John Brown, Soldier of Fortune: A Critique

by Hill Peebles Wilson

It was to this Mr. Sanborn, that Brown first suggested his scheme to raise $30,000 cash, to arm and equip a company of "fifty volunteer-regulars" for the defense of Kansas settlers. Mr. Sanborn was impressed, deeply so, and undertook to promote the proposition. Also, he undertook to promote Brown's scheme to have the Legislatures of Massachusetts and New York appropriate $100,000 each, to reimburse the Brown family for losses its members had sustained while "fighting" in Kansas; and ever thereafter had been Brown's faithful and efficient servant. He was a member of the "Secret War Committee" of six, and had reason to think, and probably did think, that Brown had taken him into his full confidence. He says:

Although Brown communicated freely to the four persons just named,—Theodore Parker, Dr. Howe, Mr. Stearns and Col. Higginson,—his plans of attack and defense in Virginia, it is not known that he spoke to any but me of his purpose to surprise the Arsenal and town of Harper's Ferry.... It is probable that in 1858 Brown had not definitely resolved to seize Harper's Ferry; yet he spoke of it to me beside his coal fire in the American House, putting it as a question, rather, without expressing his own purpose. I questioned him a little about it; but it then passed from my mind, and I did not think of it again until the attack had been made a year and a half afterwards.[399]

Thus Mr. Sanborn acknowledges that Brown had not entrusted to him the secret of his intentions, and thereby disqualifies himself as an authority upon Brown's plans, or as having correct information concerning what he intended to do in Virginia. It is more than probable that upon the occasion to which Mr. Sanborn refers, Brown contemplated confiding to him his plans for the conquest of the South by means of an insurrection of the slaves and the massacre of the slave-holding population, and intended to offer him a position upon his staff. Brown and Forbes had laid plans for their campaign, with Harper's Ferry as the base of operations, as early as January, 1857, and in pursuance thereof had ordered the thousand spears with which to arm the blacks for the opening horror.

Sitting beside his coal fire in the American House, his thoughts upon his plans, and the hopes of his mighty conquest surging in his brain, John Brown, the grim Soldier of Fortune, drew out his young companion by indirection, and took the measure of his capacity for heroic undertakings. Had the young man, at the close of that interview, appealed for an omen "from that shrine whose oracles may destroy but can never deceive," he might, in a spiritual vision, have seen upon the invisible tablets, where Brown's mental records were kept, an inscription, or word, similar to that which Belshazzar saw traced upon the wall by the finger of an invisible hand. The man of "blood and iron" had invited the interview in his letter to Mr. Sanborn of February 24th.[400] Brown's decision was adverse to Mr. Sanborn. The latter did not suspect that he had passed through the fire of an examination, and had been found deficient. The subject was never again taken up; the door of opportunity closed against Mr. Sanborn.

Following the trail blazed by a discredited predecessor, the writer of Fifty Years After abandons the teachings which the record discloses concerning this episode, and, concurring with Mr. Redpath, tries to confirm in our history that author's perversion of the facts relating to it. He assumes to believe, and seeks to teach the public to believe, that Brown's plans were, comparatively, crude, and that his movement in execution of them was of a harmless nature: that he merely intended to attempt to carry on a guerrilla warfare from some point in the nearby mountains, and that his entrance to Harper's Ferry was not an occupation of the place but a "raid" upon it, undertaken for the purpose of advertising, in a spectacular way, the guerrilla warfare which he intended to engage in. He says:[401]

As for their general, he not only was the sole member of the attacking force to believe in the assault on the property of the United States at Harper's Ferry, but he was, as they neared the all-unsuspecting town, without any clear and definite plan of campaign. The general order detailed the men who were to garrison various parts of the town and hold the bridges, but beyond that, little had been mapped out. It was all to depend upon the orders of the commander-in-chief, who seemed bent on violating every military principle. Thus, he had appointed no definite place for the men to retreat to, and fixed no hour for the withdrawal from the town. He, moreover, proceeded at once to defy the canons by placing a river between himself and his base of supplies,—the Kennedy Farm,—and then left no adequate force on the river-bank to insure his being able to fall back to that base. Hardly had he entered the town when, by dispersing his men here and there, he made his defeat as easy as possible. Moreover, he had in mind no well-defined purpose in attacking Harpers Ferry, save to begin his revolution in a spectacular way, capture a few slave-holders and release some slaves. So far as he had thought anything out, he expected to alarm the town and then, with the slaves that had rallied to him, to march back to the school-house near the Kennedy Farm, arm his recruits and take to the hills. Another general, with the same purpose in view would have established his mountain camp first, swooped down upon the town in order to spread terror throughout the State, and in an hour or two, at most, have started back to his hill-top fastness.... Hence, he confidently hoped to retire to the mountains before catching sight of a soldier of the regular army or of the militia,—by no means an unjustifiable expectation....

The danger to any raiding force would come from losing possession of these bridges, in which case the sole means of escape would be by swimming the rivers or climbing up through the town toward Bolivar Heights, in the direction of Charlestown, eight miles away.

By the gratuitous and irrelevant assumptions herein, this biographer discredits Brown's intelligence; and by unjust, unfair, and illogical criticisms of his conduct, seeks to conceal and to emasculate his intentions. Authenticated facts place limitations upon the presumptions of historians, which challenge the consistency of reckless statements, and the logic of their conclusions concerning them. There is not an authenticated line in this history which justifies a belief that Brown contemplated doing the things which this author assumes that he intended to do. His theory that the occupation of Harper's Ferry was merely an incident in a raid, the first one of a series of undertakings in guerrilla warfare, which he represents Brown as intending to execute from a location within walking distance of the town, is a reflection upon the sanity of every person connected with the movement. It is an assumption that Brown and his men believed that they could maintain a headquarters for such warfare in the Maryland hills—at a "hill-top fastness," if you please—and not be "run to earth at once," as the author states Cook would have been, if he had attempted to hide in these inhospitable hills.[402] It is also a general denial of the historical truth that Brown intended to invade Virginia and the Southern States, and to establish over them the jurisdiction of a provisional government. Moreover, it is so divergent from the lessons taught by the vast accumulation of authenticated facts which relate to the matter, that it constitutes a contradiction of the facts, and raises a question as to the integrity of the author's purpose in putting it forth.

There is no room in historical literature for the indulgence of poetic license. If Brown was a man of "blood and iron" and his men "hard-headed Americans" one day, they must be regarded as being such the next day, and every day. It may be said, upon the authority of this author, that Brown and his men were not the stupids which they are, in this instance, represented as being. "Captains John H. Kagi and A. D. Stevens, bravest of the brave"[403] were not words idly spoken. "The hard-headed able Americans like Stevens, Kagi, Cook, and Gill, who lived with John Brown month in and month out worshipped no lunatic."[404] Grafter! Hypocrite! Fiend! Monster! Brown was, but never a trifler. If he ever engaged in a trifling enterprise or attempted to do anything in a trifling manner or upon a trifling scale, it has not been recorded. First, last, and all the time he played the limit of his resources. And in the execution of this venture—the climax of all his undertakings—he was neither trifling nor juggling with its details, as his biographers have persisted in doing with his motives, and with what his intentions and his plans were, in these premises.