One man who was against slavery was named John Brown. He was a religious man, but not very wise. He went to settle in Kansas, where he spoke his mind so freely that the slavery people there soon learned to hate him. In a fight at Osawatomie, John Brown was victorious, but lost one of his relatives. This loss almost crazed him, and made him all the more anxious to put an end to slavery. Indeed, he finally imagined that the Lord had specially chosen him to do this work.
As he could not stay in Kansas, where a price had been set upon his head, John Brown of Osawatomie went to Harpers Ferry, in Virginia, in 1859. There, with the help of a few well–meaning but very unwise persons in the North who supplied him with money, John Brown made a plan to free the slaves. As he knew they would need arms to resist capture, he and twenty followers seized the United States armory at Harpers Ferry. Then they seized and imprisoned a few slaveholders.
This was against the laws of both state and country. Before John Brown could escape, he was caught by our troops, tried for treason and murder, and hanged. “John Brown’s Raid,” as his expedition in Virginia is generally called, created a great excitement, for the Southern people did not realize at that time that it was merely the plan of a man half–crazed by suffering. Some Southerners fancied that all the abolitionists in the North were in league with John Brown, and as they had lived through the horrors of small Negro revolts, they were naturally indignant.
In fact, most people in the North thought it very wrong of John Brown to take the law into his own hands or to try to free slaves by violence. They did long to see slavery ended, but they wanted it to be done by vote, and not by force. Besides, they knew, as well as the Southerners, that an uprising of the Negroes was greatly to be dreaded, for the latter were so ignorant at that time, and so easily led, that they might have been urged on to commit the most horrible crimes.
John Brown’s attempt only made slavery quarrels worse, and when the time came for a new election, four candidates were proposed. One of these men, Breckinridge, was in favor of allowing slaves to be carried into all the territories, but another, Stephen A. Douglas, said that the new territories ought to be opened to slaveholders and free men, the settlers themselves deciding for or against slavery. The third man declared merely in favor of union and peace. The fourth, Abraham Lincoln, claimed that, while the laws of states should be respected, slavery ought not to spread any farther, because it was morally wrong.
Now, by the last census made, there were thirty–one million inhabitants in our country, only twelve million of which lived in slave states. You will therefore not be surprised to learn that Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, was elected sixteenth President of the United States (1860).
I’m a two-time biographer and student of John Brown the abolitionist. I’ve spent countless hours in archives and have done original research resulting in two books and some articles. I understand that contemporary history writing may present legitimate concerns for criticism, but on the other hand, surely you must be aware that the writing of history in the U.S. in the 19th century was heavily biased in its own right. In fact, the most victimized of historical figures was John Brown, who fell prey to a major shift of attitude in the 19th century, as the nation moved away from Reconstruction and into de jure segregation. Brown was not only misrepresented by white southern writers who had their own political reasons for attacking him, but also northerners who reflected differing attitudes and tended to infuse their portrayal of Brown based on those attitudes. So much of what was written about Brown for so long had little original research behind it, and most of it was centered around his role in Kansas, which itself was interpreted of all things by a “sympathetic” pacifist (Oswald Villard) who was also the grandson of abolitionist Wm Lloyd Garrison. This pacifist, while not motivated by race prejudice, clearly gave the 20th century a hostile view of Brown, and this was further picked up by writers like Robert Penn Warren and others who hated Brown for political reasons. Your estimation of Brown really reflects this revision, which is at least authentic to the era to which you appeal. But it really is not a return to truth or anything like that, which is what it seems you’re attempting to do. You’ve only returned to the first, major revision, the one that fueled Brown writing for the next century. In more recent years, scholars like myself have done real archival work, and we’ve debunked a number of major claims by the old hackneyed writings on Brown. If you’re interested in approaching truth, I assure you, you must revisit Brown and I suggest you read my two books. You seem to want to characterize him as not being wise, but if being wise is having the insight and character to go against the grain of a whole culture of racism and injustice in order to struggle for a despised people’s rights, then I’d say Brown was far more wise than his generation, both North and South. I hope that your work in history is done in a conscientious manner rather than a propagandistic one. “History 4U” can have more than one meaning. Either you are seeking to give people a fair and thoughtful understanding, or you are simply writing history to suit your prejudices–history literally 4U.
Louis DeCaro Jr
December 31st, 2007
Hello Louis,
I agree with you. There is no way to escape the bias of any culture from any time–past, present, or future. The 19th century certainly had their own propaganda machines.
I’d like to feel that History4U is done in a conscientious manner. My only goal is to (re-)interest Americans in our own history by making the contents of a book published in 1899 available. Obviously, information is available today that was not available in the 1800’s when the book was published.
admin
December 31st, 2007