John Brown, the 19th century abolitionist, has never gotten a fair shake from history and, as far as school history textbooks go, he’s been given the brush off or treated as a madman (see James Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me).
Yesterday’s New York Times Book Review has a stellar review (by Barbara Ehrenreich) of David S. Reynold’s John Brown, Abolitionist. Reynolds presents Brown as a reasonable man of his time–embraced by leading intellectuals such as Thoreau and Emerson–rather than as a crazed anti-slavery terrorist. Accordiing to Ehrenreich, Reynolds backs up his claims with plenty of evidence.
The closing paragraph of Ehrenreich’s review raises some serious issues for social studies educators and people interested in working for the transformation of society (two barely overlapping groups in my opinion).
“How do we judge a man of such different times–and temperament–from our own? If the rule is that there must be some proportion between a violent act and its provocation, surely there could be no more monstrous provocation than slavery. In our own time, some may discern equivalent evils in continuing racial oppression, economic exploitation, environmental predation or widespread torture. To them, ”John Brown, Abolitionist,” for all its wealth of detail and scrupulous attempts at balance, has a shockingly simple message: Far better to have future generations complain about your methods than condemn you for doing nothing.”
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