The Historical Relationship Between John Brown and Harriet Tubman

This video clip comes from a John Brown: America250 Roundtable discussion with historian Margaret Washington, Ph.D., and environmental psychologist Shawndel Fraser, M.A., John Brown and Abolitionist Women. The clip explores the deeply respectful relationship between the two freedom fighters.

TRANSCRIPT

We often feel like when John Brown is mentioned, Harriet Tubman is always the first person that's mentioned. Many people do not know many of the other abolitionist women, including Black women, who had friendships with and admired Brown, as Dr. Margaret was saying. But we can't ignore the Harriet Tubman story; it's epic in its own right. The way that John Brown figures in her story, and she figures in his story, makes them significant. I was a little disappointed by the way John Brown was treated in the movie Harriet. Whatever else one may say about it, I enjoyed it, but I felt like John Brown was only there in an unnamed vignette and very briefly. But be that as it may, we're talking about them together.

Deeply shared respect

According to Lillie Chase Wyman, when John Brown first found Harriet Tubman—I think that would have been in the spring of 1858 in St. Catharines, Canada West—Harriet had already dreamt of Brown; she had already seen him in a dream. In advance of the meeting, when John Brown met her, the tradition is that he entered and shook hands with her three times, which, keeping in mind especially for a kind of Biblicist, three is a significant number. It has some sort of significance in itself. He said, "The first I see is General Tubman, the second is General Tubman, and the third is General Tubman." And then they proceeded to talk.

After that meeting, he wrote to his son, John Jr., because Harriet Tubman had signed on and had committed herself to helping him raise men, particularly Black men, to join him. And he said this: "I came on here direct with Jermaine Loguen the day after you left Rochester. I'm succeeding to all appearances beyond my expectations." And now get this: "Harriet Tubman hooked on his whole team at once. Harriet is the most of a man naturally that I ever met with." That's April 8, 1858.

Afterwards, in the summer of 1858, he wrote to Frederick Douglass on Harriet's behalf, asking him to raise some financial support for Harriet Tubman's own project. He says, "When at your place, I forgot in my haste to say a word on behalf of my friend Harriet Tubman at St. Catharines, Canada West. She wants to raise $100 towards furnishing a home for herself and her aged father and mother." And here's the line again: "Anything you can do for General Tubman, the man of deeds, will be appreciated."

The last vignette we have is according to the abolitionist Wendell Phillips. Brown and Tubman met in probably the beginning of June 1859, which is the year of the raid. According to Phillips, he said, "The last time I ever saw John Brown was under my own roof in Boston, as he, Brown, brought Harriet Tubman to me, saying, 'Mr. Phillips, I bring you one of the best and bravest persons on this continent, General Tubman, as we call her.'" So that's a very interesting profile of the interaction.

Analyzing gendered language in historical context

But what's also fascinating is this language, and when I first read this, especially in our contemporary context, I wonder how we understand that, because some people might say that's very insulting. So I thought that I would ask Shawndel and Margaret to weigh in on that and give us some perspective.

Earlier you made a joke about watching what you say, and people make that joke a lot when they hear psychologist, but as an environmental psychologist, I do analyze, study, and come to understand people in context. Some of that is what they do socially, which ties into the culture of the moment. We have time, we have place, and we have people. And so, I contextualize. In my work, when I look at masculinity, I'm looking at historic masculinity, certainly as embodied by John, as a person who acted on behalf of people who could not repay him in any material sense in a time when those people were considered to be monetarily valuable rather than humanely valuable in and of themselves.

Brown was referring to her in a warrior capacity, 'He/him' is a compliment

I also imagine the future of masculinity from today's standpoint as well. So when we think about what John might have been saying when he referred to Harriet as a man of deeds and the greatest man that he had ever known, I understand him to be talking in the way of the Greeks. In reference to her courage and in reference to her works—which also feels like a biblical reference, "by your work shall you be known"—we have the concept of andreia from the Greeks. The root word of andreia is actually referring to adult males, but not in terms of biology; it's in terms of a fully formed moral person. It's also referring to a warrior virtue: acting for the sake of what is noble regardless of fear, being steady in the face of fear, and acting for something that is greater than yourself.

General Tubman showed herself to be an outstanding leader in the army, right? The Combahee River Raid, which makes me want to come back to womanism and Black feminism as well. The virtue, the bravery, the morality of Harriet—all of her actions—is what I think he was referring to. With Socrates, there were the references that you mentioned in the letters from Mary Stearns and Frances Ellen Watkins. That visioning of John as a person who spoke the truth to the system and was persecuted for it is very apt.

Harriett Tubman had a high opinion of Brown, too

I want to make reference to Harriet and some of the quotes that she had about how she perceived John as being the greatest white man who ever lived, as being more valuable in his actions and his life than 100 men doing what they could do at the level that they'd be willing to embody courage. Another one that's not quoted very often, but I think Tiya Miles did actually reference it in Night Flyer, is that he was a man who lived as Jesus Christ lived, and specifically that, "I sometimes think he was Jesus Christ come again." We can see those parallels there.

The struggle for equality continues today, but the situation is different

Speaking to what Margaret mentioned about the Declaration of Sentiments and the exclusion of Black women at that time, it does raise a question for me about the three-fifths rule. At what point were we no longer three-fifths and became five-fifths, and where does that timing align? I am also thinking about then versus now and who is included in major movements for inalienable rights—feminism, then Black feminism, then womanism. That is when we started to think about intersectionality: these various ways of understanding experience and how it shifts in relevance according to people's particular place and their embodied experience.

Judging the past by today's standards is short-sighted and a bit foolhardy. Every species goes through its process of adaptive change. Today, what we think of as, "Oh, of course it should be considered in this perspective," ignores that all the things that make that thought process possible did not exist in previous times. We can't put the burden of today's standards on yesterday's experiences and knowledge-making. We can't impose our contemporary sense of things if I understand correctly. Margaret, do you want to step in also on this topic?

The Feminist movement never really included Black women

I agree with that to a point, because we can certainly learn a lot from the past. This reflects the women's movement and some of the conflicts in terms of, well, even just to move ahead with the suffrage movement and the Black suffrage movement—the passage of the 15th Amendment versus women's suffrage. I think that is a struggle that the abolitionists were the leaders of, and yet they split over this, and I think they've been split ever since. I think the feminist movement never really included Black women. That isn't to say that various groups within the feminist movement did not embrace Black women, but as a movement, that was an issue, and I think that issue took us into the 20th and, yes, even the 21st century. One can say the same thing about race and the legacy of slavery.

Outro music thanks to Chuck Bickford via The John Brown Project