10 minute read
Henry David Thoreau’s John Brown
By Ben Lovelace
As John Brown awaited his fate following his failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, American philosopher and author Henry David Thoreau submitted into the public discourse an eloquent defense of Brown’s actions and legacy. He stated rather plainly, “I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character,–his immortal life.”
Simply titled A Plea for Captain John Brown, Thoreau’s essay not only defended the efforts of Brown but also attacked fellow abolitionists who, alongside pro-slavery forces, were quick to denounce John Brown as a violent fanatic. Thoreau, a leader in the transcendentalist movement and a fervent abolitionist, endeavored to set the record straight regarding the way John Brown would be remembered. Perhaps most notably, Thoreau endorsed John Brown as a “transcendentalist above all” even though that is likely not a word Brown would have used to describe himself. Thoreau’s admiration of John Brown was not a universal attitude, and John Brown remains a controversial figure today for a myriad of reasons. But the exaltation Thoreau imparts on Brown, and the transcendentalist lens through which he viewed his life, gives us a unique look not only into John Brown himself but also transcendentalism, an ideology that came to define the moral stances of numerous contemporaneous movements, such as feminism and abolitionism.
I have at times pondered the conversations and ideas thrown around by the men and women of the so-called “Transcendental Club” that was founded in 1837. I imagine they often found themselves complaining about how the broader public and intellectuals alike misunderstood or misinterpreted their beliefs. As we will see, Thoreau found in John Brown someone that understood what it meant to be free of both literal and figurative societal chains and who strove to make that true for all men. Perhaps most importantly, Brown was someone who embarked on that noble cause without a concern for what organized political parties, governments, or religions had to say about his cause and the tactics he used. In the eyes of Thoreau, this was what it truly meant to be a transcendentalist.
Before we can begin to understand John Brown the transcendentalist, we must first define transcendentalism, which can be an elusive concept. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a leading thinker within the movement, published an essay in 1842 simply titled, The Transcendentalist, in which he defined what the transcendentalist was and was not in approximately 6,500 words. Tackle that prophetic work if it pleases you. For everyone else, a summary is provided below for those who don’t wish to venture into transcendental philosophical analysis, which is very messy at times.
Basically, transcendentalists believed that man-made societal structures such as government, political parties, and religion corrupted the inherent good nature of human beings. Perhaps most importantly, transcendentalists believed that it was the duty of these good natured individuals to personally resist the corrupted institutions. In Thoreau’s Plea he characterized Brown as a man who “did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid.” Exactly how the transcendentalists were supposed to resist these corruptions was not clearly defined. Many, if not most, looked to nature. In the case of Henry David Thoreau, he retreated into nature as he grew uncomfortable with an ever expanding industrial society, driven by the labor of chattel slaves. In protest of that society, he refused to pay his taxes to a government that maintained such a system. As we well know, John Brown resisted the government and the man-made institution of slavery through violence and revolution. Most people, even those who shared John Brown’s disdain for slavery, were in opposition to the violent and murderous methods he used. In 1849, only a decade before John Brown’s raid, Thoreau himself expressed an inclination towards nonviolence in perhaps his most famous political work On Civil Disobedience. In that essay he argued that paying taxes to a government that protected and endorsed such corrupt institutions was itself an act of violence against those held in chains. Thoreau refused to participate in such a system. “I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually.” Between 1849 and 1859, civil disobedience had only accomplished so much. Over the course of ten years the institution of slavery, and those vested in its expansion, had secured victory after victory. Whether it was the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, or the Dred Scott decision, the institution of slavery was free to expand as far west as it pleased, Black people could not be citizens, and what few protections northern states had to “stand aloof” from slavery had been thoroughly eroded. Transcendentalism was an inherently fluid ideology. A transcendentalist did not need to be permanently violent or non-violent. They could, and in fact should, be fluid in their thinking, especially in the face of an institution antithetical to their ideology. The transcendentalist simply needed to be in search of justice and truth, led by nothing more than their own conscience. By the time of Thoreau’s 1859 Plea, he was ready to receive a violent radical like John Brown into a pantheon of true transcendentalists, a move indicative of his own radicalization, “even though he were of late the vilest murderer… the spectacle is a sublime one.”
Demonical Force
The depth of Thoreau’s appreciation for John Brown as a transcendentalist, however, went far beyond Brown’s violent resistance to the institution of slavery, an institution protected and endorsed by a government Thoreau described as a “demoniacal force.” For Thoreau and many others, transcendentalism, while often rooted in resistance to injustice, was also a spiritual endeavor that sought to reconnect people with the natural world in the way they observed other living species, lived in harmony with nature as was intended, free from man-made corruptions. Returning to Ralph Waldo's Emerson's The Transcendentalist, he put it rather simply, “the squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace.” Using Emerson’s analogy, Thoreau equated the institution of slavery to a bee that instead of gathering honey, hoarded the nuts of the squirrel. Most people would agree that such a thing is unnatural and should cease for the betterment of both species. A bee that is hoarding nuts is distracted from its true purpose of gathering honey, leaving the squirrel unable to fulfill its own purpose of hoarding nuts. Slavery was an unnatural institution, created by the decisions of men who chose to act against their better nature. To combat it, even violently, was the transcendentalist returning the world to its natural state, returning the bee to its duty of gathering honey, leaving the squirrel to hoard its nuts in peace.
Divine Figure
For Thoreau, John Brown was even more than a transcendental radical restoring balance to the world. In fact, Thoreau would go so far as to suggest that Brown was a divine figure. This was a peculiar choice, given that transcendentalists often viewed organized religion as corrupted and rejected the divinity of their most important figures. They often saw organized religion as subverting people's attention from true religious experiences in nature. Thoreau however, saw an opportunity to confront and use the evangelical tendencies of his abolitionist audience in order to elevate the status and memory of Brown. Abolitionists were a large group of people with their own spectrum of beliefs. Their uniting characteristics were that they all believed in the emancipation of all enslaved people and in granting Black people some semblance of civil rights. They often disagreed on what avenues that noble pursuit should follow, however. John Brown paints one end of the spectrum. He not only advocated for, but organized violent resistance against slavery. On the other end of that spectrum might have been the Quakers, who were often pacifists that refused to engage in violence. People like William Lloyd Garrison occupied a middle ground, defending enslaved peoples' right to rebel against their oppressors but not advocating for mass organized violence. Thoreau’s Plea sought to address the Quakers, Garrisonians, and the evangelicals, among others.
Thoreau had clearly grown frustrated with the fact that so many abolitionists jumped at the opportunity to cast aside John Brown’s more militant form of abolitionism. After all, who were they to judge and determine how slavery came to an end? Simply put, Thoreau was skeptical of the supposed devotion of his fellow abolitionists. He criticized their willingness to work within the political realms, as one might expect from an anti-establishment transcendentalist. He also went after their eagerness to discard John Brown and his efforts. At the same time he heralded Brown’s own Christian devotion when he said, “He has a spark of divinity in him… They talk as if it were impossible that a man could be 'divinely appointed' in these days to do any work whatever; as if vows and religion were out of date as connected with any man’s daily work; as if the agent to abolish slavery could only be somebody appointed by the President, or by some political party.” The fact that Thoreau rejected Jesus Christ’s divinity but saw a “spark” of divinity in John Brown, speaks to his admiration of him not only as a person but as a being that had transcended humanity. He continued his Plea, “When I reflect to what a cause this man devoted himself, and how religiously, and then reflect to what cause his judges and all who condemn him so angrily and fluently devote themselves, I see that they are as far apart as the heavens and earth are asunder.” It should come as no surprise that Thoreau finished his attack on his fellow abolitionists by saying, “You who pretend to care for Christ crucified, consider what you are about to do to him who offered himself to be the savior of four millions of men… Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links.”
Natural State
While much of Thoreau's Plea was dedicated to defending John Brown and attacking his detractors, he didn’t want it to be lost on those who heard or read it that he was advocating for radical change. Thoreau was seemingly aware that his words would not inspire the radical change in his fellow abolitionists that would truly align them with John Brown the transcendentalist. As many do today, Thoreau saw John Brown as a catalyst that would bring about revolutionary change. Knowing this, he finished his Plea by reminding his audience of John Brown’s revolution. He reminded them of Brown’s noble cause. A cause that would drastically push the world towards its natural state, one where the bee no longer hoarded the nuts of the squirrel. A transcendentalist above all, remember?
I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God… I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared the better… We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.
- Henry David Thoreau, A Plea for Captain John Brown, October 30th, 1859
---------Ben Lovelace is an Education Specialist at ACWM.
