[CHAPTER I]
THE SUBJECT MATTER
Truth, crushed to earth shall rise again;
—Bryant
The object of the writer, in publishing this book, is to correct a perversion of truth, whereby John Brown has acquired fame, as an altruist and a martyr, which should not be attributed to him.
The book is a review of the historical data that have been collected and published by his principal biographers: Mr. James Redpath, Mr. Frank B. Sanborn and Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard. It is also a criticism of these writers, who have sought to suppress, and have suppressed, important truths relating to the subject of which they wrote, and who have misinformed and misled the public concerning the true character of this figure in our national history; and have established in its stead a fictitious character, which is wholly illogical and inconsistent with the facts and circumstances of Brown's life.
Mr. Redpath, his first and most lurid biographer, was a newspaper correspondent of the type now generally called "yellow." He was a "Disunionist," and seems to have been a malcontent, who went to Kansas Territory to oppose the policy which the Free-State men had adopted for a safe and sane solution of the Free-State problem; and who sought to thwart their efforts to create a free state by peaceable means. He said:[1]
I believed that a civil war between the North and South would ultimate in insurrection and that the Kansas troubles would probably create a military conflict of the sections. Hence, I left the South, and went to Kansas; and endeavored personally, and by my pen, to precipitate a revolution.
After Brown's spectacular fiasco in Virginia, and tragical death, his cultured partisans, in most conspicuous eloquence proclaimed him to have been a philanthropist—an altruistic hero; and placed a martyr's crown upon his brow. Mr. Redpath's purpose, in putting forth his work, was to make Brown over to fit the part; to make his life appear to conform with the extravagant attributes of his improvised estate. In pursuance thereof he sought to conceal the facts concerning the actions and purposes of his life, rather than to develop them; and to blind the trails leading to the facts with masses of sentimental rubbish; and to divert public attention away from them. Upon the publication of his book, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, in a review of the work, expressed his disapproval of it in vigorous language. He said:[2]
It would be well had this book never been written. Mr. Redpath has understood neither the opportunities opened to him, nor the responsibilities laid upon him, in being permitted to write the "authorized" life of John Brown. His book, in whatever light it is viewed—whether as the biography of a remarkable man, as an historic narrative of a series of important events, or simply as a mere piece of literary job-work—is equally unsatisfactory....