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John Brown

www.ohiohistorycentral.org

Originally aired on September 29, 1995 - In part 57 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the life of staunch abolitionist John Brown and describes his botched raid of the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.

#57 – The Grim Avenger

It has been said that if you do not understand the pure emotionalism of this nation in the mid-19th Century, you will never understand the Civil War. For seen on paper a century or more later, viewed dispassionately in an age of electronic media saturation, and with a political sophistication that borders on cynicism, what happened then really does not make sense.

But emotionalism ruled that day. It swept the country like a tidal wave, uncontrollable and destructive. No individual in the years immediately before civil war more personified a society gone made than fierce-eyed, iron-willed John Brown.

He was a strange, misguided romanticist who had failed in every undertaking of his life. As Brown grew older, as the world gave him hard knocks, as his lack of business system and foresight plagued him into one dead-end street after another, Brown’s character changed for the worst.

By the late 1850s he still had the old views of Puritan idealism; but a vein of ruthlessness peculiar to fanatics – and especially fanatics scarred by failure – had become dominant. Brown’s whole life centered on the elimination of slavery in this country. More ominously, he forgot the New Testament mercy of a loving God and placed his faith in the harsh, implacable Jehovah of the Old Testament.

Brown’s favorite biblical passage became: “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.” So in the autumn of 1859, he and twenty-two followers came to Virginia with vague plans for seizing the federal arsenal along the bank of the Potomac River at Harper’s Ferry. From there, Brown would call on all slaves to desert their masters and join his band. He in turn would lead them to freedom like some new Moses taking the children of Israel to the Promised Land.

Abolitionists had talked long enough. The hour for action had come.

The ensuing John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry was amateurish and a pitiful failure. Four innocent townspeople, including a black freedman, were killed. In Brown’s disorganized thinking, he forgot to bring a map, he forgot to prepare a defensive position, he forgot to bring food, he forgot even to issue his call to freedom.

United States Marines easily put down the invasion, killing half of Brown’s band in the process. A week later, Brown went on trial for insurrection, treason against Virginia, and four counts of murder. He was found guilty on all charges and, a scant one month later, hanged at Charlestown, Virginia.

Brown might well have avoided the gallows if, at his court hearing, he had displayed any measure of the insanity many were convinced he possessed. Yet the old man was clever enough to see that he was worth more to the abolitionist cause dangling from a rope than living out his life in a lunatic’s cell. So his behavior from arraignment to execution was impeccable. Of Brown, it could be said that nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.

Northern anti-slavers hailed him as “St. John” and a man who had made “the gallows glorious like the cross”. To Southerners, Brown was a murderer, a terrorist who got exactly the punishment he deserved. And in every community of the South, militia companies began organizing for other John Browns who might invade their homeland.

Violence begets violence. Sixteen months later, civil war blew apart the American experiment in democracy. It is not surprising that many Northern soldier-boys who marched off to accomplish what John Brown had attempted would sing his song and step with his soul. And scores of reports later appeared of badly wounded Billy Yanks who swore that in the battle they had seen a joyful John Brown walking amid the gun smoke while bullets whistled through his shadowy figure.

Dr. James I. "Bud" Robertson, Jr., is a noted scholar on the American Civil War and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech.