Who John Brown Wasn’t

A terrorist, a ne’er-do-well, or crazy

In this interview excerpt with the John Brown Project, Dr. Louis A. DeCaro Jr. begins the discussion of who John brown was, but spelling out who he wasn’t.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Before we talk about who John Brown was, I’d like to talk about who he wasn’t.

John Brown was not a terrorist

To be very succinct about it, John Brown wasn’t a terrorist. He was labeled as a terrorist, but historically speaking, he was a counterterrorist.

He did use violence, but he used it in self-defense and to subvert widespread terrorist violence taking place in the Kansas Territory. Otherwise, he never used violence unless he was in combat.

John Brown was not a ne’er-do-well

He also wasn’t a ne’er-do-well. He’s often portrayed as a man who failed so miserably in life and in business that the only thing left for him to do was become an abolitionist. But that’s simply nonsensical. From the very beginning, he wanted to be an abolitionist tycoon. He wanted to be a successful businessman so he could use his resources to end slavery. That didn’t work out for him, but it was really the circumstances of history that drove him more toward active abolitionism.

In his life, he did experience business downturns. Andrew Jackson had destroyed the national bank, and there wasn’t a uniform economic system in that part of the century. There were no modern economic safety nets like limited liability corporations. A financial crash hit the East Coast, and by the time it reached the western states—which in those days included Ohio and Illinois—John Brown, like many others, was doing business on credit. That’s what ruined him. The banks couldn’t deliver, and so he failed.

Historians have often acted as if John Brown was uniquely and miserably a failure in business. The truth is that he recovered. By the late 1840s, he was highly sought as a specialist in fine sheep and wool. He built a reputation that allowed him to travel throughout the Northeast, even as far south as Virginia, writing certificates of quality for flocks of sheep. He was considered one of the three foremost judges of fine sheep and wool in the country. So the idea that he was a ne’er-do-well is a distortion repeated by historians who pick at the edges of his story and recycle the same narrative.

John Brown was not crazy

He also wasn’t crazy. Throughout his life, there was never any credible suggestion of insanity. His family thought the charge was nonsensical. We know the origin of the “crazy” story in the 19th century. During his incarceration, some friends and relatives began preparing affidavits in hopes of getting his death sentence commuted.

In the mid-20th century, however, Lincoln historians who were hostile to Brown, along with Civil War historians who knew little about him and were often aligned with status quo or Lost Cause interpretations that sought to protect the perceived integrity of the South, revived the insanity claim. It became one of the favorite points of attack against him. That interpretation has largely been set aside by serious scholarship. We now know there’s no substantive evidence for it. Yet the idea has filtered into popular culture, and many people still casually refer to John Brown as crazy.