A Curse upon the Nation by Lewis Kay Wright;

Author:Lewis, Kay Wright; [Lewis, Kay Wright;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780820351278
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2017-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

John Brown’s Mistake

The Power of Memory and the Dangers of Violence

When white abolitionist John Brown first plotted to terrorize the South, he may have believed that the black community was ready to join him in carrying out his vision of a slave revolt throughout the South. Brown seized the United States Federal Arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, on October 16, 1859, because for him, “slavery was a state of war, and the slave had a right to anything necessary to his freedom.”1 Most blacks, however, did not know what Brown’s plans actually were—they did not know all of what he really intended to do. Some blacks did give Brown their support for what they understood would be “Railroad business on a somewhat extended scale.”2 For many other blacks, however, despite Brown’s dissemblance, using forceful means to help the enslaved escape through the Underground Railroad was viewed as a mistake and was unlikely to succeed. Nevertheless, Brown attempted to seize Harpers Ferry in order to arm those slaves he hoped to encourage to run away from neighboring plantations. The fugitives would then be able to flee to the free states or Canada or remain as part of an armed force to help Brown and his men hold the Allegheny Mountains as a sanctuary of freedom. Brown wanted to replicate this model throughout the South. Brown failed.

A popular perception is that if Brown had had more support from blacks, his plan could have succeeded. But the lack of black participation in Brown’s insurgency in Harpers Ferry was deliberate: blacks and whites had not forgotten nor gotten rid of their anxiety about a potential war between the races. Indeed, the aftermath of Brown’s invasion into Harpers Ferry verifies that the concerns black people had about racial violence and their fear of black extermination were legitimate. Brown’s operation was founded upon certain assumptions girded by white nineteenth-century notions of masculinity that sanctified violence if a person’s rights were trampled upon. Therefore, Anglo-Americans could not respect people, in this case black men, if they were unwilling to fight for their own freedom.3 Yet black men had their own ideas about manhood, which did not sanction exposing the black community, particularly black women and children, to violent retribution. Brown’s invasion of Harpers Ferry did unsettle the institution of slavery in the South, but it was enslaved and free blacks who suffered the consequences of Brown’s actions.

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