New and Noteworthy--Freedom's Dawn, October 16 through December 2, 1860

Freedoms' Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia, Louis DeCaro, Jr., Rowman and Littlefield, Publishing, 450 pp, 18 b/w illustrations, end notes, bibliography, index, $45.00.

From the publisher: John Brown’s failed raid on the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry Virginia served as a vital precursor to the Civil War, but its importance to the struggle for justice is free standing and exceptional in the history of the United States. In Freedom's Dawn, Louis DeCaro, Jr., has written the first book devoted exclusively to Brown during the six weeks between his arrest and execution. DeCaro traces his evolution from prisoner to convicted felon, to a prophetic figure, then martyr, and finally the rise of his legacy. In doing so he touches upon major biographical themes in Brown’s story, but also upon antebellum political issues, violence and terrorism, and the themes of political imprisonment and martyrdom. 

Blurbs: "Louis DeCaro's treatment of the prophetic John Brown's last six weeks is a gem. Don't miss it!"    Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary

No scholar has contributed more to John Brown studies than Louis DeCaro, and Freedom’s Dawn is a masterful new contribution to his indispensable body of work.                                                            Steven Lubet, author of The "Colored Hero" of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War Against Slavery and John Brown's Spy: The Adventurous Life and Tragic Confession of John E. Cook

"Freedom's Dawn" is the most thoughtful and judicious rendering yet of John Brown's final weeks.  In a moving narrative, Louis DeCaro, Jr. presents Brown not as a crazed terrorist but as a determined, heroic prophet of human rights"  David S. Reynolds, author of John Brown, Abolitionist and Walt Whitman's America

Front Flap: John Brown's failed raid on the Federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry,Virginia, served as a vital precursor to the Civil War, and its importance to the struggle for justice is exceptional in the history of the United States.  Freedom's Dawn is the first book devoted exclusively to Brown during the six weeks between his arrest and execution.  Louis DeCaro Jr. traces Brown's evolution from prisoner to convicted felon, to prophetic figure, and then martyr, finally examining the rise of his legacy.  In doing so, DeCaro touches upon major biographical themes in Brown's story, and also upon antebellum political issues, violence and terrorism and the themes of political imprisonment and martyrdom.
          

CWL--- John Brown: An Abolitionist Taliban?

Today in Springfield Illinois an American Taliban was arrested beside van-sized bomb parked in front of a federal courthouse.

In David Reynolds' biography of John Brown, the author makes the point that African-American historians have always understood John Brown. It is white historians who see 1) a lunatic, 2) a Bible thumper, 3.) a sociopath 4.) a failure as a family provider, 5.) a psychopath, 6) a dope, 7.) an egomaniacal individual seeking martyrdom 8.) a character who has wandered out of a Flannery O'Connor short story and into history.

Even 150 years removed from the October 16-17 raid on U.S. arsenal at Harper Ferry, it is difficult to understand John Brown's character and motivations. He has always been an enigma to CWL. Currently scholarship is discarding stereotypes of John Brown. David Reynold's biography, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, Evan Carton's biography, Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America , Jon Stauffer's treatment of radical abolitionists, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race have set the stereotypes of John Brown on their heels.

Take a glace at the Gilda Lehrman Center's October conference on John Brown the last week in October.

How I Wrote John Brown, Abolitionist: A Cultural Biography (David Reynolds)
The Word and the Life: John Brown as Reader

The Wind and the Whirlwind: Can Biography Explain John Brown?

From Armed Propaganda to Creative Suffering: John Brown and Traditions of Expressive Violence

'I'll be John Browned': Abolition in the Southern Imagination

John Brown and the Tradition of Attacking Slavery at the Source

Was John Brown a Terrorist?

John Brown and the Legacies of Violence

Considerations on the Rhetoric of Race War in the Antebellum South

The Harpers Ferry Historical Association and the Harpers Ferry National Park will host a three day event on the anniversary of the raid. At 10pm on October 16 2009, a group will leave the Kennedy Farm where Brown's band was ensconced for 90 days. From the Kennedy Farm marchers will walk the five miles to the arsenal site and its iconic fire engine house building.

In period clothing and with a lantern, CWL will be among the marchers and will be searching for that 'period rush' for which reenactors long. Possibly even a few others on the march may have 'the black heart of abolitionism' pulsing wildly in their chests.

Forthcoming: The Charge---Treason Against Virginia

John Brown's Trial, Brian McGinty, Harvard University Press, 384 pp., October 15, 2009. $27.95.
Mixing idealism with violence, abolitionist John Brown cut a wide swath across the United States before winding up in Virginia, where he led an attack on the U.S. armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Supported by a “provisional army” of 21 men, Brown hoped to rouse the slaves in Virginia to rebellion. But he was quickly captured and, after a short but stormy trial, hanged on December 2, 1859.

Brian McGinty provides the first comprehensive account of the trial, which raised important questions about jurisdiction, judicial fairness, and the nature of treason under the American constitutional system. After the jury returned its guilty verdict, an appeal was quickly disposed of, and the governor of Virginia refused to grant clemency. Brown met his death not as an enemy of the American people but as an enemy of Southern slaveholders.

Historians have long credited the Harpers Ferry raid with rousing the country to a fever pitch of sectionalism and accelerating the onset of the Civil War. McGinty sees Brown’s trial, rather than his raid, as the real turning point in the struggle between North and South. If Brown had been killed in Harpers Ferry (as he nearly was), or condemned to death in a summary court-martial, his raid would have had little effect. Because he survived to stand trial before a Virginia judge and jury, and argue the case against slavery with an eloquence that reverberated around the world, he became a symbol of the struggle to abolish slavery and a martyr to the cause of freedom.

Brian McGinty is an attorney and writer specializing in American history and law. He is also the author of Lincoln and the Court.

Text Source: Harvard University Press

Image Below: Photobucket

CWL Notes: Harper’s Ferry Raid at 150: John Brown’s War Against Slavery

On Sunday night October 16 1859, nineteen men began a short five-mile march from a rented farmhouse to the U.S. factory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Their goal was to seize weapons and hostages and retreat to the highest peaks of the Appalachian Mountains where a permanent trail heading northward would be established. By Monday morning most of the arms had been seized and the hostages taken. The plan was to leave at dawn but they stayed, were besieged and captured by Tuesday morning. During that time, rumors of a slave revolt spread and apprehension accompanied by fear spread outward from Harpers Ferry.

For the past 150 years, questions about Brown have plagued historians. Stephen Oates, considered by many to be Brown’s best biographer, explained Brown’s raid as an effort by a religious fanatic who relied on God for the plan and its outcome. Indeed, Brown was deeply religious and fanatical regarding the abolition of slavery. Religion in several of its varieties may be a catalyst for violence for the purpose of vengeance, and judgment.

But religion in and of it self is not an explanation for Brown’s taking his chosen path to the gallows. Rigorously pious, zealously abolitionist, and deeply egalitarian, John Brown believed that God and the U.S. was at war with slavery. Many of those who agreed with his notion of resistance to slavery did not accept, promote or call for violence.

Brown’s plan was not revealed to him by God; it was Brown’s own and it was flawed. Beginning with the arrest and through the Civil War Brown was repeatedly described with Biblical metaphors. This is similar to the eulogies of Lincoln that relied heavily on Biblical images and stories. Brown saw his war against slavery as being similar to other wars found in the Bible. Both Brown and his surviving children reported that he never wrestled with God or received revelations regarding slavery. Brown did not claim to be a prophet or martyr. The possibility of failure at Harper’s Ferry was weighted against the relentless advance of a Slave Power that could not be defeated through democratic agitation and politics. In the flow of history Brown’s raid on the Harper’s Ferry armaments was poor tactics but a successful in terms of strategy. The raid induced a crisis of fear in the South, a crisis of unity in the Democratic Party, and a crisis of a minority presidency. These crises lead to a war that included emancipation as a tactic. By the third anniversary of John Brown’s raid the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation had been issued. The battle at Sharpsburg Maryland that allowed Lincoln to issue the proclamation was a day’s hike from the farmhouse that Brown had occupied until the late evening of October 16, 1859.

Notes on reading of Robert E. McGlone, John Brown’s War Against Slavery, pp. 1-9.

Image Source: Civil War History website

CWL---150th Anniversary: John Brown, Harpers Ferry, and The 'Crimes of This Land' Purged With Blood

John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry: A Brief History With Documents, Jonathan Earle, Bedford St. Martins Press, 158 pp., selected bibliography, index, 3 illustrations, 2 maps, questions for consideration, 2008, paperback, $12.95

On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown and 19 others seized the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The actions of Brown's men brought national attention to the emotional divisions concerning slavery.

In the summer of 1859, John Brown with 21 others took up residence near Harpers Ferry on the Kennedy farm a few miles northeast of Harpers Ferry in Maryland. He trained a group of twenty-two men, including his sons Oliver, Owen, and Watson, in military maneuvers. On the night of Sunday, October 16, Brown and all but three of the men seized the armory, Halls Rifle Works and hostages from nearby farms. The first Harpers Ferry citizen to confront the raiders was Hayward Shepard, an African-American railroad baggage handler.

In general, the plan was to seize weapons and to add African-Americans to the party. Within 12 hours from the beginning of the raid, authorities in Washington ordered Colonel Robert E. Lee and an infantry detachment to Harpers Ferry. At 6:30a on the morning of Tuesday, October 18, Lee ordered a group of men to storm the engine house. In the brief but dramatic assault, Brown was received a serious head wound. Brown was taken to the Jefferson County seat of Charles Town for trial.

In his brief history of Brown and his raid, Jonathan Earle sketches the key elements of Brown's life, the political condition of the nation, the raid and the immediate responses to it. One historian has describe the responses to John Brown as being being in one of two categories. Brown was incompetent and a sociopath or Brown was martyred by slaveholders.

Earle's work is among the best concise introductions to the event of 150 years ago. Brown receives a new biography about every 20 years. Recently, Stephen Oates' To Purge This Land With Blood and David Reynolds John Brown have done much to redeem Brown's reputation. Those biographies from the 1920s through the 1960 focus on the irrationality and religious fundamentalism of the man. As justice and race issues came to the fore beginning in the 1950s through the present day, Brown's life and crimes have been reinterpeted in the light of the issues of the 1850s and 1860s.

Additionally, terroristic acts motivated by religion are more common today than Americans wish. Brown's understanding was that America was at war in the 1850s. The enslavement of about four million Africans was warfare against the Judeo-Christian God's desire for complete equality among all humans. Most abolitionists did not see Blacks, enslaved or free, to be equal. Abolitionists for the most part wished to do away with slavery but not inequality. Brown wished to do away with both slavery and inequality.

By offering a brief history, 16 relevant documents, a chronology, a list of relevant participants, and 2 maps, Jonathan Earle's book is an approachable introduction that will probably generate an interest for further study and possibly a visit to Harpers Ferry National Historic Park.

News---Preservation: 'Bleeding Kansas', Lecompton Saves Constitution Hall

Lecompton, Kansas' Constitution Hall state historic site renovation is complete. Layer upon layer of old paint was removed from the exterior of Constitution Hall State Historic Site to prepare it for a new paint job. The original brown-colored 1856 black walnut clapboard installed by Sheriff Samuel Jones and his crew more than 149 years ago was cleaned and repainted.

Constitution Hall, erected by Samuel Jones in 1856, became the place were the Kansas Territorial Government convened. In the fall of 1857 (October 19), the Lecompton Constitutional Convention met and drafted a pro-slavery constitution in the upper story of the building. The downstairs was rented as the federal land office and private law offices. During 1857 this building was one of the busiest and most important in Kansas Territory. Thousands of settlers and speculators filed claims in the United States land office on the first floor. They sometimes fought hand-to-hand for their share of the rich lands that were opening for settlement. The government was removing the Native Americans from Kansas to make their lands available to whites.

Upstairs the district court periodically met to try to enforce the territorial laws. Most free-state people refused to obey these laws because they had been passed by the pro slavery territorial legislature. This resistance made law enforcement nearly impossible for territorial officials. Time after time the territorial governors called out federal troops from Fort Leavenworth or Fort Riley to maintain order. In January 1857 the second territorial legislative assembly met on the upper floor. Although still firmly pro slavery, this group removed some of the earlier laws that their antislavery neighbors opposed.

The Lecompton Constitutional Convention met that fall in this same second-floor assembly room. The purpose of the convention was to draft a constitution to gain statehood for Kansas. Newspaper correspondents from across the country gathered to report on the meetings. Many Americans feared a national civil war if the convention could not satisfy both pro slavery and antislavery forces. Regrettably, compromise proved impossible because pro slavery men dominated the convention. They created a document that protected slavery no matter how the people of Kansas Territory voted. This was intolerable for their antislavery opponents, who refused to participate in what they considered to be an illegal government. Eventually the Lecompton Constitution was defeated at the national level. It never went into effect.

Instead, free-state forces rallied their supporters. They gained control of the territorial legislature in the October 1857 election. Two months later this new legislature was called into special session to deal with critical territorial problems. They met in the same Lecompton assembly hall that their political enemies had controlled only a few weeks before. Here they began to reform the laws of Kansas Territory according to their own beliefs. That work continued during later legislative sessions. In 1858 the assembly was moved from the pro slavery capital of Lecompton to the free-state town of Lawrence. After 1894 Constitution Hall was owned by Odd Fellows Lodge number 413. Over the years they shared their lodge room with the Grand Army of the Republic, the Masons, and the Modern Woodmen of America. Rebekah lodge number 698 took over responsibility for the building in 1946.

Source: Historic Lecompton, Kansas

News---The Opera's Not Over Until John Brown Swings

John Brown Opera In Kansas City

On May 3, The Lyric Opera - Kansas City presents the world premier of the opera "John Brown," which promises to "bring to life" Brown's career in Kansas and other events in his tumultuous life. Other scheduled performances are May 5, 7, 9 and 11.

John Brown Opera Synopsis

In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which provided that the question of slavery in those territories was to be decided by their residents. This precipitated a proto-civil war between North and South, both sides sending men and money to Kansas to swing the balance of national power. The South was in control of the federal government; it feared that abolition of slavery in the new states would mean the end of its power. Nearest to Kansas was Missouri, a slave state; in the first territorial elections, thousands of armed men from the South crossed the border, terrorized election officials, stuffed the ballot boxes and "elected" a pro-slavery Kansas government which immediately enacted repressive laws: anti-slavery sentiments were punishable by prison sentences or death. This territorial government was given official sanction in Washington.

ACT I
Lawrence, Kansas Territory, December 8, 1855

Invaders from the South are threatening the free-state settlers of Lawrence, Kansas. Martha and her brother Tom, both pacifists, try to persuade her fiancé, John Brown's son, Oliver, to leave town with them, but he refuses. The leader of the settlers, Robinson, and the pro-slavery Governor both want to avoid conflict, but each is opposed in his own camp: Robinson by the abolitionist John Brown, the Governor by the blood-thirsty Sheriff. When Lt. Jeb Stuart arrives without the troops the Governor had requested, the Governor crosses the river to sign a peace treaty with Robinson. Stuart, a proud Southerner, overhears John Brown describing the evils of slavery. This leads to a heated confrontation, with Stuart's slave caught in the middle. Alone with the slave, Brown tells how, like Moses, he has been chosen by God to lead the slaves to freedom. Robinson and the Governor return and are about to sign an evasive treaty, but Brown and the settlers suspect that they are being sold out to the slavery side. At the height of renewed conflict, Tom's body is brought in. Martha tells how he was murdered by the invaders. Her anguish brings about reconciliation. The treaty is signed while Brown warns, "This is but the prelude to disaster."

ACT II
Scene 1 - A meadow in Kansas, May, 1856

On their homestead in eastern Kansas, Brown's family and friends sing a spiritual with a slave whose family Brown rescued. Brown and Oliver bring news that an army of Southerners has entered Kansas, swearing to kill the Browns and all other abolitionists. These invaders are being helped by Brown's slave-trading neighbors on Pottawatomie Creek. Martha, still distraught over her brother's death, comes to say goodbye. Oliver convinces her to stay, to believe in the power of love. Frederick Douglass, the great black leader, comes to visit his old friend Brown, who reveals his plan to use the Southern Allegheny Mountains as a base for an attack on slavery. He then persuades Douglass to give a speech. Some of Brown's Southern neighbors burst in, assisted by U. S. troops under Lt. Stuart, looking for an escaped slave. Thinking Douglass was the fugitive, the neighbors beat and tie him. Douglass proves his innocence, but Stuart supervises the burning of the Browns' outlawed books. Brown leads Douglass away; when he returns a messenger comes with news that war had begun: Lawrence has been burned, its leaders jailed. Furious that there was no resistance, Brown calls for a retaliatory strike against his Southern neighbors. With the words, "The Northern army is born tonight," he leads Oliver and several others off, carrying swords.

Scene 2 - Emerson's house, Concord, Massachusetts, March, 1857

In his home in Concord, Massachusetts, Ralph Waldo Emerson praises Brown as the hero who saved Kansas. Amos Lawrence, the wealthy manufacturer for whom the Kansas town was named, decries Brown's lawlessness. While Emerson and Henry Thoreau defend Brown, he is given supplies and clothing by the people of Concord. Brown declares that he will soon carry his fight into Virginia. Lawrence denounces this as leading to civil war, withdraws his support, and warns the others that if they aid Brown, they too will be guilty of treason. Brown contrasts their luxurious surroundings with the plight of the slaves and elicits even greater sympathy and gifts.


ACT III
Scene 1 - A farm house in Maryland, October, 1859

Brown and eighteen men are hiding out in a farm house five miles from Harpers Ferry, Virginia. They need more men and money. Brown asks Douglass to join him, but when the black leader learns that the attack will be against the U. S. arsenal, he refuses. Brown insists that even if they fail, the raid will create such panic in the South that it will lead to civil war, the only means of ending slavery. Martha, now Oliver's wife and pregnant, has also become an abolitionist. Brown confides his doubt and depression to his daughter Annie, who assures him of the love and support of his family. When new recruits arrive with gold he interprets it as a sign to begin.

Scene 2 - Harpers Ferry, Virginia, three days later

The attack on Harpers Ferry had failed. Oliver, wounded and delirious, dies singing a hymn with his father. Governor Wise of Virginia is angered at news that the North is proclaiming Brown a hero. He prevents a crowd from lynching the wounded Brown, whom he then interrogates. As reporters take notes, Brown's eloquence puts the Governor on the defensive. When Brown's maps and letters are found, the Governor fears insurrection all through the South. He and Stuart goad the crowd to call for secession and war. A reporter whispers a rescue plan to Brown, who replies, "No! I am now worth inconceivably more to hang than I am to live."

APOTHEOSIS
A church in a Northern state, December 2, 1859

In a church in a Northern state, Douglass and Martha, she holding her baby, address a crowd gathered to mark the moment of Brown's execution in Virginia, and "to witness his resurrection." Douglass and Martha describe Brown's hanging, which the audience sees in large silhouette. "Now bury him!" Douglass says. "You cannot bury him! As long as men love freedom, John Brown will never die."

For Songs, Interviews, Lessons Plans and above text go to http://www.kcopera.org/OurSeason/johnbrown.html

CWL: Wasn't it just last October that the San Francisco Opera Company performed Philip Glass' Appomattox opera? See CWL's remarks at http://civilwarlibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/10/is-it-over-when-fat-generals-sing.html

CWL ---- Meteor of the War: John Brown's Spin Doctors

'Meteor of the War': Melville, Thoreau, and Whitman Respond to John Brown, Ljungquist, Kent, American Literature, 61:4 9 (December 1989), 674-680.

The Portent, Herman Melville (1859)

Hanging from the beam,
Slowly swaying (such the law),
Gaunt the shadow on your green,
Shenandoah!
The cut is on the crown
(Lo John Brown)
And the stabs shall heal no more.

Hidden in the cap
Is the anguish none can draw;
So your future veils its face,
Shenandoah!
But the streaming beard is shown
(Weird John Brown),
The meteor of the war.

Within The Portent, Melville uses several images: meteors harkening uncommon events, weirdness recalling the three Weird Sisters of Macbeth who are fate's instruments, and the veil covering faces of blind seers in classical tragedy.

These three descriptions of John Brown 'underscore his prophetic role in the conflict about to consume the nation.' (674) Between October 16th and December 2 1859, meteor showers were widely covered in the newspapers of New England; on October 16th Brown began his assault and on December 2nd, he was hung.

During Brown's trail Ralph Waldo Emerson, mentor to Henry David Thoreau, declared John Brown to be a 'saint, whose fate yet hangs in suspense, but whose martyrdom, if it shall be perfected, will make the gallows more glorious than the cross.' In his diary, Thoreau describes Brown's last six weeks on earth as 'meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.' (675-676)

In a poem, Year of Meteors, Walt Whitman describes Brown's unhealed wounds while he climbs the scaffold. Whitman inserts himself into the poem by using the noun 'I' and asks 'What am I myself but one of your meteors?' (679-680) Most of the Northern and Southern press did not accept the view of Whitman, Melville and Thoreau and Emerson. In general newspapers declared Brown a fanatic or an insane man.

The best comprehensive treatment of Brown's life, and several historian's treament of it, is David Reynold's John Brown, Abolitionist. Reynold's begins his book with a question. Why have historians for the past 150 years viewed Brown as insane and treat him dismissively?