Exploring religious faith in 19th century America

Lincoln's God, by Joshua Zeitz  (from my TBR stacks)

I am always looking for book discussions and book recommendations. For the past several years, I have found podcasts to be a rich source of both, particularly the history-related ones like the "BBC History Extra Podcast" (I also subscribe to their print magazine, which is a delight), the "Historic Royal Palaces Podcast," and lately "The Rest is History Podcast." All three are British, though the BBC and "The Rest is History" regularly cover world history topics. (I am currently listening to "The Rest is History" series on the outbreak of the Great War.) If I am listening while walking, I frequently hit pause so that I can check the library catalogue for a book that is mentioned. Sometimes I just can't wait for a library copy.

Lincoln's God came via the only U.S. history podcast I follow. "With the Bark Off," produced by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. I was familiar with Joshua Zeitz from his book Lincoln's Boys, about the presidential secretaries who became his biographers and the guardians of his legacy. In reading many books about Lincoln, I have learned something about his personal religious beliefs (or lack of them). I have also studied the role of religion in US history, especially in the 19th century. So I had some background in reading this book, which as the subtitle says explores "How faith transformed a President and a nation."

The author says in his Preface,

"What follows is the story of Abraham Lincoln's religious transformation, set against the backdrop of a nation's spiritual awakening and transformation. . .This is not a comprehensive biography of Lincoln or a broad account of the Civil War. Instead, it is a story of how religion and, more specifically, the rise of evangelical Protestantism, influenced the familiar political, economic, and military narrative. . . Abraham Lincoln's own spiritual journey was distinct from that of most Americans, but he understood better than most the organizing and galvanizing power of evangelical Christianity. His faith, and his appeal to the faith of others, in no small way determined the outcome of the war."

That lays out three main themes woven through his book. First, he charts Lincoln's religious beliefs through his lifetime, arguing that Lincoln was never a conventional Christian. By the end of his life, he might have identified as a Unitarian. Second, he tracks the rise of evangelical Protestantism and the growth of new churches and religious movements, particularly the revivals that swept through America. Church members became involved in campaigns such as temperance and most crucially, abolition of slavery (while holding racist attitudes toward Black Americans). This would split some of the mainline churches into northern and southern branches, as with the Southern and American Baptists. Zeitz also explores the role that Black churches played, particularly in the North, where they argued against slavery and for emancipation long before many white Christians. (Zeitz also acknowledges the presence of Roman Catholics and Jews in America in these years, but his focus is on Protestant Christians.)

The third theme details how northern Evangelical Christians came to ally themselves with Lincoln and with the Republican party in ways that broke down the familiar separation of church and state. Most northern Protestant churches came to embrace abolition of slavery as a war aim but also as a moral good. Like Lincoln himself, many came to view the war as a divine punishment on the United State for the sins of slavery - in which the North had been complicit. Recognizing the power of the churches, Lincoln courted their support, both financial and political. He also began to see himself as an instrument in a divine plan to eliminate slavery. I had not understood just how deeply the Protestant churches cooperated with and identified with Lincoln's administration and with the Republican party. It is easy to see parallels in our political situation today.

I have a lot of books about Lincoln and about the Civil War on the TBR stacks. I am determined not to buy more until I read some of those already on my shelves. We'll see how that book resolution goes.

I am reading: Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M. Bordewich

The subtitle of my copy (borrowed from the library) is "The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America." The image above, with a more forceful text, is from the paperback edition. It feels like a perfect time to be reading this book, under either title, given the events of the past two weeks (and the many past actions and tragedies they evoke). 

     At the start of the twenty-first century, Americans are in the midst of a contentious, often painful, national debate about slavery and its role in American history. At a time when earlier remedies for inequality have been discarded as politically and practically unacceptable, as the historian of American slavery Ira Berlin has put it, "slavery has become a language, a way to talk about race, in a society in which it seems that blacks and whites hardly talk to each other at all." Modern-day racism's roots lie in the slavery era, and any attempt to seriously address race today must also take into account not only the slavery of the past, but also the commitment and sacrifices of other Americans, both black and white, to bring slavery to an end. A better understanding of the Underground Railroad, and of men and women like George DeBaptiste [a black "conductor" in Indiana], deserves to be part of that conversation. . .
    The story of the Underground Railroad is an epic of high drama, moral courage, religious inspiration, and unexpected personal transformations played out by a cast of extraordinary personalities who often seem at the same time both startlingly modern and peculiarly archaic, combining then-radical ideas about race and political action with traditional notions of personal honor and sacred duty. . .
    The Underground Railroad's impact on the antebellum United States was profound. Apart from sporadic slave rebellions, only the Underground Railroad physically resisted the repressive laws that held slaves in bondage. The nation's first great movement of civil disobedience since the American Revolution, it engaged thousands of citizens in the active subversion of federal law and the prevailing mores of their communities, and for the first time asserted the principle of personal, active responsibility for others' human rights. By provoking fear and anger in the South, and prompting the enactment of draconian legislation that eroded the rights of white Americans, the Underground Railroad was a direct contributing cause of the Civil War. It also gave many African Americans their first experience in politics and organizational management. And in an era when proslavery ideologues stridently asserted that blacks were better off in slavery because they lacked the basic intelligence, and even the biological ability, to take care of themselves, the Underground Railroad offered repeated proof of their courage and initiative.
     The Underground Railroad, and the broader abolition movement of which it was a part, were also a seedbed of American feminism. . . In the underground, women were for the first time participants in a political movement on an equal plane with men, sheltering and clothing fugitive slaves, serving as guides, risking reprisals against their families, and publicly insisting that their voices be heard. ("Introduction") 

The cover of this book immediately caught my attention when I came across it in the library, with its pictures of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I didn't recognize all the people shown, and now I've met some of them, extraordinary characters - heroes - like Rev. Josiah Henson, a runaway slave who made it safely to Canada, where he established a colony in Ontario for his fellow fugitives. And Isaac Hopper, who began a long and distinguished career as an abolitionist and central figure on the railroad at age 16, when he helped a fugitive slave in Philadelphia find a safe home and work.

I've already ordered a copy for my shelves, since the library will want theirs back on Saturday.

I am reading: Harriet Tubman, by Catherine Clinton

I find myself stymied lately when it comes to writing about books I have read. So I thought I would borrow an idea (from Audrey and JoAnn among others), to write about books that I am reading, as I am reading them, as something strikes me. Today that is Harriet Tubman, The Road to Freedom, by Catherine Clinton.

When the announcement came that Harriet Tubman will be featured on the re-designed $20 bill, I realized how little I remembered about her. I was surprised to that a suggested design showed her posed with a gun:

I didn't associate her with active rebellion, but then I knew or remembered so little. In the discussion of the new bill, Catherine Clinton's biography was mentioned several times, so I added it to my reading list. I was happy to find a copy in the library, and I think I will be adding this to my own shelves.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland around 1820, in the same section of the state as Frederick Douglass. Like him, she escaped to the north and freedom. But then she returned to the south, over and over again, to bring her family to freedom, and then scores of others, friends and strangers. She made at least one raid a year, working the rest of the time in domestic service and farm work to fund her missions. She was never captured, and she brought her people safely to freedom every single time.

     This is what makes Harriet Tubman's accomplishments so remarkable, as she was certainly the lone woman to achieve such a prominent role within the [Underground Railroad]. Also she was one of only a handful of blacks publicly associated with these extensive clandestine operations to shepherd slaves to freedom. Again, she was the lone fugitive to gain such widespread fame. Her unique vantage point - being black, fugitive, and female, yet willing to risk the role of UGRR abductor - is what allowed her to become such a powerful voice against slavery during the years leading up to the Civil War.
    When she spoke out against slavery, she was not attacking it in the abstract but had personally known its evils. She risked the horror of re-enslavement with every trip, repeatedly defying the slave power with her rescues and abductions. These risks elevated the significance of her contributions to the UGRR movement.

Catherine Clinton explains that the term "abductor" was used for "the very few who ventured into the South to extract slaves . . . to distinguish them from the vast majority of the conductors, who guided fugitives on very limited segments of their journey."

And the gun? "Tubman even carried a pistol and was prepared to use it, which earned her a reputation for toughness. . . Her fearlessness was legendary."

Now back to the book. Harriet Tubman has just been raising funds to support John Brown's ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry. And I'm sure she didn't sit on the sidelines during the Civil War either.

My Bondage and My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass

Old as the everlasting hills; immovable as the throne of God; and certain as the purposes of eternal power, against all hindrances, and against all delays, and despite all the mutation of human instrumentalities, it is the faith of my soul, that this anti-slavery cause will triumph. -- Frederick Douglass, "The Anti-Slavery Movement" (1855)

It is impossible to understand the United States in the 19th century, particularly the Civil War era, without Frederick Douglass. He was the most prominent African American of his time, an abolitionist, an advocate for the rights of black Americans, a newspaper publisher and public speaker. I learned something of his life years ago from reading his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. He was born into slavery in rural Maryland, probably in 1818. From a young age he struggled with the reality of slavery, which made him a piece of property, with no rights, held to work for others his whole life. His first attempt at running away was betrayed, probably by a fellow slave, but his second, when he was around twenty, succeeded. His Narrative, published seven years later, is considered a classic of American literature, and is also the best-known of the accounts written by escaped or emancipated slaves. These accounts were a key weapon in the struggle to abolish slavery in the United States, by making the people of the northern states aware of the horrors of life under slavery, to awaken their consciences and rally them to action.

From Henry Mayer's book All on Fire, about William Lloyd Garrison and the abolitionist movement, I learned that Frederick Douglass broke with Garrison and his wing of the movement in the 1850s. They came to disagree over tactics, and over the question of whether the U.S Constitution was a pro-slavery document, which in turn tainted the whole political structure of the country. (Garrisonians held that it did, so they refused to participate in the government, even by voting.) But Douglass also came to feel that he had a larger role to play. The Garrison people just wanted him to tell his story, his narrative. He didn't want to keep repeating himself, or to keep talking about himself at all. He wanted to challenge the whole system of slavery, and racism in American society as well. His decision to start his own paper, which would complete with Garrison's The Liberator, was seen as an overt challenge to the leadership. Some of the group also doubted that Douglass, with no formal education or training, could handle editing a newspaper.

All of this history is new to me, and I'm interested to learn more. I knew that Frederick Douglass had later published two revised editions of his autobiography. When I discovered that this one, published in 1855, covered the controversy with Garrison, I put it on my reading list. The edition I read is a Penguin Classics edition from 2003, with a very informative introduction and a bibliography.

My Bondage and My Freedom is divided into two sections. The first, "Life as a Slave," is by far the longer, 21 of 24 chapters. This part is an expanded version of the original Narrative, with editor's notes to explain the differences. It is an account of Douglass's life, not just the events but the emotional and psychological toll that slavery took on him; of his awakening to the horrors of slavery, and his own experiences of violence and mistreatment. I have read accounts of slavery in the United States, and histories of it, but I don't think I have ever read anything that delved so deeply into the mind and heart of an enslaved person. But this isn't just his story. It is also a searing indictment of the slave system, an unsparing account of its brutal realities. Douglass wrote about his fellow slaves, giving their names, stressing their humanity, recording them for history - just as he did their owners, recording their crimes. I am haunted by the night a young Frederick watched the brutal beating of his aunt, who had dared to choose a husband for herself. The sexual abuse of enslaved women is a constant theme in this section, and a poignant one given that Douglass's own father was a white man, and may have been his owner.

The second section, "Life as a Freeman," briefly recounts his escape. Douglass refused to give any details about how he escaped, because he did not want to implicate those who had helped him. But he also argued that publicizing the means by which slaves escaped made it that much harder for others, by putting slave-owners on alert - a point I hadn't considered before. This section deals only briefly with the abolitionist movement, and Douglass's later conflict with it. The longest chapter covers the 21 months that he spent in Great Britain, working with anti-slavery activists. During this time British friends purchased his freedom, to spare him from the threat of capture and re-enslavement, and also raised funds to allow him to start his newspaper. Douglass noted more than once the warm welcome and the equal treatment that he received among the British, in contrast to the racism that he and other African Americans faced in the northern United States.

Included at the end of My Bondage and My Freedom is a brief selection of Douglass's speeches and other writings, such as the ""Letter To His Old Master," written during his stay in Britain. I'd like to think that someone sent Thomas Auld a copy, though I doubt that Douglass's writings circulated in the southern states.  I have since learned that his third autobiography, first published in 1881, covers his support of John Brown's raid, his relationship with Abraham Lincoln, his on-going challenge to racism in America, and his strong support for women's rights, among other topics. (Douglass attended the first women's rights convention, at Seneca Falls in 1848.) Life and Times of Frederick Douglass has already gone on my reading list. I have also learned that Penguin will publish a "Portable Frederick Douglass" of his essential writings later this year (coincidentally, just before my birthday).

William Lloyd Garrison and the Fight Against Slavery, William E. Cain, editor

After reading a 700-page biography of William Lloyd Garrison, which chronicled his part in the struggle to end slavery in the United States, I was curious to read Garrison's own words. I was not however ready to commit to the entire 35 years of his pioneering weekly newspaper The Liberator, especially since it's only available on microfilm or in distant archives; or even to the six volumes of his published letters (yet). I was happy to find this book of "Selections from The Liberator," drawn from the first issue in 1831 to the last at the end of 1865. It begins with a biographical essay on Garrison by the editor William Cain and an overview of slavery in the United States, which accounts for almost a third of the book. Dr. Cain also wrote a brief introduction to each selection from the paper, giving some background on the topic being covered and noting related articles in other issues of the paper, for further reading.

Naturally the main focus of the selections here is Garrison's own: his call for immediate emancipation of all enslaved people, and the full acceptance of African Americans as citizens with all the rights enjoyed by white Americans. There were frequent explanations of why slavery was wrong, why human beings could not be held in bondage or denied their rights just because they were black. The language used was simple and clear:

No man has a right to enslave or embrute his brother - to hold or acknowledge him, for one moment, as a piece of merchandise - to keep back his hire by fraud - or to brutalize his mind by denying him the means of intellectual, social and moral improvement. . . Every man has a right to his own body - to the products of his own labor - to the protection of law - and to the common advantages of society. ("Declaration of the National Anti-Slavery Convention," 1833).

That these points were repeated so frequently made me realize how hard it must have been to get even these basic ideas heard, let alone accepted. The selections also show Garrison's commitment to social and political equality for African Americans, and to pacifism and non-resistance. And as early as 1838, Garrison was writing in favor of equal rights for women. This issue would lead to schism among the abolitionists, but Garrison never wavered. He introduced a resolution at the Fourth Annual National Woman's Rights Convention, in 1853, which is amazingly broad in scope for its time:

Resolved, that woman, as well as man, has a right to the highest mental and physical development - to the most ample educational development - to the occupancy of whatever position she can reach in Church and State, in science and art, in poetry and music, in painting and sculpture, in civil jurisprudence and political economy, and in the varied departments of human industry, enterprise and skill - to the elective franchise - and to a voice in the administration of justice and the passage of laws for the general welfare.

I found the selections informative and interesting. I enjoyed reading Garrison's own words, which convey the passion he felt in the fight against slavery.  His language was sometimes violent, particularly when calling people north and south to account for their sins. I appreciated the background information that Dr. Cain provided, especially on slavery itself. It was chilling to read that in the 1850s, slave owners in the eastern states were selling 25,000 slaves each year to the western slave states. That really underlined the abolitionist argument that slavery destroyed families - so many families torn apart in those years.

However, after reading the Meyer biography, I took issue a couple of points in the biographical essay. First, Dr. Cain stated that whatever Garrison said about women's rights, he expected his wife Helen to play the traditional home-bound role of wife and mother. Henry Meyer quoted a letter from Helen to Garrison before their marriage, where she wrote that she did not want to play a public role in abolition or other reform works. Garrison respected her decision, and in fact she did sometimes join in the work (for example helping to organize an annual antislavery fundraising fair). As their children grew up, she also took on a more active role - again, her own decision. Second, I disagree with Dr. Cain's dismissal of Garrison's role after the Civil War: his "main activity in the postwar years was performing the role of abolitionist hero." Yes, he took his share of the honors belatedly given to the abolitionists. But he wasn't just sitting around waiting to be given awards or promoting himself. He was out working on behalf of the freed people, women's rights, immigrants and Native Americans. In a biographical essay of 57 pages, of course there isn't the scope for a full biography. But I think these two points are important. I would never argue that Garrison was a saint, but on the evidence he was at least innocent of these two sins.

Next up in my abolitionist reading course is the second autobiography of Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom. I understand it covers his break with Garrison over tactics and strategy, as well as Douglass's decision to start his own abolitionist newspaper, in competition with The Liberator.  As a bonus, published in 1855, it will fill another year in my Mid-Century of Books.

All On Fire, by Henry Mayer

I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject [slavery] I do not wish to think or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm . . . but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD.  - William Lloyd Garrison, in the first issue of The Liberator (January 1, 1831)

The subtitle of this book is "William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery." I knew something of Garrison from studying the Civil War. I knew that his newspaper, The Liberator, was one of the first in the United States to call for the abolition of slavery, and the most influential. I knew that he was hated and feared in the South, where he and his radical ideas, published in his paper, were blamed for the Nat Turner slave insurrection, which came just months after his first issue in 1831. (The State of Georgia put a price of $5000 on his head.) I knew that he refused to vote in elections, because it would mean participating in a government that condoned slavery. I thought of him as a John Brown figure, a man of violent words (if not deeds), fueled by deep anger at the injustice of slavery.

From this massive biography, I discovered that what I knew about William Lloyd Garrison just skimmed the surface of a complex and compelling man. I came to agree with what the author wrote of him in his Preface:

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) is an authentic American hero who, with a biblical prophet's power and a propagandist's skill, forced the nation to confront the most crucial moral issue in its history. . .He inspired two generations of activists, female and male, black and white - and together they built a social movement which, like the civil rights movement of our own day, was a collaboration of ordinary people, stirred by injustice and committed to each other, who achieved a social change [abolition of slavery] that conventional wisdom first condemned as wrong and then ridiculed as impossible. . . Garrison did not shrink from the realization that the assault upon slavery would require a direct confrontation with American assumptions of white supremacy. He boldly coupled his demand for immediate emancipation with an insistence upon equal rights for black people, a principled stand that eluded every prominent political figure of his era.

The people of his own time understood his role in ending slavery - some loved and honored him, others continued to despise him. He was a polarizing figure, even in the northern states. But somehow in the 20th century, Garrison got pushed to the sidelines of history. Henry Mayer, an independent historian, wanted to right that, to put him back at the center of the story where he belongs, while recognizing the activists who worked alongside him in the decades of struggle.

I found this book mesmerizing (to the point that I was dreaming about it). Garrison himself is such an interesting character, with a childhood miserable enough to rival Anthony Trollope's. He was apprenticed in a printing shop, where like Benjamin Franklin he began writing as well as setting type. Despite a pugnacious personality in print, he was a sweet-tempered man, a little shy, a loving husband and father to seven children (two of whom died young). And he was a cat person. As a young man, he met in Boston Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker working to free individual slaves, and to open people's eyes to the evils of slavery. Lundy found a ready convert in Garrison. The disciple went forward faster and farther than the teacher, however. He saw clearly, and preached tirelessly, against the virulent racial prejudice in the northern states. Unlike many, he believed that African Americans were citizens, entitled to the same rights and privileges as whites (and therefore he opposed attempts to remove free and freed persons of color by "colonization" in Africa or Central America). He had close ties to the black community, who supported The Liberator in the first difficult year of publishing. African Americans also frequently wrote for the paper, as did women (black and white).

I don't think I ever understood before how deeply the abolitionists were hated in the beginning, in the north. White Americans did not want to hear about the wrongs of slavery - they didn't want to hear about it at all - and they did not want to hear that they were to blame in any way for it. That abolitionists held mixed-race meetings was another strike against them. In 1835, a crowd in Boston gathered to harass a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. When they found out that the hated Garrison was in the building, they tracked him down, with calls to lynch him, and he had to be jailed for his own protection. Another anti-slavery editor, Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered in Illinois, in 1837, and his printing press destroyed. The next year, a white mob in Philadelphia burned a hall in Philadelphia where black and white abolitionists had been meeting, while firemen stood by. Yet through all this, Garrison kept publishing, and the abolitionists kept organizing, handing out tracts and copies of The Liberator, speaking out on the sufferings of the enslaved people - and slowly, a consensus began to develop in the northern states that slavery was wrong. I also feel like I never fully appreciated the role that the abolitionists played in rousing the conscience of the north against slavery, and in advocating for equal rights. Once this consensus grew strong enough, politicians began to act on it.

I did not know, or had forgotten, that Garrison was also an early supporter of women's rights. Women in the United States first found their voice in reform movements like temperance and abolition. Garrison welcomed them to abolition work from the start. His concept of natural rights wasn't limited to one race or one sex. Others in the movement were less tolerant, and the movement would split into two groups over the participation of women. After the Civil War, with emancipation and black suffrage guaranteed by constitutional amendments, Garrison would turn to the fight for women's suffrage. He joined the American Women's Suffrage Association, headed by Lucy Stone, an old colleague from the anti-slavery campaigns.  Drawing on his decades of experience, he helped them edit and publish a journal. (Susan B. Anthony was another anti-slavery campaigner, who was close friends with Garrison's wife Helen and "Aunt Susan" to their children.)

The fight over women's participation in the movement was not the only one, and Mayer covers the issues in great detail. He also spends considerable time exploring Garrison's very unorthodox spiritual life. He grew up in the evangelical Baptist faith of his mother, which shaped his language and in many ways his vision. But he moved away from organized religion, in part because the churches condoned slavery. I didn't know that in the 19th century, "coming out" meant leaving the institutional church, and the "come-outer" was a recognized religious identity. I was sometimes a bit lost among all the details of the different religious movements, and with the conflicts that frequently broke out among the abolitionists - leading to schisms in both groups. Mayer tracks them in exhaustive detail, in relation to Garrison. That detail accounts in part for the bulk of the book (over 700 pages with notes and index).

This book has inspired me to some additional reading, including a Penguin edition of essential abolitionist writings (from Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott and other leaders). I also have my eye on a six-volume biography of Garrison, written by two of his sons in 1885. Mayer used it extensively in writing this book, and he says that "the personal reminiscences that dot the pages are invaluable." Perhaps that is what gives this book such life, despite its bulk. Henry Mayer manages (in the words of  historian Paul Murray Kendall) "to elicit, from the coldness of paper, the warmth of a life being lived." And what a life.

John Brown's raid

Midnight Rising, Tony Horwitz

The subtitle of this book is "John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War."  When I saw it announced, I wanted to read it because I enjoy Tony Horwitz's writing, and because of the importance of Brown's raid in American history.  On October 16, 1859, he led eighteen men, including two of his sons and five African Americans, on a raid of the Federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.  One of his stated objectives was to spark an uprising of Southern slaves, to overthrow the slave system.  Brown had taken no steps to alert the slaves in the area, however, and he inexplicably waited in the town while enraged white Virginians armed themselves and federal troops, under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, moved in.  Brown was captured with four of his men; ten others were killed in fighting or trying to escape. His two sons were among the dead, as were four townspeople and one of the soldiers. 

Within a week, Brown was on trial for treason and conspiring to incite a slave revolt, and by November 2nd he had been condemned to hang.  After his sentance had been pronounced, he told the court,

"Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the end of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country, whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I submit. So let it be done!"

Though the trial was rushed, authorities in Virginia delayed his execution for a month, time that Brown spent writing letters and giving interviews to the press, expanding on his words in the courtroom and explaining what had led him to Harper's Ferry.  In that month, Northerners who had originally seen him as a deluded and dangerous fanatic came to see him as a martyr, dying in the cause of abolition of slavery.  Abolition wasn't popular in the North.  While many northerners shared Abraham Lincoln's view that slavery was wrong, like him they also held racist views of African Americans and didn't want freed slaves moving north, competing for jobs or living next door to them.  At the same time, tensions were rising as America expanded westward.  With each new territory and state added, the same question came up: would it be slave or free?  While many northerners, again like Lincoln, believed that the Constitution protected slavery where it already existed, they did not want it expanded into new territory.  There were various tense compromises worked out over the years, admitting slave and free states in exact balance. But the tension exploded in the 1850s over Kansas, as pro- and anti-slavery forces fought for control of the new territory.  There were armed battles, and even murder.  John Brown and his large family had been at the center of this fight, implicated in the murder of at least four settlers in 1856, one a sixteen year old boy (one of Brown's many sons was in turn murdered by pro-slavery forces).

John Brown's execution galvanized anti-slavery feeling in the north.  New York diarist George Templeton Strong, unsympathetic to abolitionists and African Americans, wrote,

"Slavery has received no such blow in my time as his strangulation. There must be a revolution in feeling, even in the terrified State of Virginia. . . So did the first Christian martyrs wake up senators and landed gentlemen and patrician ladies, tempore Nero and Diocletian, and so on. One's faith in anything is terribly shaken by anybody who is ready to go to the gallows condemning and denouncing it."

At the same time, Southerners were outraged by Northern support of Brown. Just days after his execution, Jefferson Davis in a speech on the Senate floor threatened secession.  Less than a year later, the election of Abraham Lincoln as President made that threat a reality.

I was a little reluctant to read this book, though, just because it is about John Brown.  I first came across his name in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, where Reverend Brown, the Little Town on the Prairie's Congregational minister, is said to be a cousin of "old John Brown of Kansas." Laura doesn't like him, and neither do Ma and Pa. "What he said did not make sense to [Laura], but he looked like that picture of John Brown in her history book, come alive. His eyes glared, his white mustache and his whiskers bobbed, and his big hands waved and clawed and clenched into fists pounding the pulpit and shaking in air."  I didn't know who John Brown of Kansas was then, but I was left with an image of a fanatic Old Testament figure.  What I learned about him later made him seem a 19th century domestic terrorist.

Tony Horwitz addresses this in his Prologue:

     "Viewed through the lends of 9/11, Harpers Ferry seems an al-Queda prequel: a long-bearded fundamentalist, consumed by hatred of the U.S. government, launches nineteen men in a suicidal strike on a symbol of American power. A shocked nation plunges into war. We are still grappling with the consequences.
     "But John Brown wasn't a charismatic foreigner crusading from half a world away. He descended from Puritan and Revolutionary soldiers and believed he was fulfilling their struggle for freedom. Nor was he an alienated loner in the mold of recent homegrown terrorists such as Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh. Brown plotted while raising an enormous family; he also drew support from leading thinkers and activists of his day, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Henry David Thoreau. The covert group that funneled him money and guns, the so-called Secret Six, was composed of northern magnates and prominent Harvard men, two of them ministers.
     "Those who followed Brown into battle represented a cross section of mid-nineteenth-century America."

In this book, he traces John Brown's life, before Kansas and before Harper's Ferry, to explain his extraordinary commitment not just to abolition of slavery, but to equality for African Americans, and to place those events in context of his life and of the larger American story.  Brown's character and his beliefs were strongly influenced by the stern Calvinism of his parents, and he was inspired by Old Testament heroes like Gideon and Samson.  Horwitz argues that despite what Brown told his supporters and followers about his plans for the raid, he may have seen himself as a Samson, who in failing would bring down the institution of slavery.  In this, he succeeded.

Thanks to Tony Horwitz, I now have a better understanding of John Brown himself, of his motives and his mind, and of the role he played in American history.  As a popular Civil War song had it, "John Brown's body is a-mouldering in his grave, but his soul is marching on."  Yet he is still a disturbing figure, and understanding his motives still leaves me uncomfortable with the means he chose.

Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

The Fiery Trial, Eric Foner

I had almost finished reading The Fiery Trial when I learned it has won the Pulitzer Prize, and I thought, how right. I was not in the least surprised that it won as history, not as biography, despite the subtitle, "Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery." 

Eric Foner clearly states his thesis at the start of the book:

"My intent is to return Lincoln to his historical setting, tracing the evolution of his ideas in the context of the broad antislavery impulse and the unprecedented crisis the United States confronted during his adult life . . .  My aim then is to take Lincoln whole, incorporating his strengths and shortcomings, his insights and misjudgments. I want to show Lincoln in motion, tracking the development of his ideas and beliefs, his political abilities and strategies, as they engaged the issues of slavery and emancipation, the most critical in our nation's history"  (pp xxvii, xxi). 

This, then, would be no hagiography of Lincoln, not just the story of the Great Emancipator.

Reading this book made me realize that I have fallen a bit into hagiography myself (I do have a statue of Lincoln in my home, as well as a picture of him on display, above the shelves of Lincoln books).  It was a salutary shock to be reminded that while Lincoln spoke against slavery from the earliest days of his polical career, he promoted the removal of freed slaves to Africa or Central America (colonization) from those same early days, continuing to do so until well into the Civil War; he did not advocate social or full political equality for African Americans until almost the end of his life; he used racist language and humor; and he once represented a slaveowner trying to force a mother and her four children back into slavery.  Lincoln personally knew very few African Americans before he became president, so his knowledge of African Americans and of slavery was abstract.  It was only as president that he came in contact with people like Frederick Douglass, Martin Delaney, and Elizabeth Keckley, and then his views began to change.

One of the keys to Lincoln's greatness is that he could change, change his mind, his position, his policies.  Foner charts these changes, from the 1830s on, as the slavery issue came to dominate American politics, and as many Americans, including Lincoln, moved from a dislike of abolitionists as social and political nuisances to share their convinction of the wrongs of slavery.  Though Lincoln believed that the Constitution protected slavery where it existed, like most Republicans he came to believe it could and must be kept from spreading into the territories. "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" became their rallying cry (and the title of Foner's influential first book).  When the war broke out, Lincoln believed that he had to placate loyalists in the upper south and the border states, so he resisted the calls of more Radical Republicans for action against slavery, until the necessities of war led him to the Emancipation Proclamation. He believed that African Americans could never find a home in America, until the bravery and patriotism of black soldiers convinced him otherwise.

I learned so much from this book, not just about Lincoln, but about the abolition and anti-slavery movements, about the rise of the Republican Party and the Radical wing of it.  For much of the past week I was absorbed in 19th century America, and it was disorienting at times to return to 2011.