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Workers Vanguard No. 1140 |
21 September 2018 |
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In Honor of John Brown (Part Two) We print below the second part of a presentation, edited for publication, given by Spartacist League Central Committee member Don Alexander at a February 24 Black History Month forum in New York City. The first part appeared in WV No. 1139 (7 September).
I’m sure that most of you have heard that what’s so terrible about the abolitionist John Brown was that he was a heartless, bloodthirsty killer. These are longstanding bourgeois lies. The real John Brown fought for armed slave rebellion and organized armed struggle against the slave system in “Bleeding Kansas” in the 1850s.
In 1855, John Brown joined his four oldest sons who had migrated to Kansas to fight against it becoming a slave state and win the territory for the “free-soilers.” The free-soilers had been associated with the short-lived Free Soil Party, whose platform called both for barring slavery from western territories and for the federal government to provide free homesteads to white settlers. In 1854, many of the Party’s former members had gone on to join the newly established Republican Party, which was born on the platform of “free soil” and “free labor.”
It was a period of turmoil. Congress had just passed a new law called the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the terms of the 1820 Missouri Compromise that was supposed to limit slavery’s expansion. Sponsored by a Northern Democrat, Stephen A. Douglas, the law allowed the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. According to Karl Marx, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had “placed slavery and freedom on the same footing.” As he described it, “For the first time in the history of the United States, every geographical and legal limit to the extension of slavery in the Territories was removed” (“The North American Civil War” [1861]). The Kansas-Nebraska Act was nothing more than a signal for pro-slavery Missourians next door to invade and, through terror and violence, open Kansas to slavery.
At this point it was clear that there wouldn’t be, and couldn’t be, any lasting “compromises.” From the early days of the republic there evolved several sham “compromises” between the North and South. The first of these concessions, coming out of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, made slaves three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning representatives to Congress; this gave the Southern slaveowners control of Washington. Now, the fundamental and irreconcilable class interests between the slavocracy and the Northern industrial bourgeoisie were coming to a head. One or the other would prevail. War was coming and Kansas was the next arena.
After some initial hesitation, Brown sought the approval of his black supporters and garnered the support of several radical abolitionists before joining his sons in Kansas. He decided that it was best to go there because it would be more important ultimately for the cause of freedom. From that point, his determination hardened and grew in the fight against slavery.
John Brown brought weapons and ammunition with him to Kansas to equip an anti-slavery militia where he was captain. He and his sons confronted a well-armed pro-slavery group of Missourians appropriately called the Border Ruffians, who were pouring into the state to terrorize free settlers. The free settlers needed an infusion of fresh blood to beat back a highly organized campaign of intimidation and murder. John Brown, his sons and supporters waged several successful battles in their defense. His militia retaliated for a number of murders of free settlers—in one night raid they killed five pro-slavery sympathizers near Pottawatomie Creek. Brown’s force struck fear into the hearts of the marauding pro-slavery bands.
Both the governor of Missouri and President James Buchanan, a Northern Democrat, offered rewards for Brown’s capture. Buchanan and other Northerners with Southern sympathies were called “doughfaces” because they were “half-baked and malleable.” Without John Brown’s intervention, which strengthened the free settlers’ morale and military defenses, a lot worse could have happened. It was not impossible that Kansas could have become a slave state.
Brown fought in Kansas throughout 1856. Toward the end of his stay, a Missouri slave crossed the border into Kansas, seeking help from anyone to keep him and his family from being sold. What do you think John Brown did? He led his militia to where the slaveholder was back in Missouri. His forces freed a number of slaves, eleven in all, including the family that was imperiled. A slaveowner was also killed. Brown’s militia seized horses and supplies to facilitate their escape and transport with the final destination being Canada. The local, state and federal authorities were outraged and over $3,000 was put on Brown’s head.
In the end, the slaves made it to Canada because of John Brown. In a frenzy, some of his abolitionist “friends” denounced him—not for seizing the slaves, but for the seizure of the slaveowners’ other personal property. And it’s not surprising, because some of these abolitionists were capitalists, for whom capitalist private property was sacred. For his part, John Brown had no trust in politicians from either political party. As author Stephen B. Oates noted in To Purge This Land With Blood (1970), Brown “hated the Democrats because he believed their party was dominated by the South and despised the Republicans because they were too ‘wishy-washy’ on the slavery issue.”
Roll Call for Harpers Ferry
The next arena for Brown was Chatham, Ontario. Chatham was a small town just east of Detroit and was a terminus on the Underground Railroad where thousands of fugitive slaves and free blacks resided. Living nearby in St. Catherines was Harriet Tubman. I’ll get back to her in a minute.
In Chatham in May 1858, John Brown convened a secret convention to debate the way forward and to finalize plans for the coming assault on and seizure of the federal armory and arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The primary aim of the convention was to seek recruits for this action. One of the more important parts of the convention was a programmatic document he submitted—the Provisional Constitution. It was no mere empty exercise, but the basis for a selection of an abolitionist vanguard for revolutionary war. John Brown was making plans for a future provisional egalitarian free-state government in the mountains.
Brown’s Provisional Constitution was seriously debated. Some delegates argued that the best time to have a coordinated attack somewhere in the South would be when the U.S. government was at war. But the argument to delay was defeated. There were delegates who rejected any reference to the flag of the United States as a symbol of freedom; they said, this is my oppression, the American flag. Brown argued that the flag was an expression of America’s early democratic ideals—a vote was taken and he won. It became the flag against slavery during the Civil War, but today it is the flag of imperialist plunder and mass murder, racial oppression and anti-immigrant bigotry.
When his business was finished in Chatham, he finalized his plans for Harpers Ferry. Brown tirelessly gave speeches to raise money for his war preparations, for the consummation of his life’s work to free the slaves. In need of more money for arms and supplies, he contacted a radical abolitionist group that he relied upon: the “Secret Six,” which included Franklin Sanborn and Gerrit Smith, who were animated by his Kansas exploits. However, he never revealed to them the specific target of his next strike.
Brown knew that in order to attract significant black support, it was vital to win over Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Tubman was key to recruiting followers among the many freedmen and fugitives who had settled in Canada beyond the reach of the Fugitive Slave Law. Through her courageous Underground Railroad work, Tubman had extensive knowledge of the planned Appalachian route. Showing deep appreciation of her leadership skills, Brown called her the “General” or “He.” Tubman fully embraced Brown’s plans. She was organizing people to go with her, but she fell ill and didn’t make it. Unceasing toil and hardships, on top of terrible spells of unconsciousness and injuries sustained from beatings by slaveowners, had taken their toll. John Brown was deeply disappointed.
John Brown was about to lead 21 men to what would be in effect the first battle of the Civil War. As the time for action arrived, Brown met one last time with Frederick Douglass. It didn’t go well. He revealed his plans for seizing the armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Douglass sharply disagreed and said that they were falling into a “perfect steel-trap” and would be crushed. They argued for several hours, and Douglass turned down the offer to go. However, at the meeting was a friend, an ex-slave named Shields Green, who was one tough fighter and became highly esteemed by John Brown and his associates. When questioned about going or staying, Green remarked: I think I’ll go with the Old Man. Four other black men went—Osborne Anderson, John Copeland, his uncle Lewis Leary and Dangerfield Newby (who in his 40s was the oldest black man to go). Newby was sturdy and immovable and joined to help get his wife and children out of slavery in Virginia.
Putting his plan into effect required meticulous preparation and sheer courage. To hide his forces from the eyes of the prying enemy, Brown required the assistance of trustworthy collaborators. His first pick was his wife Mary, for whom he had tremendous respect. It’s clear from his letters and correspondence that they shared and discussed the political news of the day. Brown’s 15-year-old daughter Annie and 16-year-old sister-in-law Martha were assigned to hold down the secret farmhouse five miles from Harpers Ferry, keeping watch and feeding soldiers. The men were John Brown men, so they knew how to help and keep the place clean. Though when they didn’t, they were set straight. The men were confined in a tiny place and stuffed in an attic. There they studied together, argued about the history of slavery and discussed Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. They were nearly broken by tension and their discipline was weakened, but the courageous young women kept up their morale and cohesion.
The whole thing could have been blown when one of the neighbors, who had a habit of showing up unannounced, caught a glimpse of a black man in the farmhouse. She suspected that Annie was helping runaways and challenged her to an explanation, but Annie denied it. Annie devised a plan to silence her neighbor by providing her and her children with food and helping them with other tasks as long as necessary.
In a very interesting biography of the women in John Brown’s family called The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown’s Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism (2013), author Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz describes Annie’s “trial-by-fire inauguration into abolitionist activism.” Annie herself later described this as the most important period of her life. As Laughlin-Schultz remarked, “Though she did not march to Harpers Ferry in October 1859, Annie’s work in the Maryland countryside may have allowed Brown’s raiders to do so, and the work of Mary and Ruth [his wife and daughter] at North Elba helped smooth over the Brown men’s absences.”
The aim of John Brown was this: to procure arms, free slaves in the nearby area, lead his army into the mountains where they could establish a liberated area and, if need be, wage war against the slave masters. From a military point of view, Brown’s plan for Harpers Ferry was futile. His son Owen said it was like Napoleon trying to take Moscow. One of the reasons it failed was that Brown didn’t fully carry out his plans, which he admitted to afterwards. He also believed he was overly solicitous to his prisoners and relied on some of them to ward off the enemy’s blows. In the end, Brown’s forces killed five people but lost ten of their own. They held control for 36 hours, surrounded by gunmen from nearby towns and hamlets and eventually by federal troops. The troops were dispatched by President Buchanan, under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, the future commander of Confederate forces during the Civil War (you know, the “honorable” man according to White House chief of staff John Kelly). Brown and most of his associates were rounded up and captured, though several managed to escape. Those who were not killed on the spot were railroaded and later hanged by the vindictive courts of Virginia.
The Aftermath
While they were defeated in the end, John Brown and his men certainly fought. The raid at Harpers Ferry was a bold but unsuccessful action staged by a small, determined, interracial revolutionary band. What soon followed was what abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison termed “the new reign of terror” against black people in the South and against any Northerner who dared raise his head. Southerners were conjuring up fears of more Nat Turner revolts.
Harpers Ferry also caused fright and panic among some of John Brown’s so-called radical abolitionist friends in the Secret Six—they burned their correspondence with him. Gerrit Smith claimed insanity and briefly checked into an asylum while others fled for Canada. Some of them had probably been, to put it mildly, surprised when they found out that the plan was an assault on a federal arsenal and armory. It was euphemistically described by Brown, referring to the Underground Railroad, as “Rail Road business on a somewhat extended scale.” Secret Six member Thomas Wentworth Higginson refused to capitulate. He had told Brown before the raid that he was “always ready to invest in treason,” and didn’t burn his papers or correspondence. He later led a black regiment in the Civil War.
Frederick Douglass solidarized with the raid in a piece called “Capt. John Brown Not Insane” (Douglass’ Monthly, November 1859):
“Posterity will owe everlasting thanks to John Brown...[for he] has attacked slavery with the weapons precisely adapted to bring it to the death.... Like Samson, he has laid his hands upon the pillars of this great national temple of cruelty and blood, and when he falls, that temple, will speedily crumble to its final doom, burying its denizens in its ruins.”
Douglass had a price placed on his head by the federal government and used a pre-planned trip to England to escape.
John Brown knew that the pro-slavery federal government and its State of Virginia hangmen were close to finishing him off. While imprisoned, Brown was unbowed and wrote and answered many letters to family, friends and supporters (who mostly endorsed his action only some time after the fact). Above all, he pushed very hard for financial help to his family. He said that had he interfered on behalf of the rich, the oppressors would have poured praise upon him. Instead, his whole life had been devoted to fighting for the liberation of the slaves, and now he was willing to pay the ultimate price.
As I said, John Brown despised the ruling-class politicians of his day. For their murderous, cruel and unjust laws, he denounced the government as being filled with “fiends in human shape.” Before his death, in a letter to the abolitionist wife of George L. Stearns, Brown stated his wishes to be escorted to the gallows not by some pro-slavery clergyman but by poor blacks, his people: “I have asked to be spared from having any mock; or hypocritical prayers made over me, when I am publicly murdered: & that my only religious attendants be poor little, dirty, ragged, bare headed, & barefooted Slave Boys; & Girls led by some old grey headed Slave Mother.”
Following his execution, there were memorial services of black and white abolitionists in several cities. There was international impact. French writer Victor Hugo had written a rousing appeal to stop his execution and that of his followers. (The British abolitionists sat on their hands.) Brown’s death was also keenly felt in Haiti, the country with the first and only successful slave revolution in the Western Hemisphere, which was against the French slaveholders in 1791. Haitians, who saw in John Brown the great revolutionary and liberator of black slaves, Toussaint L’Ouverture, organized gatherings and fundraisers for the Brown family in every corner of the country. In addition, there were German workers—the Red ’48ers—European refugees who came to the U.S. following the failure of the 1848 revolution, who ended up playing an important role in building up the Union Army. Alongside black people in Cincinnati, they marched to memorialize John Brown.
John Brown gave his all and championed the struggles of the oppressed worldwide, including the 19th-century Hungarian, Greek and Polish struggles against national oppression. And it was his revolutionary war that opened the road to the annihilation of slavery. As radical abolitionist Wendell Phillips noted: “History will date Virginia Emancipation from Harper’s Ferry. True, the slave is still there. So, when the tempest uproots a pine on your hill, it looks green for months—a year or two. Still, it is timber, not a tree. John Brown has loosened the roots of the slave system; it only breathes,—it does not live,—hereafter.”
George Novack wrote a tribute to John Brown, published in January 1938 in the New International, journal of the revolutionary Trotskyists at that time, the Socialist Workers Party. He captured the dialectical development of events, noting how a seemingly stable and eternal slavocracy contained the seeds of its own destruction: “Through John Brown the coming civil war entered into the nerves of the people in the many months before it was exhibited in their ideas and actions.”
His Body Moldering in the Grave
—His Soul Marching On
The Civil War broke out less than two years after the execution of Brown and his comrades. The Civil War was the last great bourgeois revolution, the last progressive war of the U.S. bourgeoisie. Instead of a confederation of states, it consolidated a unified capitalist market under a United States of America.
In the fires of secessionist rebellion and total war, Douglass called for arming the slaves. For his part, Lincoln was reluctant to wage what he called a “remorseless revolutionary struggle” to crush the slaveholders. Facing ongoing military reverses, Lincoln changed in the course of the war. He was compelled to deploy powerful black arms—ultimately 200,000 black soldiers and sailors—who were critical in tipping the balance of forces against the slavocracy. At the war’s end more than 600,000 Americans lay dead.
We are told that slavery was a “stain” on this “great” capitalist democracy. This suggests it was an aberration, a deviation from an essential goodness. This is a perfumed lie. Slavery was a barbarous economic system built into the very foundations of U.S. capitalism. Its legacy stamps every aspect of social and economic life. The slaves were liberated through the Civil War. But with the undoing of subsequent Radical Reconstruction, the most democratic period in U.S. history for black people, the promise of black equality was crushed through Klan terror and defeated by political counterrevolution. This led to the consolidation of black people as an oppressed race-color caste toward the end of the 19th century.
John Brown considered himself to be an instrument of “God.” He believed that it was part of God’s will for him to liberate the slaves through force, unlike those preachers who pontificated about solace and consolation to the oppressed. We are atheists and dialectical materialists, and we base our revolutionary Marxist outlook firmly upon science. This means explaining the world from the world itself, not from some nonexistent “higher power.” In the face of natural occurrences, early human beings devised a system of mystical explanations for what they didn’t understand. Earthquakes, famines, sickness and death were not attributed to the workings of a material, physical world—a world that existed prior to and independent of human consciousness. In contrast to a materialist view, an idealist view maintains ideas, opinions and thoughts as primary and material reality as secondary. In his writings, Karl Marx asserts that “man makes religion, religion does not make man,” that “religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering,” and that religion is the “opium of the people.”
When the hour of action arrived, John Brown’s advice was to be quick, not to trifle. That is good advice. Importantly, he also struggled firmly to win revolutionary abolitionists to the fight for black freedom. He knew his foibles well and wrote about them. But what comes through from those who knew him was not a sense of superiority, but his kindness. Though we should proceed with historical care in analogies, one could say that there was a similarity he shared with Oliver Cromwell—the great 17th-century Puritan revolutionary of England. Brown would, as Trotsky noted of Cromwell, hesitate at nothing to smash oppression.
We of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) seek to build Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard parties that will hesitate at nothing in the fight to put the wealth of the world created by labor into the hands of labor itself through proletarian revolutions across the globe. Guided by a firm, revolutionary vanguard party, the workers will forge the class-struggle leadership of labor by ousting the agents of the bourgeoisie within the workers movement.
In racist capitalist America, we will remember those like John Brown and many others who waged war to throw off the shackles of the oppressed. Capitalism cannot be reformed—no ruling class ever has relinquished its power, its profits and accumulated wealth without a fight and it never will. This understanding is contrary to the illusions spread by the reformist socialists, such as the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Alternative, that you can pressure the Democrats to reform capitalism.
We understand that class struggle is the motor force of history. But this is not all. Even before Marx and Engels, bourgeois historians were writing about class struggle in France and elsewhere. We Marxists seek to extend this to recognizing the necessity for proletarian power, for proletarian dictatorship that will eliminate capitalism. We fight to end the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the capitalists, as part of a transition to a classless society of material abundance.
We stand for the full integration of black people into an egalitarian socialist order, for revolutionary integrationism. This means integrated class struggle, mobilizing the social power of the proletariat to lead the fight against all manifestations of racial oppression, against racist police terror, against segregated education, against the hated Confederate flag of slavery and finally, to victory over the exploiters.
We fight to win a new generation of conscious workers and militant youth to take up the banner of genuine Marxism: Trotskyism. As a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party acting as a tribune of the people, we have no interests separate from the working class and oppressed. We fight for a communist future. We say: Remember John Brown and all our revolutionary heroes and heroines! We say: Finish the Civil War! For a third American Revolution! For black liberation through socialist revolution!
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