Tragic Prelude, by John Steuart Curry, Kansas State Capitol, Topeka (Note 1)
In November of 1837, John Brown was attending a Congregational prayer meeting in Hudson, Ohio commemorating the martyrdom of abolitionist newspaper publisher Elijah Lovejoy, who had been killed that week in Alton, Illinois near the Mississippi River by a proslavery mob. Similar meetings were held throughout the north to recognize Lovejoy and support the movement. Brown was a devout Christian who had been raised in an abolitionist household in Ohio; he had observed his family coming to the aid of fugitive slaves. Now 37, he was particularly moved by Lovejoy's death and from the back row of the prayer meeting, he declared to all in attendance, “Here before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.” (Oats, 41-42)
Brown’s openness to armed conflict as an expression of Christian righteousness is a position that many people of faith would not affirm today. (Note 2) Likewise, it was extreme by nineteenth century standards. Indeed, the Garrisonian abolitionists were ardently pacifist (principle of nonresistance) in their activism. The Quakers, arguably the most active of all religious groups in the struggle against slavery, embraced pacifism, then and now, as a central tenant of their practice of religion. But of all prominent abolitionist figures, John Brown combined an Old Testament sense of righteous indignation with a willingness to execute wrath on the evil that he observed in the abuse of humanity through slavery.
With each passing year, the conflict over slavery itself, even in its political expression, increasingly became a violent conflict. In the experience of many, the inherent violence of the institution itself served to justify such a response, both for those suffering under slavery, and the morally conscious observers who fought for the liberation of the slaves. As noted previously, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, certainly one of the worst laws ever to come out of Congress, emboldened groups of armed southern slave hunters to pursue slaves throughout the north with limited legal restrictions. In response and increasingly over time, armed resistance came to be a part of vigilance groups opposing the slave hunters, and some agents in the underground railroad deployed weapons as well.
Significant in the political development of the slavery conflict was the battle over the future status of Kansas and Nebraska. With the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Congress stipulated that the status of slavery in these territories would be decided by "popular sovereignty." The outcome of this Act was an influx of pro and anti slavery elements into the territories to influence the pending popular vote. Kansas, in particular, became a virtual war zone as factions harassed, terrorized and killed settlers on both sides of the issue. In May, 1856, pro slavery Southerners sacked and burned much of Lawrence, Kansas, a known abolitionist city. It is amazing that only one death resulted from this attack. (Note 3)(Image: Note 4)
John Brown had come to believe in the necessity of an armed resistance to slavery. Accounts of other abolitionists that were acquainted with Brown indicate that for many years he held within his mind a strategy that would lead ultimately to some kind of slave revolution in the Virginia mountains. He cultivated a following of armed fighters and raised resources to support the cause in the years leading up to the ill fated Harpers Ferry raid. Along the way, Brown developed support for his cause and recruited others willing to fight. In the aftermath of the burning of Lawrence Kansas, Brown led a raid that killed five pro-slavery settlers. He and several of his sons spent much of 1856 involved in the guerrilla warfare that emerged in Kansas. His son Frederick was killed and his son John, Jr. was seriously wounded in this prelude to the civil war that was to come. He involvement in this armed crusade became virtually a full time occupation as he traveled west and then back east, gathering supplies and supporters.
In his travels some years prior, Brown met Frederick Douglass in 1847 or 1848, and the two maintained a level of contact for the next ten years. Brown regularly took The North Star, and came to regard Douglass as the gifted orator who could express the powerful prophetic message that he believed. Douglass came to see Brown as one of the most profoundly religious individuals that he had ever known, and it is likely that Brown influenced Douglass's growing openness to the role of armed resistance. The two developed a significant spiritual connection, perhaps best described through the concept of Christian millennialism, a theological perspective with varying forms of expression, but which generally held that history is moving toward a divinely ordained resolution. Blight notes that "Douglass and Brown shared a millennial and apocalyptic sense of history, drawn from the old stories of the prophets and from the zeitgeist of antebellum America." (Blight, 284) For Brown, there would be a reckoning for the wickedness of the country. For Douglass, the millennial theme took a more hopeful expression. Blight describes ... "For Douglass millennial symbolism was not merely a rhetorical device to sustain collective hope; it was a real source of faith. He wanted his black listeners to see "a celebration of the American Jubilee... God reigns, and slavery must yet fall; unless the devil is more potent than the Almighty; unless sin is stronger than righteousness, slavery must perish."" (Blight, 286, quoting Douglass from 1857.)
Eventually, Brown settled on a plan to raid a large federal weapons depot, Harpers Ferry, at the fork of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers in Virginia (present day West Virginia). Brown tried to recruit Douglass to the cause. In August, the two met in Pennsylvania. Douglass's response was to try and dissuade Brown from the suicidal mission, but Brown would not be turned aside. (Blight, 302) At an earlier time, Garrison had also attempted to moderate Brown's methods, chastising him for his willingness to take up violence (although evidence does not indicate that Garrison was aware of Brown's specific plot to raid the arms depot). Brown was on a decades long trajectory that could not be turned around; for him it was a divine mission.
On October 16, 1859, with less than 30 men, Brown raided the armory at Harpers Ferry. His occupation lasted less than two days. Almost all the men were killed or captured (up to five escaped), and Brown himself was seriously injured. Robert E. Lee led the Marine forces that captured Brown's raiders. The survivors of the raid were later tried and executed by the end of the year. Brown's trial created a national media sensation, providing him with an unprecedented platform to express his message of the evils of slavery in the eyes of God and the impending judgment that would certainly fall upon America.
In some of Brown's documentation, evidence was found connecting Douglass and Brown, which was enough to set off a frantic search for the most famous orator of the abolitionist cause. Miraculously, Douglass escaped to New York, then to Rochester, then to Canada. Douglass later said, in a letter to the Rochester Democrat and American, that he had opposed the raid “because he deemed it a wild and rash enterprise. Yet he would willingly support a movement against slavery when there was “a reasonable hope of success” and believed that any effort to overthrow that institution was moral. "Posterity will owe everlasting thanks to John Brown for he has attacked slavery with the weapons precisely adapted to bring it to the death. … Like Sampson, he has laid his hands upon the pillars of this great national temple of cruelty and blood, and when he falls, that temple, will speedily crumble to its final doom, burying its denizens in its ruins.” (Oats, 315, quoting Douglass)
Brown’s raid was deemed as ill conceived and morally questionable by virtually all who publicly commented upon it, but he was widely recognized in the strongest possible terms to be motivated by a deep virtue and love for the brutalized humanity whose suffering he witnessed. Brown himself believed that effort was divinely appointed. He became a martyr for his cause and thereby finally forced into the broad open the latent and irreconcilable polarization between pro and anti-slavery interests, forcing the conflict to a necessary resolution. He was revered and lauded by prominent Northern media outlets and the most noteworthy authors of the day. On the other side, his raid struck a paranoid fear throughout the South from which it would not recover until the outbreak of war. This fear continued to be stoked as additional artifacts of Brown’s plans came to light. When Brown’s maps of the southern states were made public, indicating concentrations of slave populations, fears of plots and insurrections only grew. Militias were organized, and terror, repression, and censorship increased. (Oats, 321)
In commenting on the raid, Garrison stated … “let no one who glories in the revolutionary struggle of 1776 deny the right of the slaves to imitate the example of our fathers. It will be a terribly losing day for all Slavedom when John brown and his associates are brought to the gallows.” (Oats, 318) Other abolitionists “asserted that the South had asked for an invasion like Brown’s; they trumpeted Harpers Ferry as the best news that America ever had – maybe now she would face the slavery curse forthrightly – and proclaimed Brown himself the bravest and humanist man in all the country. (Oats, 318)
Frederick Douglass described Brown poetically, (typically understating his own influence by comparison): "John Brown's raid upon Harpers Ferry was all his own ... His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun. 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." (Blight, 280)
There was a widely held sentiment by the end of 1859 that the conflict was at the precipice of a dramatic resolution, one way or another. Famous American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow commented … “Brown’s raid and death will be a great day in our history; the date of a new Revolution - quite as needed as the old one. Even now as I write, they are leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will come soon.” (Oats, 319)
Contemporary commentators hold that Brown's raid dramatically impacted the political landscape and the presidential election of 1860. (Note 4)
To be continued.
Notes
(1) (From the Online Tour, Kansas State Capitol) "Curry’s interpretation of John Brown and the antislavery movement in Kansas Territory before the Civil War is considered one of his best murals. Rich in symbolism, the painting depicts John Brown as an important, albeit fanatic man who would kill for his beliefs... The tornado and prairie fires represent the storms of war that gathered and the fires of war that swept the land. The men on either side of Brown symbolize the brother against brother conflict of the Civil War. The two dead men at his feet represent the more than one million soldiers and civilians who were either killed or wounded during the war."
(2) That is, taking up arms as a citizen outside of the law enforcement or military. Brown had lost faith in the legitimacy of these government institutions in the context of legal slavery.
(3) During the Civil War, Lawrence Kansas was attacked again and suffered a massacre of approximately 150 people, mostly civilian men and boys, by a Confederate guerrilla group. "The attack on August 21, 1863 targeted Lawrence due to the town's long support of abolition and its reputation as a center for the Jayhawkers, which were free-state militia and vigilante groups known for attacking plantations in pro-slavery Missouri's western counties." (Wikipedia - Lawrence Massacre)
(4) Image URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_states_and_free_states#/media/File:US_SlaveFree1861.gif
Map: United_States_1861-01-1861-02-04.png: Made by User:Golbez. derivative work: Kenmayer (talk) - United_States_1861-01-1861-02-04.png
(5) "The impact of Harpers Ferry quite literally transformed the nation," says Harvard historian John Stauffer, author of The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race. The tide of anger that flowed from Harpers Ferry traumatized Americans of all persuasions, terrorizing Southerners with the fear of massive slave rebellions, and radicalizing countless Northerners, who had hoped that violent confrontation over slavery could be indefinitely postponed. Before Harpers Ferry, leading politicians believed that the widening division between North and South would eventually yield to compromise. After it, the chasm appeared unbridgeable. Harpers Ferry splintered the Democratic Party, scrambled the leadership of the Republicans and produced the conditions that enabled Republican Abraham Lincoln to defeat two Democrats and a third-party candidate in the presidential election of 1860." (Bordewich, Smithsonian.com)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blight, D. W. (2018). Frederick Douglass. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Bordewich, F. M. (2009, October). John Brown's Day of Reckoning. Retrieved from Smithsonian.com: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/john-browns-day-of-reconing-139165084/
Curry, John Steuart. Tragic Prelude. Retrieved from Kansas State Capitol Online Tour: https://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-state-capitol-online-tour-tragic-prelude/16595
Lawrence Massacre. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_massacre
Mayer, H. (1998). All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Oats, S. B. (1970). To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown. Amherst, Massachusetts: The University of Massachusetts Press.
Rapley, R. (Writer), & Rapley, R. (Director). (2013). American Experience: The Abolitionists [Motion Picture]. PBS / Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Wineapple, B. (2013). Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877. New York: Harper Collins.