The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown’s Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism by Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz (review)

John Brown is one of the best known and most scrutinized abolitionists in American history. Textbooks, documentaries, and history courses consistently offer detailed coverage of Brown and his radical abolitionism. Less well-known, and even ignored by some historians, are the women of the Brown family. In The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown’s Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism, Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz seeks to correct this omission in the historiography on Brown, the American radical abolitionist movement, and abolitionism’s influence on the memory of the American Civil War. Laughlin-Schultz argues convincingly that exploring the lives and ideology of the Brown women is crucial to understanding the family patriarch and his complicated legacy. Using a diverse assortment of primary sources, including manuscript collections, newspapers, autobiographies, and oral histories, she recreates their nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century world and how they negotiated their antislavery activism with the hard work of building and maintaining their family.

Laughlin-Schultz presents her monograph as a “collective biography of sorts, opening with Mary Brown’s marriage to John in 1833 and concluding with the death of the last Brown woman, Annie, in 1926” (7). It begins by describing the Browns’ antebellum abolitionist family culture, paying special attention to Mary’s role in the family’s radical antislavery. The middle three chapters focus on the family’s acceptance of militancy, its role in Kansas and the Harpers Ferry raid, and its notoriety following Brown’s trial and execution. The concluding two chapters examine the influence of John Brown on Americans’ memory of the Civil War and the part Mary and Annie played in protecting his legacy in the postwar era.

The biography makes an important contribution to understanding the role of women, and the intersections of gender and class, in the abolitionist movement. Much literature has been written on the activism of middle- and upper-class women in abolitionist circles. Laughlin-Schultz adds to this scholarship with her scrutiny of working-class and poor abolitionist women. The Brown women lived quite ordinary lives for white women unable to escape from cycles of poverty. Many of their years were consumed by childbearing, household duties, raising children, and living on the bare edge of subsistence. It was the daily labor and sacrifice of Mary and her daughters in maintaining the household that allowed Brown to plan and execute his radical antislavery agenda. The women’s contribution to his crusade was direct and absolutely consequential; there would have been no “John Brown” without the support of his wife and daughters.

The book also provides a perspective on how the Brown women and the ideological battle over Brown’s legacy fit within narratives of American Civil War memory. These women protected his legacy and were symbols of the anti-slavery cause. Laughlin-Schultz asserts, however, that the abolitionist cause John Brown advanced was largely forgotten by the late nineteenth century. She echoes arguments made by historians that reconciliation overwhelmed the memory of the conflict celebrating Union and emancipation. The popularity in recalling the valor of soldiers encouraged Americans to only remember Brown for his exploits. Other historians, however, have countered this contention, arguing that Americans had not forgotten the unionist and Emancipationist memory of the war. It is highly unlikely that aging white Union veterans who sang “John Brown’s Body” as they marched south to save the Union and—after 1863—to abolish slavery would have forgotten his ideological mission.

Finally, a notable methodological contribution of this work is its defense of biography as a mode of historical analysis. Academic historians often disparage biography as a way to present scholarship. Laughlin-Schultz notes that scholars critique biography “for its all-inclusive nature” and its incorporation of anecdotal information, which obstructs clear scholarly inquiry (7...