John Brown: One African American Perspective

John Brown: One African American Perspective

John Hardin

The celebration of John Brown’s December 2, 1859 death in black communities became an example of one white man’s personal commitment to end slavery. One could argue that black communities interested in the abolition of slavery supported Brown’s use of the very core of slavery’s existence: violence and terror. American slaveholders—including a few black ones--perceived their mission to civilize the African population by using rape of women and children as well as mutilation of men, women and children. These behaviors were not non-violent and were acceptable behaviors by church-going (and not non-church going) slaveholders. From the 1640s forward, American slaveholders struggled to justify and often legislated violence as statutory punishments in colonial and state legislatures.

Into this picture, we see John Brown and his followers seeking to take a drastic effort to destroy an institution justified by the three articles in the US Constitution (Article I, sect.2-3/5 clause; Article I, sect.9-extension of the slave trade; Article IV sect.2-Fugitive slave law) and the US Supreme Court decision of Sanford v. Dred Scott. Simply put, Brown was no longer trying to gently and nonviolently persuade change of slavery that was NOT going to and refused to change.

Brown’s behaviors reflected a broader societal acceptance of violent measure to control their property’s behavior: slaveholders would use an arsenal of tools-whips, dirks, coffles, shackles and other restraints to control impudent and uncontrollable blacks. Slave rebel Nat Turner’s 1831 violent attack in Virginia during which 60 whites were killed by him and a small band of black followers demonstrated a sense of hopelessness in trying to end this barbaric system by persuasion.

Although Turner used a similar sort of apocalyptic/Armageddon-like solution of murder and mayhem, Turner’s effort assumed that thousands of Virginia blacks would rise up with him and force their masters to end the system at once. However, Turner’s efforts were summarized and packaged by white attorney Thomas Gray whose “Confessions of Nat Turner” left an impression that the man was clearly possessed with a demon and dysfunctional. Free blacks came under suspicion of acting like Turner and were forced to leave some southern states or post bond that they would not cause violence against slaveholders.

As abolitionists became more vocal in the early 19th century but essentially ineffective, Brown took a different approach in how he hoped to accomplish his attack and destruction of the system of slavery. Initially, he would attack a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia since the US government was the protector, defender and supporter of the institution. Afterwards, take its 100,000 weapons produced there and turn them against the very forces that protect it. Next, Brown, as did other violent attacks on the system, assumed thousands of black and white volunteers would attack the system. In May 1858, Brown met in Chatham, Ontario with 34 blacks including Osborn Perry Anderson, eventually the sole black survivor of the Harpers Ferry event. Four other blacks—Shields Green (the only former slave in the group), Dangerfield Newby (mixed race), John A. Copeland, Jr. (another mixed race person) and Lewis S. Leary—join the band of 19 attackers. Were their efforts immediately successful? As with such events, the answer is no. For one, the ammunition for their guns they carried was the wrong type for muskets produced there. Reinforcements by others in Canada and from Harriet Tubman never arrived and local blacks did not join.

Ten members of the group were killed in the fighting including Newby and Leary and two of Brown’s sons. Seven others including blacks Copeland, Green and Brown were captured after several weeks. All were tried for treason, found guilty and sentenced for execution by hanging. Brown was to be executed on December 2, 1859 out of public view. The black co-conspirators were to be executed two weeks after Brown.

When word of this event got out, Black churches held fundraisers for the soon-to-be widows of the conspirators. Brown’s execution day was declared “Martyr Day” by black abolitionists. Special prayer services were held at other black churches across the country. In Chatham, Ontario, special prayer services held were at the time of Brown’s execution; black businesses closed as well. Following his execution, his body was conveyed to North Elba

While Brown was the center of the event, one of the condemned men, John A. Copeland was from North Carolina, married an Oberlin College student. According to his last comments, he remarked “If I am dying for freedom, I could not die for a better cause.” The December 17, 1859 New York Tribune reported that Copeland and Shields Green “mounted the scaffold with a firm step.”

As each of the Brown party died, they became larger in life and far more successful than they ever anticipated. Memorials were made of Brown and the group’s heroic stand as they were executed. A popular song among abolitionists was “John Brown’s Body Lies a Mouldrin’ in the Grave.” Its melody would be sung later as the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (“Mine Eyes have seen the glory…) Commanders of the US Marines by President Buchanan sent to stop this terrorist act was Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lt. J.E.B. Stuart. Both men would be convinced of the necessity to stop not only Brown but any others willing to destroy southern culture. Later, the military skills of both men would be essential to the Confederacy.

Abolitionists who were committed to a gradual dissolution of slavery using moral suasion of white slaveowners found themselves becoming a small minority. Brown and his interracial band felt that they had no other realistic alternative. Death was no longer a deterrent to immediatist abolitionists whether white or black. Southern slaveholding states ordered ammunition for their own state arsenals and began drilling their “well-armed militias.”

Psychologically, John Brown had become a white version of Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey all of whom planned and or initiated failed attacks on slavery in earlier decades. While these more well-known attacks unnerved slaveowners, these attacks represented some of the 250+ slave rebellions in the US. Even before the seven Brown conspirators were executed, two blacks in Berryville, Virginia were convicted of arson and sentenced to death on the grounds that their acts were result of the Brown attack. After some persuasion by local whites that these slaves were local and not “foreigners” as were the Brownites, their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment at hard labor. Kentucky historian J. Winston Coleman notes that a “Cynthiana panic” occurred in November 1859 as another spinoff of this event.

In summary, my comments today suggest that John Brown and his interracial band of conspirators were perhaps on a suicide mission. Yet, to cooperate with that system in any way made them collaborators with the same evil. Free blacks—especially those born free and possibly to be carried INTO slavery--reached the conclusion that unless all were free, no blacks were free. Apparently, Brown reached another conclusion—unless whites ended slavery of blacks, enslavement of whites by slavery’s depravity and moral turpitude would continue. To use a saying in an old Pogo comic strip “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Dr. Hardin is a professor of history at Western Kentucky University. His publications include Onward and Upward: A Centennial History of Kentucky State University 1886-1986 (1987) and Fifty Years of Segregation: Black Higher Education in Kentucky 1904-1954 (1997). He also serves as a general editor of the Kentucky African American Encyclopedia. He is a member of the Kentucky Oral History Commission and the Kentucky African American Heritage Commission.