John Brown, Cultural Interpretation, and the “Inadequate Tool” of Biography

In preparation for his reelection campaign, President Barack Obama traveled to Osawatomie, Kansas, in December 2011 to make what The New York Times called “his most pointed appeal yet” on behalf of his economic strategy. Journalists recognized that it was no coincidence that the president chose this “hardscrabble town” to make such an important speech. It was the same place where Theodore Roosevelt spoke in 1910 in preparation for a tough Progressive Party campaign in the upcoming presidential election.¹ Yet few seem to recall that the premise of Roosevelt’s visit to Osawatomie was actually to dedicate a historical site pertaining to the heroic role of abolitionist John Brown in the antebellum struggle against slavery in Kansas. In fact, Roosevelt made only slight reference to the abolitionist in his speech; and a century later, President Obama made no reference to Brown at all in his Osawatomie speech.

This story, with its historically nuanced connection to John Brown, is a reminder of what R. Blakeslee Gilpin refers to in his cultural history, John Brown Still Lives!, as the “obligations and hazards of historical memory” (p. 195). Gilpin’s intention was to trace “Brown’s unique and nagging presence in the nation’s memory” by providing a multigenerational study of how the controversial abolitionist has been used and interpreted as a symbol over the years in order to reveal “the true power and relevance of Brown’s place in American memory” (p. 2). This work is multiform history, the first three chapters consisting of a biographical narrative, followed by six chapters in which Gilpin sketches the literary and artistic portrayal of Brown from the time of the Civil War until the first half of the twentieth century. However, Gilpin seems displeased with the traditional emphasis on biography as a means of understanding John Brown and his significance to the nation’s memory. “Purely biographical explanations” cannot suffice to understand the man’s place in history, he contends, because his biographers have not sufficiently located explanations to the “knotty conundrums” in the life of the abolitionist, “his psychological profile, and the cultural currents of his time.” Thus, the book focuses on “Brown’s final decade and the 150 years since his death in order to reframe the debates over his meaning” (pp. 1–2).

Gilpin somewhat delivers on the promise of the book in a number of key themes, expertly researched and well crafted to its purpose. In chapter five, he unpacks the fascinating account of rivalry, race, and political agenda in the story of Brown’s notable biographers, W. E. B. DuBois and Oswald Garrison Villard.² He shows how the collegiality of these early twentieth-century activists—black and white allies in the founding of the NAACP—was stressed and torn over the personal and ideological agendas driving their interpretations of Brown. Villard, a white liberal born in privilege and wealth, was also the grandson of pacifist antislavery giant William Lloyd Garrison; the legendary DuBois was a busy activist and college professor living on a limited budget. Thus, Villard’s handling of the subject not only reflected his unique ability to pay for extensive research assistance, but also his contempt for Brown’s use of violence, further exacerbated by jealousy for the Garrison legacy. DuBois’ book, which came out a year before Villard’s, was strongly interpretive but rested on outdated, unreliable sources. When it was published in 1909, Villard sniped at DuBois in a harsh, anonymous review. DuBois thus recognized Villard’s racial condescension, particularly when he was denied the opportunity to respond in the New York Evening Post, which was owned by Villard. Yet their biographies of Brown were not simply different in the quality of evidence or even “racial” perspective, but specifically in DuBois’ willingness to advocate bloodshed in order to achieve liberty, quite in contrast to Villard’s fanatical pacifism. This was the...