weeen

"The parish of Aquin has just accepted the peace treaty, but there is no safety with such perverse men. The blow is surely planned in Les Cayes and everywhere. Take care; leave the city; camp at the slightest movement: kill, ransack, burn, there is no more safety for you.

Our enemies must not take advantage of their perfidy; no arrangements until after the instructions (which were expected from Croix-des-Bouquets). I am flying to vengeance; if my destination is not to die in this expedition, I will return immediately to join you. Camp, and we will defeat the brigands who want to slaughter our party and reduce it to slavery.

Vengeance! Vengeance! I embrace you all: My last word is to avenge myself on these barbarians. Fly to the aid of your slaughtered brothers. Long live freedom! Long live equality! Long live love!"

A declaration that proves how far delirium can lead one astray!

The immediate trigger of the war, of course, was the South's secession after the election of Lincoln. But the choice of Lincoln itself was influenced by the hostilities inflamed by Brown. The Republicans, tarred by their opponents with responsibility for Harpers Ferry, tried to calm sectional animosities by choosing the moderate dark horse, Lincoln, over more controversial candidates. Southern extremists, meanwhile, manipulated the panic over John Brown's raid to add fuel to the anti-Northern frenzy that led to the splintering of Lincoln's opponents into three parties, thereby ensuring his election and bringing on secession.

The polarized passions created by Brown's attack on Harpers Ferry, then, contributed to the election of Lincoln. One might posit that a Lincoln presidency would not have existed without John Brown.

Lincoln at first shrank from waging a war for emancipation, which he said would be “a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale.” But is there any question that Lincoln and his generals did not, in effect, end up following Brown's lead by condoning God-ordained violence? Think about Sherman's march, and then reconsider those who criticize Brown for using violence in the name of a higher political and religious cause.

John Brown planted seeds for the civil rights movement by making a pioneering demand for complete social and political equality for America's ethnic minorities. To be sure, many other Americans have contributed to civil rights. But only one white reformer lived continuously among blacks, penned a revised American constitution awarding them full rights, and gave his life in a violent effort to liberate the slaves. That's why the Second Niagara Movement (which became the NAACP), the forerunner of the civil rights movement, hailed Brown as one “who had no predecessors, and can have no successors.” And that's why no other white person in American history has been more beloved over time among African Americans than John Brown.

It may be discomfiting to think that some of America's greatest social liberties sprang in part from a man who can be viewed as a terrorist. But John Brown was a man not only of violence but of eloquence and firmness of principle. His widely reprinted declarations against slavery impressed the intellectual leaders Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said Brown's speech to Virginia court was as great as the Gettysburg Address, and Henry David Thoreau, who declared that Brown's words were more powerful than his rifles.

Besides, Brown saw slavery as a state of war against an entire race. Sometimes a social evil is so egregious, so entrenched, that violence is the only answer. For those of John Brown's moral vision, American slavery—a system of oppression, torture, rape, and murder—had to be eliminated by any means. As it was.

John Brown declared that slavery would end only after “verry much bloodshed” [sic]. Unfortunately, he was right.

John Brown worked not simply for Black Men—he worked with them; and he was a companion of their daily life, knew their faults and virtues, and felt, as few white Americans have felt, the bitter tragedy of their lot. The story of John Brown, then, cannot be complete unless due emphasis is given this phase of his activity.

Unfortunately, however, few written records of these friendships and this long continued intimacy exist, so that little new material along these lines can be adduced. For the most part one must be content with quoting the authors mentioned (and I have quoted them freely), and other writers like Anderson, Featherstonhaugh, Barry, Hunter, Boteler, Douglass and Hamilton.

But even in the absence of special material the great broad truths are clear, and this book is at once a record of and a tribute to the man who of all Americans has perhaps come nearest to touching the real souls of black folk.