Midnight Rising
John
Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil WarBy Tony Horwitz
pp 365, Picador
Reviewed
by Sue Ellis
A
Photoshopped likeness of John Brown stares from the cover of Midnight Rising. He appears stern,
determined, and weary. After reading Tony Horwitz's biography on the man, I
think the only thing the photo doesn't reveal is a touch of lunacy.
John
Brown was driven to a purpose from an early age by the mentoring of his father,
who taught him that it's wrong for a person to own another human being. That
credo firmed up in his mind as he aged,
coming to fruition when he was an old man—a man who was deemed a failure by the
standards of the day. He was a dreamer and risk-taker who fathered a large
brood whom he then had trouble supporting, and he was the probable cause of his
second wife's fragile mental state, neglecting her as he did for the cause of
abolition.
At
nearly sixty, maybe he figured he'd go all out and try to do one thing right in
his life, to fight for the thing most dear to his heart. But he didn't limit
his ambition to himself; he recruited three sons and a daughter to the cause.
In his usual grand, impractical style, he set upon a plan to lay siege to the
nation's armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. And he didn't let the fact that he
was only able to recruit twenty-one followers discourage him.
Ten men were killed in action, including two of Brown's sons. Brown and six of his followers were later tried and hanged, and five of his followers escaped, including one son, Owen. .
There's no question that the old man was
brave. There's no question that his motivation was pure, but the fact is, he
martyred himself, his young followers and his family, was responsible for
several murders along the way, and instigated a war between the states whose
terrible toll still resonates in the
American psyche, regardless of the fact that it set the wheel of racial
equality in motion. As Horwitz points out, his actions pretty well fit our current
definition of terrorism.
As
with any martyr, Brown gained more fame after his death. The court trial and
subsequent news stories paid tribute to his clearly spoken, unwavering
statement that he was willing to die for his cause. And then he did, without
complaint.
After having read Midnight Rising, I'm not
sure I perceive Brown the same way the author does, but maybe that's the best
thing about biographies that are as well written as Midnight Rising—that we
are left to draw our own conclusions. Brown's daring attack on the slave
holding south was so ill-planned as to be considered daft. That it succeeded,
at least in the broadest terms, speaks to the idea that, for a few of us, our
destiny is preordained.
In
the end, I admire the man and his vision for a constitution unmarred by the
blight of slavery. Not all heroes are successful businessmen, or born with a
pedigree. Brown was an ordinary man who lived his beliefs, treating blacks as
equals and welcoming them into his home. It didn't matter that he arrived to
meet destiny threadbare, a loser whose military strategy was laughable--he had
nonetheless arrived.
From now on, when I run across mention of John
Brown in another venue, I'll remember who he was. Not long after reading Midnight Rising, I read Rick Bragg's
excellent memoir, All Over but the Shoutin', where he utilized Brown to
describe himself and his wild brothers as children:
To
say we were rotten little children would be like saying John Brown was a little
on the impetuous side.
I
liked that sentence a lot, and thanks to Tony Horowitz, I understood exactly
what it meant.