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John Brown: A National Hero Alvin Shaul HS 335, T. Cantrell Peterson Book Review February 7, 2005 A National Hero The focal point of Merrill Peterson�s book is the telling of the story of one of America�s greatest citizens, the story of John Brown. In order to rightly give credit to Peterson, I feel a brief summary of Brown�s life as told by Peterson is considered necessary. John Brown was an abolitionist born in Torrington, Connecticut. He was the son of a tradesman, growing up in Hudson, Ohio and was unschooled. When he was 8 years old, John�s mother died of a severe mental illness. For trade, he became a tanner. Throughout the following years he would also work as a land surveyor, a shepherd, and a farmer. Brown was a family man and sought to have a large family from the beginning of his marriage. His first marriage in 1820 lasted less than ten years, when his wife died. He remarried in 1831. Between his two wives, he fathered twenty children. He took his family from place to place during the 1830s and 1840s, as he failed over and over again looking for profitable work. Although Brown had been an abolitionist since his youth, it was not until he reached his fifties that he began to fight for emancipation with force. In 1855 he and six of his sons moved to Osawatomie, Kansas to join the movement to keep Kansas a non-slave state. After the burning of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces, Brown led four of his sons and a small group of others to Pottawatomie Creek where they killed five pro-slavery advocates. This happened on May 24,1856 and Brown showed no shame in taking responsibility for the act. The act in itself sparked within Brown a passion for such demonstrations. His hatred toward slavery and those who supported it grew every day. Finally, after returning east, he rallied the support of Gerrit Smith and others who gave him the needed supplies required for battle. For Brown, the next step in victory was a raid on Harpers Ferry. On October 16 of 1859 he and his party seized the armory at Harpers Ferry but made little more impact. For, as they were battling, a brigade of US Marines under Colonel Robert E Lee raided the building and captured Brown�s party of men. Brown was tried for treason on November 2 and hanged one month later. As such, Brown became a martyr to the people of the North, as well as a threatening influence to the people of the South. Ralf Waldo Emerson wrote of Brown: �It has been impossible to keep the name of John Brown out of the war from first to last...� His tormenters were forgotten, �but John Brown�s soul is marching on� (33). Indeed, for John Brown was an inspiration to the Union soldiers of the North. As blacks and whites from the North marched into battle after battle of the civil war, it was the thought of the bravery of John Brown and his actions that drove them on. John Brown, thus, did much more damage than sacking Osawatomie, Kansas, and attacking Harpers Ferry. He gave life to what would become the driving force of the anti-slavery movement and the eventual abolishment of the institution as a whole! Inevitably, someone would have stepped up and taken force against the slave-holding South, but if not John Brown in 1855 and 1856, then when? The war itself and the events leading up to it following Brown�s hanging might have been completely different and our country might very well have labored in the treachery of slavery for another twenty years. As Charles Robin stated in 1877: The soul of John Brown was the inspiration of the Union armies in the emancipation war, and it will be the inspiration of all men in the present and distant future who may revolt against tyranny and oppression�To the superficial observer John Brown was a failure. So was Jesus of Nazareth. Both suffered ignominious death as traitors to the government, yet one is now hailed Savior of the world from sin, and the other of a race from bondage (60). Considering the religious fervor of the day and that one of the main claims against slavery was on the grounds of biblical teachings, this type of bold association with the embodiment of Christ shows the sincerity and reverence that was to be shown to John Brown. Another quote, this by Oswald Garrison Villard, further accents the character of John Brown: To all these powers of an intense nature were added the driving force of a mighty and unselfish purpose, and the readiness to devote himself to the welfare of others�The essentially ennobling feature of John Brown�s career, that which enabled him to draw men to him as if by a magnet, was his willingness to suffer for others�in short, the straightforward unselfishness of the man (91). John Brown�s impact on America has become a lasting legacy. Today, Harpers Ferry is both a National Monument and a National Historical Park. Although signs of racism and the history of our nation still can be seen today, it is because of John Brown that most of such has been evaporated. Credit is often given to Lincoln or others who actually abolished slavery, but it was John Brown, American hero, who gave them to opportunity to do so. |