I Visited John Brown’s Birthplace
On a summer road trip, I passed through the town of Torrington, Connecticut whose welcome sign read “Birthplace of John Brown”. I’d previously heard of the legendary abolitionist. In 1859, right before the Civil War, he’d fought to liberate the slaves in an insurrectionary attack on Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. He lost his sons in the attack and was hanged as a traitor. Frederick Douglass, a former slave turned powerful abolitionist and orator, told the tale in this excerpt of a speech he gave years after the war:
“These men invaded Harper’s Ferry, disarmed the watchman, took possession of the arsenal, rifle-factory, armory and other government property at that place, arrested and made prisoners nearly all the prominent citizens of the neighborhood, collected about fifty slaves, put bayonets into the hands of such as were able and willing to fight for their liberty, killed three men, proclaimed general emancipation, held the ground more than thirty hours, were subsequently overpowered and nearly all killed, wounded or captured, by a body of United States troops, under command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, since famous as the rebel Gen. Lee.”
— “JOHN BROWN, AN ADDRESS” by Frederick Douglass. May 30, 1881
By chance, I had been watching Ken Burn’s “The Civil War” the past week. In his telling, while Brown’s attempt ended in defeat, it caused a political reorganization that enabled the Civil War — and ultimately the bondsmen were freed. Near the peak of abolitionist political frenzy, the southerners saw a crazy white man try to militarily free the slaves in a revolt, two of their worst nightmares combined into a single event. Southerners began forming militias, which later claimed federal arsenals under the watch of James Buchanan; right as President-elect Lincoln was on his way to Washington.
Brown was fueled by religious conviction that slavery was an abomination and swore an oath of “eternal war with slavery”. Frederick Douglass said of his friend John Brown:
“His zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine — it was as the burning sun to my taper light — mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the boundless shores of eternity. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him.”
— “JOHN BROWN, AN ADDRESS” by Frederick Douglass. May 30, 1881
It seemed fitting to visit the place where John Brown the hero was born and grew up. The import of his work and martyrdom are clear, but where does a person like this come from? Can anything be learned by treading the ground of his childhood?
His home is tucked away in a pretty forested area down what is now called John Brown Road. There was very occasional vehicle traffic, but really there were no people at all. Nor was there even a parking spot — we had to drive partly onto the dirt in order to stop and get out. There is no house remaining, only the stone foundations of two buildings of unequal size (they burned down in 1918), but there are plaques and a forest trail maintained by the Torrington Historical Society. A gravestone-like marker designates the spot where the main building stood.
Brown was born in 1800. 221 years hence, it’s difficult to tell whether the the land was as forested then as it is now. According to Wikipedia, Brown’s father was a cattle breeder, tanner, and land speculator who had eight children and was an abolitionist and himself a friend of Frederick Douglass. Owen’s father (John Brown’s grandfather) was a 1776 revolutionary martyr and he helped facilitate the underground railroad. This sheds a lot of light on John Brown, but less on how they landscaped the property.
Nonetheless, as I walked on the soft verdant grass, I couldn’t help but see in my mind’s eye an image of John Brown as a child, running and playing with his siblings; John Brown studying the Bible. Did Frederick Douglas ever come to visit? Very few answers were to be had, but questions bubbled to the surface.
Did Brown have any sense of his life’s vocation when he lived there or did it only come later? How would he engage with politics today, stripped of the deep evil of African slavery, but still filled with fights so dire that they could affect the survival of most life on Earth? What was his conception of Liberty?
On July 4th, 1859, the summer before Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, his son Owen likely transcribed the text of “A Declaration of Liberty By the Representatives of the slave Population of the United States of America” on a handcrafted scroll.
“We hold these truths to be Self Evident; That All Men are Created Equal; That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are Life, Liberty; & the persuit of happiness. That Nature hath freely given to all Men, a full Supply of Air. Water, & Land; for their sustinance, & mutual happiness, That No Man has any right to deprive his fellow Man, of these Inherent rights, except in punishment of Crime. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That when any form of Government, becomes destructive to these ends, It is the right of the People, to alter, Amend, or Remoddel it, Laying its foundation on Such Principles, & organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect the safety, & happiness” of the Human Race, To secure equal rights, privileges, & justice to all; Irrespective of Sex; or Nation; To Secure Fraternal Kindness to all Friends of Equal Moral privileges, to all who honestly abandon their Despotic oppressive rule. We hold this truth to be self evident; That it is the highest Privilege, & Plain Duty of Man; to strive in evry reasonable way, to promote the Happiness, Mental, Moral, & Physical, elevation of his fellow Man. And that People, or Clanish Oppressors; who wickedly violate this sacred principle; oppressing their fellow Men, Will bring upon themselvs that certain & fearful retribution, which is the Natural, and Necessary penalty of evil Doing.”
— “A Declaration of Liberty By the Representatives of the slave Population of the United States of America”, July 4th, 1859 (emphasis mine)
I found this text very profound. Despite my impertinent questions projecting him into the present, I wanted to be careful to avoid projecting modern attitudes onto a man that lived in the 1800s that was extremely radical, but possibly idiosyncratic on issues other than slavery. In John Brown, I recognize the image of an almost modern leftist. This 1859 declaration was written after the 1848 Communist Manifesto had been penned, but the manifesto didn’t become popular until later and the failure of the 1848 revolutions had made even Marx grumpy.
Nonetheless, in addition to calling for the abolition of slavery, John Brown and his son called for the recognition of rights beyond liberalism. They call for the guarantee of economic rights to individuals — not only to participate in a market economy, but the guarantee of biological need. They call for non-discrimination on the basis of sex, on the guarantee of justice beyond the borders of his own nation that his grandfather had fought and died for. In this declaration, there are recognizable elements of American political discourse around the yeoman farmer and 1776 revolutionary political discourse, but John Brown goes beyond their limits and in the same document calls for the forcible reconstruction of a government that fails to guarantee these natural and unalienable rights given by the creator. The main gap between this text and a modern socialist is the recognition of class struggle in the marketplace, but it is almost childish to point this out as Brown was a militant and ultimately successful revolutionary in the struggle between the enslaving class and the enslaved class.
This grandchild of the revolution was even more revolutionary than the founding generation. It’s heartening to see a hero from our own country both in word and deed espouse real justice. Part of the painful education of socialists is learning that nearly all the heroes in American history are fatally flawed to such a degree that they must be held at arm’s length at minimum. The founders were slavers, the frontiersmen genocidal, the soldiers agents of imperium, the industrialists tyrants, and all the presidents save possibly Lincoln (still a killer of Native Americans even as he emancipated a seventh of the nation’s population) mere killers, ghouls, and manipulators. Brown, through his pedigree and philosophy, draws from the same revolutionary tradition as 1776 but then takes it in a positive direction. In 1945, another revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, would also take up this spirit in the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and also, in the end, win. It’s nice to know we can still have heroes.
The property is fairly large and includes a lovely 3/4 mile long marked forest trail. It’s not clear how the trail relates to what young John Brown would have done at home, but nonetheless walking through the woods I had an eerie feeling of following his footsteps. Surely little John must have played or done chores here.
The sunlight filtered through the trees and the temperature was perfect. An abundance of mushrooms of many shapes, sizes, and colors grew throughout the trail that I had never seen before. It indicated to me that while the trail was well maintained, very few people ever visit this sanctified patch of earth. It made me feel sad that he isn’t getting the recognition he deserves, but at the same time lucky I could enjoy the trail with my girlfriend alone.
As I wandered the trail I thought about why Brown was able to succeed. Like most Americans, I once subscribed to the Great Man theory of history, but no longer. After amateurishly studying historical materialist philosophy, for a time I began to think individuals no longer mattered at all in shaping events, but all were tectonic forces of class conflict, the environment, the market, and international relations. However, while this explains 95% of history, I think something more is needed. The titanic forces of history present constraints on action, often over-constraining decisions so that only a single course of action makes sense for decision makers regardless of their personal beliefs. However, occasionally the forces allow a choice in one of a few directions. They are like a great wave rushing towards a fork and the surfer can sometimes ever so slightly push themselves to one side or the other.
Maybe you can say it was inevitable that a person like John Brown would appear at the time he did. However, the quality of his plan’s execution and the high regard and zeal he inspired are particular to him. Were there other John Browns waiting in the wings or was he an extraordinary and rare person? I am inclined to think it was the latter. Perhaps a Civil War was inevitable, but was it inevitable to happen in 1860? Could a rough compromise have been worked out? Would history have taken a different course, perhaps via international intervention if the US had held out on slavery a decade or two longer?
My current understanding of the Civil War is that unlike most other wars and major events I’ve investigated, it was not forced by economic conflict. The North had previously held slaves, just many fewer and had no economic need for them due to the seasonal crops that grew at those latitudes which made seasonal laborers cheaper than year round housing and feeding of an enslaved population. Instead, according to Princeton historian Matt Karp in “Slavery Was Defeated Through Mass Politics”, it was mass democratic struggle that forced the question. This means that John Brown’s political actions carried outsize weight by influencing the framing of US politics.
Brown took action on a highly contentious political issue that caused the entire geographically contiguous slave region of the country to fear the contiguous northern free region by fueling their nightmares. The slavery question was so heightened already, that Brown’s bold action pushed it to near breaking, causing them to form militias and eventually seize federal arsenals. Lincoln’s election triggered a wave of succession in the southern states. Then southern aggression on Fort Sumter triggered the Civil War. The war was fought initially for the Union. However, things changed. Abolitionists kept pushing Lincoln. He also needed to keep cotton-dependent England and France (whose populations were anti-slavery) away from a Confederate alliance. Then there was the practicality of depriving southern planters of slaves and reinforcing Union units with freed recruits. These reasons combined to give Lincoln a controversial but effective strategy for giving liberatory meaning to the war with the Emancipation Proclamation.
John Brown lives in eternity now where time stretches forward and back. It is indifferent to him whether we meet him where he began or where he ended. I’m glad I got to walk with him in spirit in such a beautiful place and consider how he accomplished so much. The politics of the 21st century are no less dire than in his time. We face ecological collapse, nuclear war, rampant exploitation and propagandizing of the working class, pandemic, a global military dictatorship, and a political order that is completely ossified and hostile to working class democracy.
Effective action will necessarily be fitted to our very different circumstances, but from John Brown we can take solace that change is possible. He struggled against slavery, an institution older than Rome, and won. Capitalism is only a few centuries old.
It has been beaten before and it will be again.
