On The 155^th Anniversary Of The Heroic Captain John Brown-Led Fight For Black Liberation At Harper’s Ferry-Josh Breslin’s Dream    

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

I remember a few years ago my friend and I, Josh Breslin, from the old working- class neighborhoods of North Adamsville, a town south of Boston, were discussing the historical events that helped form our political understandings back in the early 1960 since we were, and are, both political men driven by historical examples as much as by the minutia of organizing principles. And while we have diverged on many of the influences since then as we have a fair degree of differences on the way to change the world and what agencies can do that (basically working within the current political system or moving over to the base of society and organizing from the ground up within or outside of the system depending on circumstance) we both agreed whole-heartedly that one of our early heroes was old Captain John Brown and his heroic efforts with his small integrated band of men at Harper’s Ferry down in what is now West Virginia but the just Virginia, a slave-holders stronghold. As we discussed the matter more fully we found we were hard pressed to explain what first captured our attention and agreed that then would have not had the political sense then to call Brown’s actions heroic although we both understood that what he did was necessary.

 

See, coming up in a mainly Irish working-class neighborhood we were always aware, made particularly aware by grandfathers who had kindred over there in those days, of that heroic struggle in Easter 1916 that was the precursor to the long sought national liberation of Ireland from the bloody British. So when we first studied, or heard about John Brown we instinctively saw that same kind of struggle. Both of us also agreed that we had had back then very strong feelings about the wrongness of slavery, a wretched system going back to Pharaoh’s time if not before, although Josh was more ambivalent about the fate of black people after Civil War freedom than I was since there was in his household a stronger current of anti-black feeling around the civil rights work down south in those days than in mine. (Strangely my father, who was nothing but a corn liquor, fast car, ex-coal miner good old boy from down in Kentucky was more sympathetic to that struggle that Josh’s Irish grandfather whom Josh could never get to call black people anything better than “nigras.” At least we got my father to say “Negro.” Jesus.)                

 

A couple of week after that conversation Josh called me up from California one night where he was attending a professional conference near San Jose and told me that he forgot to tell me about what he called a “dream” he had had as a kid concerning his admiration for John Brown. Of course that “dream” stuff was just Josh’s way of saying that he had sketched out a few thoughts that he wanted to share with me (and which will undoubtedly find their into a commentary  or review or something because very little of Josh’s “dream” stuff fails to go to ink or cyberspace). Some of it is now hazy in my mind since the hour was late here in the East, and some of it probably was really based on stuff we had learned later about the Brown expedition like how Boston Brahmins and high abolitionists like George Stearns secretly funded the operation or Brown’s attempts to get Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on board (neither name which we would have known very much about then), and some of the stuff was probably a little goofy since it involved Josh in some hero worship. Since he will inevitably write something on his own he can make any corrections to what I put down here himself. Know this though whenever I hear the name John Brown mentioned lately I think about Josh’s telephone call and about how the “old man” has held our esteem for so long. Here is what I jotted down, edited of course, after that conversation:   

 

From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harper’s Ferry. I would say that was in about the sixth grade when I went to the library and read about Abraham Lincoln before he became president and how he didn’t like what John Brown did because he knew that that action was going to drive the South crazy and upset the delicate balance that was holding the Union together. Frank though thinks it was the seventh grade when we were learning about the slavery issues as part of the 100^th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War and his name came up as a “wild man” out of some Jehovah Calvinist burning bush dream who was single-handedly trying to abolish slavery with that uprising. Was ready to “light the spark” to put out the terrible scourge of slavery in the land with some spilled blood. That slavery business, if you can believe this really bothered both of us, especially when we went to a museum that showed the treatment of slaves and the implements used to enforce that condition down South. And I remember one time going to the Museum of Fine Arts and saw how old Pharaoh used his slaves to build those damn pyramids to immortalize himself. Yeah, the hell with slavery, any kind.   

I think I am right thought about when I first heard about the “old man” because I know I loved Lincoln, loved to read about him, loved that back then we celebrated his birthday, February 12^th, and we got the day off from school. Loved that Lincoln was basically forced at the governmental level to implement Brown’s program to root out slavery once the deal went down and he was merciless about its extermination once he got “religion” on the matter. Of course neither I nor Frank would have articulated our thoughts that way then but we knew “Massa Lincoln” was on the right side of the angels in his work as much as he hated to burn down the South in the process. But there was no other way to get the damn issue resolved and I think that is what he learned from the Captain whether he gave credit to the man or not. By the way this I do know that while we celebrated Lincoln’s birthday in the North as the great emancipator and Union-saver Frank once told me a story about one of his cousins down south and how when he mentioned that he had Lincoln’s birthday off that cousin said “we don’t celebrate that man’s birthday down here,’’ in such a way that Frank began to understand that maybe the Civil War was not over. That some people had not gotten the word)   

I knew other stuff back then too which added to my feel for the Brown legend. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as John Brown’s Body, a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they bravely headed south. Funny but back then I was totally unaware of the role of the Massachusetts 54^th Regiment, the first black regiment raised although with white officers when Father Abraham gave the word, whose survivors and replacements marched into Charleston, South Carolina, the heart and soul of the Confederacy, after the bloody Civil War to the tune of John Brown’s Body. That must have been a righteous day. Not so righteous though and reflecting a very narrow view of history that we were taught back then kind of fudging the very serious differences back in Civil War times even in high abolitionist Boston was not knowing thing number one about Augustus Saint-Gauden’s commemorative frieze honoring the men of the 54^th right across from the State House which I passed frequently when I went on to Boston Common.

I was then, however, other than aware of the general narrative of Brown’s exploits and a couple of songs and poems neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the ante bellum struggle against slavery of which he represented the extreme activist left-wing. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Some 150 years after his death I am proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown. [And I am too, brother!-Frank]

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As various biographies point out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harper’s Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for the institution about his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. Like them without warts and with a discernible thrust from early adulthood that leads to some heroic action. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning allegations of the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) have also clouded his image. However if one looks at Kansas as the start of the Civil War then all the horrible possibilities under the heat of battle mitigate some of that incident although not excusing it anymore that we would today with American soldiers in places like Afghanistan and Iraq busting down doors and shooting first. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows that they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the Maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs. The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harper’s Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist “avenging angel” in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. (Strange, or maybe not so strange now, both Frank and I who grew up upright Roman Catholics gravitated toward those photographs of Brown with his long unkempt beard as some latter day Jehovah and I remember Frank had a photo on the wall in his room with just such a photograph from I think a detail of the big mural in the State House in Kansas.) In short Brown   was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist sense of pre-determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported Brown and kept his memory alive in hard times. In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. This old time prophet animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand today the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown.  He prophetic words upon the scaffold about purging the evil of slavery in blood proved too true. But that demeanor in the face of defeat was very appealing to me back then.  I have learned since that these results, the imprisonments or executions are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order if one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871 when that experience was crushed in blood after heroic resistance. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar with now there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy that led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown, and of his friend Frederick Douglass.

I used to fervently believe that if Douglass had come on board as Brown had urged the chances for success would have been greater, at least more blacks (mostly free blacks and not plantation blacks for obvious reasons) and more radical whites who could have been mobilized as a result of all of the events of the 1850s especially the struggle against the Fugitive Slave Act and the struggle against the imposition of slavery in Kansas. Now I am not so sure that Douglass’ acceptance would have qualitatively changed the outcome. He went on to do yeoman’s work during the Civil War articulating the left black perspective and organizing those black regiments that shifted the outcome of the war at a decisive point. In any case honor the memory of old Captain John Brown and his heroic band at Harper’s Ferry.