CHAPTER 7

The Madness of Joh Bvozvn

For more titan two months the twenty-one men hid in the cramped attic.They were mosOy idealistic yo~mg men in their twenues, bound togetherduring the tedious waiting by a common hatred of slavery. Now, on Octo-ber 16, 1859. their leader, Old John Brovm. revealed to them his final plan.The group comprised five blacks and s~x~een whites, including three of theold man’s sons, Owen, Oliver, and YVatson. For years Brown had nurturedthe idea of striking a blow against the southern citadel of slavery. Tomorrow.he explained, they would move into Harpers Ferry, Virgima. and capture thetown and its federal arsenal. As they gathered arms. slaves would pour mfrom the surrounding couur_ryside to iota their arm?: Before the local mili-tia had time to orgamze. Brown’s forces would escape to the nearby hills.From there, they would fight a guerilla war until the curse of slavery hadbeen exorcised and all slaves freed from bondage No one among them ques-tioned Brown or his plan.

An anmmn chili filled the air. and a ligiat rain fell as the war partT madeits way down the dark road toward Harpers Ferry. Three men had remainedbehind to handle supplies and arm slaves who took up the fight. A sleepystillness covered the small town nestled in the hills where the Shenandoahioined the Potomac sLxty miles from VCashingmn. DC. It was a region ofsmall farms and relatively few slaves. Most likely, the presence of the arsena!and an armory explains why Brown chose to begin his campaign there.

The attack began without a hitch. Twc raiders cut telegraph lines rtmnmgeast and west from the town. The others seized a rifle works, the armory, andthree hostages, including a local planter descended from the Washingtonfamily. Soon the sounds of gtmfire drew the townspeople from their beds.Amid the confusion, the church bell pealed the alarm dreaded by so manywhites throughout the South--slave insurrection! By late morning thehastily jo~ed militia and armed farmers had trapped Brown and his men inthe engine house of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. One son had beenkilled and another lay dying at his 5ather’s side. Drunken crowds thronged

150

The Madness ~f John Brown 151

John Brown. man of action:After leading thePottawatomie Massacre inKansas in 1856, Brown grewa beard to disguise hisappearance. His easternabolitionist backers wereimpressed with the aura heradiated as a western man ofaction. The image was nothurt by the fact that Browncarried a bowie lmife innsboot and regularly barricadedhimself nights in his hotelrooms as a precannon againstproslavery agents.

the streets crying for blood and revenge. When news of the raid reachedWashington. President Buchanan dispatched federal troops under ColonelRobert E. Lee to put down the insurrecnon.

Tl-arty-six hours after the first shot, John Brown’s war on slavery ended. Byany calculation the raid had been a total failure. Not a sh~gle slave had risen toloin Brown’s army. Ten of the raiders lay dead or dying; the rest had been scat-tered or captured. Mthongh wounded himself, Brown had miraculously escapeddeath. The commander of the assauk force had tried to kill him with his dressSword. but it merely bent double from the force of the blow. Seven other peo-ple had been ldlled and nine more womaded during the raid.

Most historians would agree that the Harpers Ferry raid was to the CivilWar what the Boston Massacre had been to the American Revolution: an in-cendiary event. In an atmosphere of aroused passions, profound suspicions.and irreconcilable differences. Brown and his men put a match to the fuse.Once their deed had been done and blood had been shed. there seemed tobe no drawing back for either North or Sonth. ’The shonts of angry menoverwhelmed the voices of compromise.

152 AFTER TIlE FACT: THE ART OF HISTORICAL DETECTION

From pulpits and public platforms across the North, leading abolitionistsleapt to Brown’s defense. No less a spokesmaxl than Ralph Waldo Emersonpronounced the raider a "saint... whose martyrdom, if it shall be perfected,will make the gallows as g!orious as the cross." Newspaper editor HoraceGreeley called the raid "the work of a madman," for which he had nothingbut the highest admiration. At the same time the defenders of national unionand of law and order generally condemned Brown and his violent tactics.Such northern political leaders as Abraham Lincoin, Stephen Douglas, andWilliam Seward spoke out against Brown. The Republican Party in 1860went so far as to adopt a platform censuring the Harpers Ferry raid.

Moderate northern voices were lost, however, on southern fire-eaters, towhom alI abolitionists and Republicans were potential John Browns. Acrossthe South angry mobs attacked northerners regardless of their views on theslave question. Eve13m~here the specter of slave insurrection fed fears, andthe uproar strengthened the hand of secessionists, who argued that theSouth’s salvation lay in expunging all traces of northern influence.

THE MOTIVES OF A FANATICAnd what of the man who triggered all those passions? Had John Brownforeseen that his quixotic crusade would reap such a whirlwind of violence?On that issue both his contemporaries and historians have been sharply di-vided. Brown himself left a confusing and often contradictory record of hisobjectives. To his men, and to Frederick Douglass, the former slave andblack abolitionist, Brown made clear he intended nothing less than to pro-voke a general slave insurrection. His preparations all pointed to that goal.He went to Harpers Ferry armed for such a task, and the choice of the ar-moW as the raid’s target left little doubt he intended to equip a slave army.But throughout the months of preparation, Brown had consistently warnedthe coconspirators financing his scheme that the raid might tZail. In thatevent, he told them, he still hoped the gesture would so divide the nationthat a sectional crisis would ensue, leading to the destruction of slavery.

From his jail cell and at his trial Brown offered a decidedly contradictoryexplanation. Ignoring the weapons he had accumulated, he suggested that theraid Was intended as an extension of the Underground Railroad work he hadpreviously done. He repeatedly denied any intention to commit violence orinstigate a slave rebellion. "I claim to be here in carrying out a measure I be-lieve perfectly justifiable;" he told a skeptical newspaper reporter, "and not toact the part of an incendiary or ruffian, but to aid those [slaves] suffering greatwrong." To Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, who asked Brownif he expected a slave uprising, the old man replied, "No sir; nor did I wish it.I expected to gather them np from time to time and set them free." In court,with his life hanging in the balance, Brown once again denied aW violent in-tent. He sought only to expand !fis campaign for the ~iberation of slaves.

Brown’s contradictory testimony has provoked much speculation over theman and his motives. Was he being quite rational and calculating in abruptly

The Madness of John Brown 15 3

John Brown. the impractical idealist: "The old idiot--the quicker they hanghim and get ifim out of the way, the better." So wrote the editor of a Chicagopaper to Abrabvan Lincoln. Many conmmporaties shared the view of the cartoonreprinted here. that Brown was a foolish dreamer. Yet Brmvn had other ideas. "Ithink you are fanatical!" exclaimed ane southern bystander after Brmvn had beencaptured. "And I think yon are fanatical." Brown retorted. "’Whom the Godswould desttoy they first made mad,’ and you are mad."

chang~g his story after capture? Certainly, Brown knew how much his mar-tyrdom would enhance the abolitlonist movement. His execution_ he wrotehis wife, would "do vastly more toward advancing the cause I have earnestlyendeavored to promote, than all I have done in my life before." On the otherhand, perhaps Brown was so imbued ~vith his ow{1 righteousness that he de-ceived himself into believing he had not acted the part of"ineendiary or ruf-fian." but orfly meant to aid those slaves "suffering great wrong." "Poor oldman!" commented Republican presidential hopeful Salmon Chase. "Howsadly misled by his own imaginations!"

Yet for every American who saw Brown as either a caleulating insurrec-tionist or a genuine, if self-deluded, martyr, there were those who thoughthim insane. How else could they explain the hopeless assault of eighteenmen against a federal arsenal and the state of Virgmia--where slaves were

154 AFTER ~ FACT: THE ART OF HISTORICAL DETECTION

"not abundant" and where "no Abolitionists were ever known to peep"?Who but a "madman" to quote Greeleyj could have concocted, much Iessattempted, such a wild scheme?

Nor was the issue of John Brown’s sanity laid to rest by his execution orDecember 2. 1859. Brown had become a symbol, for both North and South.of the dimensions of the sectiunal s~ruggle, embodying the issues of thelarger conflict in his own actions. Inevitably, the question of persunal moti-vation becomes bound up in historians’ interpretations of the root causes ofsectional and social conflict. Was Brown a heroic martyr--a white man in aracist society with the courage to lay down his life on behalf of his blackbrothers and the principles of the DecIaration? Or was he an emotionallym~balanced fanatic whose propensity for wanton violence propelled the na-non toward avoidable tragedy?

Dunng the middle years of the twentieth century the view of Brown as anemotional fanatic gained grmmd. John Garraty, in a popular college surveytext. described Brown as so "deranged" that rather than hang him for his"dreadful act .... It would have been far wiser and more :ust to have commir-ted him to an asyhim." Allen Nevins defined a middle ground when he ar-gued that on al~ questmns except slavery, Brow~l could act coherently andrationally. "But on this special question of the readiness of slavery to crumbleat a blow." Nevins thought. "his monomania.., or his paranoia as a modernalierdst [psychoanalyst] would define it. rendered him irresponsible.’"

In 1970 Brown’s academic biographer. Stephen Oates. agreed that inmany ways Brown was not "normal." Yet Oates re:ected the idea tllat insan-ity could either be adequately demonstrated or used in a~y substantive wayro explain Brown’s actions. That Brown had an "excitable temperament" anda single-minded obsession with slavery Oates conceded. He concluded, too.that Brown was egotistical, an overbearing father, an often inept man worndown by disease and suffering, and a revolutionary who believed himselfcalied to his mission by God

But having said all that. Oates demanded that before they dismissed Brownas insane, historians must consider the context of Brown’s actions. To call himinsane. Oates arga~ed. "is to ig~aore the tremendous sympathy he felt for theblack man in America." And, he added. "’to labd him a ’maniac’ out of touchwith ’reality’ is m ignore the piercing insight he had into what his raidwhether it succeeded or whether it failed--would do to sectional tensions."

Given such conflicting views on the question of John Brown’s sanity, itmakes sense ro exan~ne more closely the evidence of his mental state. Themost readily available material and the most promising at first glance, waspresented after the original trial by Brown’s attorney, George Hoyt. As alast-minute s~ratagem, Hoyt submitted nineteen affidavits from Brown’sfriends and acquaintances, purporting to demonstrate Brown’s instability.

Two major themes appear in those affidavits. First, a number of peopletestified to a pronounced pattern of insanity in the Brown family, pamcu-larly on his mother’s side. In addition to his maternal grandmother and nu-merous uncles, aunts, and cousins. Brown’s sister his brother Salmon. his

John Brown. martyr of freedom:John Brown of Ossawatomie. they led him out to die:And io! a poor slave-mother with her livde child pressed nigh,l’hen the bold, blue eye ~ew tender, and the harsh face grew mild,And he stooped between the leering rattles and kissed the Negro’s child!

John Greenleaf YVhitfier based this incident in his poem. "Brova~ of Ossawatorme"(December 185%. on an erroneous newspaper report. Apparently Brown did kissthe child of a white iailor he had befriended. Brown also remarked to the samejailer that "he woNd prefer to be surrounded in his last moments by a poorweeping slave mother with her children," noting that this "would make the pictureat the gallows complete."

first wife, Dianthe. and his sons Frederick and John Jr. were all said to haveshown evidence of mental disorders, Second. some respondents describedcertain patterns of instability" they saw in Brown himself. Almost everyone

AFTER THE FACT: THE ART OF I~STOP~CAL DETECTION

John Brown. the terrorist:Mahala Doyle, the wife of JamesR Doyle, one of the men Brownkilled at Pot*awatomie. testifiedof Brown. "He said if a manstood between him and what heconsidered right, he would takehis life as cooly as he would earhis breakl:ast. His actions showwhat he is. Mwavs restless, heseems never to s~eep. ~/Vi~h an eyelike a snake, he looks like ademon."

agreed he was profoundly religious and that he became agitated over theslavery quesOon. A few traced Brown’s insanity back through his years of re-peated business failures. The "wild and desperate" nature of those businessschemes and the rigidity with which he pursued them persuaded severalfriends of his "unsound" mind and "monomania."

Many old acquaintances thought that Brown’s controversiaI experiences inKansas had urdamged the man. There. in May 1856, proslavery forces had at-tacked the antislavery roxwa of Lawrence. In retaliation. Brown led aband of seven men (including four of his sons in a midrfig~at raid on someproslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. Although the Potcawatomie resl-deiits had taken no part in the attack on faraway Lawrence. Brown’s men. tra-der has orders, took their broadswords and hacked m death five ofthem. That grisly act horrified free-state and proslavery advocates afike. JohnJr., one of Brown’s sons who had not participated m the raid. suffered a ner-vous breakdown from his own personal torment and from the abuse he re-ceived after be’rag thrown into prison. Another of Brown’s sons. Frederick wasmurdered a few months later in the civil war that swiftly erupted in Kansas.

Thus a number of acquaintances testified in 1859 that from the time of thePottawatorrae killings onward. Brown had been mentally deranged.E. N. Sill. an acquaintance of both Brown and bSs father, admitted that he hadonce had considerable sympathy for Brown’s pian to defend antislavery fam-ilies in Kansas. "But £rom his peculiarities," Sill recalled. "I thought Brown

an unsafe man to be co~mnissioned with such a matter." It was S~1I who sug-gested the idea. which A/fen Nevins later adopted, that on the s!avery ques-taon alone Brow~ was insane. "I have no cun6dence in his judgment hamatters appertaining to slavery," he asserted. "I have no ¯

the eotmtry." David King, who talked to Brown after his Kansas expenenee.obsurved that "on the subject of slavery he was crazy" and that Brown sawhimself as "an instrnment m the hands of God to free slaves."

Such tesnmony seems to rapport the view that Harpers Ferry was the out-Come ofinsandty. Yet even then and ever shaee, many people have rejected thatconclusion. Confronted with the affidavits, Governor Henry ~¢Vise of V~rginJathought to have Browr~ examdned by the head of the state’s insane asylm~.Upon reflection he changed his mind. W~se believed Brown perfectly salve andhad even come to admire begrudgingiy the old marts "’indonntable" s~irit. V~seonce described Brown as "’tire ~amest man r ,,

For what it is worth, Brown himself reiected any intimation that he wasanytl~ng but sane. He refused to plead insandty at his trial and insteadadopted the posture of the self-sacrificing revolutionary idealist. For him.s{aTcurY consututed an unethica! and unconstitutional assault of one e!ass afcmzens against another. Under that assault, acts that society deemed tmlaw-ful--dishonestT, murder, theft, or treason--could be justified ha me name ofa l~gher moral)t>

Furthermore. Oates and other historians have attacked the affidavits pre-sented by Hoyt as patently unreliable. Many people bad good reasonto have 8town declared insane. Among those signing the affidavits werefriends and relatives who hoped Governor Wise would spare Brown’s life.Might they not have exaggerated the instances of mental disorders in hisfamily to make their case more conwaacing? Most had not taken Brown’s fa-nancism seriously until l~s raid on Harpers Ferry. That event, as much asearlier abservation, had shaped their opinions. Just as important, none ofthem had any medical training or experience that would qualify them to de-termine with any expertise whether Brown or any member of his Pamilycould be indged insane. Only one affidavit came from a doctor, and likemost physicians of the day, he had no particular competence in psychologi-cal observation.

AIthough it would be foolish co suggest that we in the aventieth centmyare better judges of character than our forebears, it is fair to say that at leastwe have a better clinical tmderstandhag of mental &sorders. Many symptomsthat in the nineteen~ century were lumped together under the term insa~z-!ty have since been identified as a variety of very different diseases, each withits own distinct causes. Among those "crazy" Brown relanves were thosewho, based on the descriptions in the affidavits, may have suffered from se-nility, epilepsy, Addison’s disease, or brain minors. Thus the "’preponder-ance" ofinsanityin Brown’s fa*thly could well have bee a series aftmrelateddisorders. Even if the disorders v)ere related, psychol~ng’sts today still hotlydebate the extent to which psycholog{cal disorders are i~heritable.

AFTER THE FACT: THlg ART OF I~STORICAL DETECTION

The insanity defense also had considerable appeal to political leaders.Moderates from both North and South. seeldng to preserve the Union.needed an argument to soften the divisive impact of Harpers Ferry. If Brownwere declared insane, northern abolitionists could not so easily portrayas a martyr Southern secesslomsts could not treat Brown as typical of allnorthern abolitiomsts. As a resnit, their argument that the South would besafe only outside tlae Union would have far less force. Even antislavery Re-publicans tried to dissociam themselves from Brown’s more radical tactics.During the 1859 congressional elections, the Democrats tried to persuadevoters that Harpers Ferry resulted inevitabIy from the Republicans’ appea! tothe doctrine of "irresistible conflict" and "higher law" abolitionism. To bluntsuch attacks, leading Republicans regularly attributed the raid to Brovaa’s in-sanity.

Clearly, the affidavits provide only the flimsiest basis for judging the con-dition of Brown’s mental health. But some historians have argued that thelarger pattern of Brown’s life demonstrated his imbalance. Indeed. even themost generous biographers must admit that Brown botched miserably muchthat he attempted to do. In the years before moving to Kansas. Brown hadtried his hand at tanning, sheepherding, surveying, cattle driving, and woolmerchandising--all with disastrous results. By 1852 he had suffered fifteenbusiness failures in four different states. Creditors were continually hound-ing him. "Over the years before his Kansas escapade." John Garraty con-cluded. "Brown had been a drifter, horse tbief and swindler, several times abankrapc, a failure in everything he armmpted."

But this evidence, too. must be considered with c~rcumspection. Duringthe period Brown applied himself in business, the American economy wentthrough repeated cycles of boom and bust. Many hardworking enwepre-neurs lost their shirts in business despite their best efforts. Brown’s failuresover the years may only suggest that he did not have an aptitude for busi-ness. His schemes were usually ill-conceived and he was too inflexibleadapt ro the rapidly changing business climate. But to show that Brown wasa poor businessman and that much of his life he pursued the wrong careerhardly proves him insane. Under those terms, much of the adult populationin the United States would belong in asylums.

To call Brown a drifter is once agam to condenm most Americans. Physi-cal mobility has been such a salient trait of this nation that one respected his-torian has used it to distinguish the national character. Dm-ing some periodsof American history as much as 20 percent of the population has moved eachyear. In the 1840s and 1850s. a whole generation of Americans shared Brown’s-dream of remaking their fortunes in a new place. Many like him found thelure of new frontiers irresistible. And iust as many failed along the way, oulyto pack up and try again.

The accusation that Brown was a swindler, while containing a measure oftruth, convicts him on arbitrary evidence. After several of his many businessdisasters, creditors hounded him in the courts. A few accused him of fraud.Yet Simon Perkins. an Ohio businessman who lost more money to Brown

The Mad~ess of yohn Brown 159

and who was more familiar with his business practices tt~an anyone else,never acc~xsed Brown of swind[ing~ even when the two dissolved their part-nership in 1854. Again, it was poor business sense rather than a desire toswindle that led Bro~-a into his difficulties.

The horse-thievery charge hinges on the observer’s point of view. Duringthe years of fighting in Kansas, Brown occasionally "confiscated" horsesfrom proslavery forces. Those who supported his cause treated the thefts aslegitimate acts of war. Brown’s enemies never be~eved he was sincere in hisconvictious. They accused him of e~zp!oiting the tensions in Kansas to actlike a brigand. Butit is far from clear that Brown ever stole for personal gain.Whatever money he raised, save for small sums he sent his wife, went towardorganizing his crusade against slavery. Besides, it is one thing to establishBrown’s behavior as antisocial and quite another to find him insane.

From the point of’dew of the "facts of the case," the question of insanitycannot be easily resolved. The issue becomes further muddled when we con-sider its theoreticaI aspects. Theory, as we saw when examining AndrewJackson, will inevitably affect any judgment in the case. The question, wasJohi, Brown insane? flames o~r inquiry and determines the lch~d of evidencebeing sought. And in this case, the question is particularly controversial be-cause it remains unclear just exactly what we are asking. YVhat does it mean,after all, to be "insane"?

Modern psychologists and psychiatrists have given up using the conceptof hasanity diagnostically because it is a c~tcha!! term mad too unspedfic tohave definite meaning. The only major attempt to define the concept moreprecisely has been in the legal world. In civil law, insanity refers to the in-ability of individuals to maintain conWacmal or other legal obligations.Thus, to void a will, an injured party might try to demonstrate that at thedine of composition its author was not "of sound mind"--that is, not re-sponsible for his or her actions. Insanity is considered sufficient grounds tocommit an individual to a mental hospital. But since it invoIves such a cur-tailment of rights and freedom, it is extremely difficult to prove and gener-ally requires the corroboration of several disinterested professionals.

Insanity has been widely used as a defense in criminal cases. By demon-strating that at the time o£ the crime a client could not distinguish rightfrom wrong or was incapable of detern~ning the nature of the act commit-red, a lawyer can protect the accused from some of the legal consequencesof the act. To find Brown insane, as attorney Hoyt attempted to have thecourt do, would have been to ~ssert Brown’s inability to ,aaaderstend the con-sequences of his actions at.Harpers Ferry. The raid would represent the ir-rational anger of a deranged man, deserving pity rather than hawed oradmiration.

In the lega! sense, then, Brown would have to be considered fit to standwin!. He may have been unrealistic in estimating his chance of success atHarpers Ferry, but he repeatedly demonstrated that he lmew the conse-quences of his actions: that he would be arrested and p~nished if caught; thatlarge portions of American society would conderrm him; that, nevertheless,

he believed himself in the right. In the legal sense, Brown was quite sane andclearheaded about his actions.

THE TURBULEN~f CURRENTSOF PSYCHOHISTORYYet the court’s judgment, accurate as it may have been. is likely to leave usuneasy. To have Brown pronounced sane or insane, in addition to guilty ornot guilty, does little to explain, deep down. why the max~ acted as he did.The verdict leaves us with the same emptiness that impelled psychologists tore;ect the whole concept of insanitT. What drove John Brown to crusadeagainst slavery? To execute in cold blood five men along a Kansas creek? Tolead WvemT-one men to Harpers Ferry? Other northerners abhorred the in-snmtion of slavery, yet only John Brown acted with such vehemence. In thatsense he was far from being a normal American: far, even, from being a nor-mal abolitionist. How can we begin ro understand the intensity of his deeds?

Here we approach the limits of explanations based on rational motives. Todescribe Jolm Brown simply by referring to his professed and undoubtedlysincere antislavery ideology is to leave unexplored the frre in the man. Suchan approach assumes too easily that consciously expressed motives can betaken at fiace vahie. Yetwe have already seen. in the case of the bewitched atSalem. that unconscious motivations often play important roles in humanbehavior. If we are willing to grant that app,qrently "normal" people some-rimes act for reasons beyond those they consciously express how much morelikely is it that we must go beyond rational motives in understanding Brmwn?It seems only logical that historians should bring ro bear the tools of mod-ern psychology to assess the man’s personality.

Indeed. a snbbranch of history has applied such methods to a wide varietyof historical problems. Known as psychohistory, this approach has most oftendrawn on the disdpline of psychoanalysis pioneered by Sigmund Freud. anAustrian physidan who propounded his theories during the early twentiethcentury. Freud assumed that every individual experiences intensely personalconflicts in life that are extremely difficult to resolve. VVhen a person resistscommg to terms with such situations m an open and direct mariner, thatperson represses the conflict: that is. he or she is ~*~able to think about itconsciously. Under such conditions the conflict does not go away; it ismerely forced to express itself indirectly. The surface manifestations are dis-gltlsed in neuronc symptoms such as obsessions, nervous des. or hystericalbehaviors.

By exploring a patient’s life history through a process of flee associationabout memories, dreams, and fantasies, the psychoanalyst takes the frag-ments of evidence presented by the patient and guides Nm or her toward arecognition of the rmconscions forces that have shaped the personality: Thusthe analyst seeks to explore the territop of the unconscious much as the his-tonan seeks to make ~ense out of the umble of documentary evidence.

TheMadnessofyobnBrown 161

What sort of map to the m~conscious does Freudian analysis supply? Freudcalled special at~annon ro two areas he believed were the source of much ten-sion and conflict: msr2ucmal sexual drives and the formauve experiences of in-fancy and childhood. Consider two examples. Every infant receives its firstnouristmaenr of mother’s milk from the nipple. (More recently, of course, thebaby horde has sometimes served as a substitute. Freud suggested that everybaby experiences a crisis when the mother weans the child from her breast.The hi’ant. Freud argued, has become accustomed to this constant gratifica-non from the mother and experiences rage when the breast is withheld.

Even more famous among Freudian concepts is the notion of an oedipalconflict in young boys. The concept draws its name from Sophocles’ OedipusRex. a Greek tragedy in which Oedipus rmknowingly colmnits incest with Irismother. For this "crime" he suffers blhidness and exile. Freud contended thatsomewhere between the ages of three and six, every boy normally passesthrough an "oedipal phase," during which his consciousness of erotic grad/i-cation intensifies. The natural obiect of attraction is the woman closest to theboy--his mother. Yet the child is aware that this love object is forbidden: irbelongs to his father, and therefore the child fears his father’s imagined Ieal-ons rage.

Many of Freud’s concepts--and these examples are only cwo~ sketched inbriefest onthne--s~rike laypeople as nor only counterinminve but far-fetched.Yet Freud’s psychological principles received increasing respect and a~entionin the first three decades of the twentieth century, both in the medical com-mlmity and among the broader public. Psychoanalysts were and still areltrained in his methods, and patients undergo therapy that often lasts for years.

Although controversial among historians, psychoanalytic theory came tobe used by" ah increasing minorlry of them. In Chapter 5 for example, wenoted that Michael Rogm, writing in the 1970s~ analyzed Andrew lacksonfrom the point of~iew of his role in removing Indians from the Old-South-west. But Rogin also argued that to explain Indian removal, historians couldnor rely merely on the motives of simple land hunger and material greed.Ushag Freudian theory, he pointed out that white-Indian relations duringthe Jacksonian era were fraught with parent-child symbolism. White ~reatynegotiators constantly urged Indians co make peace with their "white fa-ther," the president of the Uhited States. If friendly tribes did not concludetreaties. Jackson once warned. "We may then be under the necessity of rais-ing the hatchet against our own friends and brothers. Your father the Presi-dent wishes to avoid this urmamral stare of things."

Pursuing the Freudian focus on childhood. Rogm suggested that Jack-son’s well-known temper as an adult might be connected to the kinds of in-fant rages posited by Freud. Did the death of Jackson’s father before he wasborn affect Jaclcson’s mother during his infancy? Rogin wondered. "Prob-lems in infancy, invoMng feeding, weaning, or holding the child, often in-tensify infantile rage and accentuate later difficulties in the snuggle of thechild to break securely free of the mother." Rogin quoted Jefferson’s descnp-non of Jackson "choldng with rage" on the Senate floor: he also noted that

according to eyewimesses, Jackson often slobbered and spoke incoherentlywhen excited or angry. "Jackson’s slobbering," argued Rogin, "suggests earlyproblems with speech, mouth, and aggression. Speech difficulties oftendicate a problematic oral relationship."

In the 19~0s and 1990s, however, Freudian theory came under broad attack.Medicine, which for many years had been an ar~ as much as a sdence, increas-ingly demanded that hypotheses be rigorously tested and confirmed by repl~ca-ble experrments. By their very narore. Freudian theories about the unconsdousdealt with propositions that were either unverifiable or extremely difficult to con-firm. In addition, as more of Freud’s letters and papers became public, they sheddunbts on the methods of the master. (For years many papers had been av~lableonly to scholars sympathetic to psychoanvflysis2 Freud established his psychoan-alytic method, for example, when ttealing thirteen yoKng women who he said re-counted tales of being seduced when they were children. In fact, Freud’s papersreveal that the girls had no such recollections until after his analysis was in ~swing. Even after Freud used. in his own words, the "strongest compulsion" to"induce" his patients to free-assodate or fantasize such stories, he a&q~Jtted that"they have no feeling of remembering the scenes." This revelation goes to theheart of the evidentiary problem. If such memories are not part of the patient’srecollection until an analyst strongly induces them. how can we decide whetherthe memories truly spffmg from the unconscious rather than merely from thesuggestive comments of the analyst?

Given the strong challenges to Freuthan theory, its value for analyzi=g anyperson seems at the very least in serious doubt--let alone for analyzing a his-torical figure like John Brown. who canno~ be subiected to a process oflengthy psychoanalysis on the couch. Must we throw up our hands at thepossibility of understanding the inner workings of Brown’s deepest motiva-tions? It seems to ns that the historian still has options.

Even Frederick Crews, one of Freud’s most vocal literary critics, has sug-gested that it is possible to "dissent" from the rigid orthodoxT of psychoanalyzictheory "without forsaking the most promising aspects of psychoanalysis--itsattentiveness to signs of conflict, its hospitality to muhiple significance, itsideas of ambivalence, idendt~cation, repressmn, and projection." Freudwished his patients to free-associate about childhood experiences in part be-caush he recognized that unexpected patterns often emerged from thesememories: recurring images, fears, preoccupations. Psychologists--whetherthey are strict Freudians or not--have learned to pay dose attention to suchpatterns.

THE MOTIVES OF A SON--AND A FATHERAlthough Jolm Brown never underwent a psychological examination abouthis childhood, he has provided us, as it happens, with the means of conduct-ing one ourselves. At the age of fifty-seven. Brown wrote a long letter ad~

The Madness of .~obn Brown 163

dressed to a thirteen-year-old boy named Harry Stearns. Harry was the sonof one of Brown’s wealthiest finmacial patrons. In the letter. Brown told thestory of "a certain boy of my acquaintance" who. "for convemence," hecalled John. This name was especially convenient because the boy was noneother than Brown himself. The letter is one of the few suriwng sources ofinformation about Brown’s childhood. It is reprinted here with only a fewomissmns of routine biographical data.

I can not tell you of anything in the first Four years of John’s life worth men-6orang save that at that early age he was tempted by Three large Brass Pinslonging to a girl who rived in the family & stole them. In this he was detectedby his Mother: & after having a f~ll day to think of the wrong; received fromher a thorough whipping. When he was Five years old his Father moved toOhio; then a wilderness filled with wild beasts. & Indians. During the longjourney, which was performed in part or mostly with an ox-team; he was calledon by turns ro assist a boy Five years older &vho had been adopted by his Fa-ther & Mother & learned to think he could aceomprish smar~ things by driv-ing the Cows: & riding the horses. Sometimes he met with Rattle Snakeswltich were very large; & which some of the company generahy managed toldll. After getting to Ohio in 1805 he was for some rune rather afraid of theIndians. & of their Rifles: but this soon wore off: & he used to hang aboutthem quite as much as was consistent with good manners: & learned a trifle oftheir talk. I-Iris father learned to dress Deer Skins. & at 6 years old John was in-stalled a young Buck Skin. He was perhaps rather observing as he ever afterremembered the entire process of Deer Skin dressing; so that he could ar anytime dress his own leather such as Squirel. Raccoon. Cat. Wolf and Dog Sldns.and also learned to make Whip Lashes. which brought him some change attimes, & was of considerable service in many ways. At SLx years old he beganto be a rambler in the wild new country finding birds and squirrels and some-rimes a wild Turkey’s nest. But about this period he was placed in the schoolof adversity; which my young friend was a most necessary par~ of his earlytraining. You may laugh when you come to read about it: but these were soretrials ~o John: whose earthly treasures were very~w ~ small. These were thebeginning of a severe but much needed course of discipline which he afterwardswas to pass through; & ~vhich it is to be hoped has learned him before this umethat the Heavenly Father sees it best to take all the little things out of his handswhich he has ever placed in them. When John was in his Sixth year a poor In-dian boo gave him a Yellow Marble the first he had ever seen. This he thoughta great deal of: & kept ~t a good whil4: but at last he lost it beyond recovery. Ittook years to heal the wound & I think he cried ar times about m About Fivemonths after this he caught a young Squirrel tearing off his tail in doing it; &getting severely bit*en at the same time himself. He however held on rl thelittle bob t, ziI Squirrel: & finally got him perfectly tamed, so that he almost idol-ized his pet. This too he lost; by its wandering away; or by gemng killed: & fora year or two John was in mourn*ng; and looldmg at all the Squirrels he couldsee to try & discover Bobtail, if possible. I must not neglect to tell you of a verry

16~ 7~fER TKE FACT: T’TffE ART OF HISTORICAL DETECTION

bad and foolish habbit to which John was somewhat addicted. I mean telling lies:generally ro screen liimself from blame: or from punishment. He could notwe!l endure to be reproached: & I now think had he been oftener encouragedm be entirely flank: by makingfi’ankr~ess a kind of atonement for some of hisfaults: he would not have been so often gulIty of this fault: aur have been (inafter life) obliged to straggle so long with so mean a habit,

John was never quarelsome: but was excessivel) fond of the hardea~ & roughestkind of plays:& could nenerger enough [o~] them. Indeed when for a short timehe was sometimes sent to School the oppormmty it afforded to wrestle & Snowball & rtm& jump & lmock off old seedy Wool hats; offered to him almost theonly compensauon for the confinement. & restraints of school. I need not tellyon that with such a feenng & but little chance of going to school at all: he didnot oecome much of a schoflar, tie would always choose to stay at home & workhard rather than be sent to school; & during the warm season rmght generally beseen barefooted & bareheaded: with Buck skin Breeches suspended often with oneleather strap over his shoulder but sometimes with Two. To be sent off throughthe wilde~ness alone to very considerable distances was particularly iris delight; &in this he was often indulged so that oy the time he was Twelve years old he wassent offmore than a Hundred Miles with compames of cattle; & he would havethought his character much ininred had he been obliged to be helped in any suchlob. This was a boyish kind of feeling but characteristic however.

At Eight years old, John was left a Motherless boy which loss was completeand pearmanent for not~vathstanding his Father again married to a sensible in-telligent, and on many accounts a very estimable woman: yet he never adoptedher in feeling; but continued to pine after his own Niother for years. Tiffs op-perated very unfavorably upon him: as he was both naturally fond of females:&. withall, extremely diffident: & deprived him of a suitable connecting linkbevc¢een the different sexes; the want of which might under some circum-stances, have proved his ruin ....

During the war with England [in 1812] a ctrcumstance occured that in theend made him a most determined Abolitioni~-t: & led him to declare, or Swear:Eternalwarwith Slavery. He was staying for a short time ,adth a very gentlemanlylandlord since a United States Marshall who held a slave boy near his own agevery active, inteligent mad good feeling; & to whnm John was under consider-i~ble oblig~ation for numerous little acts of kindness. The maa~ter made ,h great petof John: brought him to table with his first company; & friends: called their at-rennon m every little smart thing he said or did: & to the [:act of his being morethan a hmnlred miles from imme with a company of cattle alone; while the ne-gro boy ~who was fidly if not more than his equal) was badly clothed, poorly fed;& lodged in cold weather: & beaten before his eyes with Iron Shovels or any otherthing that came first to hand. This brought John to reflect on the wretched.hopeless condition, of Fatherless & Motherless slave children: for such childrenhave neither Fathers or Mothers to protect, & provide for them. He sometimeswould raise the question is God their Father?. .

I had like to have forgotten to tell you of one of John’s ~hisfornmes which setrather hard on him while a young bo3z He had by some meansperbaps by gift of

The Madness of John Brown 165

his fa~er become the owner of a little Ewe Lamb which did finely fill it wasabout ~Bvo Thirds grown: & then sickened & died, This brought aamther pro-reacted rnoztrning season: not that he felt the pecuniary loss so much: for that wasnever his disposition: but so strong & earnest were his attachments,

John had been taught ftom earliest childhood to "fear God and keep hiscommandments;" & though quite skeptical he had always by turns felt muchserious doubt as to his future well being; & about this time became to someex~ex~t a convert to Christianity & ever after a firm believer in the divine au-thenticity of the Bible. With this book he became very familial’, & possessed amost mmsua! memory of its entire cmtrents.

Now some of the things I have been telling of’, were iust such as I would rec-ommend to you: & I would like to lmow that you had selected these out: &adopted them as part of your own plan of life: & I wish you to hove some deJ~-~i~e pla~. Many seem to have none; & others never stick to any that they doform, This was not the case with Jotm. He followed up with teztaci~3 whateverbe set about so hing as it answered his general purpose: & hence he rarely failedin some good degree to effect the things he undertook. This was so much thecase that he babitz~ally expected r,o yacceed in his undertakings. With this feelingshould be coupled, the ~unsciunsness that our plans are right in themselves.

Drtring the period I have named, John had acquired a kind of ownership rocertain anhnals of some little value but as he had come to understand that thetitle of minors might be a little imperfect: he had recourse to various means morder to secure a more independem: & perfect right of property. One of thosememos was to exchange with his Father for something of far less value. Anotherwas by trading with others persons for something his Father had never owned.Older persons have some times found difficulty with titles.

From Fifteen to q~venty years old, he spent most of his dine working at the"Farmer & Currier’s ~ade keeping Bachelors hale & he officiating as Cook: & formost of the tmle as foreman of the establishment under his Father. During thisperiod he found much trouble with some of the bad habits I have mennoned &with some that I have not told you off: his conscience urging him forward withgreat power in this matter: but his close attention to business: & success in itsmanagement, together with the way he got along with a company of men, &boys; i~aade him quite a favorite with the serious & more inteligem portion ofolder persons. This was so much the case: & secured for him so many little no-rices from those he esteemed: that his vanity was very much fed by it: & he came

forward to mai~ood qmte hill of self-conceit: & self-confident; notwithstandinghis exwerne bashfulness. A younger brother used sometimes to rmuiud him ofthis: & to repea~ to him this expression which you may somewhere find. "A Kingagainst whom there is no rising up." The habit so early formed of being obeyedrendered him in after life too much disposed to speak in an imperious or dictat-ing way. From Fifteen years & upward he felt a good deal of amdety to learn: butcould only read & smd’dy a little: both for want of time: & on account of inflanx-marion of the eyes. He however managed by the help of books to make himselftolerably well acquainted with common arithmetic: & Surveymgl which he prac-ticed more or less after tie was Twenty years old.

166 AI=I’ER THE FACT: ]’HE ART OF ~I!STOR~C~L DETECTION

Before exploring the letter’s deeper psychological significance, it may beworth reminding ourselves what a straightforward reading of the documentprovides. Attention would naturally center on Brown’s striking tale of how,as a tweIve-year-old, he was first roused to oppose slavery. Shocked by thecruel treatment of his young black friend, John was further incensed by them~fair and contrasting treatment he benefited from simply because he w~swhite. This vivid, emotional experience seems to go a good way towardplainhxg why the evil of slavery weighed so heavily on Brown’s mind. In anarticle on the motivations behind the raid at Harpers Ferry, this anecdote isquite clearfy the one piece of evidence worth extracting from the long letter.The additional material on Brown’s childhood, which often seems to rambleincoherently, might be inclnded in a boo!~-leugth biography of Brown buthardly seems relevant to an article that must quicldy get to the heart of theman’s involvement with abolirion.

Yet when we look more closely, Brown’s story of the mista’eated youngslave does not go very far toward explaining Brown’s motives. In a land whereslavery was central to the culmre, hundreds, even thousands, of young whiteboys must have had experiences in which black playmates were unfairfywhipped, degraded, and treated as inferiors. Nonetheless, many of those boyswent on to become slaveholders. Ftlrthermore, although some undoubtedlydeveloped a strong dislike of slavery (Abraham Lincoln among theme), nonefelt compelled to mount the kind of campaigns Brown did in Kansas and atHarpers Ferry. Why did Brown’s rather commonplace experience make sucha strong impression on him?

The answer to that question may be learned if we do not dismiss the otherporrions of Brown’s childhood experiences as irrelevant but instead examinethem for clues to his psychological development. So let us turn, for a mo-ment, from a direct examination of Brown’s abolitionism to the other ele-ments of the letter to Harry Stearns. In doing so we must consider each ofBrown’s stories, illustrations, and comments with care, keeping in mindFreud’s stress on unconscious motivations. In previous chapters we haveseen that historians must always treat primary sources skeptically, identify-ing the personal perspectives and biases that may influence the writer. Psy-ctxoanalytic theory requires us to take that skepticism one step further,assuming not only that the evidence may be influenced by unstated motiva-tions (such as Bro, mx’s wishing to impress Harry Stearns’s fiather with hisvirtue) but also that some, even the most powerful of Brown’s motivations,may be unconscious--hidden even from Brown himself.

At first glance the narrative appears to recomlt fairly ordinary events in achild’s life. Who, after all, has not cried one time or another at the loss of aper, or has not been proud of accomplishments like driving cows and ridinghorses? Yet we must remember that these events are only a few selected fromamong thousands in Brown’s childhood, events meaningful enough to him

1. As a young man, Lincoln was reputed to have been strongly moved by the sight of slaves beingauctioned in New Orlealas,

The Madness of ~obn Brown 167

that he has remembered and related them more than fifty years later, l~Vhydid Brovm retain these memories rather than others? What suggesnve im-ages and themes recur? Because psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the ~m-portance of parental relationships, we may begin by exam~mng Brown’srelationship with his mother and father.

Of the two parents, John’s mother is the most visible in this letter, and it isclear that Brown loved her dearly. Notice the language describing hismother’s death."ohnj was ’1ere ~ a Motherless boy," "he writes" not the simplerand less revealing, "John’s mother died," which places the emphasis on themother rather than on the loss incurred by the "Motherless boy." Further-more. the loss was "’complete and pearmanent." Brown never grew to love hisnew mother and "cominued to p~ne after his own Mother for years."

Jolm’s father, at first glance, appears to have taken a less prormnent rolein the letter, either positively or negatively. True. Owen Brown does teachJohn the art of dressing skins (and also. John takes care to note. of maldng"Whip Lashes"): but the attannon centers not on the father’s devoted teach-lng so much as John’s remarkable ability to learn by watching his father onlyonce. Perhaps most revealing, however. ~s an ambiguous passage in whichBrown’s father does not appear yet plays a substantial, hidden role. The rel-evant paragraph begins by noting that John "had acquired a Idnd of owner-ship to certain animals of some little value." From earlier parts of the letter.we are aware how nmch these pets meant to him--the loss of the squirrel"Bobtail" ,which he "almost idolized" and later the ewe lamb which he had"perhaps" by gift of his father become the owner). Now. Brown indicates thathe had owned other animals, but apparently not completely. He is curiouslycircumspect about explaining why: the ownership, he says. was incompletebecause "the title of minors" was "a little imperfect." Apparend~; animals thathe thought he owned were taken away from him. on the grounds that he didnot have "tide" to them as a minor. So John, being extremely strong-willeddespite his bashfidness, determinedly set out "’to secure a more indel)endent;& perfect right of property." Significantly, this questmn of ownership ap-pears to have occurred more than once. for Brown noted that he devised"various means" to dea! with it.

What is happening here? Brown’s evasive language makes the situationdi~cult to reconstruct, but certain auflines emerge. The only logical personwho might repeatedly prevent John from obtaining full "tide" to his pets washis father. Owen. Why Owen objected is never stated, but several ideas sug-gest themselves. Conceivably the elder Brown needed one o~ John’s "pet"sheep or cows to feed the family or to sell for income. Furthermore. in afrontier settlement where unfenced woodlands merged with small farms.wild or stray domestic animals might have roamed onto the Brown farmfrom tithe to rime. If young John Brova~ fomad them. he would likely haveclaimed them as pets, only to discover that the animal was on father Owen’sland and duly appropriated for food or income.

Whatever the specific situations, yomag Brown repeatedly attempted tosecare his property through one of two means. "One of those means was to

exchange with his Father for something of far less value." The implication isthat in some cases Owen Brown allowed John to ~reat animals as pets if theywere formally "purchased" from his father for a token fee ’%omething of farless vahie"~. In such eases, Owen Brown acted ldndly toward his son. thoughrigorously inslsnng that the formalities of "property" and "dOe" be ob-served. But on other occasions John apparently could not convince his fatherto spare such pets. for the letter indicates that another means of obtainingthem "was by trading with others persons for something his Father hadnever owned." If Owen would not give him pets, John would be able to getthem from more willing neighbors.

The conflict of ownership between father and son obviously left a strongimprint. More than forty years later. Brown still vividly remembered howOwen confiscated his pets, as well as the means he worked out to satist};, or msome cases actually to evade, his father’s authority. Even more important, theevasive language in the passage demonstrates that Brown remained unableaclmowiedge his anger openl3a In effect, the paragraph reveals a concealedhostility that Brown was still carrying toward his father. The Iast sentenceamounts to a conderrma~ion, but the son could only express his anger indi-recdy, th2ough use of a generality: "Older persons have some Umes found dif-ficulty with titles’."

Unconsciously, Brown may have been applying the last phrase to himselfas well. For the crucial message of the passage is not Brown’s hostility towardhis father, but the issues through which the hostility is expressed, that is tosay, doe and ownership. Indeed. a psychoanalytic interpretation of Brown’schildhood suggests that throughout his life. Brown never fully resolved thequestion of "dries" af his own identity. The more the letter is probed, themore it reveals an obsession with property and tide. Brovaa continually de-scribes himself as finding some piece of "property," forming sn:ong attach-ments to it. and then losing it and severely mourrdng the loss.

VVhat. after all. is the very first experience in Brown’s life that he cancall? Before the age of four, John steals three brass pins. discovers that his ti-tle to them is imperfect, has them taken away, and is severely whipped. Atsix. John receives a treas~tred yellow marble, loses it. and mourns for "’years."Sour. afrerward, John catches a squirrel, pulling its tail off in the process;then tames and idolizes it: then loses it and mourns another year or two. Ateight, John loses another precious possession--his mother--and pines afterher for years. Then comes the story of the lamb and, later, his conflicts withhis father over the ownership of other pets. The religious moral drawn fromthese lessons C’a severe but roach meded course of discipline"3 was that "theHeavenly Father sees it best to take all the little things out of his handswhich he has ever placed in them." Clearly, the process of becoming an in-dependent adult was for John Brown a continuing effort m reconcile hisguilt and anger over losing property with his fierce desire to become trulyindependent, to possess clear tide to his own pets. to become a "propertied"father like Owen and--dare we say it? even like God the father himsel£Paradoxically, only when Brown internalized and accepted the authoriV¢ of

Tbe Madness of yobn Brown 169

John Brown, the kindly father:Brown’s danghter RutJ~ rememberedthe following incident from herehAldhood: "When I first began togo to school. I fom~d a piece ofcalico one day behind one of thebenches.--it was not large, butseemed quite a treasure to me, a~d Idid not show it to any one m~fil Igot home, Father beard me thentelling about it, and said, ’Don’t you~ow what g~rl lost it?’ I told ham Idid not. ’Well, when you go }oschool tomorrow take it with you,and find oar if you c,n who lost it.It is a trifling thing, but alwaysremember that if you should loseanythnig you valued, no matter howsmall, y0~ would waist the personthat fmmd it to give it back toyou.

his fathers could he then act the part of a stern, loving parent himself. Sub-mission to his father’s authority made it possible for him to accept as legiti-mate his authority over his own "pets."

The pattern of Brown’s struggle for autonomy is reflected in the role heplayed as father to his own children. Owen Brown had been a stern discipli-narian, m part because he had felt the lack oft strong hamd in his own child-hood. Jotm internalized and emulated this severe approach early on. Whenhis younger brother. Salmon. had been pardoned for some misdeed by aboarding-school teacher, John went re the teacher and told him that "ifSalmon had done this thing at home. father would have punished him. Iknow he wouId expect yon ro punish him now for doing this--and if youdon’t, I shall." When the schoolmaster persisted in his lenience, John was re-ported to have given Salmon a "severe flogging." As a parent, Brown’s disci-pline was equally harsh. When his three-year-old son Jason chimed that acertain dream acmMly had occurred. Brown felt obliged to whip the boy forlying. The father’s immense ambivalence in such a situation was evidencedby the tears that welled up in his eyes as he performed the whipping.

For Browaa, even sins took on an aspect of property. The father kept a de-tailed acconnt book of his son Jotm Jr.’s transgressions, along with the num-ber of whiplashes each sin deserved. Recalled the son:

On a certain Sunday morning he invited me to accompany him from the houseto the tarmery, sa3ang that he had concluded it was time for a settlement. We

170 AWgaR ~ FACT: THE ff~RT OF HISTORICAL DETECUON

went into the upper or finishing room. and after a long and tearful talk overmy faults, he again showed me my account which exhibited t fearful footingup of debits. . I then paid about one-third of the debt. reckoned in strokesfrom a nicely-prepared blue-beech switch, laid on "masterly." Then, to my ut-ter astonishment, father stripped off his shirt, and. seating himself on a block.gave me the whip and bade me "lay it on" to his bare back. I dared not refusero obey, but at first I did not strike hard. "Harder!" he said: "harder. harder!"until he received the balance of the account. Small drops of blood showed on hisback where the up end of the tingling beech cut through. Thus ended the ac-count and settlement, which was also my first practical ilhisn:anon of the Doc-trine of Atonement.

In this astonishing tableau. Brown’s personal conflicts are vividly reflected.The father punishes the son as :usnce demands, yet Brown also plays thewayward son himself. And as John Broval Jr. recognized only later, his fatherwas consciously ass~tming the mantle of Christ, whom the heavenly Fatherhad permitted humankind m crucify and punish, in order that other chi!-dren’s sins would be forgiven.

The upshot of such discipline was that Brown’s sons harbored a similarambivalence toward their father--an intense feeling of loyalty and submis-sion countered by a strong desire for independence. The contradiction ofsuch trairang became apparent to one of Brown’s sons. Watson. during theraid on Harpers Ferry. "The trouble is." YV’atson remarked to his father,"you want your boys to be brave as ~igers. and still afraid of you." "And thatwas perfectly true," agreed Salmon Brown. another son.

Psychoanalytic insight has thus helped to reveal some of John Brown’smost intense personal conflicts: his ambivalence toward his father’s strict dis-cipIine, the paradox of his struggle to internalize and accept his father’s an-thority in order to become independent himself, and his excessive concernwith property and "pets" as a means of defining his independence. Havingexposed these themes, let us now return to the starting point of our originalanalysis of the letter--the anecdote about Brown and the young slave. Sud-denly, what had seemed a straightforward tale is filled with immensely sug-gestive vocabulary, whose overtones reveal a great deal. The passage is worthreading once again:

During the war with England a circumstance occurred that in the end madehim a most determined Abolitionist: & led h~ to declare, or Swear: Eternal warwitli Slavery. He was staying for a short time with a very gentlemanly landiurdsince a United States Marshall who held a slave boy near his own age very ac-tive, inteligent and good feeling; & to whom John was under considerable ob-liganon for mtmerous little acts of kindness. The maawr made a great pe~ o~John: brought him to table with his first company; & friends: called their atcen-tton m every little smart tiring he said or did: & m the fact of his being morethan a hundred miles from home with a company of cattle alone: while theg~’o bo3 ,who was fidly if not more than his equaB was badly clothed, poorly fed:& lodged in cold weather: & beaten before his eyes with Iron Shovels or any other

The Mad~e~s of yobn Brown 171

John Brown. the stern father: Brown was influenced in his harsh discipline byhis fames. Owen (left), and in turn influenced fus own son, Jolm Jr. (right). FatherJohn kept a detailed account book of young John’s sinful acts. along with thenumber of whiplashes each ~in deserved. Even sins it seemed, were carefullyenumerated as property.

thing that came first to hax~d. This brought John to reflect on the wretched.hopeless condition, of Fatbe~qess & Mod3erless slave children: for such childrenhave neither Fathers or Mothers to protect, & provide for them. Fie some~neswould raise the question is God their Father?

Upon this second reading, it becomes evident that Brown’s language andmetaphors here are full of references to parentaI relationships, dependence.and authority. John stayed with a "reW gentlemanly landlord" who "made agreat pet of John," trearing the boy just as John treated his own pets. Atthe same time, however, this gentlemanly father acted like no father at all tothe negro boy, beating him unmerdfully. This led John "to reflect on thewretched, hopdess condition, of Fatherless & Motherless slave children." "IsGod their Father?" he asked himself.

The situation confronted young Brown with two starldy contrasting moddsof a father, corresponding with the boy’s own ambivalent fedings towardOwen. Naturally, John wanted his own f~ther to discipline hint less harshly. Hewanted to be treated as a "pet." as his own anknals were treated, as this gentle-man treamd him. Similarly, he identified with the negro bo3~ an innocent ladwho was being pm~ished iust as Owen Brown sometimes put’shed John. Yetlike all boys, he also identified with his own father. He desired as well as hatedthe power that Owen wielded over him and that this gentleman wielded overt)e n~gro boy. He thus felt the tug of two conflicting loyalties. To use the reli-gnous ~magery so faaniliar to that age, John Brown wanted to grow up and actboth as God the mercifed Father and as God the righteous Judge.

172 z~fER %H~ FAC~I THE A~T OF I~STORICAL DETECTION

This ambivalent father-son relationship suggests that Brown’s intense life-long identification with black slaves might well have sprung from the strug-gle he experienced with paternal discipline. Helping slaves was ultimately ameans of helping himself without consciously recogmzing the source of Irisemotions and convicnuns. He could channel the repressed hostility towardhis father into a more acceptable form--hatred of the slaveholders, anotherclass of paternalistic oppressors who cruelly whipped their charges. In attack-fug the planters. Brown relieved the sense of gatilt he harbored for secre@wishing to destroy his father. After all. God the implacable Father and Judgewas using Brown as his insu’umen~ for bringing justice to the world. At thesame dine. by protecnng and defending the helpless slaves. Brown carried outGod’s will as a merciful father. In liberating the black nation, he could fleehimself. In some indirect yet significant way, the raid at Harpers Ferry in-volved the working out of psychological turmoil that had ’troubled Brownsince childhood.

Does all this speculation lead us then ro assume that childhood neurosesrather than moral conviction dictated Brown’s actions? Few historians wouldgo that far. A ful! explanation of any person’s acnons and beliefs must. in theend. be multicausal if it is to reflect the complexity of real life. We cannot rmn-~mize the sincerity--nor the nohility--of Brown’s belief in the brotherhood ofblack people and white people. Yet the stirrings of deeply rooted unconsciousforces can be neglected no more than the more ranonal components of behav-ior can.

This psychological interpretation, then. is not offered as definitive or ex-clusive. And our brief erposidon of one letter consnmtes only one smal! partof what should properly be a much larger analysis of Brown’s personality andcareer. But the exposition is ample enough to suggest how fruitful a broadlypsychoanalytica! approach can be. As Michael Rogin suggested in the case ofAndrew Jackson. psychohistory provides historians with a theory that sensi-nzes them to profitable themes, motifs, and vocabularies. An awareness ofrecurring tensions stemming from Brown’s childhood makes it possible roapprecmte how his personal sufferings incorporated the larger events of theperiod.

At the moment Brown transcended his life of failure, he forced his gener-ation to identify either positively or negatively with the action he took to lib-erate black Americans. His act of violence was appropnare to what Gatesdescribed as "the vioient, irrational, and paradoxical dines’ in which helived." Given Brown’s profoundly religious nature and commiunent to hu-man liberty and equality, he could not be ~t peace until his society recog-nized the contradiction between its religious and political ideals and theexistence of slavery.

In the end, John Brown turned the tables on society. His raid ~n HarpersFerry pressed his fellow Americans to consider whether it was not actuallytheir values, and society’s, that were immoral and "abnormal." The outbreakof civil war. after all. demonstrated that American society was so maladiustedand so divided that it could not remain a "normal." integrated whole with-

The Madness f ~ohn Brown 173

out violently purging itself. If Brown’s raid was an isolated act of a disturbedman, why did it drive an entire generation to the brink of war? Why didBrova~s generation find it impossible to agree about the meamng of HarpersFerry? As C. Varm Woodward concluded, the importance lay not so muchin the man or event, but in the use made of them by northern and southernpartisans. For every Emerson or Thorean who pronounced the raid thework of a saint, a southern fire-eater conderrmed the venture as the villainyof all northerners.

None of these actors in the historical drama paid much a~ennon to evi-dence. A crisis mentality thwarted any attemprs at understanding or recon-ciliation. In the fury of mutual recrimination, both sides lost sight of the manwho had provoked the punic outcry and propelled the nation toward war. Insuch times it will always be, as abolitionist Wendell Phil~ps remarked. "hardto tell who’s mad."