Miller Thesis - Gestalt

American Military University
GESTALT
Southern Groupthink Turns John Brown into an Avatar of Fear
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
AMERICAN HISTORY
By
Nathanael Miller
Department Approval Date:
Feb. 14, 2016

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© Copyright 2016 by Nathanael Miller
All rights reserved
_______
The author hereby grants the American Public University System the right to display these
contents for educational purposes.
The author assumes total responsibility for meeting the requirements set by the United States
Copyright Law for the inclusion of any materials that are not the author’s creation or in the
public domain.

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DEDICATION
This thesis is dedicated to my parents, William A. and Gloria J. Miller, who introduced
me to the epic and living pageant of history.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First off I must thank Mrs. Connie Foxworthy of Niceville Senior High School and Mr.
Ed Schofield of the former Okaloosa-Walton Community College (now Northwest Florida State
College), both in Niceville, Florida. They introduced me to the idea of history as a profession.
Dr. Donald D. Horward of the Florida State University’s Institute on Napoleon and the French
Revolution showed me the passion a historian can bring to the story of our past.
I have been blessed to study under many incredibly talented professors since beginning
my Masters program. I cannot do justice to all, but am compelled to mention two, Dr. Anne
Venzon and Dr. John Chappo. Dr. Venzon encouraged me to marry my skills as a professional
journalist with the skills of a historian in order to produce tightly focused, dynamic research
projects written in a style that is both academic and also accessible to a mass audience. Dr.
Chappo introduced me to John Brown, and was, perhaps, the hardest academic editor I ever
studied under. He pushed me harder than anyone else to achieve an exactingly high standard of
writing.
I must recognize my dear friend Barbara McKeever. Barbara’s shared loved of history;
keenly penetrating mind, sharp wit, and indefatigable support were invaluable in helping me
hone my analytical skills as a historian and complete this program.
Finally I must thank my shipmates at the Navy Public Affairs Support Element East,
homeported on board Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. They have listened to me pontificate at
some length about various research projects for over two years while encouraging me to continue
on. They have been true shipmates in every sense of that term.

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ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
Gestalt
Southern Groupthink Turns John Brown in an Avatar of Fear
by
Nathanael Miller
American Public University System, February 14, 2016
Charles Town, West Virginia
Dr. Heather Thornton, Thesis Professor
The purpose of this thesis is to examine how radical abolitionist John Brown became the
avatar of everything the South hated and feared about the North as the nation careened closer to
secession and Civil War. Brown emerged as the single most radical of all Northern abolitionists
when he launched his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry in what is now West Virginia. He is the only
abolitionist to initiate such overtly militant action against the slave-holding South, yet his raid
was a spectacular failure. He was captured within two days and hanged before the end of 1859.
Despite this epic failure, and despite the many denunciations of Brown by Northern leaders, he
became the symbol of everything the South feared about the states to the north. This project will
explore how Brown’s story was told in the South newspapers, diaries, and political speeches in
order to shed light on how a man who failed so badly became such a psychological force in the
gestalt mentality of the South.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. Literature Review and Historiography…………………..…….………….07
II. Preface: The State of the Union………………………………..…………11
III. Chapter 1: John Brown Strikes……………………………..….………...20
IV. Chapter 2: The Southern Media Strikes Back……….….…………….…29
V. Chapter 3: Southern Politicians Campaign against Brown………………41
VI. Chapter 4: Northern Repudiation Repudiated………......…….…….……49
VII. Chapter 5: Gestalt - Brown Becomes the Avatar of Southern Fears……..59
VIII. Epilogue: The State of the Disunion…....…………………………………67
IX. List of References…………………………………………………………73

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LITERATURE REVIEW AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
Historians have been examining John Brown for more than 150 years, but he has not been
the primary focus of study until the last decade. A great number of references to Brown are
contained in the context of larger Antebellum and Civil War histories, but only since about 2009
has he been the sole subject of study. A small number of books published since 2009 have
begun delving into Brown’s singular impact on the American story. However, while these books
examine Brown’s motivations, actions, and effect on Antebellum America, none really go into
the question of why Brown became the avatar for all Southern fears; none of them asks just how
could such a spectacular failure resonate so deeply in the South?
Bruce Catton devotes several pages to Brown, and one specifically to the Harper’s Ferry
raid, in the 1960 American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. The text is a short but
rather factual, even-handed assessment of Brown as “a martyr to the North, and a maniacal
villain to the South.”1
James M. McPherson’s 1988 Battle Cry of Freedom observed that Brown did not share
the non-violent sensibilities of most abolitionists. This observation is one of the few that begins
to address the question this project seeks to explore in depth—just what led the Southern press,
clergy, and political leadership to go nuts demonizing him. McPherson writes Brown
approached Harper’s Ferry with a “sort of fatalism” and apparently had no idea what to really do
once he captured the armory.2
The general picture McPherson paints is a man with noble
intentions, violent means, and no strategic planning.
1
Bruce Catton, The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. (New York: American Heritage
Publishing, 1960), 45.
2
James M. McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 202-205.

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Shelby Footed devoted only two paragraphs to Brown in the prologue of his epic 1986
three-volume series: The Civil War: A Narrative. Foote recounts Brown’s belief that one man
and God could overturn a country, and almost whimsically notes Brown’s observations about the
beauty of Virginia’s Blue Ridge country on the way to his execution. Foote echoes Catton’s
conclusion that, as Brown’s legend went marching on, he was seen as a prophet or a madman
depending on one’s (largely sectional) point of view. Foote, however, stops short of examining
why Brown became so infamous in the South despite the fact his raid is considered one of the
penultimate causes of the Civil War.
Jonathan Earle produced a small tome entitled John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry: A
Brief History with Documents in 2008. This book takes a rather neutral approach to Brown,
much like a traditional newspaper report would. Earle intersperses the facts and geopolitical
context of Brown’s times with reproduced original documents ranging from Brown’s letters to
transcripts of his trial. Earle is very detailed about the “who” and “what” of John Brown, noting
his legacy “became cemented in American memory, often in conflicting ways,” but does not
deeply explore the why or how of Brown’s elevation to the status of an avatar.3
Brian McGinty published John Brown’s Trial in 2009, focusing on Brown’s trial in
Virginia. McGinty observes the charge of treason against Virginia was interesting because
Brown was not, nor did he claim to be, a Virginia state citizen. Therefore, how could he be
guilty of treason against Virginia? McGinty openly refutes the widespread opinion that Brown
was mad. Recounting Virginia Governor Henry Wise’s meeting with Brown, McGinty says
Wise described Brown as a “bundle of the best nerves” he had ever seen. Wise believed that
3
Jonathan Earle, John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry: A Brief History with Documents. (New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2008), 3.

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Brown was calculating and intelligent, but was not mad.4
Robert E. McGlone’s 2009 John Brown’s War against Slavery provides evidence that
Brown actually was unbalanced, possibly suffering from a mental illness that might have run in
his family.5
McGlone examines the Brown family history and John Brown’s own personal
history. He uses Brown’s writings and actions in Kansas, at home, and in Virginia as evidence
for his thesis. However, this book does not focus or touch on Brown’s larger impact, nor why
Brown became a figure of terror for the South after his raid failed so quickly.
Tony Horowitz opens his 2012 Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked
the Civil War observing that his son’s 21st
century ninth-grade text book offered little more
information on Brown than Horowitz’s own had in the 1970s. His son’s textbook provides a few
paragraphs about Brown for students before “racing ahead to Fort Sumter and the Gettysburg
Address.”6
Horowitz’ narrative examines the psychology of Brown and his tiny band of
followers, and explores how such a small band thought they could take on the existing U.S.
social and governmental structure in some detail. Horowitz brings the narrative into the 21st
century by pointing out a superficial, but unnervingly real, comparison between Brown and
Osama bin Laden: both were bearded, religiously fanatical terrorists bent on a violent overthrow
of existing United States institutions. Horowitz also points out the differences between Brown
and bin Laden: Brown was motivated to erase an evil contradicting the United States’ ideals
whereas bin Laden wanted to erase the United States. In Horowitz’s analysis, Brown attempted
to confine his activities in Harpers Ferry to an attack on a military target, unlike the “classic”
4
Brian McGinty, John Brown’s Trial. (London: Harvard University Press, 2009), 68.
5
Robert E. McGlone, John Brown’s War Against Slavery. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 145.
6
Tony Horowitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War. (New York: Henry Holt
&Company, 2011), 3.

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terrorist who strikes at softer civilian targets (of course, Brown’s actions during Bleeding Kansas
can be used against him, but Horowitz’s focus was Harpers Ferry).
John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd edited a rather weighty tome in 2012 called The Tribunal:
Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid. This is a collection of essays, speeches,
and writings by 19th
century Quakers, politicians, black leaders, and international figures (Victor
Hugo, for instance). The Tribunal allows the reader to get an idea of how positively John Brown
was seen around the world. Some question his general strategic planning abilities, but all view
him as someone ranging from a notable role model to a godlike martyr. The Tribunal contains a
section collecting Southern responses to Brown, but it is only 1/3 of the volume, but notes that
“each generation since 1859 has asked and answered for itself” who John Brown was—hero,
martyred fool, or terrorist?7
The Tribunal is an excellent resource for those wishing to research
primary documents about John Brown, but the editors do nothing to address the “why” of John
Brown’s astonishing level of infamy on the eve of the Civil War.
Overall, major literature on John Brown is either nearly non-existent (a paragraph here or
there before, as Horowitz said, one rushes onward to Fort Sumter), or it is highlighted in smaller,
more off-the-beaten-path tomes (the “indie” books of history) that represent a historiography
mostly favoring Brown’s ideals and desires, if questioning his sanity and strategic thinking.
None of these books really gets into the gestalt—the overarching mindset that beset the
Antebellum South—or how John Brown, a spectacularly unsuccessful revolutionary, could
become a figure of such terror that he is considered to be one of the seminal figures sparking the
7
John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd, editors. The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012) xlix.

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American Civil War.

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PREFACE
The State of the Union
John Brown strode violently across a geopolitical stage in 1859 shaped by tectonic forces
rooted in the fight over slavery’s expansion. The conflicted national attitude over slavery
manifested immediately after the nation’s birth. The question of how a new republic, founded on
human liberty, could enslave human beings grated on the national nerves, keeping the body
politic on edge (much like a person with a bad sunburn stuck in a crowded elevator). The need
for the nascent states to hang together (first against the British and then to provide a unified front
to the world) trumped a final decision, but incremental steps were made to limit slavery and
(hopefully) put it on a course to extinction. Arguing for the proposed Constitution of the United
States in 1788, James Madison acknowledged that many people wished the prohibition against
importing slaves might have been set sooner than 20 years from the Constitution’s ratification.
However, Madison said the prohibition’s inclusion would encourage the remaining slave-holding
states to emulate the example of the free states and gradually eliminate slavery entirely.8
One of the only regrets in Gen. George Washington’s life was his inability to disentangle
himself and his family from slavery.9
Following retirement from the presidency, Washington
advocated a plan of gradual emancipation in Virginia, believing such a plan would “prevent
much future mischief” (how prescient Washington was with that statement!).10
Unsurprisingly,
his ideas made no headway. Emancipation efforts in the South were usually met with derision
and the men advocating them were often excoriated as enemies of the particular colony (and later
8
James Madison, “Federalist No. 42.” Writings. (New York: The Library of America, 1999), 237.
9
George Washington, Untitled essay, ca. 1788. Writings. (New York: The Library of America, 1997), 701.
10
George Washington, Letter to Lawrence Lewis, Aug. 4, 1797. Writings. (New York: The Library of America,
1997), 1002.

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the state) in which they resided. Thomas Jefferson witnessed this as a junior member of the
Virginia House of Burgesses in the late 1760s when the author of an emancipation bill was
denounced and “treated with the grossest indecorum.”11
Even so, Jefferson hoped the United
States could find a solution like England had, though it must be admitted Jefferson (unlike
Washington) never put forward any plans or ideas for such a policy.
The United States Congress outlawed the Atlantic slave trade Jan. 1, 1808 (the earliest
date allowed by the new Constitution). However, the Southern slave population continued to
grow because of the slaves’ birthrate, and Southern economic reliance on slave labor grew with
it. Although several Northern states had solved their slavery problem by adopting laws setting
free the children of slaves, thereby allowing for a gradual emancipation of the slave population,
many Southern slaveholders flatly opposed this scheme. They believed “they had paid for the
perpetual labor of slaves unborn in the high purchase price” of female slaves.12
Thus the Union went forward with the rift between the North and South continually
widening over economic, political, and social issues largely shaped by slavery. The wild
economic success of cotton plantations only rooted the institution deeper into the South’s very
identity, further eroding chances for a peaceful transition from slavery to emancipation.13
The
simmering feud was ignited into an open political contest over the acquisition of new territories
(and the resulting new states that would be carved from these territories). The South needed new
lands to continue to expand the cotton trade…and new lands into which to export their ever-
burgeoning slave population (with no overseas slave trade available, intra-state trading was their
11
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Coles, Aug. 25, 1814. Writings, (New York: The Library of America, 1984),
1344.
12
William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Vol. 1: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 132.
13
McPherson, 8.

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only option, and a whole continent beckoned them). Concurrently, Northern political leaders
began a long fight to close off, or at least severely limit, slavery’s extension into these new
territories. Although Southern congressman and senators often cloaked their objections to these
limits in terms of the South’s right to help shape policy regarding how the new lands would be
organized, the real contest was apparent to all. The fight over the West “had nothing to do with
theoretical notions of Southern honor and everything to do with keeping unfree [slave] labor
limited to its present geography.”14
The fight was a contest for control of the political and
economic future of the Union.
The 1844 debates over the potential annexation of Texas became one flashpoint because
of the vast size of the land. Southern leaders, such as Alabama’s William Lowndes Yancey,
heatedly pointed out the 1820 Missouri Compromise (perhaps the most famous compromise that
divided new territories into free and slave sections) gave the North enough room for 20 free
states while giving the slave South only Florida, yet in 1844 the North complained about adding
one slave state (Texas) to the South.15
The problem was Texas’ vast size. Texas alone was
bigger than all of New England put together and could support a potential population sizable
enough to wield vast power in the House of Representatives. This debate encapsulated the
growing divide between North and South. The South needed new lands to export slavery, but, as
a young Abraham Lincoln wrote his friend Williamson Durley, the “paramount duty” of the free
states was clear: let slavery alone in the states where it existed while doing nothing to prevent it
14
Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the
Civil War. (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 36.
15
Eric H. Walter, The Fire-Eaters. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 54.

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dying a slow, natural death.16
This meant refusing to allow slavery’s extension into new
territories.
Political fighting was not the only social seismic event shaking the republic. As the lines
were being drawn between abolitionists and slaveholders, the nation’s religious denominations
were fracturing. The Baptists experienced increasing strife as Northern Baptists became
increasingly antislavery and Southern Baptists became increasingly vociferous defending slavery
throughout the 1830s and 1840s. The denomination broke apart when the Southern Baptists
seceded to form the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845 after a Southern slaveholder was
denied appointment as a missionary to Native Americans.17
The Methodists and Presbyterians
experienced similar schisms along sectional lines, all based on calcifying attitudes towards
slavery’s proper place (or lack thereof) in the United States.
As the denominations broke apart, Southern ministers began to defend slavery as ardently
as Southern politicians did. A number of Southern ministers attacked the North’s wage system
as inherently unfair by enslaving workers to their bosses without the moral imperative slave
owners had to look after the welfare of their chattel property. Another line of attack from
Southern pulpits argued that blacks came from an inferior line of creation and were, therefore,
inferior to whites. As such, enslaving blacks was as morally defensible as herding cattle.18
The
growing religious defense of slavery would reinforce the political and economic incentives for
the slave-holding South to maintain the “peculiar institution.” This multi-pronged defense of
16
Abraham Lincoln, letter to Williamson Durley, Oct. 3, 1845. Speeches and Writings 1859-1865. (New York: The
Library of America, 1989), 112.
17
Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South. (Chapel Hill; University of
North Carolina Press, 1993), 136.
18
John Patrick Daly, When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil
War. (Lexington, Kentucky: The University of Kentucky Press, 2002), 121.

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slavery helped foment a gestalt, a widespread group-think mentality, in which the South
increasingly believed itself morally, politically, and economically superior to its neighboring
section up north…and also believed itself increasingly under siege from hostile outside forces.
The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act finally brought pro- and antislavery forces into armed
conflict. Pushed through Congress by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, this act was intended to
end the growing sectional debates started by the Missouri Compromise. Residents of a territory
were now allowed to vote whether or not they would admit slavery. However, the law of
unintended consequences “transplanted the controversy from the halls of Congress to the plains
of Kansas.”19
Proslavery and antislavery forces flooded the territory and set up rival territorial
governments. The two sides quickly abandoned any ideas of peace and engaged in a small civil
war. The sides found themselves “killing with enough frequency” to forever etch the name
“Bleeding Kansas” into American history.20
The bloody territorial fight then ricocheted back across the continent into the halls of
Congress in 1856. South Carolina Congressmen Preston Brooks shocked his congressional
colleagues when he marched into the Senate and beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner
into unconsciousness. Brooks was retaliating for an incendiary speech delivered by Sumner.
The life-long Massachusetts abolitionist had given a fiery oration denouncing the South, and
South Carolina in particular, for the bloodshed in Kansas. Brooks’ bloody attack was
condemned in the North but seen in the South as punishment long past due for rhetorical and
19
David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861. (New York: Harper Perennial,
2011), 199.
20
Ibid., 214.

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political attacks against Southern interests; punishment that was “elegantly” administered by the
South Carolina representative and “richly deserved” by Sumner…and most abolitionists.21
Ironically, not all Southern leaders supported the Kansas cause, despite the overwhelming
support for a pro-slavery government in Kansas across the South. Agricultural expert and
(eventual) leading Virginia secessionist Edmund Ruffin believed Kansas represented a “bad
cause” for the South because the pro-slavery constitution forced on the territory was “universally
admitted” to be unrepresentative of the true popular will. Ruffin worried Southern support for
the pro-slavery government would make the South appear to “support what is wrong, for selfish
ends.”22
Ruffin’s was a lonely voice in this caution; the civil war in Kansas had already
hardened sectional tensions as the 1860 presidential contest began to near.
The impending split among the States was presaged by the split that ripped part the 1860
Democratic Party convention in Charleston, South Carolina. Unable to settle on a candidate, the
Democrats adjourned to reconvene in Baltimore. However, a number of Southern Democrats
walked out and reconvened in Richmond. Although the Richmond Convention would ultimately
endorse the party’s nominee, Stephen Douglas, the “fire-eaters”—ardent secessionists who
passionately believed in slavery and a separate Southern confederacy—formally bolted from the
main party. They nominated John Breckinridge as the candidate of the “Southern Democratic
Party.” These radicals never wavered in their belief that the “Union is already dissolved, so far
as sympathy or affection is concerned.”23
21
“Elegantly Whipped,” anonymous letter to the Charleston Mercury, 28 May 1856. The Antebellum Era, ed. By
David A. Copeland. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2003), 365.
22
Edmund Ruffin, The Diary of Edmund Ruffin: Toward Independence, October 1856--April 1861. (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1972), 142.
23
William Barnwell Rhett, A Fire-Eater Remembers: The Confederate Memoir of Robert Barnwell Rhett. Ed. by
William C. Davis. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), 13.

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Addressing this Richmond Convention, former South Carolina senator and leading
political thinker Robert Barnwell Rhett (who would later join the Southern Democratic Party and
support Breckinridge) forcefully argued the federal government had become a propagandist
organ for the abolitionists of the North. Rhett maintained the federal government had spent the
previous decade encroaching on the one truly “internal object which was supposed to be above
its power—slavery in the Southern states.”24
Rhett’s ire did not only extend to Northerners; he
was disgusted with what he believed was the national Democratic Party “selling out” to Northern
influence. Rhett possessed little personal faith in the national Democrat Party’s willingness to
protect constitutional liberties (as he saw them).
Rhett’s derision was shared by other Southern leaders, including those who did not attend
this “rump” convention in Richmond. Edmund Ruffin, monitoring the Richmond Convention
from his home in Virginia, wrote in his diary his opposition to Stephen Douglas and his hope that
“disruption of the Convention is first and effective means of the disruption of the ‘national’
democratic (sic) party.”25
Ruffin, like Rhett, would throw his support behind Breckinridge,
believing Douglas the candidate of Democrats who had sold out the South to Northern interests.
The Democratic Party fractured just like the churches had nearly 20 years earlier.
With a national election looming, many leading lights of the shattered Democratic Party
were already spoiling for a showdown that would lead to the secession of the South from the
Union. Kansas was a roiling controversy, but Ruffin had been right in his cautions: too much
had been done in contravention of acceptable political practices for Kansas be the rallying cry
the fire-eaters needed to lurch the Southern gestalt permanently into a direction leading to
24
Ibid.
25
Ruffin, 418.

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secession. What the fire-eaters required was a symbol, a single unifying figure that would
violently resonate with the Southern psyche and encapsulate everything the South believed about
their perceived enemies to the North.
This is gestalt theory in action. Simply put, gestalt theory seeks to explain the human
capacity for creating a seamless whole from independent parts that are not, necessarily, the
complete picture. No one ever has all the facts; therefore, the human mind creates a picture of
reality from incomplete parts. According to retired Shippensburg University professor Dr. C.
George Boeree, this phenomena can be demonstrated by visual perception tests. Show someone
a series of disconnected lines, and the person will normally respond by replying they see a
picture of a flower, a letter of the alphabet, or some other whole construct their mind has built
out of the incomplete parts. Gestalt theory states “we are built to experience the structured
whole as well as the individual sensations. And not only do we have the ability to do so, we
have a strong tendency to do so. We even add structure to events which do not have gestalt
structural qualities.”26
Gestalt theory also seeks to explain how individuals and cultures can
form—and adhere to—fundamental beliefs about the world even when contravening facts
directly contradict those beliefs.
The sub-theory of “collectivism” within gestalt theory seeks to explain human
membership in social collectives as a “given” analogous to certain well-known nations such as
the contrast between the United States and Japan.27
Membership as a citizen in the United States
may be chosen based on philosophic and political beliefs, whereas membership in the Japanese
26
Dr. C. George Boeree, “Gestalt Psychology,” Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, 2000. Accessed Jan. 31,
2016. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/gestalt.html
27
Sean Gaffney, MA, “Gestalt with Groups: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.” Gestalt Review, 10(3):205-219, 2006.
Accessed Jan. 31, 2016. http://www.gisc.org/gestaltreview/documents/gestaltwithgroups-across-
culturalperspective.pdf

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race is based upon birth: a given. One can choose to be an American citizen, but one cannot
choose to be Japanese; it is a given based on birth. Gestalt theory says cultural groups can begin
to view membership within their ranks as similar given and therefore assume anyone sharing that
particular given shares their beliefs, thus perpetuating a groupthink mindset.
The American South experienced a strikingly lower rate of European immigration than
the North and old North West (today’s Midwest) did following the American Revolution.28
This
resulted in a level of cultural homogeneity in Dixie far greater than in the North and old North
West as those sections absorbed numerous immigrants and free blacks. This cultural
homogeneity, coupled with the singular sectional reliance on a slave-based economy, led the
South to begin culturally turning inward. Southerners developed an ever-strengthening sense of
societal independence and separation from the North over the course of the nation’s first sixty
years of existence. Being a Southern itself became a given, much like the example of a person
born into the Japanese race. This birth-right “given” reinforced the growing cultural divide in
the United States and led the South to not only develop a remarkably monolithic worldview, but
to assume the North held a similarly monolithic worldview. The reality of the North’s fractured
and tumultuously differing opinions on slavery and free blacks was never recognized by
Southerners. This gestalt resulted in Southerners considering themselves a separate nation
inconveniently stitched to a hostile North by the time of Harpers Ferry in 1859.
The geopolitical stage was set. For good of for ill, John Brown was waiting in the wings.
28
Catton, 10.

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Chapter 1
John Brown Strikes
The Connecticut-born John Brown would first gain national fame (or infamy, depending
on one’s point of view) during the Kansas conflict, but his abolitionist beliefs took root during
childhood. Brown felt the first rumbles of a war over slavery at the age of 12 after watching a
slave boy beaten with shovels.29
Brown himself adhered to a strict Calvinist creed emphasizing
the depravity of human nature and the need for swift, unremitting punishment of sins, and he
believed slavery was a national sin requiring resolute retribution. Brown had long demonstrated
a remarkable sense of equality for both blacks and Native Americans. He treated them as equals
and was not afraid to break with his own church after being reprimanded for giving blacks a
place in his family’s pew (as opposed to the segregated “colored” section in the back of the tent)
during a revival.30
Brown was a man who lived the courage of his convictions.
Brown did not join any of the abolition societies of the day, instead initiating his own
family into a secret army that would fight slavery. Consistent with the revival spirit sweeping
the nation, Brown drew Biblical inspiration for his clandestine efforts. As the story of Gideon
recounted a small force of 300 righteous men defeating a larger army, so Brown believed his
little family-army was sufficient to begin a great work. “With God as his protector, he needed
only a small tribe.”31
It is perhaps notable that Brown became immersed in the work of abolition partly as a
consequence of his failures in other business arenas. Multiple attempts at farming and various
businesses failed. “Some of his failures were attributable to the unpredictable business cycles of
29
Horowitz, 16.
30
Ibid., 25.
31
Ibid., 26.

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the young Republic…other failures, however, were attributable in part to his rigid personality.”32
This rigid personality, unswerving belief in human equality, and Biblically-buttressed belief in
the righteousness of abolition led Brown to move his family to upstate New York to help start
free blacks building a community on land acquired for them by abolitionists. During this time
Brown and his family hid fugitive slaves, using their own homestead as a stop on the
Underground Railroad.
Brown’s ardent abolitionism began to take a militant turn with the 1837 death of Elijah
Lovejoy. A proslavery mob murdered Lovejoy in retaliation for Lovejoy publishing an
antislavery newspaper in Alton, Illinois. The following Sunday Brown arose in his church and
publicly pledged himself to hostility and unceasing action against slavery.33
Thirteen years later
the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law prompted Brown to form the League of Gileadites, a militia of free
blacks in a Springfield, Mass., The League was intended to protect blacks from slave hunters
using the law as a means to impress free men and women into slavery. Brown was slowly,
steadily, moving from a war of words to a war of action.
Several of Brown’s sons moved to help settle Kansas for the antislavery forces, but
Brown himself did not come until he learned the free-soil forces were badly outclassed by the
pro-slavery forces. In 1855 he went to Kansas, and his militant abolitionism exploded into
radical action. Following an attack by proslavery forces on Lawrence, Brown led a party that
killed five men suspected of involvement in the Lawrence raid in a gory example of the vicious
warfare tearing Kansas apart (broadswords were used to split the skulls of several victims and
some bodies were mutilated). Brown had finally drawn blood in his personal war against slavery
32
Bruce McGinty, John Brown’s Trial. (London: Harvard University Press, 2009), 29.
33
Ibid., 33.

Miller /23
in an action that came to be known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. His raiding party also stole
several horses from their victims and ran other horses off.
This action both began Brown’s fame (infamy?) as the most radical of Northern
abolitionists and called into question the Biblical basis of Brown’s actions. How could a man
who professed the Gospel of Jesus, even a strict Calvinist version of it, claim to be doing God’s
work by massacring men who had, at best, tenuous connections with the proslavery elements in
Kansas?34
These questions might trouble historians, but they did not trouble Brown as he
organized and led his men into action. Brown’s forces were finally defeated by a superior
proslavery force from neighboring Missouri in the Battle of Osawatomie that June. However,
Brown’s skillful defense and ability to safely extract his forces led him to acquire the nickname
“Osawatomie Brown.” Brown’s fighting days ended when a new territorial governor disarmed
both sides and gave clemency to the men who had taken part in fighting. Brown left the
territory, free from legal jeopardy for his actions.
He made an unexpected return to the Kansas scene in 1858. As the second anniversary of
Brown’s Pottawatomie Massacre approached, nine free-state settlers were murdered by firing
squad after being dragged from their cabins. Brown would not let this atrocity go unpunished.
The fighting was supposed to be over; this was the sin of murder, plain and simple. Brown led a
band that “invaded Missouri, killed a slaveholder, and liberated eleven slaves and a good many
horses and took them to Canada.”35
Brown was clearly willing up the ante of his attacks on
slavery. Originally he operated only in Kansas, a territory being settled; now he was following
the invading Missourians from Bleeding Kansas and invading neighboring states himself to exact
34
Potter, 213.
35
McPherson, 169.

Miller /24
vengeance. Herein lies buried the seed of Brown’s eventual status of avatar for all Southern
fears: no other Northern white man invaded Southern territory on such violent antislavery
missions.
Brown began to arrange his final appointment with destiny in late 1858. Believing only
radical action could excise the sin of slavery from the United States, Brown proposed to go up
into the Appalachian Mountains and set up a “free republic” where whites and blacks would live
in equality. In order to do this, he needed men, arms, and a rallying cry to initiate an exodus of
slaves from the South to his new republic. He would invade Virginia, attack the Harpers Ferry
arsenal, and use its arms as the foundation of his nascent military while taking hostages to trade
for slaves. Brown received financial support from the “Secret Six,” six prominent public figures
in the North. These men “shared Brown’s seething hatred of slavery and scorn for pacifist
remedies.”36
The Secret Six largely doubted Brown’s chances of success, but refused to give
him up. Their financial support would quickly become part of the fear Brown engendered in the
South, raising his image as the devil of Northern oppression to an even greater level.
Brown’s recruiting efforts did not go well. “Brown’s shock troops for this purpose
ultimately consisted of five black men and seventeen whites, including three of his sons.”37
Despite this lack of initial support, Brown expected the slaves in Virginia, and later the rest of
the nation, to rise up and flock to his mountain enclave. Eventually, Brown predicted his
“biracial force would then set up a new constitutional republic in conquered territory,” forcing
slavery in the remaining states to collapse of its own weight.38
36
Horwitz, 78.
37
McPherson, 205.
38
Earle, 21.

Miller /25
Brown and his small band caught Harpers Ferry completely by surprise Sunday night,
Oct. 16, 1859. His men split up into several groups that took multiple hostages, including Col.
Lewis Washington, great-grandnephew of George Washington. The initial stages of the raid
went Brown’s way and it briefly seemed his men would capture the weapons along with the
hostages and escape. However, things started to go wrong within a few hours. The catastrophic
breakdown came when Heyward Shepherd, a free black and baggage master at the Harpers Ferry
depot, was shot while confronting Brown’s men. A brief exchange of fire at the depot caused
panic among the passengers awaiting the train and was the first indication many residents had
that something extraordinary happening in their mountain town.39
Oddly enough the train itself
was allowed to depart…thereby assuring federal authorities would quickly learn of the raid.
Events continued to spiral out of Brown’s control. Citizens of Harpers Ferry began to
organize as daylight lit up Oct. 17. The area was still a scene of confusion, but the crowds
discovered some of the hostages had been captured along with their slaves…and the slaves were
being armed by Brown’s men. Presbyterian minister Charles White prevented one such slave
from being killed by enraged local citizens. The slave told him Brown’s men threatened to kill
him if he refused to take a pike and stand guard at the rifle factory building. “I believed he was
innocent,” White wrote later that November, accepting the slave’s story of fearing for his life if
he didn’t take up arms at Brown’s insistence. Despite his lack of official authority, White
stepped between the enraged multitude and this slave, saving him (and several others) from
39
Alexander Boteler, “Recollections of the John Brown Raid by a Virginian Who Witnessed the Fight,” Century
Magazine, July 1883. University of Virginia. Accessed Dec. 28 2015.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jbrown/boteler.html

Miller /26
being summarily lynched.40
Although he had no love for abolitionists, it is remarkable that
Charles White not only attempted to protect these slaves from mob justice, but succeeded.
The arming of the captured and forcibly-freed slaves certainly helped fuel Southern terror
that Brown’s real plans were designed around slave insurrections. Southerners had long lived in
fear of slave insurrections that would murder the white population in their sleep, a fear Nat
Turner brought to life in 1831.41
Now in 1859 John Brown came south seemingly bent on the
same idea while being financed by wealthy Northern men. Events were converging that would
create a legend playing directly into the fire-eaters’ hands.
Brown’s life went from bad to worse as the 17th
wore into the 18th
. Federal troops under
the command of Col. Robert E. Lee arrived. By this time Brown’s men had been beaten back by
the townsfolk and local militia and were holed up in the arsenal’s fire engine house. It was small
and relatively easy to defend. Israel Green was part of a detachment of Marines that Lee ordered
to surround the engine house prepared to storm it if Brown refused to surrender. Green and his
men ultimately used a ladder to batter down the engine house door and assault Brown’s
remaining men. Green has the dubious distinction of being the man who whacked John Brown
on the head with the hilt of his saber before stabbing him in the chest even as Brown was felled
by a gunshot. Green’s sword was a dress sword, not a combat weapon, and bent double upon
impact with Brown’s heavy wool coat.42
This probably saved Brown’s life, allowing him to be
tried and hanged barely six weeks later.
40
Charles White, “John Brown’s Raid at Harper’s Ferry: An Eyewitness Account by Charles White.” University of
Virginia. Accessed Dec. 28, 2015. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jbrown/vmhb.html
41
Horowitz, 225.
42
Israel Green, “The Capture of John Brown,” originally published in The North American Review, Dec. 1885.
University of Virginia. Accessed Dec. 28, 2015. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jbrown/igreen.html

Miller /27
Suffice to say Brown’s attempt was a spectacular failure.
Brown said he never intended to seize the armory at Harpers Ferry. The occupation of
the arsenal was an on-the-spot change from his plan to take Col. Washington and the other
hostages to be exchanged for slaves at the Harpers Ferry Bridge.43
Brown declared he changed
his mind and moved the hostages to the armory’s engine house to protect them from an
unexpectedly bitterly cold night. If he was unable to exchange the hostages for slaves, he
anticipated being able to spirit off the hostages before a general alarm was sounded.
Speaking during his trial, Brown recounted his original intentions, referencing the earlier
raid into Missouri in 1858 in which he killed a slave owner and smuggled several slaves to
freedom in Canada. He steadfastly maintained he never intended to fire a shot nor injure a single
person. He intended to “make a clean thing” of the matter as during his Missouri raid, and no
one can say if he deliberately neglected to mention killing the slave owner of if he simply forgot
about it. However, the reference to the fatal Missouri raid provides evidence Brown’s intentions
were not as peaceful as he claimed. Brown said his plan at Harpers Ferry was simply to spirit
slaves to freedom while using the hostages to trade peacefully for more slaves. He testified he
intended no murder, destruction of public or private property, and certainly never intended to
“incite the slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.”44
Brown was executed Dec. 2, 1859. Eyewitness accounts of his death were swiftly and
widely circulated. The Virginia Military Institute (V.M.I.) sent cadets to help guard the
execution. Col. Thomas J. Jackson (who would gain fame nearly two years later as the
43
“John Brown’s Invasion,” New York Tribune, Nov. 9, 1859. John Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from
Charlestown. Ed. by Louis DeCaro, Jr. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 141.
44
John Brown, John Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from Charlestown. Ed. by Louis DeCaro, Jr. (New
York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 105.

Miller /28
Confederacy’s “Stonewall” Jackson) provided a very factual account, even testifying that
Brown’s body was displayed several times in its casket to prevent rumors of Brown’s escape (the
need to prove Brown’s death testifies to the reality of Southern fears he would escape and come
back).45
V.M.I. faculty member John T. L. Preston added his own opinion that “there was not, I
suppose, one throb of sympathy for the offender. All felt in the depths of their hearts that it was
right.”46
Harpers Ferry resident George Mauzy wrote friends after the execution that the
expected rescue of John Brown was thwarted by the large contingent of military personnel
guarding the execution. Mauzy opined the would-be rescuers’ courage “oozed out of the finger
ends” as no attempts were made.47
Brown’s efforts, both in Kansas and Harpers Ferry, killed far less men than the 60 whites
killed in the 1830 Nat Turner revolt, yet Brown’s raid became a rallying cry for Southern fire-
eaters in a way Nat Turner never did. Edmund Ruffin was in South Carolina on political and
agricultural business as Brown’s date with the gallows neared. He changed plans and hurried to
Charlestown to see Brown’s execution. Ruffin believed this event would finally open the eyes of
the South to the dangers of being in political union with the North.48
Robert Barnwell Rhett used
Brown’s raid as fuel for the “drive to influence the upcoming Democratic national convention”
in favor of secession.49
Mary Boykin Chestnut, the famed Southern diarist, kept a record of Southern life during
the Civil War. She opened her diary on Nov. 8, 1860, by transcribing a conversation she heard
45
Jackson, Thomas J. Letter to his wife, Dec. 2, 1859. Virginia Military Institute. Accessed July 28, 2015.
http://www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=4919
46
Preston, John L. Letter to his wife, Dec. 15, 1859. Virginia Military Institute. Accessed July 28, 2015.
http://www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=8183
47
Mauzy, George and Mary. Letters, Oct. 17 – Dec. 3, 1859. Civil War Trust. Accessed Aug. 12, 2015.
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/john-brown-150/george-and-mary-mauzy-letters.html
48
Walter, 258.
49
Ibid., 151.

Miller /29
on a train after a telegram announcing Abraham Lincoln’s election was read. One of the most
revealing comments Chestnut recorded was, “Now that the black radical Republicans have the
power I suppose they will Brown us all.” Chestnut closed this initial entry by adding her own
opinion to the fear that the Republican Party would “Brown” the South, by simply writing, “No
doubt of it.”50
John Brown, the spectacular failure, had become the avatar of all Southern fears about the
North. The intriguing question is just how did his infamy spread so quickly and take such hold
over the Southern gestalt in an era when the only electronic means of communication were the
limited telegraph wires only then beginning to stitch the nation together? A confluence of events
across the fracturing United States elevated John Brown to the status of avatar. The remarkable
unanimity in coverage by Southern media, a striking commonality in Southern political rhetoric,
and the undermining from within of Northern efforts to repudiate Brown were three factors
thrown into an unstable political combination. This explosive combination then mixed with the
seething cultural gestalt gripping Dixie to create a moment in time in which this remarkably
unsuccessful revolutionary could become the symbol for a revolutionary movement…a
movement which itself would be remarkably unsuccessful.
50
Mary Boykin Chestnut, A Diary From Dixie. Edited By Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary. New York:
Gramercy Books, Random House, 1997. 01.

Miller /30
Chapter 2
The Southern Media Strikes Back
Brown had barley been arrested on Oct. 18, 1859, when the Southern media began to link
him to suspected abolitionists plots the Republican Party and the Northern states were expected
to launch. The Secret Six’s financial involvement was uncovered as soon as Brown’s personal
papers were searched. This invasion by a militant white abolitionist, financed by other
abolitionists (including former slave Frederick Douglass) provided the South evidence that all
Northern abolitionists were “at the bottom” of the raid.51
Newspapers and magazines, be they
Southern or “merely” sympathetic to the South, began an unending narrative placing John Brown
at the head of an imminent invasion of Southern institutions—and even the South itself—by
Northern abolitionists bent on capsizing the South’s social order. This narrative was remarkably
consistent and reflects the long-simmering feeling of besiegement festering south of the Mason-
Dixon Line.
The editors of the Mercury in Charleston, South Carolina, received word on the 18th
of
the raid and Brown’s capture (interesting note—the Mercury was, by this time, owned by South
Carolina fire-eater Robert Barnwell Rhett). They ran an editorial the morning of Oct. 19, 1859
warning the “bloody outbreak” was a “prelude to what must and will recur again and again” if
the South did not halt its passive policy towards abolitionism.52
In an ironic twist, this editorial
51
“The Abolitionists of the North Implicated in the Harpers Ferry Insurrection,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 20, 1859.
The Secession Era Editorials Project, Furman University Department of History. Accessed Aug. 10, 2015,
http://history.furman.edu/editorials/see.py?sequence=jbmenu&location=%20John%20Brown%27s%20Raid%20on
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=ohcejb591020a
52
“The Harpers Ferry Insurrection,” Little Rock, Arkansas, Gazette, Nov. 12, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials
Project, Furman University Department of History.
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=arlgjb591112a

Miller /31
also referred to slavery, especially in the Border States, as a “dangerous and troublesome
nuisance.”
The Enquirer in Cincinnati was far more straightforward in its condemnation of events in
Virginia (this was four years before West Virginia would secede from Virginia to become the
35th
state of the Union during the Civil War). Identifying Brown by name and tying him to his
actions in Kansas, the editors of the Enquirer described the Harpers Ferry Raid as the prelude to
a storm that would “desolate” the South if left unchecked.53
The fact that Cincinnati was by no
means a Southern city shows how far sympathy for the pro-slavery forces extended into
traditionally Northern and North-Western lands and demonstrates just how fractured Northern
opinion on slavery was in contrast to that in the South.
Brown’s recruiting efforts, despite his stunning lack of success, provided fodder for the
general sense of paranoia growing south of the Mason-Dixon Line that Southern life was under
siege. The “fully established” fact of vast hordes of Northern men ready to flow South was
confirmed by Brown’s small team.54
The clarion call was being sounded about the danger of a
continued political union with the South’s “sectional enemies” to the north.55
Northern abolitionist rhetoric had long been fodder for Southern grievance gristmills, and
would be tied to Brown with alarming alacrity. New York Senator and presumptive 1860
Republican candidate William H. Seward spoke before the Senate nearly ten years earlier in
1850 on the subject of slavery. Seward, an early and life-ling abolitionist, issued a fiery oration
53
“The Cloud in the Distance No Bigger then (sic) a Man's Hand - The First Battle of the ‘Irrepressible Conflict,’”
Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 19, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project, Furman University Department of History.
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=ohcejb591019a
54
“The Insurrection,” Charleston Mercury, Oct. 21, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project, Furman University
Department of History. Accessed Aug. 10, 2015,
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=sccmjb591021a
55
Ibid.

Miller /32
declaring “a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain,” a
higher law that declared slavery a crime against mankind.56
Eight years later—and barely one
year before John Brown’s raid—Seward upped the rhetorical ante during a speech in Rochester,
New York, by declaring the two systems in the U.S.—slavery and freedom—were so completely
incompatible that a choice had to be made, “even at the cost of civil war if necessary,” because
these competing systems created an “irrepressible conflict” that would result in the nation sooner
or later becoming “entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation.”57
Southern media seized upon these speeches with the speed of a rattlesnake striking its
prey. Some outlets, such as the Federal Union in Milledgeville, Georgia, called out Seward by
name. Titling its Nov. 1, 1859 editorial, “The Abolition Insurrection at Harper’s Ferry—The
Irrepressible Conflict Begun,” the Federal Union threw Seward’s words right back at the North.
The Federal Union accused Seward and other Northern leaders of encouraging Brown through
their fiery rhetoric.58
The Mercury of Charleston, South, Carolina, declared Brown’s efforts
“silly and abortive,” but nonetheless banged the drums of secession by Nov. 1859, advocating a
separate government for the South that would bring an end to the “’irrepressible conflict’ of
Seward.”59
56
Seward, William H. Speech to U.S. Senate, March 11, 1850. Furman University. Accessed Aug. 1, 2015.
http://history.furman.edu/~benson/docs/seward.htm
57
Seward, William H. Speech at Rochester, NY, 1858. Bartleby Great Books Online. Accessed Aug. 1, 2015.
http://www.bartleby.com/268/9/16.html
58
“The Abolition Insurrection at Harpers Ferry -- The Irrepressible Conflict begun,” Milledgeville Federal Union,
Nov. 1, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project, Furman University Department of History. Accessed Aug. 2,
2015,
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=gafujb591101a
59
“The Plan of Insurrection,” Charleston Mercury, Nov. 1, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project, Furman
University Department of History. Accessed July 29, 2015,

Miller /33
Seward was not the only abolitionist blasted for inspiring John Brown. Other Northern
luminaries, such as William Lloyd Garrison, penned words supporting Brown that would be used
by Southern writers against the North. Two weeks after Brown’s execution on Dec. 2, 1859,
Garrison wrote, “Was Brown justified in his attempt? Yes, if Washington was in his; if Warren
and Hancock were in theirs. If men are justified in striking a blow for freedom.”60
Garrison
went on to say Brown was inspired by the likes of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson—
deliberately using Southern Revolutionary heroes to make his point before tying Brown’s
inspiration to Virginia’s state motto of “Sic semper tyrannis” itself. Although this was written
several weeks after Brown’s execution, Garrison’s ties to the Republican Party and his
unabashed abolitionism provided the “proof” Southern media needed to make the leap from
Brown’s raiding party and his “Secret Six” backers to the belief all Republicans were ready to
march south and stir up slave insurrections. Northern repudiations of Brown could not “wipe out
the record of what they have said and done in fomenting the treason.”61
The personal papers captured on Brown added fuel to this fire. Gerritt Smith, New York
Congressional representative and abolitionist, penned a letter to Brown in June 1859 vowing to
keep Brown at his “Kansas work.” Brown had this letter on him at Harpers Ferry, and the Times-
Picayune of New Orleans labeled Smith an “accessory before the fact” in the “atrocious crime”
that was Harpers Ferry.62
The Times-Picayune closed out its indictment by widening its net to
60
Garrison, William Lloyd. The Liberator, Dec. 16, 1859. Fair Use Repository. Accessed Aug. 14, 2015.
http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1859/12/16/the-liberator-29-50.pdf
61
“What is ‘Kansas Work?’” New Orleans Times-Picayune, Oct. 29, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project,
Furman University Department of History. Accessed July 29, 2015,
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=latpjb591029a
62
Ibid.

Miller /34
obliquely include William Seward through mention of speeches heard in the U.S. Senate
referring to a higher law than the U.S. Constitution.
Some Southern papers did attempt to quiet the matter…but then contradicted their own
efforts. The Daily Herald of Wilmington, North Carolina, took its fellow Southerners to task for
referring to Brown’s raid as an “insurrection” when “not a single slave engaged but was drawn in
by compulsion.”63
Technically this admonishment was correct; an insurrection is an uprising of
people from within a system and Brown came from outside the South. However, the Daily
Herald then fanned the flames of sectional strife by asserting the use of word “insurrection” only
played into the hands of abolitionists who wanted to make it appear the slaves were unhappy
with their lot in life.
This was a theme often echoed by Southern reporters and editors. Even if the press
denied the use of the word “insurrection,” they continued to push forward a narrative that a
hostile spirit existed in the North, a “monster” that had to be contained.64
Even when
acknowledging Brown had little support in the North, the press insisted the entire North was a
threat because the idea of abolition “obtained a wide circulation” above the Mason-Dixon Line.65
It mattered little the federal government enforced the Fugitive Slave Law, or that the federal
Army assisted Virginia militia putting down Brown’s raid, or that the new Republican party
63
“A Misnomer,” Wilmington Daily Herald, Oct. 26, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project, Furman
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=ncwhjb591026a
64
“The True Lesson,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, Oct. 30, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project, Furman
65
“No False Issue,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, Nov. 3, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project, Furman

Miller /35
actually called for leaving slavery alone where it existed and merely wished to restrict it from
expanding. Instead the Southern (and Southern-leaning) media maintained a consistent narrative
that “if the South would maintain her rights…she must rely upon herself, and not look North for
aid or sympathy.”66
Time did not diminish the hatred of Brown, nor his use as a symbol of all that was evil
about Yankees. The Sep. 13, 1860, Georgia Weekly Telegraph ran a small paragraph dripping
with vitriol in its description of Massachusetts’ Republican nominee for governor. Although
unnamed, this “Black Republican” candidate (abolitionist John A. Andrew was the target) was
drawn as an “incendiary fanatic and endorser of John Brown.” Echoing Edmund Ruffin’s
penchant for sarcasm, the Telegraph sardonically praised the “fanatics of the Bay State” for not
trying to get into power “under false colors,” but for being forthright in their fanaticism.67
One magazine that provided some of the most over-the-top denunciations of Brown and,
by extension, the entire North, was James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow’s highly influential
publication Debow’s Review, Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources, or
Debow’s for easy reference. More than six months after Brown’s execution, Debow’s ran a
multi-page article entitled “The Basis of Northern Hostility to the South.” With this article,
Debow’s raised the stakes of cultural enmity to a new level, cutting a vast swath across women’s
rights, abolition, and the right of slave owners to their chattel before tying it all together under
the aegis of John Brown.
66
“Gov. Wise and the Harpers Ferry Banditti,” Raleigh Register, Nov. 5, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials
Project, Furman University Department of History. Accessed Aug. 1, 2015,
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=ncrrjb591105a
67
Macon Georgia Weekly Telegraph, Vol. XXXIV, No. 48, Sept. 13, 1860. The Digital Library of Georgia,
University of Georgia Libraries. http://telegraph.galileo.usg.edu/telegraph/view?docId=news/mwt1860/mwt1860-
0161.xml

Miller /36
“Though kindred in blood, the conduct of the Northern States to us has ever been that of
deadly enemies, whose hatred no circumstance of time, place, or even interest, could soften.” 68
Thus the unnamed author (quite possibly Debow himself) of “The Basis of Northern Hostility”
dismissed slavery as a cause of the sectional conflict. Instead he argued slavery was merely an
excuse used by the North as a vehicle to express hatred of the South’s superior culture, which
descended from the noble British Cavaliers.
The article went on to describe the barbarity of the “irreligious” women of the north who
advocated for political rights. This “moral degradation” was the result of the “free love
societies” that forced women out of the “sphere assigned her by God.” These women no longer
took their children to church to teach them about a Savior, but rather to learn “deadly hatred to
their happier Southern neighbors.” Following this indictment, “The Basis of Northern Hostility”
contrasted the apparent degradation of northern women with the exalted place they held in the
South as the “great moral agent that lifts [Southern society] above the brute creation.”69
Finally
the author tied this immoral “free-loveism” to the other great ill afflicting the North—
abolitionism. The abolition movement was described as “sickening” and “degrading.”
“The Basis of Northern Hostility” claimed even New England senators admitted Southern
slavery was the mildest, most enlightened and “most Christian” form of chattel slavery ever
devised. The black race was described as being created in a “naturally inferior and servile
condition” by God. The South’s “right to ownership and property in the persons of the degrade
race” was a sacred right, “guarantied (sic) by the infinite justice and morality of Jehovah.”70
68
Debow’s Review and Industrial Resources, Statistics, Etc., Ed. By J. D. B. Debow., Vol. XXVIII, January-June
1860, 9. The Making of America, University of Michigan. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/acg1336.1-
28.001/13?node=acg1336.1-28.001%3A5&view=image&size=100
69
Ibid., 13.
70
Ibid., 14.

Miller /37
Moving from excoriating women’s rights to abolition, the article got to the heart of the matter
concerning the South: the threat to their slave property.
John Brown’s ghost was finally paraded before the reader in the climax of “The Basis of
Northern Hostility to the South.” Brown’s raid becomes the logical result of the immoral
North’s hatred and jealousy of the virtuous South. “The Basis of Northern Hostility” argued if
“the enslavement of the negro race here is…a moral wrong,” then that wrong could not be
righted by the North “sending armed bands to…stir up servile insurrection as was the case at
Harper’s (sic) Ferry.”71
Instead Northerners were challenged to sell the millions of acres
Virginia gave over to the Union (the Kentucky territory) and use the money to “return the injured
and degraded African” to Africa.
As breathtaking as this polemic was, John Debow was not finished publishing such
screeds. In July, 1860, Debow’s ran a short article titled “What are we to do?” that insisted
many of the Yankees who moved south to teach, preach, or run commercial businesses were
instead “bitter, malignant abolitionists” who bore an “implacable hatred” of the South and its
institutions.72
William Seward’s words were again cast forth with the publication of “The
Irrepressible Conflict and Impending Crisis” in Debow’s November, 1860, issue. Providing a
sweeping historical overview of both American liberty and the contest between the free and
slaves States, the article asserted Seward had lost touch with the republican roots of the
American Revolution and sought instead to pervert federal power in order to abolish slavery and
71
Ibid., 15.
72
J.A. Turner, “What Are We to Do?” Debow’s Review and Industrial Resources, Statistics, Etc., Ed. By J. D. B.
Debow., Vol. XXIX, July 1860. The Making of America, University of Michigan. Accessed Aug. 1, 2015.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/acg1336.1-29.001/74

Miller /38
erase Southern rights. Brown is not mentioned, but one can hear his ghost being held up in the
defense of slavery against the rapacious North that blossomed following his execution.73
Sectional tensions were already running very high by the late 1850s. The economic
contest between the growing industrial might of the North and the slower, slave-bound economy
of the South may have been the root of much strife, but the perception by Southerners that their
entire way of life, indeed their very existence, was threatened by the people of the North was
clearly being fanned by Southern editorials and magazine articles. Brown was guilty of a “great
public crime” and his hands “reeked” with the blood of his victims, but more was at stake to the
South than a simple misguided fanatic.74
As the famous Charleston Mercury opined in late 1859
after recalling the 1858 state elections in New York (elections that had transpired a full year
before the Harpers Ferry raid), the sympathies of the North were clearly for Brown and his ilk.
Using New York as a symbol for the whole North, the Mercury declared the Yankees had
demonstrated an implacable sectional hostility for the South, and the South must awaken before
“abolitionism ripens into invasion.”75
The level of public hysteria Brown generated led to acts of vigilante justice…acts which
were then reported throughout the South. One unfortunate boot dealer in Savannah, Georgia, a
Mr. Sewall H. Fisk, was dragged from his home and tarred and feathered the night of Dec. 2,
1859—the same day John Brown was executed. Long-suspected of abolition sympathies, Fisk
73
S. D. Moore, “The Irrepressible Conflict and Impending Crisis.” Debow’s Review and Industrial Resources,
Statistics, Etc., Ed. By J. D. B. Debow., Vol. XXVIII, Nov. 1860. The Making of America, University of Michigan.
Accessed Aug. 1, 2015. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/acg1336.1-28.005/535
74
“Pardon for John Brown,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, Nov. 16, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials Project,
Furman University Department of History. Accessed Aug. 10, 2015,
75
“The New York Elections and Their Meaning,” Charleston Mercury, Nov. 24, 1859. The Secession Era Editorials
Project, Furman University Department of History. Accessed Aug. 8, 2015,

Miller /39
was accused by the mob of secretly reading accounts of Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid to slaves in
his store basement.76
Tarring and feathering was a rather brutal punishment in which boiling hot
tar was smeared on the naked body of the victim before chicken feathers were fluffed over him
or her. This normally resulted in loss of hair, severe burns from the tar, and possibly fatal
infections in those burns. The reporting of such brutal mob justice meted out to those suspected
of Brown-inspired abolition activity served to continue the cycle of besieged groupthink.
Circulation of these stories reinforced the Southern belief that enemies were everywhere, even in
their own cities, and put those “enemies’ on notice that a dire fate awaited them for betraying
their birthright.
The growing militancy in the South was captured by John Syme’s Nov. 21 editorial in his
Register. Published in Raleigh, North Carolina, Syme’s Register boldly declared Brown’s raid
would bring “an immediate solution” to the question of whether the Union could be—or should
be—preserved.77
He hailed the rapid the convergence of troops from various parts of Virginia to
Harpers Ferry as evidence the South could prevent abolitionist troops from maintaining any sort
of foothold in Dixie for longer than two days. Clearly Syme, like the other editors and papers
surveyed, fully expected the North to launch a preemptive abolitionist invasion of the South at
any time.
The Secession Crisis dominoes had already begun to fall by the time Dr. William H.
Holcombe, M.D., issued a call in the February 1861 edition of the Southern Literary Messenger
for Virginia to follow her sister states who had already left the Union in the aftermath of
76
“Tarred and Feathered,” Savannah Republican, Dec. 2, 1859. The Antebellum Era: Primary Documents on Events
from 1820 to 1860. Ed. by David A. Copeland. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003), 406.
77
“Execution of the Four Conspirators,” Raleigh, North Carolina, Register, Dec. 21, 1859. The Secession Era
Editorials Project, Furman University Department of History. Accessed Aug. 10, 2015,
%20Harper%27s%20Ferry&ecode=ncrrjb591221a

Miller /40
Lincoln’s election. Declaring the Southern mindset as believing slavery “righteous and just,”
Holcombe’s editorial in the Messenger said the “assassination schemes of John Brown” and
other abolitionists gave the South only one choice: disunion. “If the Republican Party is
permitted to get into power, the Africanization of the South may be gradual, but it will be sure,”
Holcombe wrote. 78
He said the iron must be struck at that precipitous moment in history
because the social order in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri was already slowly,
steadily, changing from a Southern character to a more Northern, abolition-minded one.
Interestingly, as the early months of the Civil War played out, Virginia would secede, but
Holcombe’s observation about the changing Border State demographics was borne out. Strong
secessionist sentiments existed in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, but not strong enough to
overcome Unionist sentiments or federal military power. These three states ultimately remained
firmly in the Union. Holcombe was even right about Virginia. Although Virginia left the Union
in 1861, Unionist sentiment in the northwestern part of the state split the Old Dominion and
created West Virginia in 1863. Holcombe declared catastrophe could only be avoided by
disunion and the “sons and daughters of the South are ready for the sacrifice.”79
Clearly the Southern media (and media in the North sympathetic to the South) had
latched on to John Brown and his raid as both the symbol and logical outcome of Northern
abolitionist efforts. These newspapers and magazines were remarkably consistent in their
portrayal of the nefarious intent of Northern abolitionists as a whole and the growing Republican
Party in particular. Indeed, the Republican Party was often used to represent the entire North.
78
William H. Holcombe, “The Alternative: A Separate Nationality, Or The Africanization Of The South.” Southern
Literary Messenger, Vol 32, pp 81-88 (Feb 1861). Civil War Causes, Accessed Aug. 1, 2015.
http://civilwarcauses.org/holcombe.htm
79
Ibid.

Miller /41
Interestingly the Southern media completely ignored the Northern wing of the Democratic Party
despite that party’s staunch support for Southern rights. This is a singular example of a gestalt,
a groupthink mentality rooted deeply in a people’s psyche. The Southern media could not (or
would not) see the North was not entirely of a piece, instead maintaining a consistent narrative of
treachery. For a time in history when the telegraph was the only electronic means of
communication, it is remarkable how fast Southern media fell into lock step with their
denunciations and prophesies of doom. Even so, the media’s anti-North narrative utilizing John
Brown was mild considering what was about to come from the leading minds in the Southern
political world.

Miller /42
Chapter 3
Southern Political Leaders Campaign Against Brown
John Brown became the cause celebre of the Southern political class just as surely as he
did the newspapers and magazines. Within two weeks of his arrest at Harpers Ferry, Edmund
Ruffin wrote in his diary that, despite pleas in many newspapers for Brown’s life to be spared,
“the great mass of the people of the north” believed sparing Brown would result in “unspeakable
atrocities.”80
Two days later on Nov. 12, 1859, Ruffin celebrated the success Harpers Ferry
afforded him in advancing his anti-abolition arguments through publication in Southern
periodicals.81
In January 1860 Ruffin wrote of his disgust with Northern abolitionist Wendell Philips’
“glorification” of Brown. His rapidly growing distaste for all things sympathetic to the North led
him to begin breaking his decades-old allegiance to the Democratic Party. He fervently hoped a
die-hard Southern Whig would defeat a Democratic Party candidate for Speaker of the House of
Representatives because he regarded the Democratic candidate as belonging to the “Brown-
Helper abolition party.”82
By September of 1860 Ruffin, a life-long defender of Southern rights,
had become a leading fire-eater advocating secession. He wrote he had evidence that Brown’s
influence was spreading. Rumors of plots to incite slave uprisings in Texas circulated widely,
and though little details of such alleged plots came out of the Lone Star State, Ruffin believed
them whole-heatedly.83
“If but one-tenth of these plots and attempts be true, added to the
80
Ruffin, 354.
81
Ibid, 355.
82
Ibid., 396-397.
83
Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1978), 224.

Miller /43
attempt made through John Brown, it would be alone sufficient for a separation of the Union, to
exclude northern emissaries and incendiaries from southern territory.”84
Ruffin had given up on elected political office years before, preferring to spread his
message through letters and periodicals. However, his sentiments and view of Brown as the
leader of a Northern cabal intent on ravaging the South was unabashedly shared by leading
Southern politicians. "The man who, after the event, approves a speech which, at least,
contained the germ that might have produced the plant, is far more guilty, in my judgment, than
the man who originally made it,” Senator Jefferson Davis said to the U.S. Senate Dec. 8, 1859,
only six days after Brown’s execution.85
Davis was no mere politician. He was a widely
regarded as a serious candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1860.86
When he
spoke, people listened, and this leading presidential contender classified Brown’s raid as a
“conspiracy against a portion of the United States, a rebellion against the Constitutional
government of a State.”87
The word “conspiracy” was a loaded word, implying as it did that
Brown did not act alone, but was part of a larger plot across the entire North to provoke a slave
uprising in the South. The financial backing of the Secret Six helped fueled this theory.
Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, by no means a Southern politician but
still a leader of the Southern-leaning Democratic Party, took the entire Republican Party to task
for its culpability in Harpers Ferry. Speaking before the United States Senate in the early days of
1860, just over one month after Brown’s execution, Douglas called for considering stronger
legislation to protect individual state sovereignty against further outrages…outrages he could not
84
Ruffin, 470.
85
Jefferson Davis, “The Miserable Prostitution of Noble Men's Ideas,” Dec. 8, 1859.
http://kentuckysip.homestead.com/files/speech_on_john_brown.htm
86
Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the
Civil War. (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 54.
87
Jefferson Davis, “The Miserable Prostitution of Noble Men's Ideas,” Dec. 8, 1859.
http://kentuckysip.homestead.com/files/speech_on_john_brown.htm

Miller /44
promise would not be repeated given the “teachings of the Republican party.”88
These
“teachings” he referenced were the party’s official platform calling for the restriction of slavery
to the states in which it already existed.
Douglas went on to state the “great principle” of the Republican Party was an unending
attack upon slavery in a “sectional war” that would result in Southern agricultural fields being
tended by free labor instead of the South’s preferred slave labor. Additionally, Douglas charged
the Republicans with more than inciting the North to violence against the South. He displayed
an amazing use of tortured logic by accusing the Republicans of inciting Southern violence
against Northern interests in order to paint Southerners as a lawless people in order to justify
further Northern violence! “The declaration is that the North must combine as a section party,
and carry on the agitation so fiercely, up to the very borders of the slaveholding States, that the
master dare not sleep at night for fear that the robbers, the John Browns, will come and set his
house on fire, and murder the women and children, before morning.” 89
It is ironic that, despite such incendiary rhetoric, fire-eaters such as Edmund Ruffin and
Robert Barnwell Rhett saw Douglas as too Northern a man. These men repudiated his eventual
nomination as the Democratic candidate for president in 1860.
Fiery political rhetoric was calculated to do anything but calm sectional tensions and pour
oil on the troubled waters of a South that, despite its domination of the House of Representatives,
felt itself increasingly under siege. Southern leaders continued to accuse the North of
disregarding constitutional oaths and requirements.90
The efforts of several Northern States to
88
Stephen Douglas, “On the Invasion of States,” speech delivered to the U.S. Senate Jan. 28, 1860. West Virginia
Division of Culture and History. Accessed Aug. 14, 2015. http://www.wvculture.org/history/jbexhibit/bbspr02-
0012.html
89
Ibid.
90
J.L.M. Curry, “The Perils and Duty of the South,” Speech delivered in Talladega, Alabama, Nov. 26, 1860. Civil
War Causes, Accessed Aug. 11, 2015. http://civilwarcauses.org/curry.htm

Miller /45
subvert the Fugitive Slave Law with personal liberty laws were seen as an attack on Southern
rights equal in pernicious intent to Brown’s raid. As the presidential year of 1860 wore on, the
calumnies against the North grew as Southern leaders echoed the same call to sectional arms the
Southern media was maintaining.
South Carolina state senator John Townsend foresaw calamity as the national election
approached its climax. Speaking in South Carolina at the Edisto Island Vigilant Association
(following Harpers Ferry, “Vigilant Associations” sprang up across the South, mimicking the
Revolutionary-era Committees of Correspondence), Townsend predicted Abraham Lincoln’s
election to the presidency. He railed against the idea of continuing “a few years more of
dishonored existence” under “Black Republican rule—which has openly declared their purpose
to destroy us.”91
Townsend accused the North and the Republicans of a two-pronged attack on
Southern rights: first by violence led by men such as John Brown, second by attempting to alter
the Constitution of the United States as soon as they were in power.
Although news of the Texas abolition plots was scarce, Townsend used his long-winded
address at Edisto Island to read aloud several letters from Texas, tying these letters back to John
Brown’s pre-Harpers Ferry plan for abolition. “On some plantations the negroes (sic) have been
examined, and arms and ammunition in considerable amount have been found in their
possession,” Townsend quoted from a letter to the editors of the Evening Day Book out of
Marshall, Texas. “The plan was to burn all of the towns…then on election day they were to be
headed by John Browns and march south for Houston and Galveston City.92
Another letter
Townsend produced was written by a John H. Reagan from Palestine, Texas, reporting that two
91
Hon. John Townsend, “The Doom of Slavery in the Union: Its Safety Out of it.” Civil War Causes. Accessed
July 28, 2015, http://civilwarcauses.org/townsend.htm
92
Ibid.

Miller /46
white men had been hung after conviction of spearheading a similar plot to arm blacks and
march on Election Day.93
Townsend’s reading of Reagan’s letter included the declaration that
Texas vigilance committees were active in guarding against further dangers.
James Williams, U.S. minister to Turkey, penned a series of letters from overseas for use
in a political pamphlet against the North during the 1860 campaign season. Williams maintained
any attempt by the Republican Party to control slavery within the Union through governmental
means would be nothing short of a revolution. Even attempts to simply restrict slavery were
portrayed as hypocrisy by the North. After all, Williams said, the Northern States had divested
themselves of slaves by selling them South.94
In Williams’ interesting use of logic, restricting
slavery from spreading would actually perpetuate slavery in the South by preventing the South
from getting the blacks out of their state borders. Williams concluded this letter by stating that
if the Republicans (specifically Abraham Lincoln) gained power and enacted their agenda, the
federal government would have failed to protect the South with equal vigor as it did the North.
In that event, it would lose all claim to the South’s allegiance.95
Although Williams never mentioned John Brown or Harpers Ferry by name, and couched
his language in the diplomatic terms of a statesman, his themes were clear. He echoed common
Southern sentiments that the majority of Northern opinion, and specifically the Republican Party
itself, were now “founded on opposition to the present Union.”96
This rogue section and its
abolition party were intent on “derogation of the rights of the South” and therefore a Republican
presidential victory could only mean subjugation for the South, or disunion. Here again a
93
Ibid.
94
James Williams and John Backer Hopkins, The South Vindicated. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts,
and Green, 1862. Current historical reproduction by BiblioLife, LLC., 2009), 256.
95
Ibid., 262.
96
Ibid., 271.

Miller /47
Southern leader—reaching out from his position overseas—published rhetoric clearly calculated
to ratchet up tensions between the sections as the November election neared.
U.S. Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia addressed the Georgia legislature following
Lincoln’s election in November, 1860. Georgia was considering calling a secession convention.
In his speech, Toombs described Brown’s 1859 raid in Virginia as an attempt at “subverting her
government, exciting insurrection among her slaves, and murdering her peaceable inhabitants.”97
He then furthered his list of indictments by calling the governors of Ohio and Iowa “miscreants”
because they refused to extradite two of Brown’s sons back to Virginia who had escaped after
the failed raid. Toombs railed these “murderers” secured their own freedom by escaping to
states in sympathy with Brown.
Just over a month later, Virginia Gov. Henry Wise delivered a speech in Norfolk, Va.
Wise, who had overseen the prosecution and execution of Brown in 1859, called upon Virginia
and the South to beware of “another overt act…another raid.” Wise predicted the next incursion
“will not be a John Brown raid” led by one old man. Rather, it would be “a raid of thousands”
countenanced by leading Northern figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.98
This language was strikingly similar to that used in the newspapers (even those not owned by
political leaders, such as Rhett’s Mercury).
Following his election, Lincoln sought to find common cause with moderate elements in
the South. Lincoln, and, indeed, much of the North, seemed to underestimate the depth of hatred
that had grown in the South for perpetuating a Union with a section seen as bent on invasion. If
he did underestimate Southern opinon, Lincoln would have been shocked by the reply he
97
Robert Toombs. Speech to Georgia legislature, Nov. 13, 1860. http://civilwarcauses.org/toombs.htm
98
Macon Georgia Weekly Telegraph, Vol. XXXV, no number given, Oct. 18, 1860. The Digital Library of Georgia,
University of Georgia Libraries. http://telegraph.galileo.usg.edu/telegraph/view?docId=news/mwt1860/mwt1860-
0201.xml

Miller /48
received to a letter written to his friend and former congressional colleague, the perpetually ill
and skeletally thin Alexander Stephens of Georgia. Seeking help from Stephens to quell the
secessionist movement, Lincoln was instead hit with an angry statement by Stephens that the
“avowed disregard and breach of the Constitution in the passage of the statutes in a number of
the Northern States against the rendition of fugitives from service and such exhibitions of
madness such as the John Brown raid into Virginia” created an unbridgeable breach of faith
between the sections.99
Stephens counseled Lincoln he was not attacking him as a personal enemy, but rather
approaching him as a friend who saw but one way out of the crisis: for Lincoln to openly and
overtly disavow the Republican Party platform calling for the restriction of slavery. “Under our
system, as I view it, there is no rightful power in the General Government (sic) to coerce a
State,” Stephen wrote.100
Instead, he called upon Lincoln to forego his avowed intention to hold
the Union by force (because the Union as created could not be held by force without violating
the Constitution), and respect the right of the South to maintain her own internal institutions.
Closing with a plea to Lincoln to carefully consider his words, Stephens (who would become the
Vice President of the Confederacy within a few months of this letter) put his emaciated feet
firmly on the path of secession.
Although Harpers Ferry was never replicated, the South simply could not escape the
paranoia created by John Brown. As the 1860 election season got underway, events were
moving fast towards a final showdown between North and South. Southern politicians joined
Southern publications in keeping up a drumbeat warning Dixie of the dire threat that Brown and
99
Alexander Stephens, letter to Abraham Lincoln, Dec. 30, 1860. Civil War Causes. Accessed July 28, 2015,
http://civilwarcauses.org/ahs-al.htm
100
Ibid.

Miller /49
the North represented. Proslavery men saw anti-South plots in the North and West (today’s
Midwest) and maintained the “malign hand” of John Brown had reached from his grave to coax
the conspiracy to life.101
Some Northern media would attempt to quiet matters by praising
Brown’s goals while condemning his methods, but this would be counteracted by other media
outlets extolling him as a martyr. Northern politicians would seek to make themselves national
leaders by dissociating themselves from Brown, but it would be useless. Northern media and
political attempts to repudiate Brown would be undermined from within…and from across the
Atlantic. This only reinforced the gestalt of paranoia gripping the South.
101
Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening. (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 47.

Miller /50
Chapter 4
Northern Repudiation Repudiated
If Southern passions were panicked by the rhetoric emanating from their own politicians,
newspapers, magazines, and diarists, that panic was whipped into a full-blown firestorm by the
veneration John Brown received in the North and, to the South’s horror, overseas. Brown
became a martyr. He would be celebrated in song, poem, and multi-cannon salute all over the
North and even in Europe. Nothing could be more likely to cause the South to dig in its heels in
a self-protective posture as seeing the entire world around it celebrating a man who tried to
forcibly free Southern slaves.
Shortly after Brown’s raid and capture went public, some Northern media and, as 1859
passed into the 1860 presidential election, many leading Northern politicians attempted to
distance themselves from Brown. These efforts to quell the paranoia roiling in the South would
not only be ineffectual, but were undermined by praise and veneration from within the North and
from overseas. Even as the New York Tribune was canonizing Brown, The Valley Spirit in
Pennsylvania was criticizing the Tribune for its support of the “deplorable affairs” in Virginia.
The Valley Spirit fired with both barrels at its New York counterpart for believing that
emancipation could be achieved through “evil war and bloodshed” instead of “peace, discussion,
and the quiet diffusion of sentiments.”102
The Valley Spirit seemed intent on pursuing a crusade to prove the North didn’t truly
support Brown. On Oct. 22, three days after Brown’s capture, it ran a small piece declaring the
state of Pennsylvania had confiscated the muskets of a colored militia unit and disbanded the
102
“The Harpers Ferry Rioters Canonized,” The Valley Spirit, Chambersburg, PA
Oct. 26, 1859. The Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities,
University of Virginia. Accessed Aug. 14, 2015. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jbrown/news.vs/vsbrown3.gif

Miller /51
unit.103
On Nov. 9 it again put a shot across the Tribune’s proverbial bow by declaring
abolitionists should know local Pennsylvania “negros (sic) receive the Tribune regularly” and
were imbibing its teaching, thereby possibly fomenting a revolt against whites in the Keystone
State.104
Finally on Nov. 23 the Valley Spirit roundly criticized Northerners who found Southern
fears “laughable” as a “not very Christianlike” attitude toward fellow citizens.105
Ohio Senator Benjamin F. Wade minced no words on the floor of the Senate chamber
Dec. 14, 1859 while both praising Brown’s ideals but equating his militancy with the bloody
efforts of pro-slavery men in Kansas. Wade castigated the South for being hysterical over
Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid after itself having sent violent, pro-slavery forces into Kansas to
terrorize free-state settlers and “fix slavery there at all hazards and by force of arms…I do not go
back to the history of Kansas for the purpose of justifying John Brown and his crew in their
invasion of Virginia, but in order to show you why it is that the men of the free States, to some
considerable extent, do sympathize with this old hero.”106
Wade said he did not expect credit in
the South for his statement, but that he did not condone in any way Brown’s actions. This was
not exactly the kind of ringing denunciation of Brown the South wanted to hear.
Addressing the House of Representatives April 5, 1860, Owen Lovejoy of Illinois stated
categorically that he refused to condemn Brown’s motives, but did refer to Brown’s actions as
103
“A Colored Military Company Disbanded,” The Valley Spirit, Chambersburg, PA
Oct. 26, 1859. The Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities,
University of Virginia. Accessed Aug. 14, 2015. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jbrown/news.vs/vsbrown6.gif
104
“How We Feel,” The Valley Spirit, Chambersburg, Penn., Nov. 9, 1859. The Institute of Advanced Technology
in the Humanities, University of Virginia. Accessed Aug. 14, 2015.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jbrown/news.vs/vsbrown24.gif
105
“Laughable,” The Valley Spirit, Chambersburg, Penn., Nov. 23, 1859. The Institute of Advanced Technology in
the Humanities, University of Virginia. Accessed Aug. 14, 2015.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jbrown/news.vs/vsbrown30.gif
106
Benjamin Wade, “Invasion of Harpers Ferry,” speech delivered to the U.S. Senate Dec. 14, 1859. West Virginia
Division of Culture and History. Accessed Aug. 14, 2015. http://www.wvculture.org/history/jbexhibit/bbspr01-
0025.html

Miller /52
abhorrent…thought abetted by an unjust state of human bondage in the South. In fact Lovejoy
excoriated the entire slave system as the cause of the present national agitation and declared it
founded on a false premise: the inferiority of the black race. Such logic, Lovejoy maintained,
was specious. By such logic cripples should be trussed up like horses and the aged struck and
beaten at the whim of the young and strong. Lovejoy did draw the line at Brown’s actions,
however. “I do honestly condemn what he did,” Lovejoy said, “But I believe his purpose was a
good one; that so far as his own motives before God were concerned, they were honest and
truthful.”107
Lovejoy was immediately met with indignant reactions from his Southern colleagues. As
soon as he concluded his address, Representative Elbert S. Martin of Virginia rose and declared
that if Lovejoy came within the Old Dominion’s borders, he would be strung up just as surely as
John Brown was. Martin made it a point to say he was declaring this as a Virginian.
Responding to this overt threat with equanimity, Lovejoy simply responded, “I have no doubt of
it.”108
Clearly the attempt, however sincere, to thread a rhetorical needle between praise for
Brown’s ideals and condemnation of his actions did not mollify a South that felt itself under
siege by hordes of abolitionists intent on invading.
The Northern political establishment (read: the Republican Party) was thrust onto the
defensive. The 1860 Republican campaign was dominated by the attempt to separate the party
from John Brown for the sake of winning the election while keeping the Union intact.
Misreading their fire-eating Southern opponents, Northern political leaders still operated under a
belief the spreading political and cultural conflagration could be quelled by sectional
107
Owen Lovejoy, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives, Apr. 5, 1860. West Virginia Department of
History and Culture. Accessed Aug. 14, 2015. http://www.wvculture.org/history/jbexhibit/lovejoyspeech.html
108
Ibid.

Miller /53
compromise. Many Northern leaders did not seem to truly listen as “southern ultras made their
determination to withdraw from Lincoln’s republic all too plain.”109
William Seward tried to distance himself from Brown as the May, 1860, Republican
convention neared. The presumptive front runner for the nomination, he wrote that “charitable
natures” would concede John Brown’s convictions, but his efforts had been “an act of sedition
and treason…and was destructive of human happiness and human life.”110
These words would
not be enough to allay Southern fears…or even Northern fears that Seward was electable. Seen
as too radical, Seward lost the nomination to an unexpected contender.
The eventual Republican nominee was Abraham Lincoln. Like Seward, however,
Lincoln found himself trying to plant John Brown firmly in a grave of the past even before the
Republican convention. During an address at the Cooper Institute in New York, Lincoln hit
directly at the Southern assertion that Republican doctrine would lead to more John Browns. He
flatly denied it, and went on to add that John Brown’s effort was “peculiar.” In fact, Lincoln
maintained, it was “so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it
could not succeed.”111
Speaking again at New Haven, Conn., in March of 1860, he pointed out
that John Brown was not a Republican. Nor, Lincoln maintained, has anyone “implicated a
single Republican in that Harpers Ferry enterprise.”112
These denunciations failed to calm the
turbulent tsunami of panic washing across Southern shores.
Despite the best efforts of some Northern political leaders and The Valley Spirit, praise
for John Brown was widespread, perhaps most predictably in the community most affected by
109
Egerton, 289.
110
William H. Seward, “The State of the Country.” The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry
Raid. Ed. By John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 211.
111
Abraham Lincoln, Address at Cooper institute, Speeches and Writings 1859-1865. (New York: The Library of
America, 1989), 125.
112
Abraham Lincoln, Speech at New Haven, Conn., Speeches and Writings 1859-1865. (New York: The Library of
America, 1989), 143.

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