Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, the Secret Six, and a Theory of Slave Violence (review)

BOOK REVIEWS281 With student interest having recovered from its Vietnam era nadir, the need for a good interpretive history of American military affairs has never been greater. Over the years, the writing of American military history has changed markedly. Early writers contented themselves with stirring battle pieces, filled with blaring bugles and flashing bayonets. Gradually, more analytical accounts of wars, campaigns, and battles began to appear . Most recently, the "new military history" explored the relationship between soldiers and the society from which they emanate. At present, accounts of combat have fallen into disfavor with academic historians, leavingpopularizers to satisfy thepublic's appetite for such works. This is an unfortunate trend, no more valid intellectually than the earlier, simplistic recounting of campaigns and battles. Students of the American military experience need to be exposed to all facets of that experience , peace and war, garrison and battlefield, technology and tactics. Any modern text attempting to explain America's military past should integrate all of these diverse currents into a coherent, interpretive account. Unfortunately, Warren W. Hassler, Jr.'s new text, With Sword and Shield: American Military Affairs, Colonial Times to the Present, fails to provide the synthesis so badly needed by students of American military history. The book is simply a chronological recounting of the major military events from the colonial wars of the 1600s to Vietnam. Within this mass of detail many little-known facts abound, and their easy availability is one of the book's strengths. Another positive factor is the largenumber of colorful descriptions of significant individuals. Yet, to be of greatest utility, a superior text must do more than amass facts and describe people . It must organize those facts into significant themes, and analyze the actions of those people in as many ways as possible. Here Hassler falls short. Rather than provide a truly interpretive account, he has simply placed the facts before us, to make of them what we will. When so much more could have been done, one must conclude that the definitive history of American military affairs remains to be written. William Glenn Robertson U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, the Secret Six, and a Theory of Slave Violence. By Jeffery Rossbach. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Pp. xii, 298. $23.50.) The Secret Six, the abolitionists who financed John Brown's Harpers Ferry raid in 1859, have generally interested historians less than their more famous protégé. According to Jeffery Rossbach, associate editor of the Black Abolitionist Papers at Florida State, this has led to many misapprehensions concerning the group's motivation. Pointing to the 282civil war history need to understand why people subsidize violence, Rossbach undertakes a thorough analysis of the six conspirators: Gerrit Smith, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frank Sanborn, Samuel Gridley Howe, George Luther Stearns, and Theodore Parker. Far from being mesmerized by Brown's forceful personality, Rossbach asserts, the Six made a careful, rational decision to support Brown. Brown had to labor endlessly to convince the group that he had the qualities of manliness, courage, honor , and self-control they so admired. The violent raid won the group's approval because they believed slaves could never survive in a free and open societyuntil theylearned to fight fortheirrights. Theraid was to be a catalyzing event, transforming servile slaves into bold, self-assertive heroes who again would share the character traits the group admired. Yet, moved by ideas rather than emotions, of the six conspirators only Higginson was able to make an unambivalent commitment to violence. This accounts for the group's panicky reactions after the raid failed. Rossbach's interpretation of the Six is based largely on a sensitive, thorough reading of their correspondence and writings. He treats their attitudes as gradually evolving, shaped by such traumatizing events as the failure to rescue the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, from reenslavement because some of the Six, despite their ideological commitment to Higher Law, could not translate belief into an actual violent act. While Rossbach also examines the personalities of the Secret Six, pointing especially to the personal insecurities and need for acceptance of Sanborn, Stearns, and Howe, he follows the recent trend in abolitionist biography of...