American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with R. Blakeslee Gilpin, part 2 of 5

One, so you mentioned that the news of the mods for Brown was like news from another country, but the light of Lovejoy was different, what line? I mean, I think part of the reason why Lovejoy, the killing of Lovejoy had such impact is, I mean, partly because it was a murder. That's obviously sort of upping the anties, upping the stakes in just a really serious way, but it's also geographic proximity. So Brown is in Hudson, Ohio on November 7th, when this news that Lovejoy's been killed sort of starts rolling around the country. And he's actually at a prayer meeting when he and his father are there together, when this news comes down. And the preacher says, are we free men, or are we slaves under Southern mob rule? The response to this is they're framing these questions, these big questions of American liberty and freedom itself, in the sort of binary between slavery as sinful and freedom as good, or I mean, that's really the setup that gets made.

And this is this moment when Brown famously, or infamously says that he's going to consecrate himself to the destruction of slavery, from this moment, he will do that. And he says this actually more than once, at other points also, so this isn't something, he sort of likes declaring himself to be dedicated to the destruction of slavery. And again, it's sort of like in 1834, he doesn't really do anything practically, even in November of 1837, to really dedicate himself to the destruction of slavery. But to me, there's a real sea change in that moment, where the stakes of this fight have become exponentially more serious. That Brown is suddenly, the understanding is dawning on him that this is life and death, and that if you are going to deal with this sort of fundamental, this foundational American sin, you may have to be willing to meet arms with arms. I mean, because how can you defend men like love joy?

How many martyrs will the movement need? And that's really the understanding that really quickly spreads about love joy's murder is that this guy is the first murder of American abolitionism. That's pretty powerful stuff, especially to somebody with this incredibly passionate and devoted relationship with God and understanding of sort of, we're talking about old testament, Christianity. There's a murder and that people are being killed and the stakes are life and death, sin and salvation. That's what happens when love joy gets killed. That's what happens when he gets murdered. That's what happens when he gets lynched by this mob is that understanding really spreads throughout American abolitionism. People like Garrison are not going to take that up, but people like Brown, again, that's a really powerful seed that's planted in 1837 that these are the stakes. And so what is to be done? It's still going to take some time for him to, for crisis to meet opportunity as it were. For Brown to actually find that moment

when he can dedicate himself to anti-slavery action, but he's not going to react like Garrison would. He's going to react saying there's something greater than he needs to be done that we need to meet arms with arms. That's what happens in the 1837. Great. And I like to follow the tangent just for one second. How did the authorities respond to the way mobiles to the government stand up for the abolitionist right to free speech? I mean, the right to free speech in 1837 is a pretty complicated idea. And it's not something that was so, it was certainly not enshrined in the way that we understand it today. So the real foundational right that Americans felt they was the right to property, which is a dangerous right when we're talking about slavery. So the right to free speech is I think a little bit more murky. I mean, certainly, politicians from the founding fathers on down openly talk about in letters to supporters, letters to the press about suppressing free speech. So there's a very different understanding

of what that means. And part of the problem, there's no coherent. I don't, this doesn't even come into the 20th century. There's no coherent response to mob action. Whether that mob is a pro-slavery mob, whether that mob is an anti-slavery mob until the 20th century. The government doesn't know what to do about it because there's such a paranoia of government overstepping its boundaries. That is sort of bleeding into British monarchy territory where the government is going to suppress the freedoms of citizens, that the government really can't do anything or feels that it can't in order to suppress mobs. This is really weird because, well, this is actually how government and free speech are going to be negotiated, but the government doesn't know what to do. And this is going to go on through the civil war, through re-construction, through the lynch mobs into the 20th century. The government doesn't know how to respond for fear of overstepping those sort of sacred boundaries. I mean, they try to prosecute some people in the love of Joy-Margaret.

There's a prosecutor, Francis Murdoch. He puts them on trial, puts two people out of a mob of hundreds of people on trial. They're acquitted. I mean, this is pretty much just like a rubber stamp process. Murdoch is this pretty wild character. He goes on to draft the petition for Dred Scott's freedom. He moves to St. Louis. I mean, this guy, these anti-slavery people are just all kind of characters in a moving drama. OK, well, we're just going to move these guys to Kansas or move these guys to St. Louis. Because they're so few of them. So the same prosecutor is going to go and participate in this Dred Scott case, at least in this trying to get this slave freedom. But in terms of pursuing justice for love-joice killers, I mean, it's a dead end. I mean, and that's a large part of that is government just not knowing how to deal with this, not knowing how to step in and sort of deal, basically participate in public life as a governmental entity, intervene, stop mob justice. It's not something American government really figures out

until I probably the 1930s, if then. Yeah, I mean, the Kennedy still. Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's interesting. So the jumping way ahead to June of 1855 and Brown is going to be a meeting at Syracuse. Who were the radical abolitionists? What was there? What were the religious elections? I mean, radical abolitionists are a very small group. So if we're talking about abolitionism, I mean, probably by the 1850s, numbering in the thousands, I mean, the radical abolitionists are going to be in the low hundreds. This is a very small group of people. And this is an interracial group, which is pretty radical also for abolitionists or any political movement at that time, that blacks and whites are going to be participating in something really as close to equal partners as it is going to exist in Antibela, America. And so these are people like James McEwan Smith, Frederick

Douglas, obviously most notably Brown is participating in this very intimately. Garrett Smith, this sort of wealthy philanthropist from upstate New York. I mean, there are other figures also. A lot of them prominent New Englanders, very well educated, wealthy, they kind of take to the radical abolition in a way that they don't take to the sort of Garrisonian abolitionism. And that's really the drift of things by the mid 1850s is towards, I mean, Garrison clearly by 1855 hasn't proven to be right. I mean, he hasn't proven successful. It doesn't seem like he's accomplished anything. And I think that's the kind of thing that understanding of Garrisonian abolitionism is driving people to at least seek out more drastic solutions, or at least try to figure out are there other opportunities that we're not taking? Part of that, I mean, happens as early as the 1840s with the rise of political abolitionism. So Garrison famously is abstaining. You don't vote.

You don't participate in organized religion or in organized politics. And by the 1840s, even people are saying, well, this doesn't seem to be doing anything. We need to find something that's actually going to have concrete effects. And that's really when radical abolitionists really take up that sort of mantra and really seek out something that's going to become much more drastic. But I mean, I think the hallmark of radical abolitionism in the 1850s is still talk. These guys are talkers. I mean, you wonder, I mean, any reform of it has to begin probably with an idea. But these guys are just like, they love to talk. I mean, they're intellectual. I mean, a lot of them, intellectual, wealthy intellectuals. They've been, most of them educated at Harvard. I mean, and they're going to be getting sitting around, you know, comfy parlors and talking. Just talking their heads off about what we can do about this. And then, you know, at the end of the night, there's a handshake and they go to their respective homes. You know, there's no, what's the sort of endpoint of this? It's a sort of endlessly going around in a circle

about what we can do about this. Brown, I think, with Frederick Douglass and others spurring him on, is kind of what happens to get them out of that loop. OK, yeah, it's good. Brown must have cut quite a figure in this circle. It's not just a talker. No, no, I mean, I think part of the thing about Brown as he engaged with, yeah, part of the thing about Brown as he engaged with radical abolition, and this is a slow process, is that he's coming from this place. You know, we're talking about these seas being planted in the 1830s, that he's sort of coming around to an 80 slavery. But in 1846 and 47, Brown, destitute guy, he's been bankrupted dozens of times. He's got this enormous family that he's, you know, not necessarily dedicated to supporting in the way that we would understand that. He is spending what we would imagine

or his last sense, his last pennies, to go to Hartford, Connecticut from Springfield, Massachusetts to get daguerreotypes made. And there are these radical images. One of them, he supposedly made three images of this black daguerreotypeist in 1846 and 47. And the one that survives that I think is wild is him pledging allegiance to this homemade flag. And the flag is emblazoned with the sort of logo. I mean, this is just, it's so crazy to think about. The logo of his imagined republic that he's going to found when he invades the South. This is 1846. I mean, he's kind of in a void. He's like a kid, you know, learning guitar and making homemade record albums. You know, he's drawing his cover art when he doesn't even know how to play. That's how I imagine, you know, brown in 1846. But he's got a flag made up. And that's when he first meets Frederick Douglass is sort of immediately after he's making

what I would call aspirational images of abolitionism, of radical, more radical abolitionism than anyone has been espousing. You know, this sort of idea that he is going to lead a band of men to invade the South under the banner of this homemade flag. And he's meeting with Frederick Douglass and explaining this plan to him, you know, in 1848 when they meet in Springfield. I mean, that's just, it's sort of astounding that he's going to make this come true. That's really what it is. He's got an idea that he's actually going to bring into being by whatever means he can muster. And Douglass, he sees as a tool in this process. Well, he can't ever have a public without a flag. That's true. That's true. I mean, he didn't understand the first step. You covered a lot of stuff already,

you know, as you described, a lot of the radical abolitionists, they're well-educated, so the most over-ish citizens, but didn't browns, plans, strike them as kind of extreme, where, why would they be joining the orbit of a man like John Brown? Well, I think the process of brown sort of being integrated into, I mean, mainstream is the wrong word. We're talking about, as I always try to tell people, we're talking about a fringe movement, of a fringe movement, of a fringe movement. I mean, these people are so obscure. I don't know, I mean, they'd be like, wikens in modern American, I don't know, you have to find some such a marginalized group. They are such a small group of people, but the process of brown being absorbed

into that sort of circle really begins in 1848 when he meets Douglas. And Douglas really kind of, he gives him that endorsement. He's saying that this guy is in sympathy of black man. And he says, it's as close to his, as though his own heart was pierced with the iron of slavery. I mean, from Frederick Douglass, you can't really get much better than that. That's like the best blurb you can get for your bonafides. At the same time, though, Brown's first meeting with Douglas, I think is immediately colored by the fact that Douglass is saying, whoa, I mean, this guy is, he's into stuff that I don't even know if I'm ready for. He's literally, Brown is unfurling a map at their first meeting and saying, this is where I'm gonna go. This is where I'm going to invade and bring slaves out of the South. And I can't imagine for Doug, I mean, Douglass is a former slave. I mean, this guy probably, he has a more intimate understanding of this system than anyone in the abolition movement. And he's listening to this kind of super intense. I mean, he's gravely intense.

Very charismatic in this kind of peculiar way. White man, describe how he's going to do this. And I think Douglass is both inspired because Brown is asking for his help. Now, that's not the same sort of attitude that a gay or sony would take towards Douglass. It's much more from a place of equality or brotherhood. And Douglass is struck by that. I mean, I think he's really heartened by that, but he's also pretty wary. And I think that that is really the hallmark of Brown's interactions, even with his secret six, even with these private supporters of his mission for the next half a decade, are going to be always struck in these terms of, well, we're going to give you the money to do this, but man, this is a crazy plan. You know, I mean, that's really the way they're approaching it because they're wary. I mean, it's a crazy plan. And Brown is saying, you know, I'm going to do this and he's so determined. What else can you do with somebody that determined but give them your support,

but it's not like they're going to come along. You know, I mean, there's a limit to what they're going to do because they understand the parameters of the plan. I mean, know that it's extreme, that it's probably doomed to failure. I mean, his supporters are telling him that for much of the late 1850s, his most intimate supporters, his most intimate friends in radical abolitionism are saying, do you really think you should do this? And Brown is just, he's stalwart. He never waivers. I mean, he just says, this is what I'm supposed to do. You know, that's kind of what these guys are. I mean, it's kind of what they're looking for. You know, when people who have been talking for that long, it's finally find somebody willing to do something. I think it's sort of like the bus is going to go. So you either get on or you, it's going to be hard to let it pass because you've been talking, you've been talking a blue streak for two decades. And now there's a chance to actually do something or you've got to take, you just have to take it. Otherwise, you're sort of missing the opportunity.

And I think that's what Brown represents to these people is finally. And this really takes on much more momentum after 1856 and the Potawatomi massacre. After that, they're going to say, okay, this guy means business. I mean, he's the first, he's the first of us who actually means to do something. That's pretty powerful stuff for these gentlemen. Great, thank you. So you mentioned Potawatiki? Yeah. Can I ask you to, sorry, it's a Potawatomi. Why, why do I sort of 18? If the lady can get more modern weapons, what are you using that? Why would a killing system? Part of this, part of what sort of defines Potawatomi, I mean, not just symbolically, but literally is what's going on in Kansas. And that, I mean, that aspect of it, I think is why Brown is using this weaponry.

I mean, you've already got two murders of free-state citizens in Kansas. So Charles Dow is shot by his neighbor in the back. This is a pro-slavery on free-state killing. And then this guy named Reese Brown, no relation to John, is murdered with hatchets by a mob, by a pro-slavery mob. And when Reese is murdered, I mean, both of these guys are considered martyrs of the free-state cause of this. It's not an abolitionist cause. That's what I always, another thing that people really kind of get confused about, is most of the white New Englanders who are going to Kansas, they don't care about slaves. What they care about is stopping the slave power. So stopping the South from getting another state, getting more political repensations. This is what, this is really political abolitionism. So when Garrison is saying, oh, we have to stay out of this, I mean, we've got a practical conflict going on. But when Reese Brown is murdered with hatchets, I mean, his dying word is, I mean, this is great martyrdom here. His dying words are, they murdered me like cowards.

You know, I mean, you can't, I mean, then this speaks to Brown. I mean, if, so I think what those killings and, you know, the larger circumstances of what's going on in Kansas anyway, I think they bring Brown right back to love joy. You know, they remind him that there's a teleology, there's a timeline here of outrageous that are being committed on the righteous cause, on the cause of salvation, on the cause of American freedom. I mean, I think if we're thinking about or analyzing the symbolic use of these swords in the Potawatomi massacre, it's that, it's an even wider timeline, which is going back to the revolutionary generation. And I mean, Brown, he loves the symbolic swords, which we can talk about when we get to Harvard's Ferry. But the use of those swords in Potawatomi is the same thing. It's saying these people deserve a death that is harkening back, okay, first to revolutionary generation. But let's go back to biblical times. These people, this is God's punishment.

This is not the punishment of man. They're not gonna be hung, okay? They are going to be murdered. They're going to be butchered because that's old testament retribution. That's what's going on with those broad swords. I mean, I mean, laughing off limbs and, you know, I mean, this is real biblical, like, fire and brimstone stuff. That's what's going on. I mean, that Brown is, it's in response to events of a like kind that are going on in Kansas. But he's up in the ante. I mean, he's really taking things to the next level. And that's really important. And so, for Brown, there was any big problem squaring this with his religious beliefs, you know, for Darsen, it would be complete to capture that first. Yeah, I mean, as far as how Potawatomi fits into Brown's religiosity, it's not terribly complicated. I mean, it fits in pretty well because we're talking about retribution and kind. And I mean, Brown rationalizes these killings

in various degrees to various people over the next few years. But he's never really saying anything that sort of speaks to the fact that there is no conflict here. There's, I mean, these people are killing our people. Therefore, they deserve to die. I mean, it's a real testament to I for an I type of justice. But it's also, I mean, Brown really understands as his homemade flag demonstrates this understanding of symbolic action. I mean, that's the symbolism of this action is huge. I mean, not just the way that they do it, but doing it in a way that's going to inspire people to inspire fear, inspire awe. That's political symbolism. I mean, he's trying to bring some greater meaning than just a murder for a murder. He's going to, he's going to, you know, if they murder these free state men, he's going to murder five. He's going to murder five pro-slayer men, while they're wise and children are inside the house.

He wants this to be an intimate symbolic killing. That's what it's all about. I think of the impression that the intimacy of the killing took that toll on his sons and the people actually. Well, you can, I mean, you really can imagine in the Potawatting Massacre, he's got this band. I mean, this is partly true for Harper's Ferry too, a band of kind of unwilling participants. I mean, or participants who don't really know what they're getting in for when they set out on a journey. You know, oh, Brown says, oh, we're going to go do something. And you know, conceivably, they're thinking about like toilet papering the house. You know what I mean? They're going to throw eggs at the door. And Brown is going to butcher these men. He's not going to butcher one. He's going to butcher five, because he wants it to be, he wants it to send the message. And his sons, these poor people, I mean, who are just sort of always suffering for a cause that's not really their own. Not to say that they don't believe in anti-slavery, but they, I don't know that any of them really

believe in the anti-slavery that their father espoused. And so, you know, Frederick most famously is sort of undone by the massacre, by news of the massacre, by participating to whatever degree he did in the massacre. These people have a real problem with what Brown does. Some of the other people who participate in the massacre don't sort of have any moral qualms about it, but his sons, I think, are much more sensitive. They're much less steeled. They're much less Calvinist. I mean, they're not, they don't live in that universe, because we're talking about even more, I mean, Brown is kind of cross generations, even more than one at this point, where he's kind of, if Calvinism has faded by the late 1830s, 1840s, it's really gone by the 1850s. And that's when his sons are sort of saying, well, wow, this doesn't fit into our understanding of religion, which is more of a new testament kind of thing. Peaceful Christ doesn't butcher people in the middle of the night. That's much more of a Calvinist kind of understanding

of what God intends you to do, or what God expects you to do in response to sin. Yeah, I'm sure it's suffered a little of children's problems. What did, and so what did Brown's Eastern supporters being included in radical abolition to make a pot of wine? The Eastern response is really interesting, because there's a huge Eastern involvement. I mean, fundraising, this is like Darfur relief in 1855, to send aid being this loosely defined word that encompasses sending arms, sending bibles, much less frequently than arms, sending money to free-state people in Kansas. But there's also a huge newspaper presence. And this is sort of the first embedded war reporters, because what people don't really understand about Kansas

in 1855 is that it is open warfare. It is chaos. You've got drunken mobs of Missourians flooding into Kansas on voting days that are sort of a rampage in the landscape. They're ransacking towns. They're burning cities. I mean, they're really killing people. And so people like to sort of separate Brown's actions out as being so out of the norm. They're horrible. Let's not make any mistake. But they're definitely part of a fabric of violence that's going on in Kansas in the 1850s. I mean, he ups the ante. He goes to the next level. But it's still part of the same. It's really part of this fabric of violence. And I mean, I think the really interesting thing is that these newspaper reporters are sending things back all the time, that this is what's going on here. And the reports of the Potawatomi really reach Eastern readers very quickly. And the response from Brown supporters, I think, is not necessarily don't ask, don't tell. But they're not necessarily ever acknowledging

the brutality of those murders while they are endorsing them. And so I mean, Garrett Smith, the most famously, says this is a terrible remedy for a terrible wrong. So that these are an appropriate response to something that was done. I mean, Frederick Douglass says that they, this sort of mysterious day of pro-slavery supporters, compelled Brown to these desperate measures. I mean, those are pretty harsh sort of logic there. I mean, that's a real means to an end, whatever means necessary, is sort of what's taking over radical abolition. And really what I think is that Douglass and Smith, they're never really reckoning with the realities of Potawatomi, because in an Eastern newspaper, the news from Kansas is going to be about pro-slavery outrage is committed on free-soilers. So when there's finally, in the case of Potawatomi,

a free-soil murder committed against pro-slavery citizens, there's celebration among his supporters. You know, Frederick Douglass and Garrett Smith are saying that this is good. This is appropriate. This is just response to outrages that are being committed on us every day. Those outrages, I think, are stretching back to mobbing of garrison, the murder of lovejoy finally. There's a response. And the immediate context in which those massacres are reported is the caning of Charles Sumner in the House of Representatives. I mean, it's a sort of completely astounding political event that this very famous and outspoken massachusetts senator is practically beaten to death. I mean, beaten to death in the House of Representatives by a congressman. And nothing happens. You know, I mean, that's the synchronicity of those two events, which Brown later uses to say, well, I knew about Sumner being beaten. And that was why I did this.

That's great. That's awesome as a sort of symbolic PR move. But News didn't travel that fast in 1856. So he didn't know about Sumner, but it was, I mean, that's what Eastern readers knew about. They knew about that. And so it's sort of, you know, this is just response. Finally, Northerners are standing up for themselves. And that's, I think, the context in which the massacres were received, particularly in certain circles in the North. I just want to do another tangent for a thing, because you've mentioned several times where a fringe movement is sitting, you know, 100,000 to distinguish between abolitionists. And because more people are interested in the general cause of the Northerners, and just to clarify that for the audience. If people like Harry and Chris Stowe or not. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the relevant thing to remember is that by the mid-1850s, I mean, Harry Beeser Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin had just an enormous impact week. It's so impossible to really exaggerate how enormous

the impact of that book was in converting people to anti-slavery. Now, anti-slavery is not abolitionism, because anti-slavery is just a belief that slavery is wrong. We don't necessarily need to do anything about it right now. We don't necessarily need to do anything about it for 100 years. As long as we're committed to the fact that it's wrong, these are plans for gradual emancipation. These are plans for colonization very popular among people who are anti-slavery. The other group of anti-slavery people are really the people who are migrating to Kansas for the most part. Those are people who don't want the slave states to gain more political representation. That's what anti-slavery is. Abolitionism, particularly as it's the sort of meeting it takes on in the 1850s, especially by 1855, is immediate abolitionism. And that is we need to get rid of slavery right now. By whatever means we can get it at our disposal. For people like Brown and Radical Abolitionists, that means violence.

For more moderate people, that means compensated emancipation, paying slaveholders for their slaves. But the vast majority of northerners at this point are probably don't have much of a feeling about slavery at all. But those that do have a feeling of slavery, they're anti-slavery. They think it's wrong, but they're not going to do anything about it. That's a real strong distinction between abolitionists, people who want to do something about slavery right away, and just people don't think it's a good thing. That would have changed things, OK? Let's talk about it another day.