either i'm a coward of the highest order, or I don't really believe it's that bad to throw children into concentration camps and murder Black people. There is no other explanation.

I can say it's because I have a child that I must care for, but what lession am I teaching my Black son when I limit myself to ineffective protest and interent chatter rather than standing against evil with all the tools at my disposal? It says I'm a coward who is unworthy to call himself someone who belives in human rights, that's what it says. It says that I am a failure as a human being.

I measure myself against people like John Brown and I do not measure up. They did the right thing and in a similar situation I do not.

The **ONLY** rational, sane, humane, and proper response to slavery is to kill the slavers. That so many failed that test, as I do every single day, shows only that humanity fails the most basic test of decency on a regular basis not that those who rose to the challenge and did the right thing were crazy or wrong.

I'm a failure and I often disgust myself with my utter cowardace and lack of conviction. But I will at least recognize the authenticity and courage of those who do the right thing in the face of evil.
posted by sotonohito at 8:39 AM on January 25, 2021 [13 favorites]


^ sotonohito, I would favor your comment a million times if I could.
posted by nushustu at 12:03 PM on January 25, 2021 [1 favorite]


Mod note: folks, truly no need to bring in bad takes from long-gone users.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:21 PM on January 25, 2021


I don't think Brown was insane or "mad". I think he was right to fight. I wish he had planned better.

Slavery's very nature is injustice and horror. And it had been going on for centuries. The people who supported it continued to commit atrocities against Black people. The people who did not stand against it were helping sustain it. Slavery is an intolerable evil; he refused to tolerate it.

He did not begin the violence though. The first violent pro-slavery action began with the first person kidnapped from Africa. People talk about the violence of pro-slavery forces against other white people, in Kansas, and it certainly existed and was horrible, but it can't hold a candle to what was done to Black folks.

Slavery was not just forced labor without pay. It was kidnapping, family separation, child abuse, cultural extermination, torture, murder, rape, and more, all under the color of law. It was a genocide.

If it had not been under color of law, he would not have had to break the law. If his government had done the right thing, he would never have had to turn to violence.

To me, he reminds me of the French Resistance, or the Germans who tried to Assassinate Hitler and high ranking Nazis. Do we in America not laud them? If so, then we should celebrate him. He was a patriot fighting for his country, and for the innate rights and freedom of his fellow Americans, and they called that treason.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 7:14 PM on January 26, 2021 [16 favorites]


I hadn't before just now looked at BWA's last link with some of the other earlier lyrical variations of John Brown's Body. Some of those are really quite good.
posted by XMLicious at 1:04 AM on February 1, 2021


O soldiers of freedom, then strike while strike you may
The death blow of oppression in a better time and way;
For the dawn of old John Brown has brighten'd into day,
And his truth is marching on.
posted by XMLicious at 1:49 AM on February 1, 2021


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