John Brown’s Documents: Principle, the League of Gileadites & the Provisional Constitution
Historian/actor Ian Barford examines how John Brown's paperwork, from the 1850 League of Gileadites to the Chatham provisional constitution, reveals a man of principle, not a “blood-crazed maniac.”
Who was Brown speaking for? (0:00)
Ian Barford
There are a couple of other things I want to come back around to, because I do want to talk about the Gileadites. There's this idea that, in this day and age, some people might ask: who did he think he was speaking for? With the provisional constitution, he had a convention largely comprised of Black expatriates who voted and said, “We approve of this document.” In the declaration of liberty, as you say, he speaks as a representative.
On one hand, I like the position that he's speaking for those who can't speak for themselves. But in this day and age, I almost wonder whether there would be people who would ask: how did he dare to do that? And it goes back to 1850, when the government re-energized the Fugitive Slave Act and the Black community in Springfield was particularly terrorized. Brown had friends there and saw it, so he formed an organization. Again, he steps into these situations. And there's paperwork. This is the thing I get a kick out of with Brown: you point it out, but he's always drawing up documents. It's something he feels he can't move legitimately without, and here it takes a particular direction and shape, moving toward a constitution. So as you reflect on what you've heard, going back to Springfield in 1850, the United States League of Gileadites, and the documents he drew up.
A man of principle, not a maniac (2:01)
Lou DeCaro
I'm very struck by something Robert mentioned that I think is very important, and that was a part of Brown's life seemingly from the beginning: principle, not only as a Christian but as a citizen. This idea that he was some blood-crazed maniac is so antithetical to the record of the man's life.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (2:35)
When I think about the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the world it unleashed, violence broke out all over the North. There were countless examples of violent injustice inflicted by federal marshals on free Black people. Oh my gosh, am I talking about today? [laughter]
Springfield and the League of Gileadites (3:12)
By then Brown had already moved up to the Adirondacks, but he came back to Springfield, to his former community of Little Haiti. He collaborated with the local Black community to protect themselves from federal marshals, who needed absolutely nothing to act. They could just come in, snatch somebody, and take them away, and the judges were being paid off by the government. Because of his principled mind, and his determination that he always be seen and understood as an American and a patriot defending American principles of freedom and equality, he wrote a document called the League of Gileadites that dignified their use of defensive violent means to protect the people of Springfield.
Kansas and “Brown's Parallels” (4:23)
As for Kansas, I wanted to bring up John Brown's “Parallels,” which he wrote and which was widely published as he ultimately left Kansas in early 1859. Brown had never intended to go to Kansas. His sons had emigrated there and were sending him letters saying they were in very desperate circumstances. The federal government was putting arms into the hands of the border ruffians, the Missourians who were crossing the border and illegally rigging elections with extraordinary numbers. In some cases a county would have 400 residents and there were 7,000 votes for the pro-slavery side, all because of these ruffians. His sons said they needed guns more than they needed bread.
The Radical Abolition Party (5:31)
Brown came down from the mountain and went to Syracuse, to the convention of the Radical Abolition Party, which I think was the first and only convention of the Radical Abolition Party, led by James McCune Smith, Frederick Douglass, and Gerrit Smith. Starting with the Gileadites, and then again with Kansas, Brown began to see himself in direct opposition to the federal government and what it was trying to enact, which was to expand slavery. And as we know, the Republican Party, and later Abraham Lincoln, was not an abolition party. It was an anti-expansionist party.
Emancipation in Missouri and national fame (6:33)
As Brown was leaving Kansas, he and his colleagues emancipated some enslaved people in Missouri, and, as he said, all hell was unleashed. He wrote the “Parallels” to show the contrast: when the border ruffians had snatched up abolitionists at the Marais des Cygnes massacre (I think there were maybe 17) and shot them in cold blood, there wasn't much fanfare. But when he emancipated these human beings from enslavement, all hell was unleashed. So he becomes a national figure after Kansas, because these documents and events are national news, and Osawatomie Brown becomes a household name. In 1858 there was even a Broadway play called Osawatomie Brown, which he never saw.
The Chatham convention (7:45)
That ideological thinking also very much built the ideas that ultimately culminated in the provisional constitution, and in those debates at Chatham with Delany and the rest of the expatriates. Those were extraordinary arguments. One in particular was quite remarkable, because many of them objected to the fact that Brown was not a revolutionary. He wanted this movement into the South to be under the banner of American principles.
Of course, these men had been brutalized by the system; they didn't want to fight under the American flag, they didn't want any part of that. But through his convictions, he was able to convince them that his idea of American principles was the real America. And I find that quite extraordinary, given what those men in Canada had been through.
“Glory, glory, hallelujah… his truth is marching on.” (music by Keith Leak and New Mercies)
