JOHN BROWN
About this time there was a revival of activity in the slave trade
between Africa and Cuba. The American Government had always acted
half-heartedly in its co-operation with the British Government for the
suppression of this traffic. Now it happened that some British cruisers
in the West Indies stopped and examined some vessels under the American
flag, suspected of being slavers. This was resented by the American
Government, which sent war ships to the scene and took the British
Government to task. In Congress both parties joined in denunciation of
British aggression. The right of search, exercised by England for the
reclamation of her seamen from American vessels, had been one of the
grounds of war in 1812. It had been left unmentioned in the treaty of
peace, but England had silently relinquished the practice. Now, at the
demand of the United States, she expressly relinquished the right of
search in the case of supposed slave ships under the American flag,
unless the result should justify the suspicion. Thus the honor of the
Stars and Stripes was vindicated,--and the flag was made a great
convenience to slavers. The administration, however, bestirred itself
toward doing its own share in the work of sea-police, and several slave
ships were captured. The crew of one of these were acquitted, by a
Charleston jury, against the clearest evidence. There was some open talk
in the Southern papers of legalizing the traffic. But the trade was
destined to a discouraging check a year or two later, when President
Lincoln signed the first death warrant of the captain of a slaver.
After the Kansas troubles had subsided, John Brown sought some way to
make a direct attack on slavery. For many years he had brooded on the
matter, in the light of his reading of the Old Testament, and he felt
himself called to assail it as the Jewish heroes assailed the enemies of
Jehovah and his people. As early as 1847 he had disclosed to Frederick
Douglass, during a visit to Brown's home in Springfield, Mass., a plan
for freeing the slaves. He did not contemplate a general insurrection
and slaughter. But he proposed to establish a fugitive refuge in the
chain of mountains stretching from the border of New York toward the
Gulf. "These mountains," he said, "are the basis of my plan. God has
given the strength of the hills to freedom; they were placed here for
the emancipation of the negro race; they are full of natural forts,
where one man for defense will be equal to one hundred for attack; they
are full also of good hiding-places, where large numbers of brave men
could be concealed, and baffle and elude pursuit for a long time.... The
true object to be sought is, first of all, to destroy the money-value of
slave property; and that can only be done by rendering such property
insecure. My plan, then, is to take at first about twenty-five picked
men, and begin on a small scale; supply them arms and ammunition, and
post them in squads of five on a line of twenty-five miles. The most
persuasive and judicious of them shall then go down to the fields from
time to time, as opportunity offers, and induce the slaves to join them,
seeking and selecting the most restless and daring."
It was substantially this plan to which Brown now returned, and he
sought aid among those men at the East who had backed the Free State
cause in Kansas. He was not known to them, as he has been presented to
the reader, as the chief actor in the Pottawatomie massacre, but as a
bold guerrilla chief, who had lost a son in the Kansas strife. Even so,
he was a recognized dissenter from the peace policy which had finally
won success for freedom in the Territory. But there were men in the
anti-slavery ranks who were impatient of the whole policy of peace, and
the impressive personality of Brown won some of these to active support
of his project. Among them were Theodore Parker, Gerritt Smith, Dr. S.
G. Howe, George L. Stearns, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Franklin B.
Sanborn, who formed a secret committee to forward this plan. They were
not informed of its details, but knew its general scope. To a
considerable number Brown was known as a hero of past fights and not
averse to fresh ones. He visited Concord, where he spoke at a public
meeting, and made a great impression on Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau.
Alcott made a pen-picture of him. "I think him equal to anything he
dares,--the man to do the deed, if it must be done, and with the
martyr's temper and purpose. Nature obviously was deeply intent in the
making of him. He is of imposing appearance personally,--tall, with
square shoulders and standing; eyes of deep gray, and couchant, as if
ready to spring at the least rustling, dauntless yet kindly; his hair
shooting backward from low down on his forehead; nose trenchant and
Romanesque; set lips, his voice suppressed yet metallic, suggesting deep
reserves; decided mouth; the countenance and frame charged with power
throughout."
Emerson, from his own observation and from hearsay, drew his spiritual
portrait: "For himself, Brown is so transparent that all men see him
through. He is a man to make friends wherever on earth courage and
integrity are esteemed,--the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no
by-ends of his own. Many of us have seen him, and everyone who has heard
him speak has been impressed alike by his simple, artless goodness and
his sublime courage. He joins that perfect Puritan faith which brought
his ancestor to Plymouth Rock, with his grandfather's ardor in the
Revolution. He believes in two articles--two instruments, shall I
say?--the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence; and he used
this expression in a conversation here concerning them: 'Better that a
whole generation of men, women, and children should pass away by a
violent death, than that one word of either should be violated in this
country.'... He grew up a religious and manly person, in severe poverty;
a fair specimen of the best stock of New England, having that force of
thought and that sense of right which are the warp and woof of
greatness.... Thus was formed a romantic character, absolutely without
any vulgar trait; living to ideal ends, without any mixture of
self-indulgence or compromise, such as lowers the value of benevolent
and thoughtful men we know; abstemious, refusing luxuries, not sourly
and reproachfully, but simply as unfit for his habit; quiet and gentle
as a child, in the house. And as happens usually to men of romantic
character, his fortunes were romantic."
But the romance in this portrait is due quite as much to the imagination
of the artist as to the character of the subject. Emerson seems to have
entirely overlooked in his estimate of Brown that he had no rational
idea of the moral obligations of the citizen to the civil government and
to the peace of society; and that his conscience in its apparent
simplicity was really in dire confusion. The sentence he quotes from
Brown's conversation has its practical commentary in Brown's acts. He
was as ready to take the sword, to redress what he considered a breach
of the Golden Rule or the Declaration of Independence, as if mankind had
not for thousands of years and with infinite cost been building up
institutions for the peaceful settlement of difficulties. In Kansas he
saw in the political struggle simply an issue to be tried out by force
between good men and bad men; and he made himself executioner of a group
of men he considered bad, thereby plunging into a series of murders
utterly repugnant to his natural humanity. He afterward justified the
deed, without avowing his own part in it, which was not fully known till
twenty years later. After Harper's Ferry, the _Springfield Republican_
(which judged him very favorably), speaking partly from personal
knowledge gained during his residence in Springfield, said: "He is so
constituted that when he gets possessed of an idea he carries it out
with unflinching fidelity to all its logical consequences, as they seem
to him, hesitating at no absurdity and deterred by no unpleasant
consequences to himself personally. He is a Presbyterian in his faith,
and feels that it is for this very purpose that God has reared him up."
When a man is so possessed by the conviction that he is God's instrument
as to set himself outside of ordinary human morality, he is presumably
on the verge of shipwreck. The _Republican_, while emphasizing the
popular estimate of John Brown as "a hero," coupled with this the
characterization of him as "a misguided and insane man."
The project he was now pressing--the establishment of a mountain refuge
for fugitive slaves, working toward the depreciation of slave property,
and the ultimate extinction of the system--had a certain superficial
plausibility; and it seemed to avoid the inhumanity of general
insurrection. But it was at the best hardly more than a boy's romance,
and at the last moment Brown abandoned it for a still more impracticable
plan.
On the morning of October 17, 1859, the little town of Harper's Ferry,
on the upper Potomac, awoke to the amazing discovery that in the night
the buildings of the United States armory had been seized and held by a
company of armed men, white and black; that they had gathered in a
number of prisoners, including some prominent citizens; and that their
design was to free the slaves. Brown had struck his blow. With eighteen
faithful associates, including three of his sons, he had lurked near the
town till all was ready; then in the night he had marched in and seized
the armory, and brought in as prisoners some of the neighboring planters
who were told they were held as hostages. Other citizens were captured
almost without resistance in the early morning hours, till the prisoners
were twice the number of their captors. But there was no rising of the
negroes. Brown, after his first easy success, stayed still as if
paralyzed. Either he had no further plan, or his judgment and will
failed him at the crisis. His complete failure to improve his
first advantage--whether the weakness lay in his plan or the
execution--indicated the radical unsoundness which underlay his
impressive exterior. The town rallied its forces, surrounded the armory,
and a fight was kept up through the afternoon. At night Colonel Robert
E. Lee with a force of troops arrived from Washington, and the next
morning they easily stormed the armory, which had lost half its
garrison, including two of Brown's sons, and Brown and the rest of his
party were made prisoners.
The country was in a state of profound peace; Kansas had fallen out of
mind; the Presidential election was a year away; and even political
discussion was languid. The news of the raid came as an utter surprise.
Brown was unknown to the general public, and beyond the patent fact of
an attempted slave insurrection there was at first general bewilderment
as to the meaning of the event. Brown's secret committee,--ignorant of
his exact plan, most of them having had but little to do with him, and
none of them expecting the blow when it fell,--were in no haste to
enlighten the public, or acknowledge their responsibility. But Brown
became his own interpreter. The ubiquitous _New York Herald_ reporter
was instantly on the ground, and never were interviews more eagerly read
and more impressive in their effect than Brown's replies to his various
examiners. A prisoner, wounded, in the shadow of a felon's death, the
old man bore himself with perfect courage and composure. Asked on what
principle he justified his acts, he replied: "Upon the Golden Rule. 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 wronged, that are as
good as you and as precious in the sight of God." The Virginians
recognized his sincerity and integrity. The Governor of the State, Henry
A. Wise--an extreme Southerner in his politics--visited Brown, and said
publicly: "They are mistaken who take Brown to be a madman. He is a
bundle of the best nerves I ever saw,--cut and thrust and bleeding and
in bonds. He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple
ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is but
just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners, and he inspired
me with great trust in his integrity as a man of truth. He is a fanatic,
vain and garrulous, but firm, truthful, and intelligent."
For Brown and his associates there could be but one conclusion to the
business. They were put on trial for treason and murder. They had a fair
trial, and indeed the case admitted of no doubt. They were sentenced to
be hanged, and the sentence was carried out, within six weeks of their
act.
At the North, Brown was widely honored as a hero and a martyr. No one
defended his act,--a slave insurrection, in whatever form, found no
public justification. Probably a considerable majority of the community,
including all the more conservative political elements, condemned the
man and his deed, and perhaps justified his execution. But wherever
anti-slavery feeling was strong, and with a multitude who, apart from
such feeling, were sensitive to striking qualities of manhood, there was
great admiration and sympathy for Brown and sorrow for his fate. John A.
Andrew spoke a common feeling when he said: "Whatever may be thought of
John Brown's acts, John Brown himself was right." Emerson eulogized him
in daring words. If, he said, John Brown is hung, he will glorify the
gallows as Jesus glorified the cross. On the day of his death the church
bells were tolled in many a Northern town. Said the _Springfield
Republican_ the next morning: "There need be no tears for him. Few men
die so happily, so satisfied with time, place, and circumstance, as did
he.... A Christian man hung by Christians for acting upon his
convictions of duty,--a brave man hung for a chivalrous and
self-sacrificing deed of humanity,--a philanthropist hung for seeking
the liberty of oppressed men. No outcry about violated law can cover up
the essential enormity of a deed like this."
Never was a man dealt with more generously by posthumous fame. In the
Civil War, two lines of verse, fitted to a stirring melody, became the
marching song of the Union armies:
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave
His soul is marching on!
This was the last touch of the apotheosis; John Brown became to the
popular imagination the forerunner and martyr of the cause of Union and
freedom.
At the North, one immediate and lasting effect of the tragedy was to
intensify the conviction of the essential wrong of slavery. However
mistaken was Brown's way of attack, it was felt that nothing short of an
organized system of injustice and cruelty could have inspired such a man
to such an attempt. The very logic of facts, which compelled Virginia in
self-defense to hang him, showed the character of the institution which
needed such defense. Yes, it was necessary to hang him,--but what was
the system that made necessary the sacrifice of such a life?
But Andrew's words "whatever may be thought of John Brown's acts"--call
for further consideration. What were his acts, and what were their
consequences? A part of the answer was seen in the bodies of men of
Harper's Ferry, lying in the streets, peaceful men with wives and
children, slain for resisting an armed invasion of their quiet little
village. The first man to fall was a negro porter of a railway train,
who, failing to halt when challenged by one of Brown's sentinels, was
shot. The second man killed was a citizen standing in his own doorway.
The third was a graduate of West Point who, hearing of trouble, came
riding into town with his gun, and was shot as he passed the armory.
Among the letters that came to Brown in prison was one from the widow of
one of the Pottawatomie victims, with these words: "You can now
appreciate my distress in Kansas, when you then and there entered my
house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys, and took them
out in the yard, and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing. You
can't say you did it to free our slaves; we had none and never expected
to own one; but it only made me a poor disconsolate widow with helpless
children."
Brown's first plan, of drawing off the slaves to a mountain
fortress,--peaceable only in semblance, and involving inevitable
fighting,--he exchanged at last for a form of attack which was an
instant challenge to battle. In a conference with Frederick Douglass, on
the eve of the event, Douglass vainly urged the earlier plan, but found
Brown resolved on "striking a blow which should instantly rouse the
country." On the day of his death, Brown penned these sentences and
handed them to one of his guards: "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." But no man so directly and
deliberately aimed to settle the difficulty by bloodshed as he. It is
thus that men make God responsible for what themselves are doing.
The Civil War when it came brought enough of suffering and horror. But
it was mild and merciful compared to what a slave insurrection might
have been. And it was essentially a slave insurrection that Brown aimed
at. The great mass of the Northern people would have recoiled with
abhorrence from a servile revolt. But who could wonder if the Southern
people did not believe this, when they saw honors heaped on a man who
died for inciting such an insurrection? How could they nicely
distinguish between approval of a man's acts and praise for the man
himself? If the North had one thinker who set forth its highest ideals,
its noblest aims, that man was Emerson. Yet Emerson passed Brown's acts
almost unblamed, and named his execution together with that on Calvary.
Not all the disclaimers of politicians, the resolves of conventions,
could reassure the South, after that day of mourning with which Northern
towns solemnized John Brown's death. What wonder that an ardent
Southerner like Toombs, speaking to his constituents a few months later,
called on them to "meet the enemy at the door-sill." And what wonder
that the Southern people were inclined as never before to look upon the
Northern people as their foes?
The more deeply we study human life, the more do we realize that as to
individual responsibility "to understand is to forgive." Half a century
after the event, we may well have forgiveness--not of charity, but of
justice--for John Brown, and for the Governor who signed his
death-warrant; we can sympathize with those who honored and wept for
him, and with those who shuddered at his deed. But, for the truth of
history and for the guidance of the future, we must consider not only
the intentions of men, but the intrinsic character of their deeds; not
only John Brown himself, but John Brown's acts. And in that long series
of deeds of violence and wrong which wrought mutual hatred and
fratricidal war between the two sections of a people, that midnight
attack on the peaceful Virginia village must bear its heavy
condemnation. Hitherto aggression had been almost entirely from the
South; this was a counter-stroke, and told with dire force against the
hope of a peaceable and righteous settlement.
Probably most readers of to-day will wonder at the degree of admiration
and praise which Brown received. It must be ascribed in part to some
quality in his personality, which cast a kind of glamour on some of
those who met him, and inspired such highly idealized portraiture as
Emerson's. But there remains the extraordinary fact that men like
Theodore Parker and Gerritt Smith and Dr. S. G. Howe gave countenance
and aid to Brown's project. Before history's bar, their responsibility
seems heavier than his; they, educated, intelligent, trained in public
service; he an untaught, ill-balanced visionary, who at least staked his
life on his faith. Their complicity in his plot illustrates how in some
moral enthusiasts the hostility to slavery had distorted their
perception of reality. Such men saw the Southern communities through
the medium of a single institution, itself half-understood. They saw, so
to speak, only the suffering slave and his oppressor. They failed to see
or forgot the general life of household and neighborhood, with its
common, kindly, human traits. They did not recognize that Harper's Ferry
was made up of much the same kind of people, at bottom, as Concord. They
did not realize that a slave insurrection meant a universal social
conflagration. Indeed, Brown's original scheme of a general flight of
slaves to a mountain stronghold had a fallacious appearance of avoiding
a violent insurrection, and it was with the background of this plan that
Brown, a wounded prisoner with death impending, appealed to the Northern
imagination as a hero and martyr.
But this glorification of him wrought a momentous effect in the South.
It is best described by those who witnessed it. John S. Wise, son of the
Governor who signed Brown's death-warrant, writes in his graphic
reminiscences, _The End of an Era_: "While these scenes were being
enacted"--the trial and execution of Brown and the Northern comments--"a
great change of feeling took place in Virginia toward the people of the
North and toward the Union itself. Virginians began to look upon the
people of the North as hating them, and willing to see them assassinated
at midnight by their own slaves, led by Northern emissaries; as flinging
away all pretense of regard for laws protecting the slave-owner; as
demanding of them the immediate freeing of their slaves, or that they
prepare against further attacks like Brown's, backed by the moral and
pecuniary support of the North. During the year 1860 the Virginians
began to organize and arm themselves against such emergencies."
The spirit of proscription against all anti-slavery men broke out
afresh. At Berea, Kentucky, a little group of anti-slavery churches and
schools had been growing for six years, championed by the stalwart
Cassius M. Clay, and with the benignant and peaceful John G. Fee as
their leader. A month after Brown's foray a band of armed horsemen
summoned twelve of their men to leave the State. Governor Magoffin said
he could not protect them, and with their families they went into
exile--stout-heartedly chanting at their departure the 37th Psalm: "Fret
not thyself because of evil-doers."
In the South itself there had been developing recently an antagonism to
the slave power. Its strength lay not in the moral opposition to
slavery, which indeed always existed, but was quiet and apparently
cowed; but rather in the growing class of city residents,--merchants and
professional men,--whose interests and feelings were often antagonistic
to the large planters. The hostility to slavery on economic grounds, and
in the white man's interest, found passionate expression in Helper's
_Impending Crisis_, and in a milder form was spreading widely. But at
the menace of invasion and servile insurrection all classes drew
together. Especially the women of the South became suddenly and
intensely interested in the political situation. The suggestion of
personal peril appealed to them, and to the men who were their natural
defenders. The situation is well described in Prof. J. W. Burgess's _The
Civil War and the Constitution_,--a generally impartial book, written
with personal appreciation of the Southern standpoint: "No man who is
acquainted with the change of feeling which occurred in the South
between the 16th of October, 1859, and the 16th of November of the same
year can regard the Harper's Ferry villainy as anything other than one
of the chiefest crimes of our history. It established and
re-established the control of the great radical slaveholders over the
non-slaveholders, the little slaveholders, and the more liberal of the
larger slaveholders, which had already begun to be loosened. It created
anew a solidarity of interest between them all, which was felt by all
with an intensity which overbore every other sentiment. It gave thus to
the great radical slaveholders the willing physical material for the
construction of armies and navies and for the prosecution of war."