On two separate occasions, Emerson delivered speeches on John Brown. The first speech, John Brown — Speech at Boston, was given before a meeting for the relief of the family of John Brown at Tremont Temple in Boston on November 18, 1859. At that time John Brown was in prison in Virginia, having been tried and awaiting his scheduled hanging on December 2nd for the raid at Harper’s Ferry.
Emerson’s speech is short and to the point. He begins by making Brown out to be a humble farmer from generations of humble farmers, right back to Peter Brown who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. He goes on to praise Brown as “a man to make friends wherever on earth courage and integrity are esteemed, the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no by-ends of his own.” He is possessed with “simple, artless goodness, joined with his sublime courage.”
Emerson quotes from John Brown’s final speech given during his trial (he was, apparently, a very charismatic speaker):
If I had interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or any of their friends, parents, wives or children, it would all have been right. But I believe that to have interfered as I have done, for the despised poor, was not wrong, but right.
Emerson states that it is easy to see that Brown will be a favorite in history, that no one in the civilized world will be able to resist being sympathetic to him.
On this, Emerson was wrong. Brown is a controversial figure in history. When I was in high school I remember learning about the Raid on Harper’s Ferry and I thought Brown was a hero because he tried to free the slaves. But the more I have been reading about him lately, the less I think of him as a hero. His cause, however good and righteous, was forwarded by armed insurrection and murder. I can’t help but wonder if Brown hadn’t been so successful, perhaps there may have been a way for the country to find a way to avoid civil war as well as a peaceful dissolution to slavery.
But nonviolence was not Brown’s way, and I find it interesting that both Emerson and Thoreau, men who believed ardently in nonviolent civil disobedience, could so wholeheartedly support a man like Brown.
Emerson’s second speech, John Brown — Speech at Salem, was delivered at Salem on January 6, 1860. Brown had been dead for a little over a year and the start of the Civil War was just a little over a year in the future. Here Emerson seems to be attempting to memorialize Brown.
Emerson spends much time on Brown’s biography, almost mythologizing him by including a bit about how as a boy Brown had befriended a twelve-year-old slave and had seen the cruelty to which he was subjected. So Brown “swore an oath of resistance to slavery as long as he lived.” Emerson stresses that Brown grew up both religious and poor and as such was
without any vulgar trait; living to ideal ends, without any mixture of self-indulgence or compromise, such as lowers the value of benevolent and thoughtful men we know; abstemious, refusing luxuries, not sourly and reproachfully, but simply as unfit for his habit; quiet and gentle as a child in the house.
Emerson says he sees why so many politicians don’t like the man, and why so many “sensible and self-respect[ing]” people do.
Emerson ends his speech by asking,
Who makes the abolitionist? The slave-holder. The sentiment of mercy is the natural recoil which the laws of the universe provide to protect man-kind from destruction by savage passions. And our blind statesmen go up and down, with committees of vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of this new heresy. They will need a very vigilant committee indeed to find its birthplace, and a very strong force to root it out. For the arch-abolitionist, older than Brown, and older than the Shenandoah Mountains, is Love, whose other name is Justice, which was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, before slavery, and will be after it.
Notice he says “who” and not “what” makes an abolitionist? All the blame is laid squarely on the slave holder, neglecting to take into account history, politics, economics, and culture. He oversimplifies, implying that ending slavery is easy. He also exonerates Brown by implying that his being an abolitionist was not his fault.
Of course it is easy from my position in the 21st century to look back and speculate, to indulge in “if only.” But I can’t support Brown like Emerson did. Brown’s cause was just, but his methods, not so much.
Next week’s Emerson: American Civilization
I suspect it might be a tendency in very cerebral men to secretly idealise action. It seems to come up as a theme regularly in literature. Here’s Emerson performing for all he’s worth, delivering his impassioned speeches, but maybe some part of him wished he could get his hands dirty? I have to say I’d never heard of John Brown before so you continue to educate me, Stefanie!!
As a biographer of John Brown the abolitionist, I’m sorry that you have taken such a dim and cynical view of him, while you seem to have embraced such a idealistic notion with respect to what might have happened.
I do not know what sources you are reading about him, but your tendency in thinking actually goes opposite of what most people think. Most–particularly whites–have been schooled to believe that Brown was a crazy, violent fanatic. You saw him as a heroic figure but now, based on your reading, think of him as a violent man and murderer. You think Emerson was largely stylizing him.
Let me assure you that you have not read enough about Brown. Brown nowhere planned insurrection, which is essentially an armed uprising with the intention of eliminating slave masters. Brown planned an armed defensive campaign. His intention was to lead enslaved people away from slavery, arm them to fight defensively while they liberated still more people, fighting in small groups in the mountains, until the economy of slavery collapsed. Brown did not believe in killing unless it was absolutely necessary. This also explains what happened in Kansas. The men that were killed by Brown and his company were terrorist collaborators and the Browns themselves were targeted for attack. There was no law and order and protection had to be taken into their own hands. Brown has been prejudicially misrepresented. Most of the “facts” of his case have been mediated from slave masters, pro-slavery people, and pacifists.
I wonder what answer you would have to slavery in 1859? You vainly imagine that another route toward peace was possible between north and south. Number 1, the South was looking for an excuse to secede and sustain slavery at all costs. Prior to the war, the South was bullying the federal government and running roughshod over the North to get their way. When moderate Lincoln was elected, they blew up and rebelled, and Lincoln did everything possible to assure the South that he would not take their slaves from them.
Number 2, with all due respect (and writing as a European American), you reason like a white person who sees slavery as an ethical “problem,” but not as a life-or-death crisis as would a black person, or any human who was enslaved. You seem to think that ending slavery has to be done “without violence,” when you would not feel the same way if you and your family were robbed of their labor, and your body was subject to the lusts of a man who owned you. Slavery is the great monstrosity of this nation and when whites talk about it so clinically, so removed, as if it were a mere economic issue, or bad policy, they only show that they STILL DO NOT GET IT. If you GOT IT, you’d appreciate how important John Brown really was, because there were not too many of “us” truly committed to human liberation at all costs. You probably admire the “founding fathers” who use violent insurrection and killing to win our independence, when as “whites” our independence was a matter of economic advantage, not freedom to control our bodies or earn wages. But still you hate and dismiss John Brown. I think that you have yet to read history correctly. I would recommend reading or rereading John Brown’s last statement to the court. Best wishes in your continued study and writing.
Lou, saying that someone has fallen for slave-owners’ propaganda and is in effect pro-slavery is not a very effective rhetorical strategy. A gentler tone would actually be more convincing.
Good post, as usual, Stefanie. The use of non-violent methods in these tough cases (slavery or genocide) is obviously very complicated, and I thought you made that point well.
Good post indeed. All this debate — the controversial figure that Brown is today — shows just how difficult the issue of slavery is to talk about, even today; we still have so much to work through as a country.
I agree that Brown may have had a noble and good cause, but he most definitely went about things in the wrong manner. I also believe that in some ways he was more concerned with making a name for himself than anything else. Slavery was and is wrong — no doubt! But, John Brown a hero? I’m not so sure. There are many others who worked to try to end slavery without slaughter.
I have never been able to muster any sympathy for John Brown or his sons and do not see anything glorious or inspiring in his story. His methods were deplorable and the man was a murderer.
Litlove, I suspect you are right about Emerson the intellectual wishing to be a man of action. Intellectual influence is so much more difficult to gauge; the results aren’t always as obvious as a raid.
Lou, thank you for your comment. You are obviously very passionate about John Brown and I can appreciate that. But you have also served to illustrate my comment that Brown is a controversial figure. If he were not, we’d all have said some very different things. As for my sources about Brown, they all came from the internet, Wikipedia mainly but also historical sites about Kansas and some university history lectures that are online. I should elaborate as to why I saw Brown as a hero when I was in grade school. At that time I misunderstood my history and thought Brown was a black man, an escaped slave, and the Raid on Harper’s Ferry and attempt to rescue his family. I do think the US could have ended slavery without a bloody civil war from which we as a nation are still suffering the consequences. You say Brown has been misrepresented by slave masters, pro-slavery people and pacifists. While I am neither a slave master, nor pro-slavery, I am a pacifist. In my opinion violence is rarely the best solution to anything. Part two of your comment doesn’t even merit a counter-argument on my part. You do not know me or my beliefs or my ethnic background and engaging with you and your accusing rhetoric is pointless because you have already passed judgment.
Amateur Reader, thank you. The choice of nonviolence is never easy, especially when we naturally react violently when attacked. But I do think nonviolence is a viable option and should always be considered first. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and the historical Jesus have great lessons to teach us on that.
Dorothy, I agree. As a country we are still have not resolved all the problems of slavery and the civil war. If we had, Obama wouldn’t have had to give a speech about race.
Lisa, you are right, there are many others who worked to end slavery without violence. I believe those people were heroic. Harriet Tubman, for instance. There is a woman that deserves respect and praise.
Sam, John Brown was supposedly a charismatic speaker. Imagine what he could have done if he had used his speaking talents for the cause of abolition in ways other than raising money for guns. Things would have gone a whole lot differently.
Stefanie, perhaps I have judged you harshly and wrongly, and I do apologize. The fact that you are a pacifist does put your critique in a different category, one which I nevertheless do not agree with. However you feel no less strongly about your analysis than I do about mine. Pacifists can rightly and easily point out that violence usually leads to more violence, and never has a utopia been born out of a war. On the other hand, pacifists often stand on the sidelines of history and make judgments upon men and women who choose to fight, as if all people who fight believed in violence as THE answer, or that they are essentially defined as violent people. Brown did not see violence as man’s hope. He had great apprehension about the use of force insofar as civilians were concerned, which is why he wrote a constitution for his people in which the rights of prisoners were to be protected and war crimes were to be punished. As a Christian, he preferred peace and lived 50 years without ever using violence. But as a Christian he felt the Golden Rule constrained him to do something, and by 1850 it was clear that slavery was not going to go away. In fact, slavery was encroaching upon the North (Dred Scott, Fugitive Slave Law). Brown knew there are times and seasons when men and women must fight, particularly when evil men and institutions become so powerful that nothing but militant power will overturn them. In Kansas Brown would have killed many more people had he loved violence or practiced “terrorism” as he is often accused. I believe he and others killed there for self-preservation, and only a pacifist would indict him for that (smile). He was actually a man who minimized violence and tried (I think to the point of self-defeat) to avoid general bloodletting. He had no intention of a general insurrection (which involves killing slave masters) and the reason he was caught at Harpers Ferry is because he delayed in “parleying” with his captives, for whom he had a kind of paralysis of pity. He was trying to assuage their fears, believe it or not, and show them that his only concern was to release enslaved people, not kill them. This is documented, but too many people have only listened to the slave master record, which was carried into the northern press, upheld by the moderate Republican party, rehearsed by Lost Cause southern romantics, and harped upon time and again by journalists and scholars with little interest or understanding of Brown’s life.
You write: “I do think the US could have ended slavery without a bloody civil war from which we as a nation are still suffering the consequences.” But this is my point: even if this were possible, slavery would have ended in the 20th century, and only after slave masters had been compensated for their “property.” And that’s the optimistic viewpoint. There’s still plenty of reason to believe that forces in the South were pushing for secession, independence, and a permanent continuation of slavery. Nor do I know what consequences we as a nation are suffering as a result of the Civil War. Where are they? The nation boomed as a result of war time industry; the South was welcomed back and power returned to white southern secessionists within fifteen years. While there may be “nooks and crannies” of the South where people still hate Yankees, the only people who REALLY suffered the consequences of the Union victory were emancipated blacks, who fell back into the hands of their defeated former masters after 1875. Post-reconstruction, segregation, lynching, and economic disenfranchisement from that era still resonate in disparities that exist today. This was also the era when John Brown was increasingly slandered and misrepresented.
I apologize also for nosing in on your blog. As a biographer of Brown, I survey what’s being written about him regularly on the internet, and so much of it follows along the lines of the bigotry and malice expressed by Sam Houston the commenter above. Once in a while I throw my two cents in, but I should have refrained and let you have your conversation with your colleagues. So forgive my intrusiveness. I do admire your literary passion and humanitarian perspective even though I still don’t agree with your view of Brown, or your perspective on the “could haves” of history. Maybe some day you’ll do me the honor of reading my two biographies of the man. You may not change your opinion, but I believe you will see him in a different light in some respects.
FIRE FROM THE MIDST OF YOU: A RELIGIOUS LIFE OF JOHN BROWN (nyu press); JOHN BROWN–THE COST OF FREEDOM (international publishers)
All the best to you.–Lou D
PS Brown was not a good orator at all. He found speaking difficult although he tried at points to address audiences, particularly in 1857. If Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and others had golden tongues, Brown had a copper one at best. Believe me, he was a better guerilla than an orator.–LD
Stephanie–thank you so much for your thoughtful and very informative post. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the conversation it invited.
Have you read Cloudsplitter? the novelistic rendering of the John Brown story by Russell Banks? It’s a tremendous novel–way, way high on my list of historical fiction favorites–precisely because Banks’ spinning of the John Brown story doesn’t resolve these complexities. A beautiful novel, beautifully written on an often very ugly subject.
“and so much of it follows along the lines of the bigotry and malice expressed by Sam Houston the commenter above.”
And with this quote Lou DeCaro Jr. has made my day. I am never impressed when someone decides to use name-calling rather than reason. DeCaro wants us to believe that anyone calling John Brown a murderer is a bigot. I am certainly less of a bigot and filled with less malice than was John Brown himself.
My opinion stands: John Brown was a murderer and deserved his end. The man was willing to kill in order to meet his objectives. There are very few objectives of any sort that cannot be achieved without killing the opposition if they are truly worthwhile objectives to begin with.