John Brown's Place in American History

Once very controversial and now largely forgotten, John Brown certainly deserves acknowledgement as a great American freedom fighter.

But he was an outlaw who opposed the law of the land. (Slavery.)

But he advocated to bring about change through violence. (That isn't cool.)

And, although he may have tried as hard to end slavery as anybody, he was white, so he isn't likely to get mentioned during Black History Month. (There isn't time to honor a white man during Black History Month, is there?)

Who was John Brown and how does he now fit into American History?

Five years ago, John Hendrix gathered up all the recent work historians were doing on John Brown, interpreted it into clear language, drew up illustrations, and the result is an outstanding childrens' book:

John Brown: His Fight for Freedom

 

Since this blog is about church history, I should point out that John Brown's religion motivated him to work to abolish slavery. Hendrix gets even more specific than that.

Behold the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no comforter, and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. -Ecclesiastes 4:1

This Bible passage caused something to happen inside John Brown's chest and he made an oath to fight slavery then and there (page 9).

When Kansas was set to vote on becoming a free state or a slave state, pro-slavery "ruffians" destroyed crops, burned settlements and killed people who got in their way. When the ruffians made threats towards John Brown he wouldn't stand for it. He and his sons took five pro-slavery settlers to a creek and killed them with broadswords (page 15).

From that point on, John Brown wasn't just an outlaw to the federal government, he was a crazed madman to many but a folk hero to others.

Violence - even used for a good cause - is what it is. But, by its own nature, slavery required violence and perpetuated more violence. John Hendrix makes the point that many, many free people were opposed to slavery before the Civil War, but not many people were doing much about it. Except talking. And talking didn't get it done. However, at the same time, Hendrix says "John didn't believe bloodshed was the answer."

Anyway, the reason I wrote this post today is that today is the 155th anniversary of John Brown's famous raid of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. Unfortunately, I don't have space here to summarize the raid. Instead, I recommend that you either read about it at U.S. history.org or, better yet, get your hands on Hendrix's book and read pages 18 to 35.