John Brown, Soldier of Fortune: A Critique. Hill Peebles Wilson

Table of Contents

      John Brown Frontispiece

      Steel engraving made from a photograph compared with a photogravure. The photograph was taken about 1859. Original in the Kansas State Historical Society. The photogravure is from Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard's book: John Brown—A Biography Fifty Years After.

      John Brown facing page 98

      Steel engraving, made as above. The photograph was copied from a daguerreotype taken in 1856. Original in the Kansas State Historical Society.

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      THE SUBJECT MATTER

      Truth, crushed to earth shall rise again; —Bryant

      The object of the writer, in publishing this book, is to correct a perversion of truth, whereby John Brown has acquired fame, as an altruist and a martyr, which should not be attributed to him.

      The book is a review of the historical data that have been collected and published by his principal biographers: Mr. James Redpath, Mr. Frank B. Sanborn and Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard. It is also a criticism of these writers, who have sought to suppress, and have suppressed, important truths relating to the subject of which they wrote, and who have misinformed and misled the public concerning the true character of this figure in our national history; and have established in its stead a fictitious character, which is wholly illogical and inconsistent with the facts and circumstances of Brown's life.

      Mr. Redpath, his first and most lurid biographer, was a newspaper correspondent of the type now generally called "yellow." He was a "Disunionist," and seems to have been a malcontent, who went to Kansas Territory to oppose the policy which the Free-State men had adopted for a safe and sane solution of the Free-State problem; and who sought to thwart their efforts to create a free state by peaceable means. He said:[1]

      I believed that a civil war between the North and South would ultimate in insurrection and that the Kansas troubles would probably create a military conflict of the sections. Hence, I left the South, and went to Kansas; and endeavored personally, and by my pen, to precipitate a revolution.

      After Brown's spectacular fiasco in Virginia, and tragical death, his cultured partisans, in most conspicuous eloquence proclaimed him to have been a philanthropist—an altruistic hero; and placed a martyr's crown upon his brow. Mr. Redpath's purpose, in putting forth his work, was to make Brown over to fit the part; to make his life appear to conform with the extravagant attributes of his improvised estate. In pursuance thereof he sought to conceal the facts concerning the actions and purposes of his life, rather than to develop them; and to blind the trails leading to the facts with masses of sentimental rubbish; and to divert public attention away from them. Upon the publication of his book, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, in a review of the work, expressed his disapproval of it in vigorous language. He said:[2]

      It would be well had this book never been written. Mr. Redpath has understood neither the opportunities opened to him, nor the responsibilities laid upon him, in being permitted to write the "authorized" life of John Brown. His book, in whatever light it is viewed—whether as the biography of a remarkable man, as an historic narrative of a series of important events, or simply as a mere piece of literary job-work—is equally unsatisfactory. …

      There never was more need for a good life of any man than there was for one of John Brown. … Those who thought best of him, and those who thought the worst, were alike desirous to know more of him than the newspapers had furnished, and to become acquainted with the course of his life, and the training which had prepared him for Kansas and brought him to Harper's Ferry. Whatever view be taken of his character, he was a man so remarkable as to be well worthy of study. …

      In seasons of excitement, and amid the struggles of political contention, the men who use the most extravagant and the most violent words have, for a time, the advantage; but, in the long run, they damage whatever cause they may adopt; and the truth, which their declamations have obscured or their falsehoods have violated, finally asserts itself. … Extravagance in condemnation has been answered by extravagance in praise of his life and deeds.

      Twenty-five years later, when Mr. Sanborn published his book, Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia, Mr. John F. Morse, Jr., voiced the disappointment felt by discriminating persons, in an article published in February, 1886.[3] He said:

      So grand a subject cannot fail to inspire a writer able to do justice to the theme; and when such an one draws Brown, he will produce one of the most attractive books in the language. But meantime the ill-starred "martyr" suffers a prolongation of martyrdom, standing like another St. Sebastian to be riddled with the odious arrows of fulsome panegyrists. With other unfortunate men of like stamp, he has attracted a horde of writers, who, with rills of versicles and oceans of prose, have overwhelmed his simple noble memory beneath torrents of wild extravagant admiration, foolish thoughts expressed in appropriately silly language, absurd adulation inducing only protest and a dangerous contradictory emotion. Amid this throng of ill advised worshippers, Mr. Sanborn, by virtue of his lately published biographical volume, has assumed the most prominent place.

      Referring to the opinions expressed by these writers, Mr. Villard, in the preface to his book, John Brown, A Biography Fifty Years After, says: "Since 1886 there have appeared five other lives of Brown,[4] the most important being that of Richard J. Hinton, who, in his preface gloried in holding a brief for Brown and his men." Concerning his book he says:

      

      The present volume is inspired by no such purpose, but is due to a belief that fifty years after the Harper's Ferry tragedy, the time is ripe for a study of John Brown, free from bias, from the errors of taste and fact of the mere panegyrist, and from the blind prejudice of those who can see in John Brown nothing but a criminal. The pages that follow were written to detract from or champion no man or set of men, but to put forth the essential truths of history as far as ascertainable, and to judge Brown, his followers and associates, in the light thereof. How successful this attempt has been is for the reader to judge. That this volume in no wise approaches the attractiveness which Mr. Morse looked for, the author fully understands. On the other hand no stone has been left unturned to make accurate the smallest detail; the original documents, contemporary letters and living witnesses, have been examined in every quarter of the United States. Materials never before utilized have been drawn upon, and others discovered whose existence has heretofore been unknown. …

      Under this broad pledge of personal fidelity to the subject, this historian introduced his volume, and has asked the public to give him its full confidence and to accept his work as a faithful and complete record of the ascertainable truths of history relating to the subject. For the ardor which he has exhibited, and for the great labor which he has expended in his compilation, and for much material of minor importance, which he has uncovered, the student of history will not fail to acknowledge to Mr. Villard the sense of his obligation. In these respects, and in the scholarly features characteristic of the writings, it is an interesting and dramatic contribution to this literature. But, he will not be stampeded by protestations of zeal, and by professions of integrity, to accept it as a presentation of the ascertainable truth. The work is more conspicuous for the absence from its pages of important historical truths, and for the contradiction of others which have been authenticated, than it is for the great volume of trivial facts which it presents. A line of derelictions conspicuously prevailing throughout the pages of the book, amply justify the charge that it was not written, primarily, for an historical purpose—"to put forth the truths of history as far as ascertainable, and to judge Brown