Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

Though, in no way intended to be a comprehensive history of the times or even of John Brown, this fairly quickly read book again confirms the predominance of the slavery issue in mid-19th century America, often driven by men of fanatical, moralistic outlooks with a predisposition for egregious acts of violence in support of or in opposition to slavery. It is indisputable that the institution of slavery and the treatment of African-Americans have cast a pall across almost all of American history; but it was becoming obvious by the 1830s that American social and political institutions would not be able to contain this huge fault line in America. The author makes a strong case that it was John Brown's failed attempt to lead a slave rebellion at Harper's Ferry in Oct, 1859, that propelled the unstable North/South standoff to the point of no return, sparking a four-year conflagration killing and wounding over one million Americans, surely the most horrific, detestable experience in American history.Brown, born in rural Conn in 1800 into meager circumstances, was a tough, imposing, uncompromising abolitionist, who after frequently moving across the old Northwest region and producing a huge family, found himself swept into the ferocious, "bleeding Kansas" conflict in the mid-1850's. There, now seeing himself as a captain in a fearsome crusade, he led a small band of men in several bloody skirmishes inflicting terrible retribution on pro-slavery forces while seeing his own men, including his own sons, paying terrible prices. But Brown was becoming a mesmerizing national figure, admirably known as "Osawatomie Brown," a darling of Northeastern abolitionists though he had a bounty on his head.Although the author provides some details concerning Brown's movements among wealthy supporters and sympathizers, his fund-raising, buying and staging supplies, trying to recruit conscripts, and the like, the steps that he took to conceive of a plan to foment a slave rebellion within Africa, Brown's term for the South, are actually quite murky. Beyond logistics, the bigger question is what was Brown actually trying to accomplish? His plan was no more than a collection of haphazard bits and pieces that had absolutely no chance of succeeding; yet, it is not obvious that Brown, a driven fanatic, realized this until abject failure stared him in the face. The author describes in fairly careful detail every misstep that Brown and his men took in the days surrounding the capture of the armory at Harper's Ferry and the loss of it within thirty hours to an overwhelming force resulting in the death of most of his men, including two sons.The murky "facts" of Brown's half-baked assault on Harper's Ferry are almost an irrelevancy to the larger story. No one could have possibly anticipated how this audacious moment in time would resonate throughout the nation. However, even so, had John Brown died in the Harper's Ferry incident with his men, it seems likely that the incident would have receded in the public's mind. Or, had he been declared insane and locked away from the public, again, it is likely he would have been largely forgotten. But that is not what happened. Who could have predicted that Brown could literally recast himself as the conscience of the nation?Brown, though badly wounded in the assault by the US military, comported himself with immense dignity after his capture, continuing as he had done while holding hostages in the armory. There is no doubt that Brown recognized immediately that he had been presented with a last chance to get his message to the public. He knew instinctively that his life would not be spared for long. He was patient and accommodating with the press as he forcefully made quite cogent points that slavery could hardly exist in a nation founded on fundamental liberties and stood in sharp contrast to the morality central to religious precepts. His entire approach, as well as the moral force of his arguments, attracted many of leading intellectuals of the day, including Thoreau and Emerson. Resisting efforts at clemency, rescue, or an insanity defense, Brown seemed to sense that accepting his own death with steely resolve would make the greatest and most lasting statement.As the author notes, if there was any doubt in Southern minds of the existence of resolute individuals in the North who would stop at nothing to eradicate the Southern system, Harper's Ferry ended that fantasy. Southerners stiffened their resolve against the North and towards individuals who even hinted at questioning their way of life. Even though Lincoln was a moderate, his election added to the disaffection already at a fever pitch, essentially lighting the match to the powder keg that Harper's Ferry represented.John Brown is a difficult man to pin down. It is almost impossible to understand how a man who led such an erratic life ended up at Harper's Ferry. His single-mindedness, determination, imperturbability, and willingness to endure personal hardship explain to some degree; but there are hints that Brown suffered from some form of insanity. It almost seems inevitable that the highly discordant events of the times would produce "a" John Brown. Yet, it was "the" John Brown who emerged, who became notorious overnight, remaining so 150 years later. It was he, regardless of how inadvertent or unlikely that may have been, who sliced open the festering slavery wound in the body politic, forcing the nation to see that the wound could no longer be bandaged.Perhaps it is best left, as does the author, to let Frederick Douglass have the last words regarding the significance of John Brown. Speaking in 1881 at Storer College, a black teacher's college founded in 1867 in Harper's Ferry, Douglas acknowledged African-Americans' and his immense debt to John Brown: "His zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine - it was as the burning sun to my taper light. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him." Brown's message had such moral resonance that, as Douglass says, Southerners "could kill him, but they could not answer him." The South had one last gasp: "they drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not Brown's, the lost cause of the century."The story of John Brown almost transcends the book. Even though Brown to some extent remains an enigma, the author tells the amazing story of how one man and a raggedy band of twenty men made America realize it was living a lie in regards to liberty and equality for all men. No mist or haze for Brown: "against truth and light, legislative enactments were mere cobwebs - the pompous emptiness of human pride - the pitiful out-breathings of human nothingness," as so said by Douglass.Addendum:The author does not specifically address the question of whether the John Brown affair launched the Civil War - but it does lurk. He convincingly demonstrates that John Brown loomed large in the nation's consciousness at a time when gasoline did not need to be poured on the fragile North/South standoff. Obviously, Brown did not explicitly kick off the War, because the Southern states did not secede until over a year after Harper's Ferry. But there seems to be considerable evidence that the South ratcheted up its awareness that abolitionists were coming in some manner, either legislatively or militarily. The South's overreaction to Lincoln's election confirms that. Of all of the Republicans, Lincoln may have been less hostile to the South than any of them. Clearly, he had no intention of ending slavery.Northerners were completely wary of the so-called Slave Power - the disproportionate power that the South had at the Federal level. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the fiasco in Kansas, and the Dred Scott decision - all added to their feelings. But there were no calls to invade the South, or anything like that. On the other hand, the South was already prone to call for seceding conventions and the like long before John Brown. The South had its "fire-eaters." Any dispassionate examination of what started the Civil War would quickly realize that it was the South who wanted a confrontation of some sort with the North over the slavery issue. That is the context in which the John Brown affair must be examined in terms of its relevancy in kicking off the War.John Brown was, if anything, an emotional event. It fed directly into the hypersensitivity - the paranoia - of the Southern mindset. The South basically went into a mode after the Brown affair of looking for that one action or event that would confirm that the abolitionists were coming. And for them, that was the election of Lincoln, even though they misconstrued his intentions. That is what the author suggests. I think he is correct. Brown took the nation and especially the South to a point from which it could not return - to a point where all that could happen was an explicit turn to separation from the North and all that would follow.Of course, the causes to the Civil War were mostly long-term and deeply rooted in American society. But in 1850s there was steady increase in tensions, which seemed to culminate in the John Brown affair.

Tony Horwitz has written a thoroughly researched and eminently readable account of the life of one of history's most complicated and vexing characters. John Brown was a visionary hero ahead of his time. He was also a radical outlaw willing to match violence for violence and even take life in cold blood. He was also a seriously flawed human being whose inflexible nature and single-minded devotion to his cause and utter inability to manage business affairs left his wife and brood of children in near poverty and very likely imperiled his own mission. There is simply no way to reconcile this singularly complex figure into any of the neat packages history has tried to stuff him into - whether hero, madman or villain. Yet this fanatical hero-villain, in the course of a blundered raid, lit the spark that ended slavery and exploded the "Southern Way of Life".After a brief prologue setting the stage for the raid on Harper's ferry, Horwitz returns to the beginning to trace what is known - and what Brown himself reported - of Brown's childhood and early life. Brown was raised by a strict Calvinist who espoused hard work, piety, strident punishment of sins, and the equality of all people, including blacks - a radical idea at the time, even among abolitionists. John, left motherless at age eight by his mother's death in childbirth, seems to have emulated his father in both temperament and action.Early in this life, Brown "consecrated" himself to the cause of ending slavery, and he enlisted his wife and sons as a sort of independent army. While his business affairs careened up and down, Brown's passion, determination and independence brought him the attention - and financial support - of wealthy Abolitionist backers from Gerrit Smith to William Lloyd Garrison.Brown's initial cause was keeping Kansas a free state during the fierce "Bleeding Kansas" period when both pro- and anti-slavery interests were pumping settlers into the new territory. Brown believed, rightly, that there was too little check on the pro-slavery forces who were using violence and intimidation to enforce their way. Brown came to believe that the non-violent response of the anti-slavery movement was inadequate, so in the middle of the night Brown, several of his sons and some allies abducted, killed and apparently mutilated six men believed to be important leaders of the pro-slavery faction. Brown and his allies both denied responsibility and claimed self-defense, but Horwitz dissects these defenses and concludes that the killings were likely carried out to inspire fear and deter future violence. Such an act could justifiably be labeled terrorism, but then, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. But regardless of the effect on Kansas, the effect on Brown's men was devastating. In addition to some physical wounds, some of the participants suffered mental breakdowns and life-long impairment. Brown himself, however, was unscathed and ready to do further battle.Following the massacre, Brown, now an outlaw and a wanted man, retreated back east where he carried on his crusade in various forms while planning his attack on "Africa", Brown's code word for the slave-holding South. While imploring money from his benefactors and recruiting soldiers to his cause, Brown spoke of raids along the Southern border to free slaves (who would, it was believed, join Brown's band), strike fear into the hearts of slave owners, and make slave holding economically unviable. But little by little, through both coded references and open admission, Brown began to make it clear that something bigger was in the works, although what the something was, and what was the ultimate aim, remained rather muddy even as Brown and his rag-tag band of diverse followers began the march on Harper's Ferry.Often throughout his life, Brown proclaimed that he received his orders from God. If that were true, then God is a pretty lousy general. Horwitz presents a masterful portrayal of the raid on Harper's Ferry, the bungling involved, the sheer luck that it succeeded as well as it did, and the tragedy along the way. Inadequate men, lack of communication and poor coordination of supplies hampered efforts from the beginning. An early and unintended shooting of a free black man (ironically, by white men seeking to liberate blacks, as Horwitz points out) was an ill omen and aroused the anger of the town. Brown failed to take into account the arrival of a train on the bridge to Harper's Ferry, and he wildly underestimated the support he would receive from both the townsfolk and the freed slaves (what few slaves he actually freed, that is). Furthermore, even once he captured the arsenal, Brown failed to use any of the federal arms or ammunition.But as big a failure as the raid seemed to be, the aftermath of the raid brought much of the success Brown appeared to be seeking. Brown comported himself with composed dignity and did not flinch at the prospect of death. He willingly, even eagerly, met and spoke with all who sought him out (except his own wife, that is), especially pro-slavery advocates. Through inspired and eloquent speeches, writings and conversations, Brown sought to propound his vision of a just and equal society without the evils of slavery and oppression. He sought to make Southerners see the error of their ways and convert to Abolition. He largely failed on that count, but he did impress his opponents with his courage and conviction. He also appealed to Northern Abolitionists to bring pressure to bear against the iniquity of slavery.Horwitz speculates - compellingly - that this platform to speak and be heard is what lay beneath the raid all along. Brown could never have expected to hold Harper's Ferry or free very many slaves. And ultimately, despite his violent acts, Brown was too conflicted and ambivalent about using violence to end slavery. Brown claimed not to want to take life, but the one life he could offer was his own. Through his martyrdom, Brown hoped to achieve what he and his meager band of followers could not otherwise achieve. And through is dignity and courage in his final days and his clarion call to the decency of all humans, he did in fact, in many ways, achieve what his violence did not.Wrestling with the morality of the life of John Brown is no easy task. Is violence ever acceptable, even to end a great injustice? What about the men Brown lured into his fanatical plot without fully informing them of his plans - was it right to make martyrs of them too? What about free black porter Heyward Shepherd and the other innocent victims? And what right did Brown have to make his wife a widow and leave his children fatherless? Furthermore, this wrestling has to take into account the conditions and realities of Brown's time. It's easy now to point to the actual end of slavery as justification, but Brown had no way of knowing when or if slavery might end or how his actions might affect those bound in slavery. Following Brown's raid, life for slaves got a good deal harder, as slave owners became even more fearful of rebellion. Had the Civil War not ended slavery, Brown's actions would have been no favor to blacks bound in that "peculiar institution".These issues and many more will never be neat and clean, but Horwitz does an excellent job of wrestling with them. Horwitz rules out the madman option, but wavers somewhat between the hero and villain, ultimately landing on the hero side. However, he pulls no punches and makes no attempt to tidy up history or present Brown as an unblemished hero. Horwitz closely examines the historical facts, dissects them this way and that, and paints a painfully honest and detailed portrait of villain-hero John Brown against the ugly backdrop of the times in which he lived. Highly recommended for all adults as well as kids who are mature enough and ready to wrestle with weighty, ambiguous moral issues.

With @150 Civil War books in my library, this was the first one that I read that was solely about John Brown's raid in Harper's Ferry. And, being a fan of Tony Horwitz, it did not disappoint. There is a wealth in detail about Brown's life, his previous actions out west and his efforts to generate interest (and funding) from northeners who had abolitionis tendencies. The planning for the raid, the actual event and its aftermath get a thorough coverage. It is also, like Horwitz's other books, a joy to read and includes numerous photos of the participants and locations of events.

I'd heard a lot about the legendary John Brown through reading Civil War books so decided to read this book dedicated to the man himself and his actions at Harpers Ferry. The story is well told at a good pace and held my attention well. Would recommend.

This is a great book. If you (li,ke me) love Horwitz' books then you might be disappointed. This is not a history/travel book like his others. This is a pure history book. It is still a fantastic book and I enjoyed reading it very much, but it is not in the same vein as Horwitz' other books. I recommend it, but keep in mind that it is a bit different from his other books.

A well researched and thoroughly interesting book about the flawed John Brown and how he amazingly could be said to have started the American Civil War.Reminds me somewhat of the Tea Party and arguing without factual evidence, just faith. Quite religious in its views and very American. An Excellent Read.