DeCaro on Pardoning Brown: No

Considering the recent UN resolution, declaring human slavery a crime against humanity, I feel like it is worth revisiting some words from our resident scholar, Dr. Louis A. DeCaro Jr. from a decade and a half ago on whether John Brown should be pardoned by the US Government or the state of Virginia. “No,” says Dr. Lou, asserting that before Brown is pardoned, Black people in America should be apologized to.

“Indeed, the US government and the state of Virginia should be petitioning to be pardoned. A popular vote of African Americans—which would only be symbolic—would be more meaningful than if John Brown were pardoned by these governments.” 

Not only has the United States NOT apologized yet, they were one of three nations voting against the UN resolution, effectively declaring that human enslavement over the course of at least three centuries was NOT a crime against humanity.

DeCaro says that the US and Virginia are unfit to offer Brown such forgiveness “when both are historically complicit in crimes against humanity,” voicing a decade and a half ago what today’s US government still refuses to say. Finally, he reasons that a pardon would undermine Brown’s work.

“Pardon him, and you will strip him of his victory. Take away his guilt by means of a government pardon, and you will make him no better, no more valid, no more appreciated. The bigots, racists, and snobs who hate him will not suddenly embrace him. Those of us who love him will not love him any more for a pardon from Uncle Sam or the Old Dominion.”

As usual, Lou makes a great point. You can hear the whole argument in his most recent John Brown Today podcast episode, which is stitched together from a 2011 event where he and David Reynolds were invited to present opposing views on the topic.

You can listen to the podcast below, and/or read the lightly edited transcript of DeCaro’s case.

TRANSCRIPT:

I just want to say on a personal note, I really appreciate what David's work has done for John Brown studies. Russell Banks' novel made a lot of noise for John Brown, but it didn't really represent John Brown—it represented Russell Banks' understanding of him. We so appreciate what David has done.

On that note, however, I'm going to disagree with him—and it is the disagreement of not only brother biographers, but of people who both love Brown.

The case against pardoning Brown

My position—this came out again at the Harpers Ferry raid assessment centennial—David made what I think was a very brave, courageous argument that Brown ought to be pardoned, first by the president, and then there were discussions about whether the best place to start would be the state of Virginia. My position is not just to be contrary, but maybe coming from a different angle: no. Let me try to make my case for what it's worth.

First, the reason and the purpose for which Brown died was a struggle for Black freedom and justice for the disenfranchised, oppressed, enslaved African. Those who would seek a pardon for John Brown are, in my opinion, putting the cart before the horse. John Brown would not want to be pardoned if the African people of the United States were still owed both an apology and some form of reparations from the federal government, as well as individual states that sustained slavery, and from the descendants of slaveholders whose family estates were enriched by stolen Black labor.

A mere and feeble gesture of sentimentalism—to pardon John Brown when the United States government has never even issued an apology to Black people of this nation, whose ancestors were treated like animals and property by the law of the land. As long as Black people are fundamentally insulted by this nation, as long as the majority population pretends that slavery was an unfortunate parenthesis of old-mannered behavior in an otherwise praiseworthy democracy, I doubt John Brown would want that government or its people to pardon him.

Like Daniel, the ancient Hebrew prophet, I think Brown would say to the government: keep your pardon, or give it to someone else. This nation owes Black people, if nothing else, a flagrant, official, and definitive apology. Until the US government acknowledges its terrible guilt and crime against humanity in terms of the so-called peculiar institution—as well as the suppression and extermination of Native Americans and other territorial abuses based on the lust of slaveholder expansionism—John Brown can wait, and I don't think he'd object.

The government is not fit to grant the pardon

Secondly, there is something inherently problematic about looking to the federal government, the state of Virginia, or the president to pardon John Brown, when both are historically complicit in crimes against humanity. Who are Uncle Sam and the Old Dominion to be dispensing pardons to freedom fighters like John Brown?

Given the fact that slavery was part of the US Constitution, and that this government and its Supreme Court passed repressive, fascist laws pertaining to fugitive slaves and the Dred Scott decision, asking federal and state governments to pardon Brown actually seems ludicrous to me. Indeed, the US government and the state of Virginia should be petitioning to be pardoned. A popular vote of African Americans—which would only be symbolic—would be more meaningful than if John Brown were pardoned by these governments.

A pardon would strip him of his meaning

Lastly, to pardon John Brown would rob him of the moral historical context of his self-sacrifice. I would no more want John Brown to be pardoned by Uncle Sam or the state of Virginia—and I speak as a minister and as a Christian—than I would want Constantine to pardon St. Paul, who was beheaded by an imperial predecessor. The force and integrity of Paul's martyrdom was his quintessential innocence over the guilt and perversion of the emperor who ordered his execution. The same applies to Brown in 19th-century US politics. To pardon him today would be like cutting him away from the moral historical fabric in which his life and death had meaning.

There is a sense in which John Brown is only John Brown as a man found guilty and condemned by what he called this slave nation. John Brown was not bothered by the fact of dying at the hands of a guilty government. He did not care for the judgment of the nation or Virginia—only the judgment of his God. As a believer in the atoning work of Christ and the evangelical and reformed faith, Brown had all the pardon he wanted from the great judgment seat of eternity.

His legacy transcends the government's reach

Brown's legacy is bigger than the US government's legacy, which is only political and self-serving to the rich and powerful of this land—something that Brown himself declared in his final statement to the court. His legacy is likewise bigger than that of the Old Dominion, which was filled with the bones of slaves and the fools who would rather have their sons die to keep slavery than to set their slaves free.

John Brown is an internationally loved and regarded revolutionary freedom figure. He has been loved down through the years and will be embraced by oppressed people and freedom fighters as long as this fallen world continues to produce oppressors and oppression. On November 29th, 1859, he wrote from his jail cell to Mary Stearns, the wife of one of his greatest supporters:

I have asked to be spared from having any mock or hypocritical prayers made over me when I am publicly murdered, and that my only religious attendance be poor, little, dirty, ragged, bareheaded and barefooted slave boys and girls, led by some old gray-headed slave mother. Farewell.

John Brown does not need a pardon. He is more than pardoned by the people who love freedom and hate oppression. What activist Yuri once wrote about Malcolm X can likewise be said of John Brown: he is both epic and epoch in person. His single life and sacrifice defies monuments and memorials. If he had a postage stamp or a great stone temple in Washington, D.C., it would likely mean he was little more than a political compromiser and creature of the wealthy.

Malcolm X's postage stamp only illustrates this very point—Malcolm would hardly have cared if the US Post Office put him on a stamp. And in putting him on a stamp, he was mainstreamed and deprived of his revolutionary political identity.

Let him remain a martyr

The fact that Brown's greatest memorial is a humble farmhouse near the northern border of the United States—near Lake Placid, overlooked and disregarded by most—marks him as an authentically epic figure in human history. The fact that he lived and died fighting slavery in the context of a nation that was flagrantly racist and unjust makes him the standard bearer of slavery's antithesis in his era.

So finally: leave him to live and die in that era. Let him hang, despised and condemned on that Virginia gallows. Pardon him, and you will strip him of his victory. Take away his guilt by means of a government pardon, and you will make him no better, no more valid, no more appreciated. The bigots, racists, and snobs who hate him will not suddenly embrace him. Those of us who love him will not love him any more for a pardon from Uncle Sam or the Old Dominion.

Do not pardon John Brown. Let him be, ever and always, a martyr—a witness for the oppressed. His soul goes marching on. Happy birthday, old man.