Davin White, Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette, April 26, 2009
Abolitionist John Brown has been labeled as “crazy,” “nuts” and a “traitor” for leading the 1859 raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry.
Brown, however, carefully and secretly crafted his revolution with help from top black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and free blacks from Detroit to Baltimore, according to Hannah Geffert, a history professor at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown.
Geffert presented “John Brown and His Secret Alliance” Sunday as part of the West Virginia Humanities Council’s Little Lecture Series.
{snip}
In the late 1850s, Brown was trying to revive activity in the Underground Railroad movement, “which was really fading,” Geffert said. While he sought whites to bankroll his endeavors, Brown sought alliances with free blacks and their acceptance of his revolution, she said.
In Pennsylvania, Brown met up with abolitionist Martin Delaney, a Charleston native and early advocate of black nationalism. Douglass sent Brown to meet with Delaney, Geffert said.
{snip}
In Detroit, historians found a document in a time capsule where blacks wrote, “we were on our way” to Harpers Ferry, but the raid happened earlier than expected, Geffert said.
Geffert said the local black community in Harpers Ferry had some sense that Brown’s raid would occur before it did. In 1859, there were 540 freed blacks in Jefferson County, the most of any county in Virginia at that time, she said. Also, many African Methodist Episcopal churches could be found in Jefferson County.
In the post-raid period, many of Brown’s suspected cohorts ended up fighting in all-black brigades for the Union army.
After Brown and his fellow raiders were convicted (Brown was hanged shortly after), “specific” fires were set at the houses and farms of the jurors who voted for convictions, Geffert said.
{snip}
Original article
(Posted on April 29, 2009)
Comments
The part about white abolitionist money is more likely to be a driving factor than freed blacks. The abolitionist movement of the time was nothing more than a front for the northeastern industrial and manufacturing elite. Their opposition to slavery was not humanitarian, but personal and economic — slavery powered the Southern cash crop agrarian economy, made money, and money bought the Southern political elite the essential hegemony over American politics, and therefore low tariffs. The new industrial elite needed tariffs to protect their business against well established British manufacturers and their economies of scale. Whether by hook (“humanitarian” organizations) or by crook (out and outright warfare), the northern industrial elite had to get rid of slavery.
All the while, Irish immigrant kids were being chained to factory machines and made to work their fingers off. Irish immigrants were drafted into the “Union Army” to free slaves while their kids were slaves in all but name.
John Brown didn’t “carefully and secretly craft” anything prior to his bungled attack on Harpers Ferry. No prior reconnaissance was conducted of the area in and around Harpers Ferry. It was a harebrained plan drawn up and executed by a kook.
“Frederick Douglass and free blacks “helped.”
There’s a black talking head who is the usual talking head racist who maintains that Lincoln begged Frederick Douglas to help him win the war, which he generously did.
So you see it’s not just the Tuskeegee airmen who won WWII all alone, blacks also won the civil war for the northern honkies.
I wonder how they had time for all that since they created so many inventions that whitey cleverly covered up, probably right after they shot off the nose on the sphinx, so nobody could tell it was a black head.
The rich white abolitionists who backed John Brown had a reason for selecting Harper’s Ferry as the site of the raid. The river the that flows past the town of Harper’s Ferry is now the boundary between W. Virginia and Virginia.
The idea was to split W. Virginia from Virginia so that northern and European industrialists could develop actually seize illegally the coal deposits of W. Virginia making the miners slaves in all but name and paying them even less than the slaves were paid in nutritious food, shelter, clothing, medical care, secure retirement etc.
The slaves were paid in goods and services such as nutrious food. The free White miners after the civil war were paid money or script redeemable only in company stores. The White miners were malnourished and badly housed in comparision to the slaves. Unlike the slaves, when the White miners got too old too work, they were turned out to starve if their families could not care for them.
A major reason most slave states had laws that slaves abslutely could not be freed after their 50th birthday was because the law makers knew that if given the opportunity the slave owners would free the slaves when they got too old to work. Then the elderly slaves would either starve and die homeless or be a burden on whatever system existed.
The whole civil war was nothing more than a raid on the resources and laborers of the south by northern industrialists and German bankers.
The result was 100 years of poverty and malnutrition for both Whites and blacks.
It’s funny how revisionist history always reveals that blacks did more or”contributed” more to something than was previously believed, and never less. That would seem statistically unlikely if the studies were honest, which they rarely are.
So some blacks claimed “we were on our way” to Harper’s Ferry but typically showed up late on C.P.T.
Or maybe they’re lying just like similar white “war heroes” who falsely claim to have fought in Vietnam, Korea, Iwo Jima, The Battle of the Bulge, etc.
The first person killed in this raid was a freed black man.
If John Brown was put into a time machine and left off in 21st Century black areas like Harlem, New York Gity, North Philadelphia, or Johannesburg, South Africa, he would be called a “honkey”, robbed, beaten up, and maybe killed.
Racist blacks today would not make an exception for him.
What’s historically significant about blacks participating more than previously believed in John Brown’s “raid” on Harper’s Ferry?
Brown himself was a deranged eccentric, and his attack on Harper’s Ferry was a comically botched guerilla action such as might have been organized by Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and Mark Rudd.
Additional black participation, of course, only would have enhanced the Three Stooges/Keystone Kops nature of the raid.
http://diverseeducation.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/harpers-ferry-monument-to-hayward-shepard/
Question Diversity has pointed out the hypocrisy of how the northern industrial elite would support the abolitionist movement, but make factory economic slaves out of Irish children and have Irish men drafted into the Union Army for the Civil War.
This kind of factory slavery of white children continued well into the 20th Century until child labor laws were passed. Although many of our public schools are in shambles today, it was still also a good idea to establish truancy laws and start having truant officers.
On the frontier, there was violent brutality on both sides between whites and Indians. But in the 19th Century before the Civil War, I personally think it would have been better for a white child to be captured by and adopted into a Plains Indian tribe, like the Cheyenne or the Sioux, than be a factory slave in the East. Just like in the 1971 movie “Little Big Man” starring Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway. But maybe I am being a bit too romantic.
To everyone reading this post, did you see the recent movie “Knowing” starring Nicholas Cage? Concerning the missing children crisis today, as horrible as it is for the parents, I would very much prefer that these children were abducted and taken by extra-terrestrials from another planet, than be kidnapped on our planet by our own human race!
I have heard from other sources that prior to the Civil War, black slaves often lived better than poor whites. After all a slave was an expensive lifetime investment that had to be properly taken care of. Whereas, for the northern industrial elite, white, economic factory slaves where a dime a dozen that could be hired and fired at the drop of a hat.
This book, published published around 1974, “The Good Old Days-They were Terrible!” is a historically accurate account of life in the 19th Century. To everyone reading this post, if it is out-of-print and you cannot order it at your local bookstore, try to get it on Amazon or ebay.
Margaret:
Just a very slight knitpick: There weren’t too many German-American bankers at the time. In fact, the myth of all German-Americans being pro-union and anti-slavery is a myth promulgated by modern day German-American societies so that they can appear politically correct and “make amends” for Hitler guilt.
Almost all German-Americans in states that did not secede fought for the Union Army, almost all German-Americans in states that did secede fought in the Confederate Army. Most German-Americans in the South were against slavery not because they liked blacks, but because they didn’t like blacks and their slothful ways and their inefficiency, and were perplexed why an advanced society would want their labor or presence. I have seen a copy of a handwritten letter by Robert E. Lee telling his underlings that Germans make the best farmers, especially in marginally arable land (which German-Americans had by-and-large because the Anglos got here first and therefore had the prime pickings). But there were some German-Americans who did have slaves, the largest antebellum cotton farm in Texas was German-American owned and used slaves.
John Brown’s major supporters were white, northern abolitionists.
Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe: Physician
These men were responsible for arming and encouraging a man who murdered innocent people in Kansas - who incidentallly did not own slaves - and at Harper’s Ferry. They have much to answer for.
Otto Scott has written an excellent book on these men: “The Secret Six”. Get it and read it.
Here is a link to the men listed above:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/Ftrials/johnbrown/secretsixdetails.html
Wikipedia lists Hayward Sheperd as the first fatal casualty of the raid at Harper’s Ferry. He was the baggage master on the Baltimore and Ohio train that Brown’s men stopped in the town. He was also a free black man.
Question Diversity
Margaret: Just a very slight knitpick: There weren’t too many German-American bankers at the time.
I did not say German American bankers. I said German bankers, in Germany, Grand Duchy of Hesse, headquartered in Frankfort actually.
The government of France always regretted the loss of Louisianna territory to first the English and Spanish and then the Americans. The English tried to recover their American colonies in 1812. There was a lot of going back and forth between southern seccessionists to England and France in the 1850’s. Remember Ben Franklin was in France all during the 1760’s arranging financial and military support for our revolution.
Southerners were in Europe during the 1850’s trying to arrange both financial and military support for their war of seccession. England would have loved to get the USA back. England sent massive amounts of troops to Canada during the Civil War to be ready to seize any opportunity.
The French invasion and occupation of Mexico was also about the Civil War. The French considered Napoleon to be a ursurper who sold louisianna territory illegally. Ideally, the French in the south and British troops in the north could have split the USA.
Remember that the confederate secretary of the treasury, Judah Benjamin was a European banker who arrived just in time for the civil war and went back to Europe as soon as the south lost.
There were a lot of international implications. India and Egypt made a lot of money because the American cotton was blockaded in the southern states and unavailable for the international market.
