John Brown Abolitionist | Hanged for Treason
John Brown: Abolitionist who died trying to make slavery illegal in America.
It’s difficult for some to understand the deep impact of this American hero’s lifelong passion to destroy slavery in the United States, so to help unpack some of what we may have learned in school about this man and his place in American history…
LET’S PLAY a GAME.
In this game, you pretend to be white, and I’ll be… hmm… for lack of a better catchall term, I’ll be “colored.” You are a free white person. You live on a small plot of fruitful land and you have three children who are beautiful, healthy little replicas of yourself and your spouse. Look at your little son over there with his dazzling blue eyes. Isn’t he handsome? And so sturdily built, too. Bear with me now, this is where it starts getting educational.
I, and a whole lot of my colored neighbors and friends have become convinced that you just don’t deserve any of the rights or freedoms we colored people have. And it’s not just us. Our colored ministers, politicians, soldiers, scientists and civic leaders agree. Why, some are even saying that you, white person, are not really even a human being.
We’ve outlawed you teaching your kids to read and write and you can never learn to swim (escape risk) or own a weapon. It is too bad that you have no way to protect yourself or your family or to rebel against us, but, not to worry, we will feed you and clothe you and all you have to do in return is… well… everything you are told to do.
Oh, look there. The nine-year-old blonde girl with the long legs and nice teeth. Is that your daughter? She is quite the attractive one, isn’t she? I’m sure you won’t mind if I give her as a Christmas gift to my lonely 380-pound cousin Roscoe.
Are you struggling to stay in this game? Well, GAME OVER — AND YOU WIN! THANKFULLY, U.S. CHATTLE SLAVERY WAS ABOLISHED NEARLY 160 YEARS AGO. And that leads us back to one extremely important cog in the wheel of justice: John Brown, ABOLITIONIST.
For those who’ve never heard of him, John Brown was a white American man who would have plotted, schemed, fought, killed and died to make sure the above mentioned nine-year-old girl (or any other human being) was never anyone’s slave.
John Brown: Abolitionist Hero
Though most white historians have painted him as a radical, maniacal, bloodthirsty traitor, who deserved to be hanged for his methods, if John Brown had fought to free their white sons and daughters from a horrific life of slavery, he surely would have been painted in a more “courageous” light.
John Brown Abolitionist, oil on canvas by John Steuart Curry, 1939.
After spending his entire adult life actively working to outlaw slavery, in 1837, in response to the murder of abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah P. Lovejoy, John Brown publicly vowed:
“Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!”
Dissatisfied with the pacifism that was highly encouraged by the organized abolitionist movement, Brown was quoted to have said
“These men are all talk. What we need is action – action!”
On October 16, 1859, Brown and 21 men (5 black, 16 white) captured the federal armory and arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia with plans to organize and arm an insurrection. The local militia responded and besieged Brown and his men. One of Brown’s sons emerged waving a white flag to negotiate a surrender, and was shot and killed. News of the battle reached President Buchanan, and Colonel Robert E. Lee was dispatched to the scene. Lee’s men quickly ended the insurrection leaving ten of Brown’s men dead (including two of Brown’s sons).
Seriously wounded and unrepentant, Brown was taken to Charlestown in shackles, quickly tried and sentenced, then executed. During his trial, he said this to the presiding judge and jury:
“I see a book kissed which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do unto 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 that 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, I did no 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 say, let it be done.”
John Brown was hanged December 2nd, 1859.
The renowned black abolitionist Frederick Douglas later wrote of him:
“John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light; his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him.
From Henry David Thoreau’s essay entitled A Plea For Captain John Brown, delivered and subsequently published on October 30th, 1859:
“…I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them … No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature… He needed no babbling lawyer… to defend him. He was more than a match for all the judges… He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist. Do yourselves the honor to recognize him. He needs none of your respect.”
“What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years..? All their speeches put together and boiled down… do not match for manly directness and force.., the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown, on the floor of the Harper’s Ferry engine-house,–that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there. No, he was not our representative in any sense. He was too fair a specimen of a man to represent the like of us. Who, then, were his constituents? If you read his words understandingly you will find out… Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharpe’s rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,–a Sharpe’s rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.”
Highly Recommended References:
For more information about this great American anti-racist hero read:
Henry David Thoreau’s A Plea for John Brown < HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READ!
Karen Whitman’s Re-evaluating John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry
Victor Hugo’s Letter to the London News regarding John Brown
John Brown’s letters for the years 1833 thru 1859
Wikipedia’s John Brown