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Coded Language: John Brown as an American Patriot

-- By OkontaP - 31 Mar 2016

Terror and Patriotism

American history lessons in Liberty, Missouri were never dry, always triumphant, with a clear winner and loser. Throughout my 13 years of schooling, American history was designed and presented in a distinct way: a clear American protagonist was cast against a foreign villain in a poetic series that mirrored the exploits of a justice seeking superhero. Events centered around a patriot, that stood up for American Exceptionalism, who was to always be praised and revered. Those that were at odds or attacked American ideals were labeled aggressors, to be chastised, and enemy to these great united states. Lessons were often not much more nuanced than that. America was good, and the white male figure that fought for American ideals was great, its soldier, its revolutionary, its patriot.

In the two and a half days that the sophomore student body at Liberty High School studied the Civil War there was no surprise that this discussion lacked the same nuance as other lessons. There was no discussion at the inherently perverted nature of the American social, legal and political system that enslaved a men, yet championed for equal liberties and freedoms for all. The conflict was flat-lined to an issue over a collision between states' rights and the authority of the federal government. The lessons sustained the idea of American patriotism. The legacies of men who held their fellow men in a brutal form of demoralizing captivity, or were complicit in a system that allowed other men to do so, were left untarnished. Forever regarded in the minds of eager adolescences as those that vigorously supported the American notion that "All men are created equal". American superheroes. American patriots.

John Brown the Revolutionary

The core of early American idealism centers around a discourse of equality, life, and justice. The guarantee of inherent rights was in direct contradiction however, to these claims. At the time the Declaration of Independence was first circulated, even the great American patriot himself, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.

English abolitionist Thomas Day ridiculed the hypocrisy stating, "If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot signing resolutions of independence with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves".

Fellow abolitionist sought to eliminate the duplicity the men that led the confederate allegiances of states and the government’s perpetuation of this injustice.

The illegitimacy of the government in maintaining the system of slavery not only justified the actions of John Brown, but made his defiance inevitable. A historical account of John Brown usually refers to the man as a “radical abolitionist”, using violence to overthrow slavery. He led attacks during the Kansas-Nebraska Act slavery conflicts with his sons, and met those that participated in slavery with an equal level of violence. The end of his work was met in 1859 after Brown led a raid on the federal armory of Harpers Ferry in Virginia. The forces held the area under siege for two days, but were eventually defeated. Brown was tried and convicted for his leadership in the event and was executed after stating his just and God sanctioned motivations for leading the liberated forces. Often described as a “slave rebellion”, I think a more adequate description would be a “slave revolution”. A revolution that created a fundamental change in how the problematic and contradictory nature of slavery was viewed in American society.

John Brown was a true American revolutionary, or more accurately a true American patriot, because he not only wanted, but demanded freedom for all. His action exemplified the American ideal: knowing his actions would meet an almost certain death, he battled for equality and self-determination by any means necessary.

John Brown a Terrorist

“He’s a terrorist because he broke the law”. The intersection between law, freedom and terrorism is an interesting one. Adversaries of Brown may claim that he is in fact a terrorist because he used violent and illegal methods to attack a government endorsed system (slavery). However, the notion that eradicating an inherently unjust and viciously violent system peacefully is null. How else could Brown have demand freedom from the chains of oppression and subjugation, without taking a sword to those chains? There was no legal remedy for slaves or those that wished to end slavery within the confines of American law. The life and Supreme Court case of Dred Scott let the world know that a black man lacked standing as citizen, let alone a free man in federal courts. How could he have peacefully turned the wheels to one of the bloodiest battles on American sand (the Civil War) without creating a spark in which no one could look away from?

While textbooks and orations often focus on the tragedy of Harper’s Ferry, the reasoning of his actions and his non-violent actions are often not called into play. As an abolitionist taking part in the Underground Railroad, Brown helped in the liberation of hundreds of slaves, established the League of Gileadites, a group formed with the intention of protecting black citizens from slave hunters, and did everything in his power to ensure the end of slavery. What more could one ask for in a patriot? If Brown must be labeled a terrorist for the revolutionary act of self-defense on Harpers Ferry, then every single American citizen that participated in the act of terror by subjecting their fellow man to the brutalities of American slavery, or that were complicit in this system by not actively fighting it, affirmatively repudiating it, or by sitting back and “paying taxes” should be labeled as an American terrorist as well. A terrorist to every American man and woman whose ancestors’ blood taints the bedrock of American society.

Individuals opposed to the actions of Brown often point to Martin Luther King Jr., as a respectable man, that championed for social and legal change without the use of violence. Yet, these respectability politics are limited. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was maintained through the highly publicized and politicalized access to vicious attacks on people of color perpetuated by white supremacists. Now, while King has claimed that violence begets violence, his participation in illegal marches, sit-ins, and boycotts (at the very least), show that illegal actions often move and accelarate social movements and society towards justice. MLK writes that, “man-made law” is “no law at all,” when it is, “out of harmony with the moral law” and “is not rooted in eternal and natural law.” Legal action is not always the best action when freedom from a powerful oppressor is being pursued. A man-made law that oppresses another is not in sync with natural law and must be defeated, even if through "illegal" actions. John Brown, the patriot, embodied this ideal. American superhero. American patriot.

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