continued from post #44
After the Harpers Ferry raid and Brown was being tried, many tried to separate themselves from Brown at the beginning. But the Transcendentalists would began their work of making Brown a Christ-like figure. And it would be their make over that would catch like fire among the North.
Quotes are from (John Brown Abolitionist, David S. Reynolds)
"Joshua Giddings, the Ohio Republican who had met Brown on a number of occasions, wanted to publicize the fact that the Virginia plan never came up during these meetings....Salmon P. Chase, the Republican governor of Ohio, assumed an attitude of condescending pity....He conceded that he had once donated money toward Brown's Kansas effort, but that was his only tie to Brown....Pity also characterized the response of Henry Ward Beecher, the period's leading antislavery preacher....I disapprove of his mad and feeble schemes."
"Given this avalanche of attacks on John Brown--from Democrats, from Southerners, and from Republicans--where did the overwhelming approval that the North later showered on Brown come from? Who kept alive his reputation long enough for sympathy to take root? Once more we must look to the Concord-Boston network of Brown supporters affiliated with Transcendentalism. " (p. 363)
"Emerson also wanted Brown to be rescued....But Emerson implemented an even more important form of rescue: a metaphorical rescue, one that plucked Brown from the obloquy that assaulted him from all sides." (p. 363)
"By the late 185O's, Emerson was widely regarded as America's leading intellectual....When Emerson spoke, America listened." (p. 364-365)
"...Emerson's startling description of John Brown: 'That new saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of men into conflict and death,--the new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross." (p. 366)
Then after the hanging of John Brown...
"At a service held in Concord, Massachusetts, on the day of John Brown's hanging, Henry David Thoreau declared that Brown embodied 'transcendent moral greatness. Thoreau rhapsodized, 'Almost any noble verse may be read, either as his elegy or his eulogy'; Brown was 'one of those rare cases of heroes and martyrs for which the ritual of no church has provided." (p. 402)
"Ten days later Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee expressed a very different sentiment in a speech before the U.S. Senate as it prepared to investigate the Harpers Ferry raid. Johnson announced, 'I want these modern fanatics who have adopted John Brown as their Christ and their cross, to see what their Christ is....This old man Brown was nothing more than a murderer, a robber,a thief, and a traitor'." (p.402)
"For Thoreau, speaking at a memorial service he had organized with Emerson and Alcott, Brown was on the level of Christ and other exalted beings....Thoreau read verses from Andrew Marvell and Aytoun's 'Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers.' Alcott read Plato and an ode he had written for the occasion. Emerson read Brown's speech to the Virginia court and selections from his prison letters. Others read statements made by Solomon and Jesus Christ. " (p.402)
"For Andrew Johnson, comparison's between John Brown and Jesus--or anyone else good, for that matter --were absurd and dangerous....the future vice president of the United States launched a diatribe against Brown, whose true colors, he argued, were revealed at Pottawatomie in May 1856..." (p.402-403)
"One important convert to his (Brown's) side was Garrison (William Lloyd Garrison). As a committed pacifist who had once quarreled sharply with Brown, Garrison was not easy to win over...In the first few weeks after the raid, most of the pieces he ran in his paper were harsh indictments reprinted from other papers,....Garrison himself called the raid a 'well-intended but sadly misguided effort,' a 'wild and futile' enterprise. Despite his qualms over tactics, Garrison was a leading promoter of Brown's personal qualities." (p.404)
The North, due to its moving away from Bible believing Christianity, would embrace this Christ-like Brown. See how much religion played a role in that war?
Stranger
