American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with R. Blakeslee Gilpin, part 1 of 5

out of, you know, supposition and yeah, yeah, you know, we're picking up this story in young Brown's story in the summer, we've just a little bit of background here, what were your circumstances growing up and how was it born? I mean, Brown is born in Torrington, Connecticut in 1800. And I mean, that part of Connecticut is this really interesting area, very rural at that time. And Brown is born into this household where you've really got these three pillars of belief. One of them is Calvinism, which is this very sort of strict rendering of a belief in Christianity that basically all humans are born into depravity, that God is sort of out to, he knows what your destiny is, but that basically you're always going to do wrong. I mean, this is, it's sort of a non-redemptive, I mean, you're always working towards redemption, but there's no real concrete opportunity to know that you've been redeemed. So we've got Calvinism, we've got the sort of revolutionary war as another pillar of this household. And that's really just a huge part of American

life in 1800, how did you connect, how did you sort of tangibly believe yourself to be an inherent in or connected to the spirit of the revolutionary era, the revolutionary generation, you know, principles of freedom and equality, but also of being willing to take up arms to fight. And then finally, Puritanism, which is this really weird thing to throw into a mix with Calvinism, because Puritanism has this very reform-minded understanding of religion, where you can move towards redemption, or if you can sort of purify yourself in some way. I mean, that's a really strange thing to throw into Calvinism. And those, all those threads are the things that Brown is growing up with, in Torrington, under this very stern, I mean, you think this guy's own brown, his father is kind of the, if I ever think of somebody who is the model of the remote father figure, this guy is that guy, you know, just no, I don't think he was given, certainly not giving a lot of emotional feedback to his son, but also not a lot of encouragement

in any particular direction, because that wouldn't be in a Calvinist sort of mindset, you know, you have to find your own path, God has a path for you, and you have to figure it out. And brown is not, you know, for some such an important historical figure, this guy does not have a, he does not have a lot of sort of sparkling events in his early childhood, you know, he is not doing very well, he's not very well read, he's not very smart, he doesn't really prove himself to be very good at much of anything except for manual labor. And that's affects him profoundly, because really what he aspires to are the people who are most accomplished in this society that he's sort of being born into, or religious figures, you know, they are preachers, they are religious writers, and brown really doesn't have the chops to make that happen. So his early life is, you know, it's filled with a lot of trial and hardship. I mean, death is a huge part of the, of the American household in the early 19th century, and that's certainly a big part of brown's

upbringing, you know, his mother dies at a very early age, and his father takes into wife, that's happened very quickly at that time, and I don't think brown really got along very well with his stepmother, and you know, he tries to attend seminary to get this religious education, and he's just not very good at it, then he fails out, and he tries again, and he fails out of that. You know, this guy is just had a, he's had a pretty hard run of it, and not a lot of encouragement, in any way, except to say, you can take care of animals, or you can run a tannery. These are not, you know, his father's not telling him, you can be, you can be anything, son. I think it's much more like you need to look to God to find whatever you're good at, and God's probably not going to tell you, that's really what Calvin is all about, you know, God won't tell you what you're supposed to do, you just have to discern it somehow. But Calvin then seems to be something that's lend itself to interpreting God's will, as you see. Yeah, I mean, I think the fascinating thing about Calvinism, particularly as brown understood,

you know, the problem with any American religious movement, particularly in the 19th century, is there are 100 splinter groups within any major groups, so there are, you know, liberal Calvinists and conservative Calvinists. I would say the brown is growing up in a very hard-line Calvinist household, where the understanding of what God's destiny or what God's fate for you is has to be discerned by who knows what means, and that's really the difference from later religious movements that are going to come along and become very popular in the later in the 19th century, is that this kind of Calvinism isn't a vision, isn't a spiritualism, it's sort of concrete signs that you have private conversations with God about what you're supposed to do. So, if an opportunity opens up, you say to yourself, well, this is apparently what God intended me to do. I mean, that's a very murky, it's open to a lot of personal interpretation or reinterpretation. You know, if your business fails, well, God intended that business to fail and he intended

me to do something else, and now I'm going to go on to do that. That's a pretty strange and it's an anomalous sort of religious belief where God is sort of this mercurial figure. It's kind of like a, just like Owen Brown is to his son. God is playing a pretty similar role in Brown's life. There's no encouragement. There's no, you can't have a sort of spiritual conversation with God. You just know that God has something intended for you. So, by the summer of 32, he's living on, I think, in 90 or by another 90-year cycle, being in remote Ohio. Pennsylvania, yeah. So, it seems almost almost the life of the, he's living a kind of biblical patriarch, I kind of like the father. Yeah. I wonder if you'd expand on that. Well, Brown is part of this generation. Also, Americans who are really moving westward.

And so, this is a huge part of what takes him, you know, out of Connecticut into other places, into Ohio, into Pennsylvania. And he's, in 1832, he's in New Richmond, Pennsylvania. He's purchased, I think it's almost 200 acres of land. And he's running this tannery as 15 employees, you know, things are, we would think kind of on the up and up for Brown in 1832. But the problem is that he's always seeking. And I think that this is really Brown's relationship with God, his relationship, particularly with Calvinism, is this idea that he's never quite found what he's supposed to do. And then God starts to send him sort of concrete signs that he's not doing the right thing. So, his son, his first son Frederick, his second son Frederick, is going to be a very important figure later on. But his first son Frederick dies in March of 1831. And that's this sort of crushing event for him, which is strange because, as I mentioned, death is really just an omnipresent for Antebellum Americans. I mean, it is just always a part of life. And their understanding of death is totally different from ours. There is much more of a

comfort or familiarity with people in your house dying. You have five kids, you can pretty much count on one or two of them passing away before the age of 10. And so Brown is in New Richmond P.A. and his son dies and he gets ill. And these are the kinds of things that Calvin is going to say, well, there's some meaning in this. And then his wife dies, his first wife, Diantha. And that is a crushing event. That's in August of 1832. And he writes to his father and he says, we are being tested. We are again being tested by our Heavenly Father. We are suffering under the rod of our Heavenly Father. That's a really, really amazing wording that God is sort of punishing him. But the context in which Brown renders that is to say that it's trying to push him in some direction. The rod is meant to punish and send him in a new direction. That's really what that death kind of says to him. And that doesn't mean that he immediately goes out to do anything because

part of interpreting a guy who doesn't talk to you directly is that you have to kind of figure out what it means for yourself. That's a pretty complicated process. But in 1832, what he's thinking about is that things haven't gone right. And his tannery fails. I mean, this is one of many businesses that goes under. But I think it's sort of the culmination of those three factors. It's the death of his son, his sickness, and then the death of his wife, say to him, well, this business isn't the right thing. I'm not in the right place. This sort of biblical existence that I've crafted here in Pennsylvania isn't the right scenario. I have to find something else. Yeah, one would think that an omnipotent God would actually have more efficient than that. Brode signs. Yeah, something more specific, right? And so just to go back one more time, what was his position on slavery, again, just before all this? Well, okay. So the problem, I mean, the greatest problem for anyone who studies John Brown,

who's interested in John Brown is that there are no written records before a certain time period. So all we have are his later sort of revelations about when he sort of turned against slavery. The first time he actually ever mentions in writing the first written evidence that we have of Brown's positions on slavery don't happen until 1834. And that is this very strange letter that he writes to his brother, Frederick, which is about procuring. I mean, it's just the language in this letter is just, I think, it's very dirty and it's very odd. It's very jolting to a modern reader where he says we have to procure a Negro boy by whatever means we can. And he's talking hopefully about maybe a Christian slaveholder will give us one or maybe we'll just find a free one. And it's really like blacks are an object. I mean, they're being treated very, they're not being treated like human beings. This is going to Brown's beliefs on this and his the language that he'll

use to talk about them will change a lot. But in 1834, which is the first time we hear him talking about black slavery, doing something to help their condition. It's in this very strange, you know, so I have to go to the store and procure myself a Negro. And then I will help that Negro. You know, I'm going to give him a Christian education. And so there's a sort of vague scheme in 1834 where he's talking about, you know, I'm going to found a school to help either freed slaves or free blacks doing something to help their wretched condition. I mean, I think that's it's very garisonian. It's, you know, it's a real sort of rudimentary for Brown. Certainly not the radical beliefs that he would later espouse. So it's this sort of rudimentary belief in assisting. But in a very paternalistic way, you know, I mean, there, it's very much the conception of blacks as things to be sort of taken under your wing, definitely not being seen as equals in in 1834. And what did he have connections with other anti-slavery? You know, was he connected to garisonian

groups or humans? I mean, I think part of there's so much supposition that goes on about Brown's because everybody wants to locate when did this guy? Because he became so radical. I mean, he's basically, he is the zenith of anti-slavery belief. So when did this guy who becomes so extreme? When did he start? That's what everybody wants to know. What's the point of origin? And I think that there's some of that is a little bit wrong-headed. But what we can know is that he certainly was exposed to garison's liberator. I mean, that's anyone who has even the vaguest sort of belief that slavery is wrong is going to see garison's liberator in the early 1830s. It's just impossible for them not to. But I just don't think in the way that Brown is looking in this sort of Calvinist religious search for a path that garison speaks to him. So, you know, I'm sure that he encountered the liberator and he read it. And I think it probably it pushed him a little further in the direction that he eventually ended up going. But it doesn't it doesn't speak to him on that sole

level that, you know, I've struck upon what I need to do. It's going to take other events for that to happen. It's going to take more dramatic events, more things that are more personally touching or dramatic to him that speak to his sense. And again, this sense of the revolutionary generation of like a puritan ideal of reform, but also a Calvinist god, you know. So there's this sort of like god and violence being wedded in some way. The garison absolutely is not speaking to because he's he's speaking to almost a really modern pacifist reform. Whereas Brown, I think in his in his heart of hearts has a more sort of vitriolic or passionate response to slavery when he ends up coming around to doing something about it. And it's interesting because the garison is the, you know, especially in his encounter with the mob, he seems to almost, you know, embody the the neat price-like resolution. And the apart from all

the other differences, just the religious views would seem to preclude a real meeting of the souls. Yeah. I mean, I think that's basically I'm part of this is a little bit of the, you know, a false binary or a false dichotomy, but part of it is real. The garison really inspires, I mean, these people talk of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, you know, they find in garison a sort of wellspring for their beliefs about reform. That that's not the reform of John Brown, you know, he has a he has a different concept when he comes around to doing something about it. The garison does not share, which is that in the in the face of violence or in response to violence, you know, you're allowed to use whatever means or at your disposal to do something about that. That's that's something garison is never going to come close to because his is much more a, it's not just pacifism, but it's also of abstention. You know, so garison saying we, you can, if you believe that slavery is wrong and that our governmental documents are compromised with

slavery, they're they're written in blood, then you can abstain, you cannot vote, you cannot participate in formal politics, you can, you can sort of withdraw from those things and sort of be a noble and silent protester against these things. That doesn't speak to Brown in any way. I mean, from the very beginning, I mean, even if we're talking about this very paternalistic, which I think garison certainly was, this very paternalistic concept that he's voicing in 1834 about, you know, we're going to procure Negro boy, that's still much more radical than abstaining, you know, that's a, it's a, it's a more involved, it's a more practical or, sort of literal engagement in these issues than garisons talking about really at any point. Do you give any credence to the story Brown later told about seeing the slave boys? That's one of my, I mean, that's my, that's my, that's my, that's my fear. It's like the whipping horse of, of, of sort of the brown hero worship, I would say, the story about, about brown witnessing the slave boy being beat. It just has all the hallmarks of this sort of boilerplate, you know, invention.

And the pro, to me, the greatest problem with is it's kind of this, it's something that we find very compelling and modern audiences, especially because people in the 19th century didn't care about that stuff at all to a certain extent. But now we really want the origin story. We want that moment when suddenly the clouds parted and, and the, and the pure queen voice of anti-slavery spoke to John Brown. I mean, the thing is you can find John Brown literally locates that moment, the conversion moment to anti-slavery at so many different points. And I mean, the tableau of him witnessing the slave being beaten, I mean, I'll go out and I'll even say it's certainly not true. I mean, there's, there's basically no evidence. I mean, mostly just in the way he lived his life. I mean, that's really the most practical proof we have that he probably did not even really think about slavery being so such a serious issue until the 1830s, where he's, this is well past the moment where he's saying, I saw the slave boy being beaten with a shovel. I mean, it's just, to me,

it's just so, it just, it reeks of invention. It reeks of sort of him rationalizing his path, which is great. I mean, that's the stuff I will live for is Brown as the self-invented, as the symbolic, as the, as the symbol of anti-slavery. He fashions himself in that way. So that, the story about the slavery being is perfect for that. And I mean, you have to, the only, the first written proof we have where he's talking about that is in 1857. I mean, so this guy, he's, he's already killed. He's already, he's already been plotting for more than a decade to invade the south. And now he's writing to this little boy and saying, this is what I witnessed as a boy about your own age. You know, this is how early you can also be converted to the cause of anti-slavery. I mean, it just, it just really doesn't, doesn't ring true. Okay, good. Let's make sure I convert everything from that period. So we jump forward to November

1837 to conversion moment 8c. Yeah. But before we get to love joy, what's, do you want to say? No, no, no. What, what a change for Brown by, I mean, by 1837, he's, he's just, it's a string of, yeah, yeah, yeah. So by 1837, Brown is, again, meeting a string of business failures. I mean, this is the thing that his, the tractors have loved, gloryed over. But he really was just, you know, failing at one thing after another. And part of this is because he's a seeker. I mean, he's really trying to find that thing that he's meant to do. But he's also, I mean, I'm not sure if he had ADD, but he's definitely easily bored, you know, he's, he, he gets sort of fed up with if, if a situation gets comfortable. And this is a pretty strange twist on, on how he

understands religion. If things get too comfortable, if he's succeeding, he thinks that he's not doing well. That, that life is supposed to be about hardship. I mean, this is a real, that's real hardline Calvinism to think that if you're doing, if you're sort of coasting as it were, if you're providing your family in a, in a coherent and calm way, something's wrong. This is not really an American puritan understanding. So that's not where Brown is. This is really hardline Calvinism. And he's in Ohio in 1837. And as early as January, he's protesting, or I mean, he signs his name to protesting these sort of racist laws against blacks. So he's definitely, I think creeping towards in small ways, becoming more engaged in anti-slavery. But there's still, you know, if his conversion moment is as early as he kind of often points it out to be later on, he's really not doing much, practically speaking, to pursue an anti-slavery goal. And I think that that's really the hallmark

of his time in Ohio leading up to November of 1837 that he's not really done anything yet in a coherent way to sort of pursue any abolitionist end. He's, you know, talking in letters from time to time about wanting to help, wanting to help blacks. I think that's kind of in the same way as we say, oh, we might, we'd like to go to a soup kitchen, this Christmas, then we don't end up going, you know, it's sort of this vague thing. They're much more practical and sort of he's got an enormous family. And we're talking about John Brown has got seven kids by 1832. That's by his first wife. And he's got 13 more children in the next, you know, decade and a half. This guy is a real, I mean, he's pro-creating. And you got to feed those people. And I mean, that's a real practical, I mean, probably the greatest, practical problem of Brown faces in the next two decades of his life is just providing for this enormous brood. And it's really tough for him. And I think that that's, it's a huge distraction from whatever his sort of moral beliefs are about slavery.

It's going to take him to get to very desperate times to actually turn to anti-slavery. And that's that's going to happen later on. I mean, I think by the late 1830s, Brown is drifting just further and further into a very deep and dark relationship with God. So I think his father had a much more biblical understanding. You know, there's, you're referring to the Bible all the time. That's that's the medium in which you're communicating with the Lord. And that's that sort of trickles down to very practical things about the way the household is operated, you know, whether it's punishment for the children, things like that. But I think Brown really has a much darker relationship, which is that he's trying,

he's always trying to discern what God wants for him. And that is going to become very complicated later on. Because you're what what Brown's understanding is, he's essentially asking God to communicate with him through extremely clumsy means. There's base if if something goes wrong, he's doing something wrong. But if something's going right, he's doing something wrong. I mean, that's Calvinism. That really is Calvinism in a nutshell. You're basically, you're, you're eternally in sin. You're just constantly trying to get out of it like a drowning man. You know, I mean, you're just always grasping for that life preserver. But it's never happening. And I think that that's, I mean, we can talk about that in a few minutes, but that's really what's going to happen. I don't think the life preserver actually comes until he's in that engine house at Harpers Ferry. You know, that's when that's when he sees the life preserver for the first time. I mean, that's pretty wild. You know, this guy's 59 years old and he's just led probably the most dramatic abolitionist, you know, misadventure of all time. And that's when he finally sees God's

purpose for him. I mean, that's that's that's dark or it's harsh. I mean, I don't that's not an advertising for Calvinism. It's not going to help recruit individuals to Calvinism. You know, that how how how how sort of how sort of grim that outlook is. Yeah, it's amazing. But I think one of the grinky bread wasn't the grinky bread. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so, um, I mean, we'll get to a large electrode. How did he feel? You know, this is all his mom stuff happening in 34 years. Yeah. He's he's presumably hearing the reading about this. Yeah. I think Brown is hearing about, you know, these mob responses to abolitionists. I mean, most notably Garrison. But I can't I think it's kind of like reading about events in a far distant land for him at that point in that he has much more practical concerns that are really right in front of him. Um, and so anti-slavery, I mean, particularly because it's

being about Garrison is anti-slavery in 1835 in the eight basically for the entire decade of the 1830s that Garrison is synonymous with abolitionism. And because his methods don't speak to Brown, I think these mob actions are just sort of they're being planted in this sort of deep garden of Brown's mind, you know, like they are seeds that are going to sprout later on when he's when he's really engaging with slavery as it is corrupting the American mission. That's going to happen in the next decade. But in the in the mid 1830s, I mean, there's not much evidence for Brown being so engaged. I mean, he talks about these things being outrageous in letters, but he's not I don't think he's really it's not causing him to do anything. You know, I mean, it's still he still hasn't got to that breaking point. Um, and that's good. And that's it's going to take a while for that to happen. Well, why, I mean, do you, uh, why was he killing over a lie, a lie of love to a different? I mean, I think there's something there's something really outrageous. There's

something very personal about love joy story. Um, two abolitionists, particularly abolitionists from New England, which is obviously where most of them are from. Um, you've got this Colby College graduate, um, who goes to St. Louis and he's not radical. I mean, I think that's people really don't comprehend just how fringe this movement was. I mean, in the 18th, in the 1850s, but in the 1830s and we're talking about, you know, probably not more than a few hundred people in all of America. I mean, this is not a popular movement by any means. It is not a, you know, it's not a political force to be reckoned with. Garrison is just, he screams so loudly that people hear him and he's got this newspaper. And a newspaper is really the thing that starts sort of, uh, triggering this momentum that's going to end very disastrously for the country. Um, and so in the 1830s, when love joy goes to St. Louis, he's just sort of, you know, a nice quiet New England boy, he's religious, um, and he wants to start a newspaper. But when he gets to St. Louis, St. Louis is one of those

strange crossroads where there is slavery in Missouri. Um, he sees slavery palpably. And this is something that I think also we have a really hard time understanding since we live in such an interconnected, uh, age that slavery for New Englanders, particularly people like love joy, he's from Maine, they're not, they have no exposure to this. Slavery in the small, you know, I mean, still depraved form that is, it existed in New England in the 18th century. It still wasn't really very popular. And it certainly didn't resemble southern slavery in any real way. So these people have had really no exposure to this. It's, it's an idea. I mean, it's like talking about elephants. I mean, it's something that's so remote to them, so obscure, that when he goes to St. Louis and he's confronted with us, he, he becomes converted literally overnight. I mean, he sees a slave auction going on in St. Louis and he thinks this is the worst thing I've ever seen. You know, this is, this is, this is the sort of heart of American sin

because he's a religious guy. Maybe he has this understanding of the sort of life and death stakes of, of your relationship with God. Of the country's relationship with God, very strange concept for modern Americans also. And Lovejoy becomes converted. And he starts publishing light garrison, these sort of outspoken critiques. So you know, you've got these scattered individuals, but they're very passionate and they're very incensed and they're also able to raise their voices. And so their sort of influence becomes totally disproportionate to their, their numbers. I mean, this is a very small group of people, but they're, they're screaming, you know, and they're, they're making themselves be heard. And Lovejoy's really quickly, you know, the response to Lovejoy in St. Louis is not positive. You know, because this is a place that's filled mainly with expatriates of some kind. You know, these are people who are migrating from New England, from the south. I mean, particularly in Missouri, a lot of southerners. And these people are pretty hostile to the ideas that he starts printing in his newspaper. And his presses start

to be destroyed. You know, this happens sort of five or six times and you wonder with these guys with these printing presses. I mean, their printing presses are being thrown in the river, they're being burned. And then they just go buy another printing press. I mean, this is happens over and over again. And finally, it's actually Harry Beecher Stowe's brother, says to him, you know, you should move. I move over to Illinois. It's going to be a lot safer for you there. This obviously ended up not being a great move for Lovejoy. I mean, he goes to all Illinois and I mean, I just can't imagine the determination and this dedication, you know, just to keep starting this newspaper over and over again. And Lovejoy does it again. The mob shows up and they kill him. I mean, this is a, you know, a huge mob. And it's not just southerners, you know, these are people who just, I think the sort of dedication of preserving the status quo for Americans at this time is enormous. It is impossible for us to understand, you know, in a bitterly divisive political environment, these people were above all dedicated, just preserving the crappy compromises that are perceived them. You know, we just want to keep

whatever this bargain is that our forefathers have struck. And that is basically, you know, a large part of this mob doesn't want a rabble rouser. You know, these are Illinoisans. They're not slaveholders. They probably, they might not even be very sympathetic to slavery, but they have no moral outrage. They have no moral concept of it being wrong. And they come to Lovejoy's, you know, printing press and they, and they shoot him in the back. I mean, I'm guessing the shotgun was actually fired by somebody from the south, but the point is that this mob is dedicated to stopping him. That's really the mission. And it's, that's a pretty outrageous response to the printed word. I mean, it's when it's time we got to change things. Okay.