American Experience; John Brown's Holy War; Interview with historian Margaret Washington, 3 of 5

john brown wanted to make money he wanted to have a solvent family he wanted to be able to not worry about money and he spent some time trying to put himself in that position he was very successful at it in a huge family and all in all nineteen children which had to be fed and taken care of so what he was torn he had this higher commitment that was part of him that was part of the soul and he had a deep love for his family for his wife his wives and because he was married twice and his children are what he made a commitment and that commitment was something that he was able to work at while he was trying to make money and he could do it in all kinds of ways to work an anagram railroad meet with african americans talk to them about his plans but all the time as he was trying to make money he was thinking about abolition and it's something i never

stop thinking about as he became less and less successful it's almost as though at some point he made up his mind i'm not going to be a successful businessman i'm not going to make money if i make my mark is going to be as an abolitionist and it's as though once you made that decision then if he went out in full force but it was it was an incredible thing because he did try to make money and he tried very hard and it was as though all the weight he probably side was god is trying to tell me something that this is not my calling my calling is to do what i can the in bondage actor was yours or for alex browning says now that in fact he's not being able to live up to

what you know what's interesting is that you know why would you name is that some of the videos twenty years before he is able to really get his life if i saw it was at the holes in what john brown makes this john brown makes this vow after the murder of elijah lovejoy to fight slavery with everything he's got on one level he keeps that how he does fight slavery but he also has a family to take care of so this is one thing that keeps them occupied and one might say that interferes with his real commitment on the other hand there's so many personal tragedies that enter into his life that fight everything has this lutheran but yet he gets help that you can see that president assad isn't that

it hurts were walking this creates for them the death and the lives of luxury is monumentally important in france like us and this has been the debt and he lives alone to lay this monumentally important and john brown's life and in his vow to do whatever he can to end slavery but it doesn't happen right away brown is embroiled in all kinds of legal problems with his ten in business he's trying to support his family and this has to come first he has to take care of his family he is after all a patriarch

there's also the situation of his personal life the tragedies that take place in his own life the fact that a number of his children die and down he's not sure what he's going to do in this situation he knows that he has a calling beyond simply taking care of his family and trying to start a business that same time he is the man who takes pride in being a man and in the manhood which was something that he was always very very adamant about in his relations with african american man as a man who is very important and as a man could he not see after his family could he not attempt to provide the best for them but as a man and as a man who believes in the bible and the declaration of independence which he was fond of saying could be ignore this calling which he maintained was directly from god

it's been to pay and the olivier was something beautiful i literally because he talked about his hand in dan brown said i believe in the bible and the declaration of independence and his belief in the declaration of independence something he took very seriously as seriously as he took his belief in the bible and the wars of the declaration of independence we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal was part of his creed

and it really framed his attitude toward people of african descent i think those words meant more to john brown than they meant to thomas jefferson because he took them beyond rhetoric and philosophy he took them into practical daily living and he took them to your elbow and in setting up that community it was the desperation independent said he had in mind and he wanted it very clear that he saw african americans as equals but for brown was unusual for a lot of them to really deal with are think that's a thing now cisco is

less diverse it's important to understand what an anomaly john brown was during his time as far as his attitude toward people of african descent was considered because john brown considers himself a completely egalitarian and it was very important for him to practice egalitarianism on every day level this was not america of the nineteen century america in the nineteenth century was a very racist society old north and south african americans were caricaturist of people they were characterized as the phones and minstrels ah they were the butt and jokes in american society and even the abolitionists as anti slavery as they were the majority of them did not see african americans as equals the majority

of them and this was something that african americans complain about all the time the majority of the abolitionists were willing to work for the end of slavery in the south but they were not willing to work to end discrimination in the north and much of the legal aspect of society in the north that was aimed toward african americans very few of them can vote and they couldn't ride in the same public finances with whites in a separate seating hundreds steamboats but these issues he's heard daily issues that african americans were confronted with that the abolitionists did not want to deal with what john brown wasn't like that or ham practicing egalitarianism was a first step toward ending slavery and african americans who came in contact with him now this immediately he made it very clear that he saw more different he didn't

make this clear by saying it you made it clear though when he did this they oppose that was the signal a written statement we have about vincent horn again well isn't enough actors and that i think we get a really great insight into the personality job that we can hear you know the description of what happens and it just creates the importance of what you know what this season one reason that ok you know i mean you say what it happened there's no better example of john brown's attitude of egalitarianism toward african americans then the experience that

writer richard henry dana observes when he gets lost in the adirondacks and wanders on the brown's household john brown invites i'm a historic center where it'll just start to get it this is one clear view jeff brady when john brown and white stain into his home he invites him and for dinner and there's the family the air and he

serves them venison and one of the things that didn't notice is is that the african americans in our elbow there's a couple they're who are invited to sit down with him and dino observes that first of all they sit at the table with the white people were brown and his family again and his companion us has never done in american society and even though dana himself as an anti slavery man he's appalled at this once more brow introduces the couple as mr and mrs not fannie and joe but mr and mrs so and so i'm giving them the respect that you would give to any white person as far as dna is concerned and it doesn't understand this he doesn't understand and why john brown would create this situation of perfect

egalitarianism between whites and blacks or maybe also you know it's kind of the idea that this is the only piece of riley we have this is just a coincidence the waters to you know destroy you know it's a coincidence chesney it's so exciting for me and this meeting is the only record we have of the kind of attitude john brown hands on race we know what he did at harpers ferry we know that he was a friend of henry highland garnet and frederick douglass but then so was william lloyd garrison so was wonderful ups so when many of the abolitionists and yet we can not equate the same kind of egalitarianism

that they were dealing with when the taliban had because we have this example and it's a completely chance situation that gives us insight into the kind of man john brown was and how different his attitude toward african americans was compared to his compatriots in the anti slavery movement was a kid so dana gives us the opportunity with his chance meeting to see john brown on what was probably a daily basis and it gives us an insight into his attitude toward african americans and gives an insight into how different his attitude was toward african americans how different was as compared to someone who had the same political attitude towards slavery as a brown but

yet had a completely different social attitude toward african americans and whites and he gives us a sense of i don't know what else to call it but the racism of the society that you can have an abolitionist you can have to abolitionists who had a completely different social attitude toward the place of african americans in american society this is it to sit at the table as a shocking the undercurrents too has acknowledged that such an insightful serve it at the time maybe a

humidor and i'm thinking man so unfair to receive the times you know i have to say this that there were other abolitionists would've done right phillips went on there are probably already there are all right now but he certainly to regain its still surprising analysis a surprising moments now is the abolitionists yeah i had a question i could also speak to the difference between the movement has so many layers john brown really represents the top echelon of the abolitionist movement in that sense i think that's fascinating in that this is a movement to end slavery and yet you about all these layers arm where did john brown at the top and freestyle is at the bottom and someone like richard henry bain ad in

between and is only at the higher echelon that you get individuals who are really egalitarian its own and the best example course is the republican party but it's interesting also is that brown at this point isn't it that's right even know which is also interesting i know if they know so many reactions to talk about brown is from the sixth letters a letter writing these riots in his son writing his own there doesn't of the john brown is really when he runs across his farmhouse john brown is an abolitionist he's a dedicated abolitionist but he's not in the upper echelon of the abolitionist movement

so he is not what he becomes to us and to see this experience and this phenomenon to some like richard henry dana to see this social mission on air is really had since more than absurd it's horrific to him and it gives a sense of john brown and his egalitarianism it gives us a sense of what the abolitionist movement is and isn't it is anti slavery it isn't an egalitarian and it also gives us a sense of the absolutism of john brown he is anti slavery he's an abolitionist he believes in the declaration of independence that all men are created equal if you're equal pay equal you sit at the table

together you break bread together who knows a horror of horror as you might even marry each other and that of course was the big bogeyman of the nineteenth century was the idea and this is not only in the so it was in the north were sold and then the south because the south happened but in the north i was summoned people are tremendously afraid of that if you break bread with african americans the next thing that would happen was you might marry them what was probably wouldn't bother john brown it would've been the natural course of egalitarianism that you've dispelled these differences between human beings this of course would have been ahora to most abolitionists because this is what they were accused of constantly and it was the one the opprobrium that they insist that was not what they were about

to feel that that's you are right the principals be and douglas and john brown meat in a way it probably to john brown conjure up all the images of what an enslaved person could become because douglas of course had been born in bondage and yet when john brown and douglas met john brown met a man who was as cole toured articulate had written a narrative had traveled to england had moved to rochester and started a newspaper was an editor enrollment that time was a tan and douglas describes him as

not all that impressive except for his ideas and his eyes haunted douglas and then once they talked douglas went back to rochester and he when he wrote he put together the conversation in the eyes and he said that this was the most intense man he had never met and the most committed and it was as though there was this mutual attraction between the two although them felt that they were thoroughly committed i think john brown signed and douglas the possibilities of african american men if they could get their freedom end up with john brown probably imagined an entire cell full of frederick douglass is so there was this sense of possibility and they're probably really encourage brown in his ideas and of course it was at that point that he felt that he could the vault his plans his long

range plans to frederick douglass which he did and it was that from then on the two became very close friends for those was on my head and bahrain rest at the same time i'm suspicious of his tactical a suspicious of his plans in his impressive to the latin grammy well at the same time you know maybe going to well douglas admired brown for his abolitionism his plants he looked upon askance it wasn't so much that he thought they would work it was where where the people going to come from how was it going to be implemented where was that money going to come from all the practical

aspects of getting this plan calling other than just an idea and they headed by bin but at that time that was probably thought about john brown was you know a little bit off while at the same time admiring what he wanted to do and be an incredibly impressed i'll with his firmness and his commitment he was not impressed with the idea of what this plan could accomplish he is such a passionate brothers all cereals as you know iran has dominated the ground on everything together quarrelling come on his nomination well douglas didn't want to come under brown's nomination under brown's influence the public be better word but he couldn't help it because i think this was the case with a lot of people who met brown sort of wondered

you know is this man for real at the same time there was this magnetism because of his commitment because he was extremely articulate and because douglas letters people so much that he wanted them freed by any means necessary as far as that was was concerned the most important way to work for black freedom was political that was the point he was at when he met john brown before it was moral suasion now his political so if he was not and raptured with the book with which he was not enraptured with john brown's idea that he was enraptured with the man and as much as he didn't want to come under john brown's influence he did for what reason brown would leave him alone because just like douglas saw something in brown brown sought even more in douglas and so he sent him letters back and forth and whenever brown came up with an idea or want

to expand on a subterranean plant it was douglas and he went to that's interesting because he not gone at first and it was god matt holt far more than douglass the spouse to the kind of resistance the john brown was trying to foment but for brown the immediate leader a black people was frederick douglass he he knew that right away so he wanted this relationship and douglas himself was pulled toward ground we're all it's big that was couldn't follow john brown because it was a kind of suicide it was also and some ways kind of a test of leadership thought it would be that was also had a kind of arrogance about him

douglas was a leader and douglas had a very strong sense of nationalism i mean black nationalism and he also had a very strong sense of responsibility to like people he took his role as a leader very seriously he also touches on intelligence very seriously and part of this poll has influence that brown had on douglas so encouraged him to want to go but his own mind his own practical sense mayhem know that you couldn't do this that this was going to fail made at this un won't say a version of that and i think that dallas where you're saying it i might lose in the middle of the fact that it was

suicide it is in the us people are the source of that that's also a dozen years a level same of this i guess another way of st john browne this is true for us as he was douglas cannot go in his own mind because he saw the venture as doomed to failure and if he saw many people dying that was to not want to die there was had a cause to fight for and to live for and living to fight that cause was more important than dying forward for douglas now

maybe for john brown it was more important to die fr it's professor douglas his leadership was more important than his death and so he could not do it and on the one hand douglas afterwards felt bad that he was not the air and public the bottom sell for someone of a coward on the other hand if we take as much courage to say i'm not going to this man whom he admired so much to admit that he couldn't do that he could make that kind of sacrifice so that in itself to the kind of courage for john brown we didn't even take that out ok so that in itself took a kind of courage he's been in the parade