John Brown: Patriot, Traitor, Terrorist?

[MendotoManteo]

Of all the figures in American history that intrigue me the most, it's John Brown. Whatever one may think of him, I believe him to be the most exceptional American that has ever lived. He's largely fallen into the dustbin of history, although the Showtime "The Good Lord Bird" miniseries during Covid seems to have revived his legacy a bit. (It's very good, by the way, and I recommend a watch. Ethan Hawke great.)

In his biography of the man, Evan Carton writes the following in his preface:

"For drama, controversy, and historical impact, the life of John Brown exceeds that of any other private citizen of the United States. If American patriotism is defined as unqualified commitment to the nation's founding religious and political ideals - a commitment both to live by them and to die for them - then Brown may count as one of America's first patriots, though he was not born until 1800 and was hanged for treason in 1859."

I remember, growing up, to the extent we were taught anything at all about Brown, it was as if a footnote. Or even some insane caricature.

Perhaps it's my socialist sympathies, but I think the way we look at the Revolution and the Civil War is wrong. The Revolution was not a revolution. In fact, it was a class war between the colonial and British elites. The Civil War was a revolution, provided you consider it began at Harper's Ferry in 1859 and not at Fort Sumter in 1861.

Whatever the case, what do you consider the historical impact of John Brown? And what do you consider him to be: patriot, traitor, terrorist, etc?

 

[donbosco]

A reading of John Brown's address to the court that found him guilty of Treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, Conspiracy to incite a slave insurrection, and Murder and ordered his execution.

 

[MendotoManteo]

A reading of John Brown's address to the court that found him guilty of Treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, Conspiracy to incite a slave insurrection, and Murder and ordered his execution.

Thank you for sharing! I had not seen that video before.

 

[donbosco]

Interested in what folks think of Brown. He comes up often in US History Classes...adds some historical nuance to discussions of slavery and the Civil War to be sure.

 

[MendotoManteo]

Interested in what folks think of Brown. He comes up often in US History Classes...adds some historical nuance to discussions of slavery and the Civil War to be sure.

Poor John Brown. No one comments much because very few remember. As we've been taught to forget him.

I don't know what US History courses you took, but mine never involved John Brown. He was an afterthought.

And rightfully so. Because it was never the intention of this country to live up to its stated goals. As I posited with the fact the Revolution not a revolution and just a class war.

But John Brown actually believed in all that bullshit the Founders stated. And he believed in the New Testament.

If "all men are created equal," then John Brown tried to fulfill that as best as anyone who has ever lived.

Unfortunately, most Americans don't even know who he is anymore. And that's intentional.

 

[donbosco]

I never had a history course that mentioned John Brown until I got to Carolina to be sure but I read a lot on my own as a kid and knew about him.

These days I teach courses myself and I've already brought that very speech to an assembly of around 100 for one course and will do so again in a few weeks to another.

Ultimately it makes a thoughtful juxtaposition with both Lincoln's 1838 Lyceum Speech , Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July," and MLK Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail." You can throw in Thoreau's Civil Disobedience for good measure but I usually don't since he didn't really risk much in my opinion while Brown, Douglass, and King did without a doubt. Lincoln is also different because he urges obesience even to bad laws. though I think later on he shifted his way of thinking at least somewhat. Obviously, Brown was a murderer and committed insurrection but he clearly believed that he was doing right...and biblically to boot. He also accepted his execution as the price for obeying his conscience. Brown's speech tends to bring forward the question, "If you lived in tumultuous times where you saw wrong-doing around you, what would you do? What should you do?" Sometimes I throw Ida B. Wells and Sojourner Truth into the mix as well as Harry Haywood, Lucy Parsons, Rosa Luxembourg...the list goes on and on and sometimes students come up with their own resistors to add in. A student last year suggested Colin Kaepernick be added.

 

[MendotoManteo]

I never had a history course that mentioned John Brown until I got to Carolina to be sure but I read a lot on my own as a kid and knew about him.

These days I teach courses myself and I've already brought that very speech to an assembly of around 100 for one course and will do so again in a few weeks to another.

Ultimately it makes a thoughtful juxtaposition with both Lincoln's 1838 Lyceum Speech , Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July," and MLK Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail." You can throw in Thoreau's Civil Disobedience for good measure but I usually don't since he didn't really risk much in my opinion while Brown, Douglass, and King did without a doubt. Lincoln is also different because he urges obesience even to bad laws. though I think later on he shifted his way of thinking at least somewhat. Obviously, Brown was a murderer and committed insurrection but he clearly believed that he was doing right...and biblically to boot. He also accepted his execution as the price for obeying his conscience. Brown's speech tends to bring forward the question, "If you lived in tumultuous times where you saw wrong-doing around you, what would you do? What should you do?" Sometimes I throw Ida B. Wells and Sojourner Truth into the mix as well as Harry Haywood, Lucy Parsons, Rosa Luxembourg...the list goes on and on and sometimes students come up with their own resistors to add in. A student last year suggested Colin Kaepernick be added.

That's very well put.

What do you teach? I have an English PhD from the University of Tennessee. Taught many classes but never brought up John Brown, because he was lost to even me at the time. This is mid-00s to 2014 or so.

The people you mention. It reminds me how propagandized we are. Despite thinking that's something that goes on in other countries. And not here.

No, it very much goes on here. There's a reason why practically no one knows John Brown anymore.

And, I'll say this. We watch our football games every Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday, in particular, commercials come on where there's a "middle-class" family doing its thing in a home that practically no one can afford anymore. But they make it seem like it's the way every American family should live. It's so seamless. Just like walking down the street and seeing all the ads.

 

[donbosco]

I teach history...Atlantic World, Latin America, US.

 

[C-Money]

What about Nat Turner?

 

[05C40]

I don't recall, but I assume I first heard of John Brown was in one of my elementary school classes when we studied US History. The first time I have a specific recollection of studying John Brown was the February of my junior year of high school, in 1971. That year, in February, we put up our regular history book and used a book that focused on Black history. So we studied John Brown, whom I had heard of before, but learned more about. We also studied about Buffalo soldiers, whom I had not heard of before. I don't know if there was a particular focus on the various roles black soldiers played in our nation's wars, but I do know that was what caught my attention. I do not believe we studied the Wilmington Insurrection, because I didn't learn of that until I was an adult.

As for Nat Turner, I first learned of him via the book, "The Confessions of Nate Turner" in 1967 or 1968, when I was 13 or 14, when my father bought a copy and put it in the bookshelf after he had finished it.

The intensity of the disrespect for black soldiers during WW1 and WW2 I was not fully appraised of until I was in the Army in the early to mid 1970's, when efforts were made to educate soldiers about what black soldiers had to put up with in the past. While in the Army, most of my platoon sergeants were black and about half my company commanders were black. And the Brigadier General who commanded the "Group" my unit was in was both black and a Medal of Honor winner.

 

[donbosco]

Regarding African American soldiers and veterans, I often teach about the life of Harry Haywood...

"Haywood was born in 1898 in what is now Omaha, Nebraska, to a family of self-educated ex-slaves. Forced out of Omaha by racist violence, Haywood’s family settled in Minneapolis, where he lived during his adolescence. Faced with rampant prejudice in Minneapolis schools, Haywood ended his formal education in the 8th grade and went to work full time, taking on a variety of occupations.

Haywood moved to Chicago in 1915, where he soon ended up in the National Guard, caught up in the war mobilization for WWI. He suffered all the indignities and injustices of the Black soldiers of his time, serving in segregated units, and training in the citadel of reaction, the Deep South.

Even while deployed in France, Haywood’s regiment could not escape Jim Crow’s long shadow. The racist military establishment attempted to infect the French people with prejudice and refused to allow any Black officers to command the segregated troops. These efforts to reproduce U.S. racism in France largely failed, and Haywood, like many other soldiers in both World Wars, drank deeply that most powerful of intoxicants: “freedom.”

Upon returning to the United States, Haywood walked directly into the 1919 Chicago Race Riot. Throughout 1919 race riots raged across the United States, with that summer being known as “Red Summer,” because of the blood that was spilled by racist mobs. That was not the only blood that was spilled however, and in cities and towns across the country, Black communities—spearheaded by war veterans—organized to defend their neighborhoods.

Harry Haywood joined other Black veterans in Chicago, who mounted a Browning sub-machine gun in an apartment window and stood guard with Springfield rifles. Haywood mentions this moment in his autobiography as the most important turning point of his life. Fed up with the endless racism in U.S. society—and believing firmly that a better world was possible—Haywood committed himself from then on “to struggle against whatever it was that made racism possible.”

There's more at this link:

The life and legacy of Harry Haywood – Liberation School

For every Black leader who has been canonized, there is another who is faded into the background: Haywood is one of the latter.

www.liberationschool.org

 

[donbosco]

After meeting John Brown in 1847, Frederick Douglass remarked, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." In 1855 he became a leader of antislavery guerrilla fighters in what became known as “Bloody Kansas.” In a retaliatory attack on proslavery settlers there, he and his sons brutally killed five and fought for a year in the region, including Missouri. He and 21 men attacked the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia on October 16, 1859. Their plan was to steal the weapons there and distribute them to enslaved people so as to fuel a great uprising, emancipation, and ultimately abolition. He believed that in all his actions he was doing the work of the Christian God. He was captured soon after Harpers Ferry and quickly tried and convicted of treason. He was allowed to speak on his sentencing #OTD (November 2, 1859). He addressed the court in the following way.

"...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, brother, 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.. . . I believe to have interfered as I have done, . . . in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be 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."

At this link David Straithairn reenacts that speech. It is worth a listen.


Here is a transcript of the entire speech: John Brown’s Statement (1859)

John Brown was hanged on December2, 1959.



The image here is a mural entitled “Tragic Prelude” by John Steuart Curry and hangs in the Kansas Statehouse. Its placement there was not without controversy. Later a band would adopt the artwork for an album cover.

 

[Mulberry Heel]

Frederick Douglass on John Brown: "John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was all his own...His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was a taper light, his was the burning sun. Mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the silent shores of eternity. I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave."

Pretty powerful tribute from a former slave who became one of the greatest abolitionist leaders and spokesmen in American history.

 

[Mulberry Heel]

I don't recall, but I assume I first heard of John Brown was in one of my elementary school classes when we studied US History. The first time I have a specific recollection of studying John Brown was the February of my junior year of high school, in 1971. That year, in February, we put up our regular history book and used a book that focused on Black history. So we studied John Brown, whom I had heard of before, but learned more about. We also studied about Buffalo soldiers, whom I had not heard of before. I don't know if there was a particular focus on the various roles black soldiers played in our nation's wars, but I do know that was what caught my attention. I do not believe we studied the Wilmington Insurrection, because I didn't learn of that until I was an adult.

As for Nat Turner, I first learned of him via the book, "The Confessions of Nate Turner" in 1967 or 1968, when I was 13 or 14, when my father bought a copy and put it in the bookshelf after he had finished it.

The intensity of the disrespect for black soldiers during WW1 and WW2 I was not fully appraised of until I was in the Army in the early to mid 1970's, when efforts were made to educate soldiers about what black soldiers had to put up with in the past. While in the Army, most of my platoon sergeants were black and about half my company commanders were black. And the Brigadier General who commanded the "Group" my unit was in was both black and a Medal of Honor winner.

Stephen Oates book The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion is a quick, pretty good read on Turner's rebellion. And I always thought the story of the Harlem Hellfighters in WWI was simply amazing, but it's almost never discussed in most history classes and they've been mostly forgotten to American history, sadly. The story of Henry Johnson single-handedly holding off an entire unit of attacking German soldiers puts Sergeant York to shame, but of course York was white.

 

[donbosco]

IIRC, Brown attempted to talk Douglass to join in the raid on Harpers Ferry but was unsuccessful. Also note that Douglass made that evaluation before the events at Potawatome Creek in 1755. I admit to not knowing enough about their relationship.

BTW, there were two Tar Heels with Brown at Harpers Ferry...both were free black men, John Leary of Fayetteville and John Copeland from Raleigh.

 

[donbosco]

And the exclamation? My momma and many others in her generation, born in The South just about right to have their teen, early-adult years take place during the Great Depression, often said, "Well, I'll be John Brown!"

I also heard the song sung by my Grandmother, born in 1883 in The South -- "John Brown's Body."