John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was a white American
abolitionist who believed armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow the institution of
slavery in the United States.
[1]
During the
1856 conflict in Kansas, Brown commanded forces at the
Battle of Black Jack and the
Battle of Osawatomie.
[1]
Brown's followers also killed
five slavery supporters at
Pottawatomie.
[1]
In 1859, Brown led an unsuccessful
raid on the federal armory at
Harpers Ferry that ended with his capture.
[1] Brown's trial resulted in his conviction and a sentence of death by hanging.
[1]
Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved
African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, electrified the nation.
He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the
murder of five men and inciting a slave insurrection.
He was found
guilty on all counts and was hanged. Southerners alleged that his
rebellion was the tip of the abolitionist iceberg and represented the
wishes of the
Republican Party to end slavery.
Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that, a year later, led to
secession and the
American Civil War.
Brown first gained attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the
Bleeding Kansas
crisis. Unlike most other Northerners, who advocated peaceful
resistance to the pro-slavery faction, Brown believed that peaceful
resistance was shown to be ineffective and that the only way to defeat
the oppressive system of slavery was through violent insurrection.
He
believed he was the instrument of God's wrath in punishing men for the
sin of owning slaves.
[2]
Dissatisfied with the pacifism encouraged by the organized
abolitionist movement, he said, "These men are all talk. What we need is
action—action!"
[3]
During the Kansas campaign, he and his supporters killed five pro-slavery southerners in what became known as the
Pottawatomie massacre in May 1856 in response to
the raid on the "free soil" city of Lawrence, Kansas.
In 1859 he led a raid on
the federal armory
at Harpers Ferry. During the raid, he seized the armory; seven people
were killed, and ten or more were injured. He intended to arm slaves
with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed.
Within 36 hours,
Brown's men had fled or been killed or captured by local pro-slavery
farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by
Robert E. Lee.
Brown's subsequent capture by federal forces seized the nation's
attention, as Southerners feared it was just the first of many Northern
plots to cause a slave rebellion that might endanger their lives, while
Republicans dismissed the notion and said they would not interfere with
slavery in the South.
[4]
Historians agree John Brown played a major role in the start of the Civil War. Historian
David Potter has said the emotional effect of Brown's raid was greater than the philosophical effect of the
Lincoln–Douglas debates, and that his raid revealed a deep division between North and South.
[5]
Some writers, such as Bruce Olds, describe him as a monomaniacal zealot; others, such as
Stephen B. Oates, regard him as "one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation."
David S. Reynolds
hails the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil war, and seeded
civil rights" and Richard Owen Boyer emphasizes that Brown was "an
American who gave his life that millions of other Americans might be
free."
[6]
The song "
John Brown's Body" made him a heroic martyr and was a popular
Union marching song during the Civil War.
Brown's actions prior to the Civil War as an abolitionist, and the
tactics he chose, still make him a controversial figure today.
He is
sometimes memorialized as a heroic martyr and a visionary and sometimes
vilified as a madman and a terrorist.
[7]
Historians debate whether he was "America's first domestic terrorist";
many historians believe the term "terrorist" is an inappropriate label
to describe Brown.
[8]
Early years
John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in
Torrington, Connecticut. He was the fourth of the eight children of
Owen Brown
(February 16, 1771 – May 8, 1856) and Ruth Mills (January 25, 1772 –
December 9, 1808) and grandson of Capt. John Brown (1728–1776).
[9]
Brown could trace his ancestry back to 17th-century English Puritans.
[10]
In 1805, the family moved to
Hudson, Ohio, where Owen Brown opened a tannery.
Brown's father became a supporter of the Oberlin Institute (original name of
Oberlin College)
in its early stage, although he was ultimately critical of the school's
"Perfectionist" leanings, especially renowned in the preaching and
teaching of
Charles Finney and
Asa Mahan.
Brown withdrew his membership from the Congregational church in the
1840s and never officially joined another church, but both he and his
father Owen were fairly conventional evangelicals for the period with
its focus on the pursuit of personal righteousness.
Brown's personal
religion is fairly well documented in the papers of the Rev Clarence
Gee, a Brown family expert, now held in the Hudson [Ohio] Library and
Historical Society.
Brown's father had as an apprentice Jesse R. Grant, father of future general and U.S. President
Ulysses S. Grant.
[11]
At the age of 16, John Brown left his family and went to
Plainfield, Massachusetts, where he enrolled in a preparatory program.
Shortly afterward, he transferred to the
Morris Academy in
Litchfield, Connecticut.
[12] He hoped to become a
Congregationalist
minister, but money ran out and he suffered from eye inflammations,
which forced him to give up the academy and return to Ohio.
In Hudson,
he worked briefly at his father's tannery before opening a successful
tannery of his own outside of town with his adopted brother.
Remains of Brown's tannery in Pennsylvania
John Brown in 1846 in
Springfield, Massachusetts, holding the flag of
Subterranean Pass Way,
[13] his militant counterpart to the Underground Railroad.
In 1820, Brown married Dianthe Lusk.
Their first child, John Jr, was
born 13 months later. In 1825, Brown and his family moved to
New Richmond,
Pennsylvania, where he bought 200 acres (81 hectares) of land.
He
cleared an eighth of it and built a cabin, a barn, and a tannery.
The
John Brown Tannery Site was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
[14]
Within a year, the tannery employed 15 men.
Brown also made money
raising cattle and surveying.
He helped to establish a post office and a
school. During this period, Brown operated an interstate business
involving cattle and leather production along with a kinsman, Seth
Thompson, from eastern Ohio.
In 1831, one of his sons died. Brown fell ill, and his businesses
began to suffer, leaving him in terrible debt. In the summer of 1832,
shortly after the death of a newborn son, his wife Dianthe died.
On June
14, 1833, Brown married 16-year-old Mary Ann Day (April 15, 1817 – May
1, 1884), originally of
Washington County, New York.
[15] They eventually had 13 children, in addition to the seven children from his previous marriage.
In 1836, Brown moved his family to
Franklin Mills, Ohio (now known as Kent). There he borrowed money to buy land in the area, building and operating a tannery along the
Cuyahoga River in partnership with Zenas Kent.
[16]
He suffered great financial losses in the economic crisis of 1839, which struck the western states more severely than had the
Panic of 1837.
Following the heavy borrowing trends of Ohio, many businessmen like
Brown trusted too heavily in credit and state bonds and paid dearly for
it.
In one episode of property loss, Brown was even jailed when he
attempted to retain ownership of a farm by occupying it against the
claims of the new owner. Like other determined men of his time and
background, he tried many different business efforts in an attempt to
get out of debt.
Along with tanning hides and cattle trading, he also
undertook horse and sheep breeding, the last of which was to become a
notable aspect of his pre-public vocation.
In 1837, in response to the murder of
Elijah P. Lovejoy,
Brown publicly vowed:
"Here, before God, in the presence of these
witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of
slavery!"
Brown was declared bankrupt by a federal court on September
28, 1842.
In 1843, four of his children died of
dysentery.
As Louis DeCaro Jr shows in his biographical sketch (2007), from the
mid-1840s Brown had built a reputation as an expert in fine sheep and
wool, and entered into a partnership with Col. Simon Perkins of Akron,
Ohio, whose flocks and farms were managed by Brown and sons.
Brown
eventually moved into a home with his family across the street from the
Perkins Stone Mansion located on Perkins Hill.
The
John Brown House (Akron, Ohio) still stands and is owned and operated by
The Summit County Historical Society of Akron, Ohio.
As Brown's associations grew among sheep farmers of the region, his
expertise was often discussed in agricultural journals even as he
widened the scope of his travels in conjunction with sheep and wool
concerns (which often brought him into contact with other fervent
anti-slavery people as well).
Transformative years in Springfield, Massachusetts
In 1846, Brown and his business partner Simon Perkins moved to the ideologically progressive city of
Springfield, Massachusetts.
In Springfield, Brown found a community whose white leadership – from
the community's most prominent churches, to its most wealthy
businessmen, to its most popular politicians, to its local jurists, and
even to the publisher of one of the nation's most influential newspapers
– were deeply involved and emotionally invested in the anti-slavery
movement.
[17]
Brown and Perkins' intent was to represent the interests of the
Connecticut River Valley's
wool growers against the interests of the region's wool manufacturers –
thus Brown and Perkins set up a wool commission operation.
While in
Springfield, Brown lived in a house at 51 Franklin Street.
[18]
Several years before Brown's arrival in Springfield, in 1844, the
city's African-American abolitionists had founded the Sanford Street
"Free Church" – now known as St. John's Congregational Church – which
went on to become one of the United States most prominent platforms for
abolitionist speeches.
[18]
From 1846 until he left Springfield in 1850, John Brown was a
parishioner at the Free Church, where he witnessed abolitionist lectures
by
Frederick Douglass and
Sojourner Truth.
[19]
Indeed, during Brown's time in Springfield, he became deeply involved
in transforming the city into a major center of abolitionism, and one of
the safest and most significant stops on the
Underground Railroad.
John Brown's Bible is still on display at St. John's Congregational
Church in Springfield, which to this day remains one of the Northeast's
most prominent black churches.
[20]
In 1847, after speaking at the "Free Church," the famed
African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass spent a night speaking
with John Brown, after which he wrote, "From this night spent with John
Brown in Springfield, Mass.
1847 while I continued to write and speak
against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful for its peaceful
abolition. My utterances became more and more tinged by the color of
this man's strong impressions."
[17]
While in Springfield, as Brown learned more about abolitionism and the
Underground Railroad,
he also learned more about the region's mercantile elite, knowledge
which while initially a 'curse', proved ultimately to be a 'blessing' to
Brown's later activities in Kansas and at Harper's Ferry.
Springfield's
mercantile elite reacted with hesitation to change their theretofore
highly profitable formula of low-quality wool sold en masse for low
prices.
Initially, Brown naively trusted Springfield's manufacturers,
but soon came to realize that they were determined to maintain their
control of price-setting.
Also, on the outskirts of Springfield, the
Connecticut River Valley's sheep farmers were largely unorganized and
hesitant to change their methods of production to meet higher standards.
In the
Ohio Cultivator, Brown and other wool growers complained that the
Connecticut River
Valley's farmers' tendencies were lowering all U.S. wool prices abroad.
In reaction, Brown made a last-ditch effort to overcome the
Pioneer Valley's
wool mercantile elite by seeking an alliance with European-based
manufacturers.
Ultimately, Brown was disappointed to learn that Europe
wanted to buy
Western Massachusetts's
wools en masse at the cheap prices they'd been getting from them.
Brown
then traveled to England to seek a higher price for Springfield's wool.
The trip was a disaster, as the firm incurred a loss of $40,000 (over
$980,000 in today's dollars), of which Col. Perkins bore the larger
share.
With this misfortune, the Perkins and Brown wool commission
operation closed in Springfield in late 1849. Subsequent lawsuits tied
up the partners for several more years.
The Fugitive Slave Act and The League of Gileadites
Before Brown left
Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1850, the United States passed the notorious
Fugitive Slave Act,
a law which mandated that authorities in free states aid in the return
of escaped slaves and imposed penalties on those who aided in their
escape.
In response to the Fugitive Slave Act, John Brown founded a
militant group to prevent slaves' capture –
The League of Gileadites
– in Springfield.
In the Bible, Mount Gilead was the place where only
the bravest of Israelites would gather together to face an invading
enemy.
Brown founded the League of Gileadites with these words, "Nothing
so charmes the American people as personal bravery.
[Blacks] would have
ten times the number [of white friends than] they now have were they
but half as much in earnest to secure their dearest rights as they are
to ape the follies and extravagances of their white neighbors, and to
indulge in idle show, in ease, and in luxury."
[21]
On leaving Springfield in 1850, Brown instructed the League of
Gileadites to act "quickly, quietly, and efficiently" to protect slaves
that escaped to Springfield – words that would foreshadow Brown's later
actions preceding Harper's Ferry.
[21]
It is worth noting that from Brown's founding of the
League of Gileadites onward, not one person was ever taken back into slavery from Springfield, Massachusetts.
[17]
On leaving Springfield in 1850, Brown gave his rocking chair to the
mother of his beloved black porter, Thomas, as a gesture of affection.
[17]
Some popular narrators have exaggerated the unfortunate demise of
Brown and Perkins' wool commission in Springfield with Brown's later
life choices. In actuality, Perkins absorbed much of the financial loss,
and their partnership continued for several more years, with Brown
nearly breaking even by 1854.
[citation needed]
The men remained friends after ending their partnership amicably.
Indeed, Brown was a man of great talent and judgment in farming and
sheep raising; however, he was not a good business administrator.
The
Perkins and Brown partnership not only reveal Brown as a man with a
widely appreciated specialization (long since forgotten), but also
reflect his perennial zeal for the underdog which drove him to struggle
on behalf of the economically vulnerable farmers of Ohio, Pennsylvania,
West Virginia, and those near Springfield, Massachusetts.
Brown's time in Springfield sowed the seeds for the future financial
support that he would receive from New England's great merchants,
introduced him to nationally famous abolitionists like Douglass and
Truth, and included the foundation of his first militant anti-slavery
group
The League of Gileadites.
[17][18]
During this time, Brown also helped publicize
David Walker's speech called
Appeal.
[22]
Brown's personal attitudes evolved in Springfield, as he observed the success of the city's
Underground Railroad and made his first venture into militant, anti-slavery community organizing.
In speeches, he pointed to the martyrs
Elijah Lovejoy and
Charles Turner Torrey as whites "ready to help blacks challenge slave-catchers.".
[23]
In Springfield, Brown found a city that shared his own anti-slavery
passions, and each seemed to educate the other. Certainly, with both
successes and failures, Brown's Springfield years were a transformative
period of his life, which catalyzed many of his later actions.
[17]
Homestead in New York
In 1848, Brown heard of
Gerrit Smith's
Adirondack land grants to poor black men, and decided to move his family among the new settlers.
He bought land near
North Elba, New York (near Lake Placid), for $1 an acre ($2 /ha), and spent 2 years there.
[24]
After he was executed, his wife took his body there for burial. Since 1895, the farm has been owned by New York state.
[25]
The
John Brown Farm and Gravesite is now a
National Historic Landmark.
Actions in Kansas
In 1855, Brown learned from his adult sons in the Kansas territory
that their families were completely unprepared to face attack, and that
pro-slavery forces there were militant. Determined to protect his family
and oppose the advances of slavery supporters, Brown left for Kansas,
enlisting a son-in-law and making several stops just to collect funds
and weapons.
As reported by the New York
Tribune, Brown stopped
en route to participate in an anti-slavery convention that took place in
June 1855 in Albany, New York.
Despite the controversy that ensued on
the convention floor regarding the support of violent efforts on behalf
of the free state cause, several individuals provided Brown some
solicited financial support. As he went westward, however, Brown found
more militant support in his home state of Ohio, particularly in the
strongly anti-slavery
Western Reserve section where he had been reared.
Pottawatomie
Brown and the free settlers were optimistic that they could bring
Kansas into the union as a slavery-free state.
But in late 1855 and
early 1856, it was increasingly clear to Brown that pro-slavery forces
were willing to violate the rule of law in order to force Kansas to
become a slave state.
Brown believed that terrorism, fraud, and
eventually deadly attacks became the obvious agenda of the slavery
supporters, then known as "
Border Ruffians."
After the winter snows thawed in 1856, the pro-slavery activists began a
campaign to seize Kansas on their own terms.
Brown was particularly
affected by the
Sacking of Lawrence in May 1856, in which a
sheriff-led posse destroyed newspaper offices and a hotel. Only one man, a Border Ruffian, was killed.
Preston Brooks's caning of anti-slavery Senator
Charles Sumner also fueled Brown's anger.
These violent acts were accompanied by celebrations in the pro-slavery press, with writers such as
Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow of the
Squatter Sovereign
proclaiming that pro-slavery forces "are determined to repel this
Northern invasion, and make Kansas a Slave State; though our rivers
should be covered with the blood of their victims, and the carcasses of
the Abolitionists should be so numerous in the territory as to breed
disease and sickness, we will not be deterred from our purpose" (quoted
in Reynolds, p. 162).
Brown was outraged by both the violence of the
pro-slavery forces, and also by what he saw as a weak and cowardly
response by the antislavery partisans and the Free State settlers, whom
he described as "cowards, or worse" (Reynolds pp. 163–164).
Biographer Louis A. DeCaro Jr. further shows that Brown's beloved
father, Owen, had died on May 8, 1856, and correspondence indicates that
John Brown and his family received word of his death around the same
time.
The emotional darkness of the hour was intensified by the real
concerns that Brown had for the welfare of his sons and the free state
settlers in their vicinity, especially since the sacking of Lawrence
seems to have signaled an all-out campaign of violence by pro-slavery
forces.
Brown conducted surveillance on encamped "ruffians" in his
vicinity and learned that his family was marked for attack, and
furthermore was given supposedly reliable information as to pro-slavery
neighbors who had aligned and supported these forces.
Speaking of the
threats that were supposedly the justification for the massacre, Free
State leader Charles Robinson stated, "When it is known that such
threats were as plenty as blue-berries in June, on both sides, all over
the Territory, and were regarded as of no more importance than the idle
wind, this indictment will hardly justify midnight assassination of all
pro-slavery men, whether making threats or not... Had all men been
killed in Kansas who indulged in such threats, there would have been
none left to bury the dead."
[26]
The pro-slavery men did not necessarily own any slaves, although the
Doyles (three of the victims) had been slave hunters prior to settling
in Kansas.
According to Salmon Brown, when the Doyles were seized,
Mahala Doyle acknowledged that her husband's "devilment" had brought
down this attack to their doorstep – further signifying that the
Browns' attack was probably grounded in real concern for their own
survival.
Sometime after 10:00 pm May 24, 1856, it is suspected they
took five pro-slavery settlers – James Doyle, William Doyle, Drury
Doyle, Allen Wilkinson, and William Sherman – from their cabins on
Pottawatomie Creek and hacked them to death with broadswords.
Brown
later claimed he did not participate in the killings, however he did say
he approved of them.
In the two years prior to the massacre, there had been 8 killings in
Kansas Territory attributable to slavery politics, and none in the
vicinity of the massacre.
Brown murdered five in a single night, and the
massacre was the match in the powder keg that precipitated the
bloodiest period in "Bleeding Kansas" history, a three-month period of
retaliatory raids and battles in which 29 people died.
[27]
Palmyra and Osawatomie
A force of Missourians, led by Captain Henry Pate, captured John Jr.
and Jason, and destroyed the Brown family homestead, and later
participated in the
Sack of Lawrence.
On June 2, John Brown, nine of his followers, and twenty local men
successfully defended a Free State settlement at Palmyra, Kansas against
an attack by Pate. (
See Battle of Black Jack.)
Pate and twenty-two of his men were taken prisoner (Reynolds
pp. 180–181, 186).
After capture, they were taken to Brown's camp, and
received all the food that Brown could find.
Brown forced Pate to sign a
treaty, exchanging the freedom of Pate and his men for the promised
release of Brown's two captured sons. Brown released Pate to Colonel
Edwin Sumner, but was furious to discover that the release of his sons was delayed until September.
In August, a company of over three hundred Missourians under the
command of Major General John W. Reid crossed into Kansas and headed
towards
Osawatomie, Kansas, intending to destroy the Free State settlements there, and then march on
Topeka and
Lawrence.
[28]
On the morning of August 30, 1856, they shot and killed Brown's son
Frederick and his neighbor David Garrison on the outskirts of
Osawatomie.
Brown, outnumbered more than seven to one, arranged his 38
men behind natural defenses along the road. Firing from cover, they
managed to kill at least 20 of Reid's men and wounded 40 more.
[29]
Reid regrouped, ordering his men to dismount and charge into the woods.
Brown's small group scattered and fled across the
Marais des Cygnes River.
One of Brown's men was killed during the retreat and four were
captured.
While Brown and his surviving men hid in the woods nearby, the
Missourians plundered and burned Osawatomie.
Despite being defeated,
Brown's bravery and military shrewdness in the face of overwhelming odds
brought him national attention and made him a hero to many Northern
abolitionists,
[30] who gave him the nickname "Osawatomie Brown".
This incident was dramatized in the play
Osawatomie Brown.
On September 7, Brown entered Lawrence to meet with Free State
leaders and help fortify against a feared assault.
At least 2,700
pro-slavery Missourians were once again invading Kansas.
On September
14, they skirmished near Lawrence.
Brown prepared for battle, but
serious violence was averted when the new governor of Kansas,
John W. Geary, ordered the warring parties to disarm and disband, and offered clemency to former fighters on both sides.
[31]
Brown, taking advantage of the fragile peace, left Kansas with three of his sons to raise money from supporters in the north.
In Late October, Brown made a stop at the Traveler's Rest, an inn
kept by a Quaker named James Townsend in West Branch, Cedar county,
Iowa.
He asked Townsend, "Have you ever heard of John Brown of Kansas?"
Mr. Townsend took out a piece of chalk and marked Mr. Brown's hat, back
and mule with an 'X,' meaning he was added to the 'free list.'
He left
there on October 25, and headed to Chicago, then Ohio, New York and
eventually to Boston.
[32][33] James Townsend would later act as one of the pallbearers at Owen Brown's funeral.
[34]
Later years
Gathering forces
By November 1856, Brown had returned to the East, and spent the next
two years in New England raising funds. Initially, Brown returned to
Springfield, where he received contributions, and also a letter of
recommendation from a prominent and wealthy merchant, Mr. George Walker.
George Walker was the brother-in-law of
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn,
the secretary for the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee, who later
introduced Brown to several influential abolitionists in the Boston area
in January 1857.
[18][35]
Amos Adams Lawrence, a prominent Boston merchant, secretly gave a large amount of cash.
William Lloyd Garrison,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
Theodore Parker and
George Luther Stearns, and
Samuel Gridley Howe also supported Brown.
A group of six wealthy abolitionists – Sanborn, Higginson, Parker, Stearns, Howe, and
Gerrit Smith –
agreed to offer Brown financial support for his antislavery
activities; they would eventually provide most of the financial backing
for the raid on
Harpers Ferry, and would come to be known as the
Secret Six[36]
and the Committee of Six.
Brown often requested help from them with "no
questions asked" and it remains unclear of how much of Brown's scheme
the Secret Six were aware.
On January 7, 1858, the Massachusetts Committee pledged to provide 200
Sharps Rifles and ammunition, which were being stored at
Tabor, Iowa. In March, Brown contracted Charles Blair of
Collinsville, Connecticut for 1,000
pikes.
In the following months, Brown continued to raise funds, visiting
Worcester,
Springfield,
New Haven,
Syracuse and Boston.
In Boston, he met
Henry David Thoreau and
Ralph Waldo Emerson. He received many pledges but little cash. In March, while in New York City, he was introduced to
Hugh Forbes, an English mercenary, who had experience as a military tactician that he gained while fighting with
Giuseppe Garibaldi
in Italy in 1848.
Brown hired him to be the drillmaster for his men and
to write their tactical handbook. They agreed to meet in Tabor that
summer.
Using the alias Nelson Hawkins, Brown traveled through the Northeast and then went to visit his family in
Hudson, Ohio.
On August 7, he arrived in Tabor. Forbes arrived two days later. Over
several weeks, the two men put together a "Well-Matured Plan" for
fighting slavery in the South.
The men quarreled over many of the
details. In November, their troops left for Kansas. Forbes had not
received his salary and was still feuding with Brown, so he returned to
the East instead of venturing into Kansas. He would soon threaten to
expose the plot to the government.
William Maxon's house, near
Springdale, Iowa, where John Brown's associates lived and trained, 1857–1859. Brown himself lived at the home of
John Hunt Painter, which was less than a mile away.
Because the October elections saw a free-state victory, Kansas was
quiet. Brown made his men return to Iowa, where he fed them tidbits of
his Virginia scheme.
[37]
In January 1858, Brown left his men in
Springdale, Iowa, and set off to visit
Frederick Douglass in
Rochester, New York. There he discussed his plans with Douglass, and reconsidered Forbes' criticisms.
[38]
Brown wrote a
Provisional Constitution that would create a government for a new state in the region of his invasion. Brown then traveled to
Peterboro, New York,
and Boston to discuss matters with the Secret Six.
In letters to them,
he indicated that, along with recruits, he would go into the South
equipped with weapons to do "Kansas work".
Brown and twelve of his followers, including his son Owen, traveled to
Chatham, Ontario, where he convened on May 8 a
Constitutional Convention. The convention was put together with the help of Dr.
Martin Delany.
One-third of Chatham's 6,000 residents were fugitive slaves, and it was here that Brown was introduced to
Harriet Tubman.
The convention assembled 34 blacks and 12 whites to adopt Brown's
Provisional Constitution.
According to Delany, during the convention,
Brown illuminated his plans to make Kansas rather than Canada the end of
the
Underground Railroad.
This would be the Subterranean Pass Way.
He never mentioned or hinted
at the idea of Harpers Ferry.
But Delany's reflections are not entirely
trustworthy.
Brown was no longer looking toward Kansas and was entirely
focused on Virginia.
Other testimony from the Chatham meeting suggests
Brown did speak of going South.
Brown had long used the terminology of
the Subterranean Pass Way from the late 1840s, so it is possible that
Delany conflated Brown's statements over the years. Regardless, Brown
was elected commander-in-chief and he named
John Henrie Kagi as his "Secretary of War".
Richard Realf
was named "Secretary of State".
Elder Monroe, a black minister, was to
act as president until another was chosen.
A.M. Chapman was the acting
vice president; Delany, the corresponding secretary.
In 1859, "A
Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of
the United States of America" was written.
Although nearly all of the delegates signed the constitution, very
few delegates volunteered to join Brown's forces, although it will never
be clear how many Canadian expatriates actually intended to join Brown
because of a subsequent "security leak" that threw off plans for the
raid, creating a hiatus in which Brown lost contact with many of the
Canadian leaders.
This crisis occurred when Hugh Forbes, Brown's
mercenary, tried to expose the plans to Massachusetts Senator
Henry Wilson
and others.
The Secret Six feared their names would be made public.
Howe and Higginson wanted no delays in Brown's progress, while Parker,
Stearns, Smith and Sanborn insisted on postponement. Stearns and Smith
were the major sources of funds, and their words carried more weight.
To throw Forbes off the trail and to invalidate his assertions, Brown
returned to Kansas in June, and he remained in that vicinity for six
months. There he joined forces with
James Montgomery,
who was leading raids into Missouri.
On December 20, Brown led his own
raid, in which he liberated eleven slaves, took captive two white men,
and looted horses and wagons.
On January 20, 1859, he embarked on a
lengthy journey to take the eleven liberated slaves to Detroit and then
on a ferry to Canada. While passing through Chicago, Brown met with
Allan Pinkerton who arranged and raised the fare for the passage to Detroit.
[39]
Over the course of the next few months, he traveled again through
Ohio, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts to draw up more support
for the cause.
On May 9, he delivered a lecture in
Concord, Massachusetts.
In attendance were
Bronson Alcott,
Rockwell Hoar,
Emerson
and Thoreau.
Brown also reconnoitered with the Secret Six.
In June he
paid his last visit to his family in North Elba, before he departed for
Harpers Ferry.
He stayed one night en route in Hagerstown, Maryland at
the Washington House, on West Washington Street.
On June 30, 1859 the
hotel had at least 25 guests, including I. Smith and Sons, Oliver Smith
and Owen Smith and Jeremiah Anderson, all from New York.
From papers
found in the Kennedy Farmhouse after the raid, it is known that Brown
wrote to Kagi that he would sign into a hotel as I. Smith and Sons.
[40]
Raid
As he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined by
Harriet Tubman, "General Tubman," as he called her.
[41]
Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of
Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his
planners.
Although other abolitionists like
Frederick Douglass and
William Lloyd Garrison
did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new
state for freed slaves, and made preparations for military action.
After
he began the first battle, he believed, slaves would rise up and carry
out a rebellion across the south.
[42]
He asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in present-day
Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which
she did.
[43]
Brown arrived in
Harpers Ferry on July 3, 1859. A few days later, under the name Isaac Smith, he rented a
farmhouse in nearby
Maryland.
He awaited the arrival of his recruits. They never materialized in the
numbers he expected.
In late August he met with Douglass in
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania,
where he revealed the Harpers Ferry plan. Douglass expressed severe
reservations, rebuffing Brown's pleas to join the mission.
Douglass had
actually known about Brown's plans from early in 1859 and had made a
number of efforts to discourage blacks from enlisting.
In late September, the 950 pikes arrived from Charles Blair. Kagi's
draft plan called for a brigade of 4,500 men, but Brown had only 21 men
(16 white and 5 black: three free blacks, one freed slave, and a
fugitive slave).
They ranged in age from 21 to 49. Twelve of them had
been with Brown in Kansas raids.
On October 16, 1859, Brown (leaving three men behind as a rear guard) led 18 men in an attack on the
Harpers Ferry Armory.
He had received 200
Beecher's Bibles—breechloading
.52 (13.2 mm) caliber Sharps rifles—and pikes from northern
abolitionist societies in preparation for the raid. The armory was a
large complex of buildings that contained 100,000 muskets and rifles,
which Brown planned to seize and use to arm local slaves.
They would
then head south, drawing off more and more slaves from plantations, and
fighting only in self-defense. As Frederick Douglass and Brown's family
testified, his strategy was essentially to deplete Virginia of its
slaves, causing the institution to collapse in one county after another,
until the movement spread into the South, essentially wreaking havoc on
the economic viability of the pro-slavery states.
From the Southern
point of view, of course, any effort to arm the enslaved was perceived
as a definitive threat.
Initially, the raid went well, and they met no resistance entering
the town.
They cut the telegraph wires and easily captured the armory,
which was being defended by a single watchman.
They next rounded up
hostages from nearby farms, including
Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grandnephew of
George Washington. They also spread the news to the local slaves that their liberation was at hand.
Things started to go wrong when an eastbound
Baltimore & Ohio
train approached the town.
The train's baggage master tried to warn the
passengers.
Brown's men yelled for him to halt and then opened fire.
The baggage master, Hayward Shepherd, became the first casualty of John
Brown's war against slavery.
Ironically, Shepherd was a free black man.
Two of the hostages' slaves also died in the raid.
[44]
For some reason, after the shooting of Shepherd, Brown allowed the train to continue on its way.
A. J. Phelps, the Through Express passenger train conductor, sent a
telegram to W. P. Smith, Master of Transportation of the B. & O. R.
R., Baltimore:
Monocacy, 7.05 A. M., October 17, 1859.
Express train bound east, under my charge, was stopped this morning
at Harper's Ferry by armed abolitionists. They have possession of the
bridge and the arms and armory of the United States. Myself and Baggage
Master have been fired at, and Hayward, the colored porter, is wounded
very severely, being shot through the body, the ball entering the body
below the left shoulder blade and coming out under the left side.[45]
News of the raid reached Baltimore early that morning and then on to Washington by late morning.
In the meantime, local farmers, shopkeepers, and militia pinned down
the raiders in the armory by firing from the heights behind the town.
Some of the local men were shot by Brown's men.
At noon, a company of
militia seized the bridge, blocking the only escape route.
Brown then
moved his prisoners and remaining raiders into the engine house, a small
brick building at the entrance to the armory. He had the doors and
windows barred and loopholes were cut through the brick walls.
The
surrounding forces barraged the engine house, and the men inside fired
back with occasional fury. Brown sent his son Watson and another
supporter out under a white flag, but the angry crowd shot them.
Intermittent shooting then broke out, and Brown's son Oliver was
wounded. His son begged his father to kill him and end his suffering,
but Brown said "If you must die, die like a man." A few minutes later he
was dead. The exchanges lasted throughout the day.
Illustration of the interior of the Fort immediately before the door is broken down
By the morning of October 18 the engine house, later known as
John Brown's Fort, was surrounded by a company of
U.S. Marines under the command of Colonel
Robert E. Lee of the United States Army.
A young Army lieutenant,
J.E.B. Stuart,
approached under a white flag and told the raiders that their lives
would be spared if they surrendered. Brown refused, saying, "No, I
prefer to die here." Stuart then gave a signal.
The Marines used sledge
hammers and a makeshift battering-ram to break down the engine room
door. Lieutenant Israel Greene cornered Brown and struck him several
times, wounding his head.
In three minutes Brown and the survivors were
captives.
Altogether Brown's men killed four people, and wounded nine.
Ten of
Brown's men were killed (including his sons Watson and Oliver).
Five of
Brown's men escaped (including his son Owen), and seven were captured
along with Brown.
Among the raiders who were killed were
John Henry Kagi;
Lewis Sheridan Leary and
Dangerfield Newby; those hanged besides Brown included
John Anthony Copeland, Jr. and
Shields Green.
[47]
- Killed
John Anderson[48]
Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson (killed during the storming of John Brown's Fort)
Oliver Brown
Watson Brown
John Henry Kagi |
|
Lewis Sheridan Leary
William H. Leeman
Dangerfield Newby |
|
Stewart Taylor (died of wounds)
Dauphin Osgood Thompson (killed during the storming of John Brown's Fort)
William Thompson captured and killed by militia.
For an account of his capture, see "Seven Marstellers and their lineal
descendants" by Rev. John Andrew Thompson Marsteller (1938) |
- Hanged in 1859 following the raid
- Hanged in 1860
Albert Hazlett
Aaron D. Stevens
- Died during US Civil War
Barclay Coppock
Charles Plummer Tidd
- Survived
Osborne Perry Anderson
Owen Brown
Francis Jackson Meriam
- Freed
Former slave Isaac Gilbert, his wife, and their three children
Imprisonment and trial
Brown and the others captured were held in the office of the armory.
On October 18, 1859, Virginia Governor
Henry A. Wise, Virginia Senator
James M. Mason, and Representative
Clement Vallandigham of Ohio arrived in Harpers Ferry. Mason led the three-hour questioning session of Brown.
" [...] 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.
This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I
see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the
New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that
men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me,
further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I
endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to
understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have
interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done
in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is
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!"
--John Brown, in his speech following the conviction
[49]
The old Court House at Charles Town, Jefferson County, Virginia, where
John Brown was tried; it stands diagonally across the street from the
jail (ca. 1906)
Jail at Charles Town, Jefferson County, Virginia, where John Brown was imprisoned
Although the attack had taken place on Federal property, Wise ordered that Brown and his men should be tried in Virginia in
Charles Town,
the nearby county seat capital of Jefferson County just seven miles
west of Harpers Ferry (perhaps to avert Northern political pressure on
the Federal government, or in the unlikely event of a presidential
pardon).
The trial began October 27, after a doctor pronounced the still-wounded
Brown fit for trial.
Brown was charged with murdering four whites and a
black, with
conspiring with slaves to rebel, and with
treason against Virginia.
A series of lawyers were assigned to Brown, who included Lawson Botts, Thomas C. Green,
Samuel Chilton, a lawyer from Washington D.C., and
George Hoyt,
but it was Hiram Griswold, a lawyer from Cleveland, Ohio, who concluded
the defense on October 31.
In his closing statement, Griswold argued
that Brown could not be found guilty of treason against a state to which
he owed no loyalty and of which he was not a resident, and that Brown
had not personally killed anyone himself, and also that the failure of
the raid indicated that Brown had not conspired with slaves.
Andrew Hunter, the local district attorney, presented the closing arguments for the prosecution.
On November 2, after a week-long trial and 45 minutes of
deliberation, the Charles Town jury found Brown guilty on all three
counts.
Brown was sentenced to be hanged in public on December 2.
In
response to the sentence,
Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked that "[John Brown] will make the gallows glorious like the Cross."
Cadets from the
Virginia Military Institute under the leadership of General
Francis H. Smith and Major
Thomas J. Jackson
(who would earn the nickname "Stonewall" less than two years later)
were called into service as a security detail in the event Brown's
supporters attempted a rescue.
During his month in jail, Brown was allowed to send and receive
correspondence.
One of the letters was from Mahala Doyle, wife and
mother of three of Brown's Kansas victims.
She wrote "Altho' vengeance
is not mine, I confess that I do feel gratified to hear that you were
stopped in your fiendish career at Harper's Ferry ..." In a postscript
she added "My son John Doyle whose life I beg[g]ed of you is now grown
up and is very desirous to be in Charlestown on the day of your
execution."
[50]
Brown refused to be rescued by
Silas Soule,
a friend from Kansas who had somehow infiltrated the Jefferson County
Jail offering to break him out during the night and flee northward.
Brown supposedly told Silas that, aged 59, he was too old to live a life
on the run from the federal authorities and was ready to die as a
martyr.
Silas left him behind to be executed.
More importantly, many of Brown's
letters exuded high tones of spirituality and conviction and, when
picked up by the northern press, won increasing numbers of supporters in
the North as they simultaneously infuriated many white people in the
South.
On December 1, his wife arrived by train in Charles Town where
she joined him at the county jail for his last meal. She was denied
permission to stay for the night, prompting Brown to lose his composure
for the only time through the ordeal.
Victor Hugo's reaction
Victor Hugo, from exile on
Guernsey, tried to obtain
pardon for John Brown: he sent an
open letter that was published by the press on both sides of the Atlantic (cf.
Actes et paroles). This text, written at Hauteville-House on December 2, 1859, warned of a possible civil war:
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Wikisource has original text related to this article:
|
[...] Politically speaking, the murder of John Brown would be an
uncorrectable sin. It would create in the Union a latent fissure that
would in the long run dislocate it. Brown's agony might perhaps
consolidate slavery in Virginia, but it would certainly shake the whole
American democracy. You save your shame, but you kill your glory.
Morally speaking, it seems a part of the human light would put itself
out, that the very notion of justice and injustice would hide itself in
darkness, on that day where one would see the assassination of
Emancipation by Liberty itself. [...]
Let America know and ponder on this: there is something more frightening than Cain killing Abel, and that is Washington killing Spartacus.
Death and aftermath
On the morning of December 2, 1859, Brown wrote:
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty
land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think,
vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be
done."
John Brown on the way to be executed – two and one-half blocks from the Jefferson county jail to his scaffold.
He read his Bible and wrote a final letter to his wife, which
included his will. At 11:00 a.m. he was escorted from the county jail
through a crowd of 2,000 soldiers a few blocks away to a small field
where the gallows were.
Among the soldiers in the crowd were future
Confederate general
Stonewall Jackson and
John Wilkes Booth, who borrowed a militia uniform to gain admission to the execution.
[51]
The poet
Walt Whitman, in "Year of Meteors", described viewing the execution.
[52]
Brown was accompanied by the sheriff and his assistants, but no
minister since he had consistently rejected the ministrations of
pro-slavery clergy. Since the region was in the grips of virtual
hysteria, most northerners, including journalists, were run out of town,
and it is unlikely any anti-slavery clergyman would have been safe,
even if one were to have sought to visit Brown.
He elected to receive no
religious services in the jail or at the scaffold.
He was hanged at
11:15 am and pronounced dead at 11:50 am.
His body was placed in a
wooden coffin with the noose still around his neck. His coffin was then
put on a train to take it away from Virginia to his family homestead in
New York for burial.
In the North, large memorial meetings took place,
church bells rang, minute guns were fired, and famous writers such as
Emerson and
Thoreau joined many Northerners in praising Brown.
[53]
On December 8, John Brown was buried at the
John Brown Farm in
North Elba, New York, on the outskirts of
Lake Placid.
The farm and grave are located near Old Military Road.
Also buried near Brown are his sons
Oliver Brown and
Watson Brown.
The
tombstone of Captain John Brown (1728–1776)
[9] is on the grave of his grandson John Brown.
Senate investigation
On December 14, 1859, the U.S. Senate appointed a bipartisan
committee to investigate the Harpers Ferry raid and to determine whether
any citizens contributed arms, ammunition or money to John Brown's men.
The Democrats attempted to implicate the Republicans in the raid; the
Republicans tried to disassociate themselves from Brown and his acts.
The Senate committee heard testimony from 32 witnesses, including
Liam Dodson, one of the surviving abolitionists.
The report, authored by
chairman James M. Mason, a pro-slavery politician from Virginia, was
published in June, 1860.
It found no direct evidence of a conspiracy,
but implied that the raid was a result of Republican doctrines. The two
committee Republicans published a minority report, but were apparently
more concerned about denying Northern culpability than clarifying the
nature of Brown's efforts.
Republicans such as
Abraham Lincoln rejected any connection with the raid.
Lincoln called Brown "insane".
[54]
The investigation was performed in a tense environment in both houses
of Congress.
One senator wrote to his wife that "The members on both
sides are mostly armed with deadly weapons and it is said that the
friends of each are armed in the galleries." After a heated exchange of
insults, a Mississippian attacked Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania with a
Bowie knife in the House of Representatives. Stevens' friends prevented
a fight.
[55]
The Senate committee was very cautious in its questions of two of
Brown's backers, Samuel Howe and George Stearns, out of fear of stoking
violence.
Howe and Stearns later said that the questions were asked in a
manner that permitted them to give honest answers without implicating
themselves.
[56]
Civil War historian
James M. McPherson stated that "A historian reading their testimony, however, will be convinced that they told several falsehoods."
[57]
Aftermath of the raid
The raid on Harpers Ferry is generally thought to have done much to
set the nation on a course toward civil war. Southern slaveowners,
hearing initial reports that hundreds of abolitionists were involved,
were relieved the effort was so small.
Yet they feared other
abolitionists would emulate Brown and attempt to lead slave rebellions.
Therefore, the South reorganized the decrepit militia system. These
militias, well-established by 1861, became a ready-made
Confederate army, making the South better prepared for war.
[58]
Southern Democrats charged that Brown's raid was an inevitable
consequence of the Republican Party's political platform, which they
associated with Abolitionism.
In light of the upcoming elections in
November 1860, the Republican political and editorial response to John
Brown tried to distance themselves as much as possible from Brown,
condemning the raid and dismissing Brown as an insane fanatic.
As one
historian explains, Brown was successful in polarizing politics:
[58]
- "Brown's raid succeeded brilliantly. It drove a wedge through the
already tentative and fragile Opposition-Republican coalition and helped
to intensify the sectional polarization that soon tore the Democratic
party and the Union apart."
Many abolitionists in the North viewed John Brown as a martyr who had
been sacrificed for the sins of the nation.
Immediately after the raid,
William Lloyd Garrison published a column in
The Liberator, judging Brown's raid as "well-intended but sadly misguided" and "an enterprise so wild and futile as this".
[59]
However, he defended Brown's character from detractors in the Northern
and Southern press, and argued that those who supported the principles
of the
American Revolution
could not consistently oppose Brown's raid.
(Garrison reiterated the
point, adding that "whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all
slave insurrections", in a speech in Boston on the day Brown was
hanged).
[60][61]
|
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
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On December 22, 1859,
John Greenleaf Whittier published a poem praising him, "Brown of Ossawatomie".
After the Civil War, Black leader
Frederick Douglass
wrote, "His zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine—it
was as the burning sun to my taper light—mine was bounded by time, his
stretched away to the boundless shores of eternity. I could live for the
slave, but he could die for him."
[62]
Viewpoints of historians
As the United States distanced itself from the cause of slavery and
"bayonet rule" in the South, the historical view of Brown declined in a
manner parallel with the demise of Reconstruction.
In the 1880s, Brown's
detractors – some of them contemporaries embarrassed by their fervent
abolitionism – began to produce virulent exposés, particularly
emphasizing the
Pottawatomie killings of 1856.
Although
Oswald Garrison Villard's
1910 biography of Brown was thought to be friendly, Villard being the
grandson of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, he also added fuel to
the anti-Brown fire by criticizing him as a muddled, pugnacious,
bumbling, and homicidal madman.
[64]
Villard himself was a pacifist and admired Brown in many respects, but
his interpretation of the facts provided a paradigm for later anti-Brown
writers. By the mid-20th century, some scholars were fairly convinced
that John Brown was a fanatic and killer, while some African Americans
sustained a positive view of the man.
[65]
Recent biographers' accounts vary, although several works that have
been published on Brown since the opening of the 21st century have
marked a significant shift away from the hostility of writers on Brown.
Toledo (2002), Peterson (2002), DeCaro (2002, 2007), Reynolds (2005),
and Carton (2006) are critically appreciative of Brown's history, far
from the opinions of earlier writers.
A division of opinion is evident
in two recent works of historical fiction: Bruce Olds's 1995
Raising Holy Hell,
which portrays Brown as a religious zealot tortured by delusions of
godly violence; and the more unapologetically sympathetic fictional
portrayal of Brown found in
Russell Banks's 1998
Cloudsplitter.
The shift to an appreciative perspective on Brown moves many white
historians toward the view long held by black scholars such as
W. E. B. Du Bois,
Benjamin Quarles, and
Lerone Bennett, Jr.
Writing in the 1970s, Albert Fried, a biographer and historiographer
of Brown, concluded that historians who portrayed Brown as a
dysfunctional figure are "really informing me of their predilections,
their judgment of the historical event, their identification with the
moderates and opposition to the 'extremists.'"
[66]
It is this less studied, highly interpretive view of Brown that has
prevailed in academic writing as well as in journalism; as biographer
Louis DeCaro Jr. has recently written, "there is no consensus of
fairness with respect to Brown in either the academy or the media."
[67]
The current trend among some writers to portray Brown as another
Timothy McVeigh or
Osama bin Laden
may still reflect the same bias that Fried discussed a generation ago.
DeCaro likewise complains of writers taking "unstudied liberties" and
concludes that in the 20th century alone, "poisonous portrayals [of
Brown were] so prevalent as virtually to have formed one long screed of
hyperbole and sarcasm in the name of historical narrative."
[68]
- Some historians, such as Paul Finkelman, compare him to contemporary terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh.[69]
- Historian James Gilbert labels John Brown a terrorist in terms of
twenty-first century criteria and psychological profiles of terrorists.[70]
- Biographer Stephen B. Oates
has described him as "maligned as a demented dreamer... (but) in fact
one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation";[71]
- Biographer David S. Reynolds
gives Brown credit for starting the civil war or "killing slavery", and
cautions others against identifying Brown with terrorism.[72] Reynolds sees him as the inspiration for the Civil Rights Movement a century later, arguing "it is misleading to identify Brown with modern terrorists."[73]
- Historian and Brown researcher Paul Finkelman
calls him "simply part of a very violent world" and states that Brown
"is a bad tactician, a bad strategist, he's a bad planner, he's not a
very good general – but he's not crazy"[74]
- Biographer Louis A. DeCaro Jr., who has debunked many historical
allegations about Brown's early life and public career, concludes that
although he "was hardly the only abolitionist to equate slavery with
sin, his struggle against slavery was far more personal and religious
than it was for many abolitionists, just as his respect and affection
for black people was far more personal and religious than it was for
most enemies of slavery."[75]
- Historian and Brown documentary scholar Louis Ruchames wrote:
"Brown's action was one of great idealism and placed him in the company
of the great liberators of mankind.";[76]
- Biographer Otto Scott introduces his work on Brown by writing: "In
the late 1850s a new type of political assassin appeared in the United
States. He did not murder the mighty – but the obscure. ... his purposes
were the same as those of his classic predecessors: to force the nation
into a new political pattern by creating terror."[77]
- Criminologist James N. Gilbert writes: "Brown's deeds conform to
contemporary definitions of terrorism, and his psychological
predispositions are consistent with the terrorist model."[78]
- Novelist Bruce Olds calls him "fanatical, ... monomaniacal, ... a zealot, and ... psychologically unbalanced";
- Journalist Ken Chowder
states he is "stubborn ... egoistical, self-righteous, and sometimes
deceitful; yet ... at certain times, a great man"; Chowder argues that
Brown has been adopted by both left and right wing, and his actions
"spun" to fit the world view of the spinner at various times in American
history."[74]
- Malcolm X said that white people could not join his black nationalist Organization of Afro-American Unity, but "if John Brown were still alive, we might accept him."[79]
- Lawyer Brian Harris writes: 'Whatever view you take of the
consequences of Harpers Ferry, and for all that it was a botched job
which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of innocents, it had at least
the merit of having been undertaken for the noblest of motives. The same
cannot be said for the sadistic butchery that was Pottawatomie. It
served no useful purpose other than to vent an old man's rage, and Brown
is the smaller for it.' Intolerance: Divided Societies on Trial. Wildy,
Simmonds & Hill, 2008.
- Director Quentin Tarantino
said: "My favorite hero in American history is John Brown. ... He
basically single-handedly started the road to end slavery and the fact
that he killed people to do it. He decided, 'If we start spilling white
blood, then they're going to start getting the idea.'[80]
- There was also the John Brown Revolutionary League organized in 1969
in Houston, Texas and worked along The People's Party II and MAYO
as the Rainbow Coalition. Radical young groups from black, white and
Chicano backgrounds working to better their communities. Both the
People's Party II and John Brown Revolutionary League participated in an
armed stand off against Houston police on July 26, 1970. Carl Hampton,
Chairman of the People's Party II (later Black Panther Party)
was killed in the battle. Bartee Haile, leader of the JBRL was also
wounded. 400 mostly black supporters were arrested moments after the
battle ended.[citation needed]
- Documentary writer Ken Chowder calls Brown "the father of American terrorism".[81]
Visual portrayals
The two most noted screen portrayals of Brown have both been given by actor
Raymond Massey.
The 1940 film
Santa Fe Trail, starring
Errol Flynn and
Olivia de Havilland,
depicted Brown completely unsympathetically as an out-and-out
villainous madman, and Massey added to that impression by playing him
with a constant, wild-eyed stare.
The film gave the impression that it
did not oppose African-American slavery, even to the point of having a
black "
mammy"
character say, after an especially fierce battle, "Mr. Brown done
promised us freedom, but... if this is freedom, I don't want no part of
it".
Massey portrayed Brown again in the little-known, low-budget
Seven Angry Men,
in which he was not only unquestionably the main character, but was
depicted and acted in a much more restrained, sympathetic way.
Raymond Massey would also portray Brown on the Broadway stage, one of
three characters he played in the acclaimed 1953 dramatic reading of
Stephen Vincent Benet's epic poem
John Brown's Body.
Tyrone Power and
Judith Anderson
also starred in the production.
In Book I of his epic poem, Benet
called him a stone, "to batter into bits an actual wall and change the
actual scheme of things."
Brown was also portrayed on film by John Cromwell in the 1940
Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Cromwell was the director of the film and was not credited in the role. Lincoln was played by Raymond Massey.
Singer
Johnny Cash portrayed John Brown in Book I, Episode Five of the 1985 TV
miniseries North and South. He is revered by character Virgilia Hazard (
Kirstie Alley). During the Harpers Ferry episode, he exchanges brief words with character Orry Main (
Patrick Swayze) and appears noble in his aims, but unrealistic.
Royal Dano portrayed John Brown in the 1971 western comedy
Skin Game.
Sterling Hayden also portrayed John Brown in the 1982 miniseries
The Blue and the Gray.
In 1938–1940, American painter
John Steuart Curry created
Tragic Prelude, a mural of John Brown holding a gun and a Bible, in the
Kansas State Capitol in
Topeka, Kansas.
In 1941,
Jacob Lawrence illustrated the life of John Brown in The Legend of John Brown, a series of twenty-two
gouache
paintings.
By 1977, the original paintings were in such fragile
condition they could not be displayed, and the Detroit Institute of Arts
commissioned Lawrence to recreate the series as a portfolio of
silkscreen prints.
The result was a limited edition portfolio of
twenty-two hand-screened prints. The works were printed and published
with a poem, John Brown, by Robert Hayden, which was commissioned
specifically for the project.
Though John Brown had been a popular topic
for many painters, The Legend of John Brown was the first to explore
the topic from an African American perspective.
The progressive rock band
Kansas adapted Curry's painting of John Brown as the cover of their first album,
Kansas, released in 1974.
A similar image of Brown appears on
The Best of Kansas, along with images referencing other previous Kansas albums.
Paintings such as Hovenden's
The Last Moments of John Brown
immortalize an apocryphal story, in which a Black woman offers the
condemned Brown her baby to kiss on his way to the gallows. It was
probably a tale invented by journalist
James Redpath.
[82]
Influences
The connection between John Brown's life and many of the slave
uprisings in the Caribbean was clear from the outset. Brown was born
during the period of the
Haitian Revolution,
which saw Haitian slaves revolting against the French.
The role the
revolution played in helping to formulate Brown's abolitionist views
directly is not clear; however, the revolution had an obvious effect on
the general view towards slavery in the northern United States.
As
W.E.B. Du Bois notes, the involvement of slaves in the American
Revolutions, as well as the "upheaval in Hayti, and the new enthusiasm
for human rights, led to a wave of emancipation which started in
Vermont... swept through New England and Pennsylvania, ending finally in
New York and New Jersey."
[83]
This changed sentiment, which occurred during the late 18th and early
19th century, undoubtedly had a role in creating Brown's abolitionist
opinion, during his upbringing.
The 1839 slave insurrection aboard the Spanish ship
La Amistad, off the coast of Cuba, provides a poignant example of John Brown's support and appeal towards Caribbean slave revolts.
On
La Amistad,
Joseph Cinqué and approximately 50 other slaves captured the ship, slated to transport them from
Havana to
Puerto Principe,
Cuba in July 1839, and attempted to return to Africa.
However, through
trickery, the ship ended up in the United States, where Cinque and his
men stood trial. Ultimately, the courts acquitted the men because at the
time the international slave trade was illegal in the United States.
[84]
According to Brown's daughter, "
Turner
and Cinque stood first in esteem" among Brown's black heroes.
Furthermore, she noted Brown's "admiration of Cinques' character and
management in carrying his points with so little bloodshed!"
[85]
In 1850, Brown would refer affectionately to the revolt, in saying
"Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. Witness the
case of Cinques, of everlasting memory, on board the 'Amistad.'"
[86]
The slave revolts of the Caribbean had a clear and important impact on
Brown's views toward slavery and his staunch support of the most severe
forms of abolitionism. However, this is not the most important part of
the many revolts' legacy of influencing Brown.
The specific knowledge John Brown gained from the tactics employed in
the Haitian Revolution, and other Caribbean revolts, was of paramount
importance when Brown turned his sights to the federal arsenal at
Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
As Brown's cohort
Richard Realf
explained to a committee of the 36th Congress, "he had posted himself
in relation to the wars of Toussaint L'Ouverture... he had become
thoroughly acquainted with the wars in Hayti and the islands round
about."
[87]
By studying the slave revolts of the Caribbean region, Brown learned a
great deal about how to properly conduct guerrilla warfare. A key element
to the prolonged success of this warfare was the establishment of
Maroon
communities, which are essentially colonies of runaway slaves.
As a
contemporary article notes, Brown would use these establishments to
"retreat from and evade attacks he could not overcome. He would maintain
and prolong a guerilla war, of which... Haiti afforded" an example.
[88]
The idea of creating Maroon communities was the impetus for the
creation of John Brown's "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for
the People of the United States," which helped to detail how such
communities would be governed.
However, the idea of Maroon colonies of
slaves is not an idea exclusive to the Caribbean region. In fact, Maroon
communities riddled the southern United States between the mid-1600s
and 1864, especially the
Great Dismal Swamp region of Virginia and North Carolina.
Similar to the Haitian Revolution, the
Seminole Wars,
fought in modern day Florida, saw the involvement of Maroon
communities, which although outnumbered by native allies were more
effective fighters.
[88]
Although the Maroon colonies of North America undoubtedly had an
effect on John Brown's plan, their impact paled in comparison to that of
the Maroon communities in places like Haiti, Jamaica and Surinam.
Accounts by Brown's friends and cohorts prove this idea. Richard Realf, a
cohort of Brown in Kansas, noted that Brown not only studied the slave
revolts in the Caribbean, but focused more specifically on the maroons
of Jamaica and those involved in Haiti's liberation.
[89]
Brown's friend Richard Hinton similarly noted that Brown knew "by heart," the occurrences in Jamaica and Haiti.
[90]
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a cohort of Brown's and a member of the
Secret Six,
stated that Brown's plan involved getting "together bands and families
of fugitive slaves" and "establish them permanently in those [mountain]
fastnesses, like the Maroons of Jamaica and Surinam."
[91]
Brown had planned for the Maroon colonies established to be "durable," and thus able to endure over a prolonged period of war.
The similarities between John Brown's attempted insurrection and the
Haitian Revolution, in both methods, motivations and resolve, is still
seen today as the main avenue in Haiti's capital
Port-au-Prince is still named for Brown as a sign of solidarity.
[92]
In popular culture
- The 1921 dramatic monologue "John Brown" by Edwin Arlington Robinson. In which, Brown speaks to his wife on the night before his execution.
- The 1940 film Santa Fe Trail portrays Brown as a madman whom the federal army must stop. The climax is the battle at Harper's Ferry.
- Henry Miller's Plexus (Book Two of The Rosy Crucifixion) (1953) discusses John Brown.
- In Langston Hughes's Selected Poems (1958), on page 10 is a poem called October 16. In the poem Hughes celebrates John Brown's actions.
- The 1994 novel, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, by George MacDonald Fraser. The central character, Harry Paget Flashman
becomes involved in the Harpers Ferry Raid; the novel includes both a
description of the raid and a study of the character of John Brown.
- The 1998 biographical novel about John Brown, Cloudsplitter, by Russell Banks was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. It is narrated from the point of view of Brown's surviving son, Owen.[93]
- The 2000 song "Meteor Of War", from Rancid, by the punk rock band Rancid has John Brown and his actions as its topic.
- The 2006 video game Splinter Cell: Double Agent features a fictional terrorist group known as John Browns Army (JBA), created in the name of John Brown and his visions.
- In 2007, Brown was featured in a T-shirt produced during the run-up to the football game between historic college rivals Kansas and Missouri. After Missouri fans created a T-shirt featuring an image of pro-slavery militant William Quantrill, responsible for the burning of Lawrence, Kansas,
in 1863, Kansas fans responded with their own T-shirt featuring an
image of Brown and the tagline "Kansas: Keeping America Safe From
Missouri Since 1854."[94]
- James McBride's 2013 novel The Good Lord Bird
tells John Brown's story through the eyes of a young slave, Henry
Shackleford, who accompanies Brown to Harper's Ferry. The novel won the
2013 National Book Award for Fiction.[95]
John Brown's Body (1928) is an epic American poem written by
Stephen Vincent Benet.
Its title references the radical abolitionist
John Brown, who raided
Harpers Ferry in Virginia in the fall of 1859.
He was captured and hanged later that year. Benet's poem covers the history of the
American Civil War.
[1][2] It won the
Pulitzer Prize in 1929.
The poem was performed on Broadway in 1953 in a staged dramatic reading starring
Tyrone Power,
Judith Anderson, and
Raymond Massey, and directed by
Charles Laughton.
In 2015 it was announced that the recording of the performance will be inducted into the
Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for the recording's "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy".
[3]
First edition cover
(
Doubleday, Doran)
"
John Brown's Body" (originally known as "
John Brown's Song") is a United States
marching song about the
abolitionist John Brown.
The song was popular in the
Union during the
American Civil War. The tune arose out of the folk hymn tradition of the American
camp meeting movement of the late 18th and early 19th century.
According to an 1890
account,
the original John Brown lyrics were a collective effort by a group of
Union soldiers who were referring both to the famous John Brown and
also, humorously, to a Sergeant John Brown of their own battalion.
Various other authors have published additional verses and/or claimed
credit for originating the John Brown lyrics and tune.
The "flavor of coarseness, possibly of irreverence"
[2]
led many of the era to feel uncomfortable with the earliest "John
Brown" lyrics.
This in turn led to the creation of many variant versions
of the text that aspired to a higher literary quality. The most famous
of these is
Julia Ward Howe's "
The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which was written when a friend suggested, "Why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?"
[3]
Numerous informal versions and adaptations of the lyrics and music
have been created from the mid-1800s down to the present, making "John
Brown's Body" an example of a
living folk music tradition.
History of the tune
According to George Kimball, the second publication of the John Brown
Song and the first including both music and text, with music arranged by
C.S. Marsh, dated 1861. See George Kimball, "Origin of the John Brown
Song", New England Magazine, new series 1 (1890):371-76
"Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us", the tune that eventually became
associated with John Brown's Body and the Battle Hymn of the Republic,
was formed in the American
camp meeting circuit of the late 1700s and early 1800s.
[4]
In that atmosphere, where
hymns were taught and
learned by rote and a spontaneous and
improvisatory element was prized, both tunes and words changed and adapted in true
folk music fashion:
[5]
Specialists in nineteenth-century American religious history describe
camp meeting music as the creative product of participants who, when
seized by the spirit of a particular sermon or prayer, would take lines
from a preacher's text as a point of departure for a short, simple
melody. The melody was either borrowed from a preexisting tune or made
up on the spot. The line would be sung repeatedly, changing slightly
each time, and shaped gradually into a stanza that could be learned
easily by others and memorized quickly.[6]
Early versions of "Say, Brothers" included variants, developed as part of this call-and-response hymn singing tradition such as:
Oh! Brothers will you meet me
Oh! Sisters will you meet me
Oh! Mourners will you meet me
Oh! Sinners will you meet me
Oh! Christians will you meet me
This initial line was repeated three times and finished with the tag "On Canaan's happy shore."
[7]
The first choruses included lines such as
We'll shout and give him glory (3X)
For glory is his own
[8]
The familiar "Glory, glory, hallelujah" chorus—a notable feature of
both the John Brown Song, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and many
other texts that used this tune—developed out of the oral camp meeting
tradition some time between 1808 and the 1850s.
Folk hymns like "Say, Brothers" "circulated and evolved chiefly through oral tradition rather than through print.
[9]
In print, the camp meeting song can be traced back as early as
1806-1808 when it was published in camp meeting song collections in
South Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts.
[10]
The tune and variants of the "Say, brothers" hymn text were popular
in southern camp meetings, with both African-American and white
worshipers, throughout the early 1800s, spread predominantly through
Methodist and Baptist camp meeting circuits.
[11]
As the southern camp meeting circuit died down in the mid 1800s, the
"Say, brothers" tune was incorporated into hymn and tune books and it
was via this route that the tune became well known in the mid 1800s
throughout the northern U.S.
By 1861, "groups as disparate as Baptists,
Mormons, Millerites, the American Sunday School Union, and the Sons of
Temperance all claimed 'Say Brothers' as their own."
[12]
For example, in 1858 words and the tune were published in
The Union Harp and Revival Chorister,
selected and arranged by Charles Dunbar, and published in Cincinnati.
The book contains the words and music of a song "My Brother Will You
Meet Me", with the music but not the words of the "
Glory Hallelujah"
chorus; and the opening line "Say my brother will you meet me".
In
December 1858 a Brooklyn Sunday school published a hymn called
"Brothers, Will You Meet Us" with the words and music of the "Glory
Hallelujah" chorus, and the opening line "Say, brothers will you meet
us".
[13]
Cover of an 1861 sheet music score for "John Brown's Song"
Some researchers have maintained that the tune's roots go back to a "Negro folk song",
[14] an African-American wedding song from Georgia,
[15] or to a British
sea shanty that originated as a Swedish drinking song.
[16]
Anecdotes indicate that versions of "Say, Brothers" were sung as part of African American
ring shouts;
[17]
appearance of the hymn in this call-and-response setting with singing,
clapping, stomping, dancing, and extended ecstatic choruses may have
given impetus to the development of the well known "Glory hallelujuah"
chorus.
Given that the tune was developed in an oral tradition, it is
impossible to say for certain which of these influences may have played a
specific role in the creation of this tune, but it is certain that
numerous folk influences from different cultures such as these were
prominent in the musical culture of the camp meeting, and that such
influences were freely combined in the music-making that took place in
the revival movement.
[6]
Sheet music for "Brave McClellan is Our Leader Now," with words by Mrs.
M.A. Kidder, set to the Glory Halleluah tune and also including "the
famous John Brown's song," 1862
It has been suggested that "Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us", popular
among Southern blacks, already had an anti-slavery sub-text, with its
reference to "Canaan's happy shore" alluding to the idea of crossing the
river to a happier place.
[18][19]
If so, that sub-text that was considerably enhanced and expanded as the
various John Brown lyrics took on themes related to the famous
abolitionist and the American Civil War.
History of the text of "John Brown's Body"
First public performance
At a flag-raising ceremony at
Fort Warren, near Boston, on Sunday May 12, 1861, the
John Brown song was publicly played "perhaps for the first time".
[13] The
American Civil War had begun the previous month.
Newspapers reported troops singing the song as they marched in the
streets of Boston on July 18, 1861, and there were a "rash" of broadside
printings of the song with substantially the same words as the undated
John Brown Song!
broadside, stated by Kimball to be the first published edition, and the
broadside with music by C. S. Marsh copyrighted on July 16, 1861, also
published by C.S. Hall (see images displayed on this page).
Other
publishers also came out with versions of the John Brown Song and
claimed copyright.
[20]
"Tiger" Battalion writes the lyrics; Kimball's account
In 1890, George Kimball wrote his account of how the 2nd Infantry
Battalion of the Massachusetts militia, known as the "Tiger" Battalion,
collectively worked out the lyrics to "John Brown's Body". Kimball
wrote:
We had a jovial Scotchman in the battalion, named John Brown … and as
he happened to bear the identical name of the old hero of Harper's
Ferry, he became at once the butt of his comrades. If he made his
appearance a few minutes late among the working squad, or was a little
tardy in falling into the company line, he was sure to be greeted with
such expressions as "Come, old fellow, you ought to be at it if you are
going to help us free the slaves"; or, "This can't be John Brown—why,
John Brown is dead." And then some wag would add, in a solemn, drawling
tone, as if it were his purpose to give particular emphasis to the fact
that John Brown was really, actually dead: "Yes, yes, poor old John
Brown is dead; his body lies mouldering in the grave."[21]
"Say, Brothers" from Hymn and Tune Book of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, Round Note Edition, Nashville, TN (1889, reprinted 1903).
According to Kimball, these sayings became by-words among the
soldiers and, in a communal effort—similar in many ways to the
spontaneous composition of camp meeting songs described above—were
gradually put to the tune of "Say, Brothers":
Finally ditties composed of the most nonsensical, doggerel rhymes,
setting for the fact that John Brown was dead and that his body was
undergoing the process of dissolution, began to be sung to the music of
the hymn above given. These ditties underwent various ramifications,
until eventually the lines were reached,—
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul's marching on."
And,—
"He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord,
His soul is marching on."
These lines seemed to give general satisfaction, the idea that
Brown's soul was "marching on" receiving recognition at once as having a
germ of inspiration in it. They were sung over and over again with a
great deal of gusto, the "Glory hallelujah" chorus being always added.[21]
Some leaders of the battalion, feeling the words were coarse and
irreverent, tried to urge the adoption of more fitting lyrics, but to no
avail.
The lyrics were soon prepared for publication by members of the
battalion, together with publisher C. S. Hall. They selected and
polished verses they felt appropriate, and may even have enlisted the
services of a local poet to help polish and create verses.
[22]
The official histories of the old First Artillery and of the 55th
Artillery (1918) also record the Tiger Battalion's role in creating the
John Brown Song, confirming the general thrust of Kimball's version with
a few additional details.
[23][24]
Other claims of authorship
"Bummers, Come and Meet Us," published in New York, H. De Marsan, no
date. This version of the text shares many elements with "Say, Brothers"
and "Brave McClellan is Our Leader" but few, or even none, with the
"John Brown Song."
William Steffe
In hymnals and folks song collections, the hymn tune for "Say, Brothers" is often attributed to
William Steffe. Robert W. Allen summarizes Steffe's own story of composing the tune:
Steffe finally told the whole story of the writing of the song. He
was asked to write it in 1855 or 56 for the Good Will Engine Company of
Philadelphia. They used it as a song of welcome for the visiting Liberty
Fire Company of Baltimore. The original verse for the song was "Say, Bummers,
Will You Meet Us?" Someone else converted the "Say, Bummers" verse into
the hymn "Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us." He thought he might be able
to identify that person, but was never able to do so.[25]
Though Steffe may have played a role in creating the "Say, Bummers"
version of the song, which seems to be a variant of and owe a debt to
both "Say, Brothers" and "John Brown", Steffe couldn't have written the
"Glory Hallelujah" tune or the "Say, Brothers" text, both of which had
been circulating for decades before his birth.
Thomas Brigham Bishop
Maine songwriter, musician, band leader, and Union soldier
Thomas Brigham Bishop
(1835–1905) has also been credited as the originator of the John Brown
Song, notably by promoter James MacIntyre in a 1916 book and 1935
interview.
[26][27]
(Bishop also claimed to have written "Kitty Wells," "Shoo, Fly Don't Bother Me," and "
When Johnny Comes Marching Home,"—and to have played a role in the composition of
Swanee River.
[28])
Other claimants
In the late 1800s, during the song's height of popularity, a number
of other authors claimed to have played a part in the origin of the
song.
[28]
Some sources list Steffe, Bishop, Frank E. Jerome, and others as the tune's composer.
[29]
Given the tune's use in the camp meeting circuits in the late 1700s and
early 1800s and the first known publication dates of 1806-1808,
[30]
long before most of these claimants were born, it is apparent that none
of these authors composed the tune that was the basis of "Say,
Brothers" and "John Brown".
[12]
As Annie J. Randall wrote, "Multiple authors, most of them anonymous,
borrowed the tune from "Say, Brothers", gave it new texts, and used it
to hail Brown's terrorist war to abolish the centuries-old practice of
slavery in America."
[31]
This continual re-use and spontaneous adaptation of existing words and
tunes is an important feature of the oral folk music tradition that
"Say, Brothers" and the John Brown Song were embedded in and no one
would have begrudged their use or re-use of these folk materials.
Some
of those who claimed to have composed the tune may have had a hand in
creating and publishing some of the perfectly legitimate variants or
alternate texts that used the tune—but all certainly wanted a share of
the fame that came with being known as the author of this very well
known tune.
Creation of other versions
Once John Brown's Body became popular as a marching song, more
literary versions of the John Brown lyrics were created for the John
Brown tune.
[32] For example,
William Weston Patton wrote his influential version in October 1861 which was published in the
Chicago Tribune, 16 December of that year.
The "
Song of the First of Arkansas" was written, or written down, by Capt. Lindley Miller in 1864,
[33]
although (typical of the confusion of authorship among the variants and
versions) a similar text with the title "The Valiant Soldiers" is also
attributed to
Sojourner Truth.
[34]
"The President’s Proclamation" was written by Edna Dean Proctor in 1863
on the occasion of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Other versions
include the "Marching song of the 4th Battalion of Rifles, 13th Reg.,
Massachusetts Volunteers" and the "Kriegslied der Division Blenker",
written for the
Blenker Division,
a group of German soldiers who had participated in the European
revolutions of 1848/49 and fought for the Union in the American Civil
War.
[35]
Other related texts
The tune was later also used for "
The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (written in November 1861, published in February 1862; this song was directly inspired by "John Brown's Body"), "
Marching Song of the First Arkansas," "
The Battle Hymn of Cooperation,"
"Bummers, Come and Meet Us" (see facsimile), and many other related
texts and knock-offs during and immediately after the American Civil War
period.
The World War II song, "
Blood on the Risers",
is set to the tune, and includes the chorus "Glory, glory (or Gory,
gory), what a hell of a way to die/And he ain't gonna jump no more!"
[36]
The tune was also used for perhaps the most well known union song in the United States,
Solidarity Forever. The song became an anthem of the
Industrial Workers of the World and all unions that sought more than workplace concessions, but a world run by those who labor.
Sailors are known to have adapted "John Brown's Body" into a
sea shanty - specifically, into a "
Capstan Shanty", used during anchor-raising.
[37]
The "John Brown" tune has proven popular for folk-created texts, with hundreds of knock-offs, parodies, and school-yard versions
[38] created over the years.
The Burning of the School is a well-known parody.
A version about a baby with a
cold
is often sung by school-age children. An African-American version was
recorded as "We'll hang Jeff Davis from a sour Apple Tree".
[39]
In
Sri Lanka it was adapted into a bilingual (English and
Sinhala) song sung at
cricket matches - notably at the
Royal-Thomian, with the lyrics "We'll hang all the Thomians on the
cadju-puhulang tree...".
Another adaptation sung at the annual match between the Colombo Law and Medical colleges went "
Liquor arsenalis and the
cannabis indica...". This was adapted into a trilingual song by Sooty Banda.
[40]
Len Chandler sang a song called "move on over" to the tune on
Pete Seeger's
Rainbow Quest TV show.
[41]
Lyrics
The lyrics used with the John Brown tune generally show an increase
in complexity and syllable count as they move from simple,
orally-transmitted camp meeting song, to an orally composed marching
song, to more consciously literary versions.
The increasing syllable count led to an ever-increasing number of
dotted rhythms in the melody to accommodate the increased number of
syllables.
The result is that the verse and chorus, which were musically
identical in the "Say, Brothers", became quite distinct
rhythmically—though still identical in melodic profile—in "John Brown's
Body."
The trend towards ever more elaborate rhythmic variations of the
original melody became even more pronounced in the later versions of the
"John Brown Song" and in the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", which have
far more words and syllables per verse than the early versions.
The
extra words and syllables are fit in by adding more dotted rhythms to
the melody and by including four separate lines in each verse rather
than repeating the first line three times.
The result is that in these
later versions the verse and the chorus became even more distinct
rhythmically and poetically though still remaining identical in their
underlying melodic profile.
Say, Brothers
- (1st verse)
- Say, brothers, will you meet us (3x)
- On Canaan's happy shore.
- (Refrain)
- Glory, glory, hallelujah (3x)
- For ever, evermore!
- (2nd verse)
- By the grace of God we'll meet you (3x)
- Where parting is no more.
- (3rd verse)
- Jesus lives and reigns forever (3x)
- On Canaan's happy shore.
John Brown's Body (a number of versions closely similar to this published in 1861)
- John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave; (3X)
- His soul's marching on!
-
- (Chorus)
- Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
- Glory, glory, hallelujah! his soul's marching on!
- He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord! (3X)
- His soul's marching on!
-
- (Chorus)
- John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back! (3X)
- His soul's marching on!
-
- (Chorus)
- His pet lambs will meet him on the way; (3X)
- They go marching on!
-
- (Chorus)
- They will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree! (3X)
- As they march along!
-
- (Chorus)
- Now, three rousing cheers for the Union; (3X)
- As we are marching on!
(From the
Library of Congress:
[42])
Version by William Weston Patton:[32]
- Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,
- While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
- But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
- His soul is marching on.
- (Chorus)
- John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,
- And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save;
- Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave,
- His soul is marching on.
- (Chorus)
- He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
- And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
- They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
- But his soul is marching on.
- (Chorus)
- John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see,
- Christ who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be,
- And soon thruout the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free,
- For his soul is marching on.
- (Chorus)
- The conflict that he heralded he looks from heaven to view,
- On the army of the Union with its flag red, white and blue.
- And heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do,
- For his soul is marching on.
- (Chorus)
- Ye soldiers of Freedom, then strike, while strike ye may,
- The death blow of oppression in a better time and way,
- For the dawn of old John Brown has brightened into day,
- And his soul is marching on.
- (Chorus)
Source: Wikipedia.org
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![Original publication of the text of the John Brown Song from 1861.[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Original-john-brown-words-george-kimball-1890.jpg)
