Customer Reviews

John Brown: The Making of a Martyr (Southern Classics Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For the past year I have been engaged in a lengthy research project on John Brown and his biographers. Robert Penn Warren's John Brown: The Making of a Martyr was written when Warren was just 24 years old, and, although it demonstrates the wonderful literary ability Warren would become famous for, the book should not be used as history; Warren's anti-Brown sentiments are obvious; his tone his extremely condescending, as he take numerous snipes at Brown throughout. Warren criticizes the work of previous Brown biographers, such as Oswald Garrison Villard, but that does not stop him from using Villard as his main source, even copying some of his words nearly verbatim. Warren does make some good points, though, like how Brown created his own martyrdom, and his prose is eloquent. Many readers go for this book because of how well told it is, but for the best, most complete, accurate, unbiased, detailed biography, read Stephen B. Oates' To Purge This Land With Blood. When it comes to research, leave this one alone.

While one may appreciate the literary contributions of Robert Penn Warren overall, surely this early work is an unfortunate part of the problem that the 20th century view of Brown has been so warped and skewed. Warren not only sustained the regional biases of his background, but he did no original research and largely appropriated the problematic but unquestioned "facts" of biographer Oswald G. Villard, whose "definitive" 1910 work questionably presents Brown as a kind of principled murderer. Warren found that an easy thesis to turn his way. The bottom line is that this book offers no original research, only an interpretation that says more about the author and his times and prejudices than about the subject. The quality of the writing can be otherwise judged by literary scholars, but as a biographer of Brown, this is not a book I ever have reason to reach for. It's only important to RPW's career and is recommended for those wishing to study the author's life and times. However it is largely irrelevant to any serious biographical study of Brown and no one interested in learning about the abolitionist should start or finish with this book.

As a John Brown scholar and biographer, I have had to get a handle on which biographies are useful and relevant to my research. While one may appreciate an author's style, such as the case of Robert Penn Warren, it is all too apparent that his work lacks any biographical significance as a work of history. RPW contributed nothing new to the research; instead he appropriated the worst elements of Oswald G. Villard's thesis, and otherwise framed it in his cultural and ideological prejudice as a southerner of the early 20th century. Villard himself, though a liberal civil rights activist, was prejudiced against Brown because he was an extreme pacifist and the grandson of abolitionist Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and likely resented how Brown stole the thunder from his hard-working grandpa. His view of Brown as a well-meaning murderer is hardly trustworthy, yet it has been put to good use by many anti-Brown writers, esp. those writing with a southern ax to grind--from RPW to Otto Scott. The fact that C. Vann Woodward wrote the preface to this edition of RPW's bio is all the more interesting, since the former was one of the key mid-20th century scholars in skewing Brown's historical reputation.

There are many books on John Brown, and a number of them are worth purchasing if you want to learn about him. However, this work by RPW is better borrowed from the library or scanned over a cup of coffee at B&N. It offers nothing of real historical value, except to the whining, bitter progeny of the South who have yet to own up to the fact that their forebears not only lost the war, but lost it for all the wrong reasons. Historically speaking, I give it one star only because I cannot give it anything less.

And make no mistake, reader. There is a definite connection between the willingness of the "majority" population to acknowledge the immensity of the CRIME of slavery and the general unwillingness of the same population to give John Brown the salutation that he deserves, instead of endlessly comparing him to terrorists and psychos.

John Brown was a fraud, murderer, thief and a failure who had no other interest in the Abolitionist movement than what he could get from the wealthy Boston Brahmins and people like Gerrit Smith.

Penn's book is one of the few that actually tells the truth as to who Brown really was. It is far more readable than the first to expose Brown. This was a book by H. P. Wilson, who started out viewing Brown as a hero until he started digging.......

Read Wilson's version free here:

To prove the accuracy of Warren:

H. P. Wilson - John Brown Soldier of Fortune - free from Google books - download it as a PDF: [...]

To verify Wilson & Warren versions, read The Mason report:

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RE: Pottawatomie massacre - The confession of James Townsley:

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(Warren's Book on the Civil War is short but balanced and accurate IMHO:
This is short just over 100 pages.
[...] )

This book should be a must read. Other proof that Brown's story of Pottawatomie was complete B.S. can be found in S.B. Oats' version in the maps on pages: 108 & 9.

John Brown started the Civil War with his invasion of Virginia by John Brown's Provisional Government (complete with a constitutional convention) - Harper's Ferry was to be a grand repeat of Pottawatomie.

Brown should have had a lot of company on the scaffold on Dec. 2, 1859 among them H.D. Thoreau, R.W. Emerson, Frederic Douglass, the "Secret Six", J.W. Howe (possibly) and almost all of Brown's original biographers. The myth of John Brown was propagated to save their necks - literally. Almost all were Harvard Alumni. the waas another person in the audience for Brown's hanging that nicely bookends the War........ guess who he/she was?

Understanding John Brown is the "Rosetta Stone" for getting at truth of the Civil War and why it was really a Jacobin Revolution.

The Harpers Ferry raid was the ember that ignited the Civil War. It was also part of a conspiracy, hidden in history almost as much as it was at the time, involving wealthy, prominant Northerners. Among them were Stowe and even Fredrick Douglas. Brown himself was a horsethief, a murderer, and a meglamaniac. Among the evidence found on his person was the constitution of the "new republic" he would usher in after Southern whites had been slaughtered by his army of freed slaves, naming himself as the new provisional president. This well researched book so completely debunks Brown as anything but a traiterous, intolerant tyrant that it is amazing that even today he can be viewed any other way. This book will raise your awareness to a brand new level, almost as much as it raises your blood pressure.