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JOHN BROWN AND HIS JUDGES: A Critique of the Historical Literature Stephen B. Oates Americans have always found it difficult to write objectively about controversial figures in their past, and this has been especially true of John Brown. Since he died on the gallows for attempting to incite a slave insurrection in the South, those who have dealt with him—biographers, poets, novelists, essayists, and, alas, professional historians—have with rare exception been either passionately for or against the man. Either Brown was right or he was wrong. Either he was an authentic and immortal hero who sacrificed his life so that America's "poor, despised Africans" might be free, or he was a "mean, terrible, vicious man," a demented horsethief, a murderer, a psychopath. For over one hundred years, American writers—popular and scholarly alike—have engaged in such heated controversy over whether Brown was right or wrong, sane or crazy, hero or fanatic, that scarcely anyone has taken the time to try to understand him.1 The legend of Brown as hero was molded by a succession of worshipful biographies that appeared between 1860 and 1910. Those written by James Redpath, Franklin B. Sanborn, and Richard J. Hinton2—all • This article is dedicated to the memory of Boyd B. Stutler, Civil War scholar and John Brown expert, whose help to me was invaluable and indispensable. 1 There have been exceptions, of course. Mary Land's "John Brown's Ohio Environment ," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LVII (Jan. 1948), 2447 , showed how Brown was influenced by the antislavery controversies that raged in Ohio's Western Reserve and concluded that Brown was not an insane fanatic but an extreme product of that intensely antislavery region. C. Vann Woodward's "John Brown's Private War," in The Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge, I960), pp. 41-68, provided a trenchant analysis of the impact of the Harpers Ferry attack on the South, but was marred by the author's acceptance of controversial documents regarding Brown's alleged "insanity" at their face value. David M. Potter 's "John Brown and the Paradox of Leadership among American Negroes," in The South and the Sectional Conflict (Baton Rouge, 1968), pp. 201-218, included a fair appraisal of Brown's relationship with Negro leaders luce Frederick Douglass, although the essay ignored the influence of Brown's religious beliefs on the Harpers Ferry attack. Other thoughtful essays are [Floyd C. Shoemaker], "John Brown's Missouri Raid: A Tale of the Kansas-Missouri Border Retold with Some New Facts," Missouri Historical Review, XXVI (Oct., 1931), 78-83; and Boyd B. Stutler's Abraham Lincoln and John Brown-? Parallel," Civil War History, VIII (Sept., 1962), 290-299. 2 Redpath, The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (Boston, 1860); Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown (Boston, 1885); and Hinton, John Brown and Hit Men, with Some Account of the Roads They Traveled to Reach Harpers Ferry (New York, 1894). D CIVIL WAR HISTORY of whom had been friends and associates of Brown—portrayed him as a deeply principled "Puritan soldier," "an idealist with a human intent," "a simple, brave, heroic person, incapable of anything selfish or base."3 The legend-builders did not always agree on facts. Redpath, the propagandist of the Brown legend, asserted that the Old Hero did not commit the Pottawatomie murders, that he was somewhere else when they occurred. Sanbom, followed by Hinton, gave evidence that Brown had instigated the massacre, but argued that he was justified in doing so, inasmuch as the victims were crude, violent, proslavery "poor whites" who would likely have massacred Brown and his free-state neighbors had he not killed them first.4 But facts aside, all three biographers, disregarding unfavorable aspects of Brown's character and career, presented him as a great man in the manner of Samson, Hercules, and Oliver Cromwell—a steadfast warrior who saved Kansas for liberty in 1856 and then gave his life in Virginia so that the slaves might be free. He was "a saint," Hinton asserted; "Our bravest martyr," said Redpath.5 Brown was as heroic as Lincoln and as noble as Socrates, declared Sanbom , one of the Secret Six who...

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