Moncure Conway, Changing Philosophies (d'Entremont, 1987)

Scholarship
John d'Entremont, Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 222.
By 1897, at the end of a four-year return engagement at South Place, Conway's philosophy had undergone a striking change from what it had looked like at the end of the American years. Much of his adult career had been spent proclaiming the Emersonian creed that evil is only "good in the making," that the direction of the world was inexorably toward the better, that "progress" could never long be retarded. That faith had supported his break with Virginia.
Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865

Moncure Conway, Background and Personality (d'Entremont, 1987)

Scholarship
John d'Entremont, Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), xii.
Moncure Conway, to borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman, contained multitudes. He was successively Methodist Minister, Unitarian minister, Theistic minister, freethought minister, no minister at all. He was a Southerner who left the South, an American who left America, a citizen of the world who belonged everywhere and nowhere. He seemed equally at home - and detached - on the Australian frontier (which he visited in 1883) and in a London drawing room. He was both a platform polemicist and a serious scholar whose biography of Thomas Paine is in many ways still the best.
Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865

Harriet Tubman (Miller, 1913)

Scholarship
Anne Fitzhugh Miller, "Harriet Tubman," The Magazine of History 16 (1913): 169-171.

No one knows exactly when Harriet Tubman was born, but it was on the eastern shore of Maryland and not much less than a hundred years ago. She knows that her mother’s mother was brought in a slave ship from Africa, that her mother was the daughter of a white man, an American, and her father a full-blooded Negro.

Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865

Moncure Conway, Background and Personality (d'Entremont, 1987)
Type: Description
Citation:
John d'Entremont, Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), xii.
Body Summary:
Moncure Conway, to borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman, contained multitudes. He was successively Methodist Minister, Unitarian minister, Theistic minister, freethought minister, no minister at all. He was a Southerner who left the South, an American who left America, a citizen of the world who belonged everywhere and nowhere. He seemed equally at home - and detached - on the Australian frontier (which he visited in 1883) and in a London drawing room. He was both a platform polemicist and a serious scholar whose biography of Thomas Paine is in many ways still the best. He was respectable and Bohemian, gentleman and radical. He had a genius for friendship and a talent for provocation. "I never yet have heard him speak that he did not have something ... worth saying." said Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "nor did I ever hear him speak, I may add, that he did not say something worth differing from."
Moncure Conway, Changing Philosophies (d'Entremont, 1987)
Type: Description
Citation:
John d'Entremont, Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 222.
Body Summary:
By 1897, at the end of a four-year return engagement at South Place, Conway's philosophy had undergone a striking change from what it had looked like at the end of the American years. Much of his adult career had been spent proclaiming the Emersonian creed that evil is only "good in the making," that the direction of the world was inexorably toward the better, that "progress" could never long be retarded. That faith had supported his break with Virginia. It also had helped provoke his departure from war-torn America and the lessons the war might otherwise have taught, when he adandoned the darkening, guilty New World to find innocence and sunlight in the Old. During his first South Place ministry he had always proclaimed the glory of evolution, ever onward and upward, and the illusory nature of evil, wrong, and pain - things that only "helped" us by alerting us to what was good. Personal and political events in the 1880s made that increasingly hard to believe. By 1897 it was impossible.
Moncure Conway, Liberating his Father's Slaves (d'Entremont, 1987)
Type: Description
Citation:
John d'Entremont, Souther Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 171.
Body Summary:
The resettling of the freedmen had a startling and drastic effect on Conway's flagging spirits. The episode could not have been better timed. At the point when he was feeling most ineffectual and helpless, Conway found a means of accomplishing something concrete for the antislavery cause: he could not save four million slaves, but he could save thirty-three. More than that, the perilous journey through Baltimore must have served to assuage any lingering suspicions Conway (or anyone else) might have had about the connection between his noncombatant status and his courage. In June a beaten man, in August he was a crusader reborn.

The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race

Gerrit Smith (Stauffer, 2002)
Type: Description
Citation:
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 242-243.
Body Summary:
When [Gerrit] Smith read the news of the raid and the actual results of his prophecy, he suffered a blow from which he never recovered. Seventeen men had been killed in battle, and [John] Brown and four surviving comrades had been captured and were almost certain to hang. And Smith’s own name was intimately linked to these deaths. He was far more sensitive and uncomfortable about the use (and sight) of bloodshed than were his co-conspirators, and more self-critical and introspective. To be sure, he had advocated violence in Kansas and had helped to fund it. But in that instance his violent means had yielded noble ends, for in his mind Kansas had been “saved” from slavery. Now violent action had brought failure, destruction, and death. And as he looked at what he had wrought, something snapped within him. The break affected him both outwardly and inwardly. The outward signs of the blow were noticeable immediately but subsided over time. The internal effects accrued slowly, almost without Gerrit’s knowing it; they did not show themselves for some time, but when they did, the change was profound.
John Brown, Harpers Ferry Attack (Stauffer, 2002)
Type: Description
Citation:
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 255-256.
Body Summary:
Although the outcome of the raid would undoubtedly have been the same, more blacks might have come to his aid had Brown’s timing been better. Almost every analysis of the raid asserts that slaves and free flacks ignored Brown’s efforts on their behalf, but some evidence – much of it stemming from oral tradition – suggests that free blacks in Jefferson County and throughout the North and Canada knew of Brown’s plans and were prepared to join him. Brown originally scheduled the raid for July 4, 1858 (reflecting his fondness for symbolic value), but the date was postponed when one of his comrades, Hugh Forbes, turned traitor and threatened to expose the raid unless he received money…Evidently, his attack caught a number of his allies by surprise: Richard Hinton was in nearby Chambersburg “at a black-operated underground railroad post,” awaiting word to join Brown. Harriet Tubman, was trying to recruit followers. And a group of blacks from Ontario, Canada, were near Detroit, and supposedly on their way to join Brown.
John Brown, Pottawatomie Creek Attack (Stauffer, 2002)
Type: Description
Citation:
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 21-22.
Body Summary:
On the night of May 24, Brown and a group of seven men cut the throats of five unarmed proslavery settlers and hacked them to death with broadswords. Brown's actions need to be understood within the context of the Radical Abolition party and its doctrines. Brown is often described as unique among abolitionists, the ne plus ultra of fanatics, but he is seldom associated with political abolitionism. Yet he aligned himself closely with Gerrit Smith, McCune Smith, and Douglass, attended other political conventions with them, and justified his actions under God and the Radical Abolitionist message that whatever was right was practicable, to paraphrase Douglass. Brown and his comrades were not far removed from Preston Brooks and the thousands of Southerners who sent him canes of congratulation: both sides advocated violent means for realizing wholly different visions of their country. But the two men's uses of violence differed in two ways. First, Brooks used violence to defend his (and the South's) honor, while Brown used violence to defend his (and Radical Abolitionists') vision of social equality. Second, Sumner had challenged and provoked Brooks with his speech; Brown's victims had done nothing directly to provoke or challenge Brown and his men.
John Brown, Radical Abolition Party Convention in 1855 (Stauffer, 2002)
Type: Description
Citation:
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 8-9.
Body Summary:
The inaugural convention of Radical Abolitionists has been largely forgotten in American history, and the party it launched won few votes and never elected a candidate to office. In fact the party itself lasted only five years and never polled more than a few thousand votes in a single election. But the convention that gave birth to the Radical Abolition party has deep cultural relevance: it marked an unprecedented moment of interracial unity and collapsing of racial barriers. It is the only recorded moment at which Gerrit Smith, James McCune Smith, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown were all in the same place. Despite their close friendship, which began in the late 1840s, they lived in different parts of New York State and had few opportunities to be together. The convention gave tangible shape to their goals for ending slavery, their hopes for their country, and the means for realizing their dreams of a new world. They arrived with high expectations, and left feeling elated by what had transpired. But the convention also marked the crossing of a Rubicon, for the party’s platform specifically affirmed violence as a way to end slavery and oppression. The embrace of violence would eventually destroy the four men’s alliance.
John Brown, Response to Elijah Lovejoy Murder (Stauffer, 2002)
Type: Description
Citation:
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 118-119.
Body Summary:
John Brown was among the many reformers who considered Elijah Lovejoy's murder the spark that fired his fervent abolitionism. But Brown's reference to Lovejoy's martyrdom needs to be understood within the context of social and religious forces that transformed him into a militant abolitionist…Lovejoy's death certainly upset Brown, but it was not so much the event itself that led to Brown's oath. Rather, Lovejoy's death signified for Brown all that was wrong in the country, much the same way that the Slave Power later symbolized for Northerners the source of their fears and anxieties. Lovejoy's death coincided with a series of tragedies in Brown's life, culminating in the panic of 1837, that made him want to replace his existing world with his millennialist and perfectionist vision.
John Brown, September 1856 Daguerreotype (Stauffer, 2002)
Type: Description
Citation:
John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 56-58.
Body Summary:
In September 1856 John Brown sat for his portrait…Although he was not yet well known at the national level, he was quickly gaining fame as a freedom fighter in Kansas. As his reputation for militant abolitionism grew, he increasingly sat for his "likeness." He had numerous portraits taken of him while in Kansas, and preferred to have black artists or abolitionists represent him. This daguerreotype was created by John Bowles, a Kentucky slaveowner who had emancipated his slaves and became an abolitionist and comrade of Brown in Kansas. Bowles was quite familiar with Brown's willingness to befriend and identify himself with blacks, and one might argue that he portrays Brown as someone who blurs the line between black and white: the daguerreotype is slightly underexposed, rendering Brown's tanned skin even darker than it actually was. Brown's face appears tawny, as dark as Douglass' in the frontispiece of My Bondage.

John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry: A Brief History with Documents

John Brown, Battle of Black Jack (Earle, 2008)
Type: Description
Citation:
Jonathan Earle, John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), 19.
Body Summary:
The battles of Black Jack (where Brown, now a wanted man and outnumbered two to one, captured the man deputized to catch him) and Osawatomie in June and August of 1856, sealed John Brown’s fame as a fearsome guerilla fighter. Brown continued to evade capture, but a force of 250 men killed his son Frederick and burned the free-state town of Osawatomie to the ground. His son Jason later recalled that, while watching the flames, his father said, "God sees it. I have only a short time to live - only one death to die, and I will die fighting this cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for. I will give them something else to do than to extend slave territory. I will carry the war into Africa.” By “Africa” Brown meant that he would next attack slavery where slavery already existed: in the South itself.
League of Gileadites (Earle, 2008)
Type: Description
Citation:
Jonathan Earle, John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), 12.
Body Summary:
The sight of federal marshals and slave catchers on the streets of Philadelphia, Boston, or even North Elba incensed abolitionist and even larger numbers of more moderate Northerners. A fugitive in chains being returned to slavery and the South personalized the issue and made it real for thousands of Northerners for whom, up to this point, slavery had been a hazy abstraction. For an already committed abolitionist like John Brown, the new law was an abomination.

In the wake of a well-publicized case of a runaway being returned to slavery in 1851, Brown composed a manifesto and presented it to a group of free black friends in Springfield. Massachusetts. Entitled “Words of Advice: Branch of the United States League of Gileadites..., Brown's essay urged African Americans to band together to resist the Fugitive Slave Law and all who sought to enforce it—even to the point of killing slavecatchers. “Be firm, detached, and cool,” Brown wrote, “stand by one another and by your friends, while a drop of blood remains; and be hanged, if you must, but tell no tales out of school. Make no confession.” Taking a page from the African American abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet (who preached slave rebellion), Brown attempted to foment an armed resistance against the Fugitive Slave Law. Inspired by what they heard, forty-four black men and women in Springfield joined Brown's United League of the Gileadites. Without Brown's presence, however, the group took little action.

In Maryland, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney dies in office

After more than twenty-eight years as the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney died of chronic intestinal disease at his home. The last words of the devoutly Catholic justice were “Lord Jesus receive my spirit.” He was buried in St John's Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland. Of the Cabinet, only President Lincoln and three other members attended his funeral. Lincoln named Salmon P. Chase as successor to Taney. (By Joanne Williams)
clear_left
On
Type
Personal
clear_tab_people
On
clear_tab_images
On
Subscribe to