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John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

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John Brown is an American enigma. His life presents a serious challenge to a simple black and white interpretation of ethics, history, and by extrapolation, even current events. He was a man a hundred years ahead of his time in racial ethics - not only opposed to slavery, but unlike almost all other abolitionist of his time, actually a believer in the equality of the races. He was praised honestly by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote of him that he "believed in two articles - the golden rule and the Declaration of Independence." Another contemporary, the black reformer Charles H. Langston praised him saying, "he was a lover of mankind - not of any particular class or color, but of all men...he fully, really and actively believed in the equality and brotherhood of man. ...He is the only American citizen who has lived fully up to the Declaration of Independence." Yet this man who was so dedicated to racial justice was able to direct the cold blooded murders of five pro-slavery men in Kansas who he had ripped from their families in the middle of the night and hacked to death with broadswords without any qualms or regrets. He chillingly stated that "it is better that a whole generation of men, women, and children should be swept away than that this crime of slavery should exist one day longer." Brown's life presents an open question on what if any limits should stand in the way of those attempting to right great societal wrongs and bring about justice. David Reynolds biography may not fully answer that question, but it goes a long way toward putting it into a proper perspective.
Reynolds' biography of Brown is both detailed and fascinating, and is sympathetic without attempting to hide the dark and troubling aspects of Brown's actions. He delves deeply into Brown's Puritan heritage and just what that meant to his life and actions. He makes clear what a unique individual Brown was. While most of the famous abolitionist who were his contemporaries never questioned the basic racism of their time despite their opposition to slavery, Brown believed firmly in racial equality. Black men and women dined with his family, and he worked intimately with them, giving them real positions of authority in the endeavors that he organized - actions unique for his time. Reynolds also explores the fact that Brown was in favor of equal rights for women and humane treatment of American Indians. He notes that while he was a fervently committed Calvinist Christian, he worked closely with others who did not share his faith, including Jews and agnostics. He shows us a man who was not a typical fanatic, but a man who believed fanatically in one basic principle - the literal interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule. Reynolds also puts Brown's most troubling violence, the murders at Pottawatomie, Kansas, back into the historical context in which they happened. He writes, "Pottawatomie, gruesome and vile as it was, was John Brown's impulsive response to equally vile crimes committed by the proslavery side."
Beyond all of this, Reynolds explores in some depth the importance that the Transcendentalists had in securing John Brown's place in American history. He points out that had not Thoreau and afterwards Emerson come to Brown's public defense, Brown very well could have been forgotten by history - viewed as just one more aberrant crank with misguided and wild schemes. He spends more than one hundred pages exploring the effect Browns actions, capture, and death had on both his contemporaries and on posterity, showing the immediate impact Brown's life and death had on the country in helping to spark the Civil War, and the way it impacted future generations who have both lauded and reviled him.
John Brown's life is a testimony to one man's uncompromising commitment to his ideals, and to the ethical morass that can result from an unrelenting pursuit of those ideals. It makes us question how far one can justifiably go in an attempt to right societal wrongs, and if violence can ever be considered a righteous answer to entrenched evil. Reynolds' book may not answer all of these questions, but it most effectively poses them for our consideration. It is an outstanding biography of a crucially important figure in American history. I highly recommend it, both to those interested in American history, and for anyone who wishes to examine a practical study of the consequence of principled violent action against authority.

Theo Logos

When I was a child the name of John Brown was a grotesquerie. We sang about his body a moulderin' in the grave, but it was generally understood that he was some kind of crazy man who killed some people over slavery, had something to do with the Civil War, and we just shouldn't talk about it. And I am from Michigan rather than the South so this avoidance wasn't based on region.

In the sixties I was about as removed in time from the Civil War as today's young people are from the First World War. That is, the people who were alive during the war were all but past and the children born to those who had lived through the war were now old. Still, some of the received knowledge of the war came from tradition of those who had life experience rather than from books and scholarship. However, with the Great War in our Grandparent's lives, the Second World War in our parent's lives and the echoes of Korea all around us and Vietnam getting under its bloody way, the Civil War just seemed too long ago to worry about in real life.

I took extra time with this book because I wanted to wrestle with the idea of when a cause is important enough to justify personally initiated violence. In our present state of affairs, it is hard to conceive a wrong so great that righting it would involve action outside the political and judicial processes. At bottom, no matter how certain of the rightness and goodness of our cause, there is still some possibility that there is more to the issue than we understand and that those whom we would kill or murder might actually, in the cosmic view of things, not merit the death we would inflict on them. We have doubts enough with the state rendering a judgment of death, how much more would we doubt the rightness of a private judgment that concluded in the death of a human being.

The author, David Reynolds, does a solid job in telling the story of John Brown. We see Brown as a human being within his time. We see his faith in God, his Puritan sense of destiny, and his fury at the injustice of slavery. As we follow him through his life we understand why he acted as he did and the enslavement and misery of four million souls makes his actions in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry make some sort of awful sense. The last two chapters make clear that this author agrees with W.E.B. DuBois that "Brown was right". Reynolds does take on the modern terrorism of the left and the right. He takes on abortion, the environment, the Islamofacists, and more. He argues that Brown was different and exceptional. He notes the power Brown's words and how his cause was taken on by so many leading into, during, and after the Civil War.

Yet, in my own mind, if I grant that Brown is an exception I have to ask what was he exceptional with? And I note it was his eloquence in words. I still cannot help but disqualify his violence as just. His cause in freeing the slaves was certainly just, but if we allow his violence under what premise do we make that allowance? Abortion has taken millions of lives, environmentalism claims they are saving the whole planet, animal rights claims they are sparing billions of animals, and on and on the fever goes until it reaches into insanity. Whose conscience do we grant the privileged position of spilling everyone's blood?

There is also a difference between the events in Kansas where the anti-slavery people were the victims of pro-slavery aggressors. Many of these murders were committed by Missourians and other non-Kansans to impose their agenda of Salvery Everywhere. While the Kansas events cannot be called self-defense per se, they were at least direct retaliation with self-preservation in mind. Harpers Ferry was an aggressive act by Brown as a complete outsider with the view of starting a national slave rebellion.

Brown had the passion, conscience, and eloquence that he could have used to make a powerful case against slavery as he did after his trial. He would have had, I believe, an even greater impact against slavery with his preaching than with his sword. Remember, every other country in the world abandoned slavery without the violence of our Civil War. And even if we grant that the War freed the slaves in 1865 while a nonviolent approach would have taken decades longer, we also have to admit it was another century of work and too often bloodshed before the descendants of those slaves got close to the civil rights promised them. And don't forget that the man who did the most to move society to accepting those rights was Martin Luther King, Jr. who preached nonviolence. Thurgood Marshall won Brown v. Board of Education with his mind and a briefcase rather than a gun.

Yes, there is more to do. Certainly, there is cruelty and injustice almost more than we can bear in the world. But bear it we must as we work towards a better world. Our methods in that work do matter and we must not become deluded that our personal sense of righteousness actually grants us a special position from which we can deal injustice in the name of a higher cause.

This is a thoughtful book and deserves to be read. You will gain a lot from it and wrestling with these awful events will help you clarify what exactly it is you do believe.

In his book, David S. Reynolds addresses the historical problem of why John Brown had an impact on the course of national events in America even well after his death. Reynolds weaves an intricate analysis of his historical problem by incorporating cultural, social, political and economic history of antebellum America. Reynolds makes a strong case for his argument, and instructs the reader how the social and cultural climate of antebellum America offered the prime conditions under which Brown became infamous.

Reynolds' work is set apart from his contemporaries in that he presents a positive portrait of Brown in contrast to other scholarship that tends to depict Brown as an insane madman who briefly stepped into history but did little to influence it. Reynolds' positive representation of Brown may seem contradictory considering his position that Brown was a terrorist. However, as Reynolds states, Brown was not a terrorist by the same definition that we use today. Reynolds defines terrorism as "violence that avoids combat, is used against the defenseless (often civilians), and is intended to shock and horrify, with the aim of bringing about social change." Brown committed what Reynolds classifies as "good terrorism" by carefully selecting his victims (pro-slavery white males) which sets Brown apart from modern day terrorists whose violent activity is intended to kill anyone. Reynolds' interpretation of Brown is presented in such a way that the ends justify the means; and while Brown's tactics were horrific and brutal, it was for the common good of society and to uphold divine law.

Reynolds offers a very in depth analysis of the life and events surrounding John Brown. He offers detailed accounts of how the lives of well-known antebellum figures such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Ralph Waldo Emerson intersected with John Brown. However, I found this book to be challenging in places because Reynolds often digresses on other characters and events of the antebellum period. While informative and interesting, the digressions were a little overwhelming to the overall story of John Brown. What I appreciated most about Reynolds' book was that it made me question how far one can justifiably go in an attempt to right societal wrongs, and if violence can ever be considered a righteous solution to correct those wrongs. To take it one step further, can the use of violence be justifiable in upholding the Constitution. When one considers this question, it is easier to identify with Reynolds' portrayal of John Brown.

David S. Reynolds background as a Professor of English Literature shows in this book: although focused on John Brown's life, you can see Professor Reynolds' interest in Mid 19th century literature on almost every page, with frequent and extensive discourses on John Browns' interactions-with and impact on many of the well known authors and orators of the day, such as Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Melville, and Emily Dickinson.

In general, Reynolds makes the argument that John Brown sparked the Civil War, and that he was a high minded, intensely religious man who was not as crazy, and not as violent, as history has led us to believe. He further argues that Brown was a man a century or more ahead of his time in terms of his attitudes towards racism, and foresaw where the war of words between the North and South over the future of slavery would inevitably lead.

Reynolds does a great job of helping us better understand Brown as a person; and brings to light many facets of his personality and life of which I'd been unaware, such as Brown's total acceptance of African Americans as equals in every respect - a stance that few, if any, whites had at the time (and is a viewpoint that is not as widely accepted as it should be, even today). The author demonstrates, quite rightly, that most other abolitionists of the time were not so much pro-African-American as they were against slavery and its impact upon America. Many were at best dismissive, and at worst rabidly against, accepting blacks as equals.

Reynolds comes across as an apologist for Brown, and seems to be attempting to justify some of Brown's bloodiest and most violent actions as merely being the unavoidable side effects of a man consumed with a passion against slavery. Those side effects included the deaths of several of his sons.

The book's pace is not the best, and hits some really slow spots here and there: especially when it reaches the aftermath of the Harper Ferry raid, where the author launches into a very extensive discourse on the impact of John Brown (and his execution) on American literature, thought, society and politics - again with a focus on the writers and orators of the day. These last chapters could have been reduced in length by half or more, with little loss in terms of content.

I question the author's repeated and strong emphasis on John Brown's strong Puritan faith as being a basis for his actions: this refrain starts to sound hollow after so many repetitions - as if he's hoping we'll get the message if he hits us with it enough times. As an inheritor of several centuries of that same Puritan tradition myself, many of his arguments concerning Brown's faith seem (at best) forced and overstated.

Reynolds' argument that John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was the spark that started the Civil War is also overstated: While I think the raid certainly contributed to the paranoia of the time, particularly in the South, Reynolds' arguments that John Brown's attack and behavior following the raid destroyed the South's reputation for chilvalric military prowess and invincibility is not believable. The war was inevitable: Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry may have raised emotions, but the South was already diligently preparing for war by the time the raid occurred. The attack, at best, hurried things along a bit, but in my view, the country was almost certain to fall apart soon after the election of 1860, regardless of who won the Presidency.

In the end, though with some significant flaws in terms of pacing, facts, and the arguments presented; this book is informative: it does bring out the nature of the man, and it helped me better appreciate his impact on the country and History. Dr. Reynolds' work especially helps us to understand Brown's impact upon many of the thought-leaders of the day, and how regional attitudes and cultural traditions played into the unfolding of events at the time and their impact on John Brown's own career and reputation during the trial, and in the years following his execution.

To better understand how racism changed and evolved after the Civil War, I'd strongly recommend the book "Race and Reunion" by David W. Blight. For a better understanding of the four regional cultures in America at the time (Appalachian, Southern, New England and Mid Atlantic), which play a major role in Reynold's text, I'd recommend "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America" by David Hackett Fischer.

"John Brown, Abolitionist" is a book that is worth the read, though its flaws limit the impact that it could have made, given the strong personality that is its subject. I give it a positive, but limited, recommendation.

That is the background theme of this book. I think David Reynolds was mistaken in making it so prominent. You can pick dozens of quotes from the book either condemning or commending Old John. The issue is really pretty subtle. Slavery wasn't exactly like not having national health insurance, after all, and most historians agree with Reynolds it wasn't about to disappear soon. Anyhow, what's "soon" if you're tied to tree being whipped in the hot sun? Or your child is? Does a slave have a "natural right" to kill his master, as many argued at the time. Interesting question from a natural rights perspective (a perspective I take seriously) and one that could get its own book.

But, anyway, in returning over and over and over to these considerations and continually offering judgements on his main character, Reynolds distracts (or distracted me) from the story line. I think he also does himself a disservice in that this theme will serve in the future to make the book seem very dated. Yes, this, too, will pass. But the story line is very good and historically significant, so it wasn't hard to get back. I learned a lot about the times and the players from this book. Which is why I bought and read it.

There are several minor points I'd mention. Two that come to mind are the interpretation late on in the book of a Dickinson poem as about John Brown (seemed like a stretch) and the remark that Thaddeus Stevens (Speaker of the House and Reconstructionist par excellance) pushed universal sufferage in order to "punish" the South. In regard to the latter I must remark that though Stevens was, indeed, a vindictive man (and in this case, why not?) his committment to the equality of each and every human being, race, class and gender, was lifelong and deeply held. In that he was rare for his time, as Reynolds is constantly mentioning in favor of Old John. (I'm from Steven's hometown or I'd let it pass. Check out Trefousse's biography)

John Brown has suffered too long from the orchestrated neglect that biased history has imposed on him. Little more than a detail in passing in most histories of the Civil War, zooming in on the facts, as here in this excellent account, brings out his great importance in changing, and polarizing, the public perceptions of slavery just prior to the onset of the Civil War. We don't need to hide his contradictions, such as his violence in Kansas, to appreciate the remarkable complexity and depth to the man, despite the vagaries of his life and career. As one of the first truly non-racist abolitionists he deserves a major place in the cultural histories of racism. But most of all is his significance in turning the tide of pacifism predominant among abolitionists of his time, facing up to the reality the proslavery position implied. We may demur, but the American system was diseased at this stage, and what Brown did created a turning point at the ugly moment when the great democratic republic was effectively paralyzed by useless politicians stuck in their compromises, as with the Fugitive slave law, Dred Scott, and the racist hooliganism in Kansas (which drove Brown over the edge). Clearly political leadership at the moment of crisis was bankrupt and we see the forces of change emerging from figures such as John Brown.

Read this book, and you will be converted to John Brown. You will also be entertained, since the book reads like a riveting novel. David Reynolds shows that Brown, a conscientious objector against military service in his young manhood, reluctantly turned to violence as a result of proslavery atrocities. Reynolds demonstrates that it was the institution of slavery--not John Brown--that began the violence. John Brown rightly saw that slavery itself was a state of war against an entire race. Could the freedom of nearly 4 million enslaved blacks have been delayed a moment longer? Should the emancipation of blacks have come a century later, as Abraham Lincoln said in 1858? No way. John Brown said that the "crimes" of his "guilty nation" could only be "purged away through blood." How prophetic. It took the death of more than 620,000 Americans to get rid of slavery. To quote W.E.B. DuBois, "John Brown was right" by forcing the issue of slavery. And David Reynolds is right in defending him. Reynolds points out that most other Abolitionists were racists. Lincoln several times said that since blacks and whites could not live on equal terms in America, blacks, once freed, should be shipped to Liberia or Central America. Jefferson felt that same way. The antislavery orator Cassius Clay said that the place for blacks was in the tropical sun eating bananas. The antislavery scientist Louis Agassiz argued that the typical black had the brain of a 7-month white fetus. And these were the ANTISLAVERY leaders! The South, meanwhile, believed that slavery was a noble, Christian institution, good for both blacks and whites. John Brown was different. He believed in a totally integrated America in which blacks, whites, and people of other ethnicities lived on equal terms. It's not Washington or Jefferson (both of them slaveholders) we should be remembering with veneration; it is John Brown.

This book is one of the best biographies I have read on Brown, or anyone, for that matter. It is a subtle portrayal of a polarizing figure in American history, which does not condone Brown's behavior but tries to explain it based on the culture of the time and the life experience and beliefs of the man himself. Reynolds highlights particularly the religious beliefs that lay behind Brown's near-fanatical belief that slavery was an abomination. Reynolds also goes out of his way to focus on the fact that, unlike other Abolitionists of his time, Brown believed in equality - true equality - not just for slaves, but for women and other minorities. Brown, like Abraham Lincoln, believed in the words of the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal." But Brown, unlike almost any other white man of his day, lived those words, as well.
Brown's violence is highly problematic, but Reynolds argues that Brown felt there was no other way to combat the pro-slavery forces (much as many people today feel that violence is the only way to combat international terrorism). Reynolds does not white wash John Brown, but he tries to understand the man and his actions, to paint a balanced portrait of a controversial figure. This is a well-written and thought-provoking book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Civil War history or just looking for a good, if challenging, biography.

With the recent murder of George Tiller, bleeding Kansas takes on a whole new meaning. That may seem like an off-topic remark, but it is the notion of the "good terrorist" that is at the heart of the John Brown story, and the legacy that he left is not at all uncomplicated.

One of the things that I like best about this biography by Reynolds is that he does not attempt to sidestep the nature of Brown's life and deeds. Instead, he looks openly at the questions of criminal violence, morality, puritanism and madness that drove the man and his sons. While I feel that Reynolds has a difficult time not admiring Brown, he rarely stoops to excuse him. There is one important exception to this-- at the end of the book while Reynolds is discussing the legacy, he glosses over the question of other kinds of American moral terrorists. He tries to make the point that slavery was fundamentally different than taxes or abortion as an issue to be addressed-- that there was something so unique about the social problem slavery presented that nearly no option except violence was open. I found that too easy. The problem at the heart of Harpers Ferry is that while the modern reader can sympathize with the frustration and rage that lay behind the actions of that day, I think that it is very difficult to find what Brown did legitimate without allowing other would-be good terrorists recourse to the same methods.

It is an interesting problem. To be frank, I do not know where I stand on its points. But it adds depth to what would otherwise be another exhaustive civil war biography, and makes the book something really special.

I did not go into reading John Brown Abolitionist with much knowledge of its subject. In fact, I would hazard a guess that having sung "John Brown's Baby" as a child was as close as I got to ever really thinking about the man. All the same, I did not find the history confusing or the text too exhaustive. It is a long book, but I got value from the whole length.

I have to also say that normally I have very little patience for history as written by literature professors, but in this case Reynold's background suits the subject well. John Brown, phenomenon, is as much about the symbol as the man himself and it is in literature that the symbol was so powerfully created. One of my favorite aspects of the book was considering how writers like Alcott, Emerson and Thoreau picked up Brown as an icon.

Highly recommended. I'm still thinking about it, even several weeks after I closed the covers.

This is a brilliant rendering of both John Brown's life and his great and inpenetrable significance in United States history, a significance that for generations was suppressed by an unreconstructed Confederate-white southern bias that still persists in mainstream history. It is an important corrective.

At the time I write this, two reviewers -- I cannot call them "readers" since both indicate that they have not perused the book -- attack Reynolds as an apologist for Brown and his actions during "Bleeding Kansas." Typical of the Southern white bias (I emphasize "Southern white" only to indicate that much of the South was African American, so it is neither accurate nor proper to refer to the South as a monolith) neither acknowledges what brought those presumably "innocent" southerners to Kansas territory.

They were there to bring human slavery to the west. They were there to extend anti-democratic, tyrranical, and criminal (what else can it be if one deliberately steals the labor of another) systems of unfreedom to the west.

The ante-bellum period was not comfortable with the self-centered vision of God that permeates our present day culture. A few blocks from my home in Denver a church has attributed this to the Bible: "God Bless America, America Bless God." In Brown's time and before, the people assumed that a God of the Old Testament -- a God of vengence and divine Justice -- took an active hand in the affairs of men and nations. This was Jonathan Edwards' vision. This was Jefferson's as well when he wrote on slavery in NOTES on the STATE of VIRGINIA:

". . . can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? They are not to be violate but with His wrath?"

Jefferson continues, with language as profound as any that appears in the history of the United States:

"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that . . . a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become probably by supernatural interference!"

He continues:

"The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us [slaveholders against slaves, tyrants against the oppressed, the oppressor against the unfree, the thief against his victim] in such a contest . . . "

Jefferson and David Walker were in agreement:

". . . but I tell you Americans! that unless you speedily alter your course, you and your Country are gone!!!!! For God Almighty will tear up the very face of the earth!!! . . . . I hope that the Americans may hear, but I am afraid that they have done us [African Americans, both slaves and free blacks] so much injury, and are so firm in the belief that our Creator made us to be an inheritance to them forever, that their hearts will be hardened, so that their destruction may be sure. This language, perhaps, is too harsh for the American's delicate ears. But O Americans! Americans!! I warn you in the name of the Lord . . . to repent and reform, or you are ruined!!!"

Julia Ward Howe conjured up that same God when she wrote:

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on . . . "

And Lincoln in his 2nd Inaugrual address:

"It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces . . . . The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offences; for it must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offenses cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the Providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribes to Him?"

And further along, Lincoln continues:

". . . if God wills that it[war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid for by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Dismissing John Brown as nothing more than a fanatic who attacked "innocent" southerners, a man who murdered others for no reason other than they came from the South, shows deep and persistant ignorance of our common national history, ante-bellum society and culture in general, and the war for freedom in particular. One cause for this bias and ignorance arises from present day white southerners who insist on overthrowing history and fixing mythology (the so-called "lost cause") in its place. The most obvious example of this occurs when white southerners argue, for example, that African Americans were happy as slaves, that plantations were akin to Club Med, and that the Civil War (or in their idiom, "The War of Northern Aggression") had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with slavery. To insist on that last bit, they have to utterly ignore the words and actions not only of their highest leadership -- Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, et.al. -- but also the testimonies in words and deeds of hundreds of thousands of others, north and South.

Facts be damned, if you are an apologist for or mythologizer of the Old South.