JOHN BROWN & HARPERS FERRY RAID

John Stauffer & Zoe Trodd, ed., The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2012) ("Immediately after his raid and death, Brown became one of the most contentious figures in American culture, a national symbol embodying contradictions: A Christ-like and satanic demon, a martyr and madman, a meteor of peace and of war. In the 150 years since his raid, Americans have continued to view Brown's legacy and his relation to American values, with deep ambivalence. For some he has been the nation's archetypal freedom fighter; for most, a dangerous fanatic, to be relegated to the historical dustbin with a corps of other easily forgotten quixotic madmen." Id. at xix-xx. "In fact, each generation since 1859 has asked and answered for itself the questions phrased by Du Bois on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown's raid: 'Was John Brown simply an episode, or was he an eternal truth? And if a truth, how speaks that truth today?' From Brown's own generation forward, through secession, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the long civil rights movement of antilynching, desegregation, and labor reform in the twentieth century, to activists on the left and right who claim his mantle today, the tribunal that he himself envisaged has sat in judgment and pronounced--in Brown's own words--that the world was different for his 'living and dying in it.'" Id. at xlix. One of my most favorite piece of writing, one I first read in high school, is Henry David Thoreau, "A Plea for Captain John Brown," October 30, 1859. Here are the two passages which stirred me then ... and stir me still. "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 laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted our of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist. When a man stands up serenely against condemnation and vengeance of making, rising above them literally by a whole body--even though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself--the spectacle is a sublime one--didn't ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans?--and we become criminal in comparison. Do yourselves the honor to recognize him. He needs none of your respect." Id. at 107. "It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoot me nor liberates me. At any rate, I do not think it is quite sane for one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about this matter, unless he is continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A man may have other affairs to attend to. I do not wish to kill nor be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jails! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them." Id. at 108. From Henry David Thoreau, "The Last Days of John Brown," July 4, 1860: "We seem to have forgotten that the expression 'a liberal education' originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only. But taking a hint from the word, I would go a step further and say, that it is not the man of wealth and leisure simply, though devoted to art, or science, or literature, who, in a true sense, is liberally educated, but only the earnest and free man. In a slaveholding country like this, there can be no such thing as a liberal education tolerated by the State;  and those scholars of Austria and France who, however learned they may be, are contented under their tyrannies, have received only a servile education." Id. at 111.).