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John Brown: The Legend Revisited

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Some theologians make the distinction between the "Christ of Faith" and the "Jesus of History." The idea is that the Christ of Faith is the Christ mediated through the depictions of him in the New Testament, depictions that represent the writers' faith reaction to the phenomenon of Christ. The Jesus of History was the actual historical person, who we can know little if anything about, buried beneath the overlay of mythologizing that resulted in the Christ of Faith

Discovering the historical John Brown is certainly a more fruitful enterprise than discovering the Jesus of History, but John Brown as symbol and myth is quite fulsome. Merrill D. Peterson's John Brown: The Legend Revisited provides us with a good taste of the historical John Brown and a banquet of John Brown the symbol and myth.

The sketch of the historical Brown that Peterson provides us makes it clear how Brown could occasion some significant mythologizing about him. Brown is an enigmatic person, seemingly driven by forces he himself doesn't fully comprehend. Also, his background and experiences do not seem to fully account for the extremities to which he would take his abolitionist beliefs. His inexplicability creates vacuums teasingly available for the purposes of mythologizers.

It's here that Peterson work shines. He provides us with plethora of ways Brown has been depicted through time. The ways range from historical narratives to artistic and other creative representations. Not all the representations have been flattering.

I wish Peterson would have provided a deeper explication of the social and political forces and agendas that formed the kinds of representations and reputations that Brown the myth has received through time. Nevertheless, Peterson's work is a must read for Brown scholarship and his approach deserves high marks for its uniqueness.

John Brown had been born on May 9, 1800. By the time he and his sons pulled their stunt taking over the National Armory on October 16, 1859, he was fifty (that's old for that era). He was an abolitionist and religious zealot. His misbegotten mission was to make people release their slaves and create a stronghold in the Virgina/Maryland mountains for them to live in peace. His plan to liberate them using violence cost him the lives of two of his sons, Oliver (20 yrs. old) died on Oct. 17 and Watson (24) on the 18th from their fatal injuries. Joseph Barry wrote an indepth account of the captives and how they were caught in his book printed in 1903, 'The Strange Story of Harper's Ferry.' Here they were trying to liberate the blacks and the first victim was a black train porter there on the tracks leading to the bridge, which I found ironic. I took my sons and two nephews to Harper's Ferry and it is a quaint little place, there at three states. That part of Virginia near Sandy Hook where the Appalachian Trail meanders was later made into a new state called West Virginia. The whole population of the town was involved in this botched takeover.

Robert E. Lee and J. E. B. Stuart captured Brown's raiders; he was found guilty of treason against his country, conspiring with slaves to create an insurrection, and hanged on December 2, 1859. Stephen Vincent Benet wrote a long poem of the Civil War which became an American classic, first printed in 1927 and won the Pultizer Prize in 1929. In it, he wrote: "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave." That is the legend school children learn.

In September, 1862, the largest military operation against Harper's Ferry occurred prior to the Battle of Antietam when Stonewall Jackson's Confederate forces seized the town and captured the 12,500-man Union garrison, the largest surrender of troops during the Civil War. The first shot occurred at Fort Sumpter, S. C. on April 12, 1861, prior to the bloodiest battle of all at Antietam and the deadliest at Gettysburg, PA. John Penn Warren wrote about John Brown: 'The Making of a Martyr.' I'm glad this legend has now been reviewed to put the atrocity to bed for good. It as the damnest thing a demented person could do; how he ever thought he would get away with it beats me. He met his end at John Brown's Fort. It is an interesting place to visit, and gives that little state some semblance of importance.