Who John Brown Wasn’t

White enslavers despised Brown’s views on freedom, and white abolitionists didn’t want him eclipsing Lincoln

This interview excerpt is from a recent filming trip to NYC where we met Dr. Louis A. DeCaro Jr. in Central Park near the Frederick Douglass statue. Lou talked to us about who John Brown was—and wasn’t, why the song “John Brown’s Body” was rewritten into the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and finally, he talked about about who Malcom X was, and a little about his place in history.

The interview was one of the final interviews needed for our documentary film, Pushing the Rock, for which we are currently conducting a crowdfunding campaign. Lou began talking about who John Brpown was by talking about who he wasn’t.

John Brown wasn’t a terrorist

Well, yeah. I think before we talk about who John Brown was, I’d like to talk about who he wasn’t. And just to be very succinct about it, John Brown wasn’t a terrorist. He’s been labeled—especially in the late 20th century and even in the early part of this century—as a terrorist. But historically speaking, he was a counter-terrorist.

He did use violence, but he used violence in self-defense and also to subvert terrorist violence—widespread terrorist violence taking place in the Kansas Territory. Otherwise, he never used violence unless he was in combat.

John Brown wasn’t a “ne’er-do-well”

John Brown wasn’t a ne’er-do-well terrorist. He wasn’t a ne’er-do-well. He’s often portrayed as a guy who failed so miserably in life, so miserably in business, that the only thing left for him to do was try to become an abolitionist. But that’s simply nonsensical.

He, from the very beginning, wanted to be an abolitionist tycoon. He wanted to be a rich man in business so he could use all his resources to end slavery. That didn’t work out for him, but it was really the circumstances of history that drove him more toward active abolitionism.

And yes, in his life he had business downturns. He did fail in business. But so did a lot of people. There was no national bank—Jackson had destroyed the national bank. There wasn’t a uniform economic situation in that part of the century. And there were no modern-day economic safety nets like limited liability corporations.

He failed in business. He was a bankrupt in Ohio, but a lot of people were bankrupt in Ohio in the 1840s. There was a crash that hit the East Coast, and by the time it reached the western states—which in those days would have been Ohio and Illinois—it really devastated people. By then, John Brown and a lot of others were doing business on credit, and this is what ruined him. The banks couldn’t deliver, and so he failed.

Historians have acted as if John Brown was the only one who failed in business and that he was just miserably a failure. The truth is that he had recovered, and by the late 1840s he was highly sought after as a specialist in fine sheep and wool.

He built a reputation for himself so that he could travel around the Northeast and even into New England—maybe as far down as Virginia—and he could write certificates of quality regarding flocks of sheep. He was even considered one of the three foremost judges of the quality of fine sheep and wool.

So this idea that he was a ne’er-do-well is a lie of historians who pick around the edges of his story and tell the same nonsense over and over again.

John Brown wasn’t “crazy”

John Brown wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t a terrorist, he wasn’t a ne’er-do-well, and he wasn’t crazy. Throughout his whole life, there was never any suggestion that he had insanity. His family thought it was nonsensical.

We know the origin of the “crazy” story. In the 19th century, during his incarceration, his friends and some relatives began to prepare affidavits with the intention of trying to get his death sentence commuted. Even people who didn’t like him but had dealt with him in business—and thought he was a good man despite differences of opinion—even they wrote affidavits essentially all saying he was a “monomaniac,” which isn’t even equivalent to insane.

But in the middle of the 20th century, the Lincoln historians who were hostile to Brown, along with Civil War historians who knew next to nothing about him and were essentially status-quo, Lost Cause people who were protecting the so-called integrity of the South, all ganged up on John Brown. And the insanity issue was one of their favorite points of attack.

That has been pretty much set aside. We know now there’s no substance to it. And yet plenty of people—because the claim trickled down into the broader culture, particularly among white people—will still talk about John Brown being crazy.

The country has work to do

I think what this says about white America, as a moral compass, is really negative. They wouldn’t say that if you were talking about a white guy who went over to Germany in World War II to fight the Nazis. They wouldn’t say that about somebody invested in another struggle they recognized as having value.

But because this involved Black lives, and because John Brown had made a lifetime choice, he was always considered fanatical by people who were even anti-slavery.

We have to understand that this country has always been lukewarm with respect to Black freedoms. So yes, I think it says a lot—really, it says more about the country than it says about the man.