The other day NPR noted that abolitionist John Brown’s farm is among those state parks and historic sites that New York Gov. David Paterson may close due to the budget crisis. With only 60,000 visitors last year, the state could decide it’s not worth maintaining the Civil War-era farm and burial site that has been a symbol of freedom for more than 150 years.
So who is John Brown anyway?
NPR’s story explains that he “led the raid on Harpers Ferry, which helped spark the Civil War.” Convicted of murder and treason among other charges, he was hanged in 1859.
I had only the vaguest elementary school history recollection of John Brown’s story when, last summer, I listened to David Blight‘s Open Yale Course on The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877. Today I went back to lectures 9: John Brown’s Holy War: Terrorist or Heroic Revolutionary? and 10: The Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis which delve deeply into John Brown’s story.
From the transcript of the latter, David Blight concludes:
I’m going to give you really four arguments, just try them on–of why John Brown matters, why he mattered then, and why he still matters in any discussion we have in American society about what constitutes terrorism now, what constitutes revolutionary violence. … First, he really makes us face this question of the meaning of martyrdom. What is a martyr? How do we define a martyr? What constitutes the values or elements of martyrdom? Two, how do we deal with revolutionary violence, in history or today? When can a cause be just…so just that violence in its name is somehow justified?
Three–and here I’m going to give you a list within the list–I think John Brown… forces us to face the almost natural ambivalences about his acts. He is disturbing and inspiring. Note all these opposites. He in some ways worked for the highest ideals–human freedom and the idea of equality–but he also used the most ruthless deeds. There’s a certain majesty about his character, at least in the aftermath, but there’s also a lot of folly. He was a monster, to some. To others he’s a saint, he’s a warrior saint. He killed for justice. When does that work for you? … When do you abide by a higher law than the laws of your society? When is it just to break human law in the name of higher law? Who decides? And lastly, I think he’s one of those avengers of history who do the work other people won’t, can’t, or shouldn’t. “Men consented to his death,” said Frederick Douglass in one of those eulogy speeches much later, in 1880, “Men consented to his death and then went home and taught their children to honor his memory.”
And then fourth, that last question that’s always laying out there. John Brown was a white man who killed white people to free black people. And that’s actually one of his deepest legacies. In my first years of teaching in a big urban high school in Flint, Michigan, I taught lots of young black people who thought John Brown was black. They had been taught that he was black, sometimes in churches. … Does it matter? Why does it matter? Why has John Brown been such a romantic hero in black culture, in poetry, in painting, in song? Michael Harper, the great modern African-American poet, has a little line in one of his poems. The poem is called “History and Captain Brown.” And the line is, “Come to the crusade, not as negroes but as brothers, like Brother Brown.”
Well, you can try all those questions on and if you come up with some perfect answers do let me know. But before we leave John Brown I want to leave you with my favorite passage ever written about the meaning and memory of John Brown, and you can see if it fits or not. It’s in a speech by W.E.B. DuBois, the greatest black scholar, writer of the twentieth century. DuBois gave a speech about John Brown at Harpers Ferry in 1932. They were dedicating a plaque memorial–this had been done before–but they were dedicating yet another sort of John Brown marker at Harpers Ferry. And the ending of that speech, I think it’s the most poignant thing anybody ever said about John Brown, and it’s why he’s so troubling. This is DuBois’s ending. “Some people have the idea that crucifixion consists in the punishment of an innocent man. The essence of crucifixion is that men are killing a criminal, that men have got to kill him, and yet that the act of crucifying him is the salvation of the world. John Brown broke the law, he killed human beings. Those people who defended slavery had to execute John Brown, although they knew that in killing him they were committing the greater crime. It is out of that human paradox that there comes any crucifixion.”
With Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder, Scott Roeder convicted for killing abortion provider George Tiller, and Joe Stack’s murderous suicidal crashing of a stolen plane into an Austin IRS because he was angry about paying taxes all fresh in our memory, Blight’s big questions are as alive today as ever.
New York will save $40,000 a year by closing down John Brown’s farm. That’s 67¢ a visitor. About the stupidest savings I’ve ever heard of. Come on New York. Raise the price a buck and keep the site open.