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John Brown: The Legend Revisited
Background Information
In the "Author's Note," Merrill D. Peterson compares John
Brown: The Legend Revisited to earlier books he wrote on a pair
of monumental historical figures in American history, The
Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960) and Lincoln
in American Memory (1994). While those two works examine the legacy
of these two presidents, the present volume focuses on the cultural impact
over the course of a century and a half made by a man "virtually
unknown until the dramatic action that culminated in his death."
Born in Connecticut at the beginning of the nineteenth century and raised
on the frontier in Ohio, John Brown lived in several places during his
adulthood—Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, before Kansas—and
"turned his hand to many things," including work as a tanner,
a shepherd, a farmer, a surveyor, and a wool merchant. But it is not so
much Brown's life as what he stood for, acted upon, and died for that
has captured the imagination of so many people and ultimately attracted
Peterson to write a history of Brown's legend. The premise of Peterson's
book is that Brown has represented different ideas to Americans at various
times during the almost 150 years since his death.
Others have written biographies of Brown—Peterson mentions them
and reviews their work—so Peterson merely provides a sketch of Brown's
life in the first chapter and recounts the climax of Brown's career and
life, his unsuccessful raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal, his public execution,
and the immediate public response. The following chapter, "Faces
and Places of the Hero," covers the era right after Brown's death,
specifically the Civil War. Peterson surveys the songs, the poems, the
melodramas, the newspaper accounts, the countless biographies, the pieces
of sculpture, and the drawings and paintings inspired by Brown that were
produced during this period. Peterson writes about "John Brown's
Body," a popular song among Union soldiers, the lyrics of which were
to be sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
He also notes the appearance in 1861 of a favorable biography of Brown,
The Public Life of Captain John Brown, written
by James Redpath, an abolitionist who met Brown in Kansas and dedicated
a book to his hero.
In the chapter "The Kansas Imbroglio," Peterson shows how during
the years from the Civil War to 1900 Brown's reputation suffered. In particular,
his character was impugned by those with a stake in recording the history
of the founding of Kansas. Peterson explains how organizers of the emigrant
aid companies, in writing their memoirs, felt compelled to tear down Brown—vilified
as "a liar, a coward, a thief, and a murderer" by Charles Robinson,
first governor of Kansas, for instance—to build up their own efforts
in Kansas. The first three decades of the twentieth century are covered
in "The Great Biography," the next chapter. It features a detailed
commentary on Oswald Garrison Villard's John
Brown, 1850-1859: A Biography of Fifty Years After, which Peterson
ranks as the greatest American historical biography written up to that
time. He also offers reasons why Brown's legend lived on beyond those
whose lives overlapped his own. Brown was on the right side of history,
Peterson says, and he was a powerful symbol of freedom fighting against
oppression. Fame is fed by controversy, and Brown was a lightning rod
of controversy.
The period from the 1920s to the 1950s is covered in "Kaleidoscope,"
chapter five. In 1928, the poet Stephen Vincent Benet published "John
Brown's Body," a bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner, an epic
poem about the Civil War that uses the recurring character of John Brown
as a unifying theme of the moral burden of war. Among the pieces of work
focused on Brown that appeared in the 1940s, foremost were James Malin's
John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six (1942)
and John Steuart Curry's Kansas State Capitol mural Tragic
Prelude. The former, a scholarly work of massive proportions, denigrates
its subject. Malin indicts Brown for having pursued "a devious career
of falsehood and bloodshed lacking any redeeming purpose." The latter,
which features Brown, has become the image most often associated with
Brown: a larger-than-life figure with blazing eyes, a Bible in one hand,
and a rifle in the other.
"John Brown Redivivus," the last chapter, brings the Brown legend almost up to the present. Peterson begins this chapter with the various 1959 observances of the centennial of Brown's death. Always a significant figure to African Americans and regarded by them as "the blackest white man," Brown reemerged as a symbol for blacks during this era that featured the Civil Rights struggles. Peterson describes the status of Brown as a historical figure among scholars during the second half of the twentieth century. One hundred years after the Harpers Ferry raid, Brown is still characterized as "a bloodthirsty fanatic." Civil War historian Bruce Catton thought Brown "a brutal murderer." Among the more recent biographers of Brown, Stephen B. Oates, author of To Purge This Land with Blood, is singled out by Peterson as having written a balanced critical book. Peterson also gives special attention to the writer Russell Banks, whose historical novel Cloudsplitter inspired Peterson to explore the life and legend of Brown, the result of which is John Brown: The Legend Revisited.
Questions for Reflection
Before reading John Brown: The Legend Revisited,
write a paragraph describing what you know about John Brown. After reading
the book, has your perception of Brown changed?
How representative a Kansas Territory settler was Brown? Was he a typical
abolitionist? If not, what beliefs and actions differentiated Brown from
the typical settler and the typical abolitionist?
For what reasons was John Brown castigated as a villain in the drama
of Bleeding Kansas?
This is the 150th anniversary of the accession of the Kansas Territory
into the United States. Apart from his role in the drama that was Bleeding
Kansas, why else would a study of John Brown's life and legend be
relevant to us today? Peterson's survey of commemorative events and
cultural artifacts inspired by Brown concludes in 2000, the bicentennial
of Brown's birth. How might Brown's ideology and actions might
be reevaluated or reappraised in light of events in the last three years?
Peterson's account covers the range of opinions offered by the many
interpreters of Brown's life, both the hagiographers and the denigrators.
How do you think Peterson himself regards Brown?
What does Peterson's book tell us about particular periods in American
history? Choose an epoch that Peterson describes and explain why Brown
elicited a response from thinkers and artists in the various forms of
media available to them.
In our age of celebrity absorption and the cult of personality, how do
you distinguish between the legend of Brown that arose upon his death
and the fame of other more recent famous historical figures?
The implicit invitation to us, then, is to make of Brown what we will now in our special circumstances. What cultural items about Brown have been passed on to us? What can we learn from his life and death, and their repeatedly interpreted significance, that will help us better understand ourselves?