Letters to John Brown from Abolitionist Women Writing about Socrates

Brown receives multiple letters in his Charles Town, VA jail cell from abolitionist women

This video clip comes from a John Brown: America250 Roundtable discussion with environmental psychologist Shawndel Fraser, M.A., and historian Margaret Washington, Ph.D., John Brown and Abolitionist Women, hosted by John Brown biographer Louis A. DeCaro Jr., Ph.D. In this clip, DeCaro introduces the discussion with a couple of quotes from letters to Brown, both comparing him to Socrates. The letters are from abolitionists Mary Stearns and Francis Ellen Watkins, writing to Brown in his jail cell, awaiting execution in Charlestown, VA, 1859.

TRANSCRIPT:

I want to share a couple things as a way of kind of spinning off into our wonderful discussion and I wanted to share and about two letters that were written to John Brown while he was waiting to die in a Virginia jail cell. The first is written by Mary Stearns.

Mary Stearns writes Brown a Letter referring to Socrates

And you're going to hear more about the Stearns, but Mary Stearns was the wife of one of John Brown's leading and most warm supporters, George Luther Stearns. And Mary Stearns writes to him on November 8th, 1859. This is what she says personally. She says,

"Dear brave old friend, you can never die. The gallows seem seems no longer a degradation since your example has so hallowed and glorified it. For the truth's sake, I can let you die, but for our affection's sake, we would put our arms around you and hold you here forever."

Then she includes, and this is really what I want to get to, she includes a a a part a stanza of a poem that was written in 1845 by a Scottish poet named Charles McKay. And the poem is called Eternal Justice but she particularly quotes from the poem in regard to Socrates and that and I won't read the whole stanza, but it says:

“Cheerily to and fro, trust to the impulse of thy soul and let the poison flow

today abhored tomorrow adored so round and round we run

and ever the truth comes uppermost and ever is justice done.”

And so she sends that to John Brown. So this is now there are other abolitionist references to John Brown being made. In fact, this is probably inspired by Emerson and others who see John Brown as a kind of Socrates.

Francis Ellen Watkins also refers to Socrates

But this woman along with the African-American poet Francis Ellen Watkins does the same thing. Now two different places. Francis is writing from Indiana and she writes a few weeks later only days before John Brown is hanged November 25th and she says this and it's such a moving—I wish I could read the whole letter—but she says

“Although the hands of slavery throw a barrier between you and me and it may not be my privilege to see you in your prison house; Virginia has no bolts or bars through which I dread to send you my sympathy in the name of the young sold from the warm clasp of a mother's arms to the clutches of a libertine or a proflegate in the name of the slave mother her heart rocked to and fro by the agony of her mournful separations.”

I thank you that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race. You have rocked the bloody Bastile, and I hope that from your sad fate, great good may arise to the cause of freedom. Already from your prison has come a shout of triumph against the giant sin of our country. The hemlock is distilled with victory when it is pressed to the lips of Socrates. Your martyr grave will be a sacred altar upon which men will record their vows of undying hatred to that system which tramples on men and bids defiance to God.

Those are the beautiful words of Francis Ellen Watkins and you heard also the affections of Mary Stearns, both of them not only citing Socrates but presenting that to John Brown and saying this is how we see you and I think it's a a wonderful way of kicking off our discussion.

(Glory glory hallelujah, glory glory hallelujah, glory glory hallelujah, his truth is marching on…), outro music thanks to Barbara McGavern and Guy Wolff via The John Brown Project.