The Afterlife of John Brown

256 Pages·2005·1.57 MB·English

by  Andrew Taylor

The Afterlife of John Brown
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The Afterlife of John Brown
Edited by
Andrew Taylor
and
Eldrid Herrington
THEAFTERLIFEOFJOHNBROWN
© Andrew Taylor and Eldrid Herrington,2005.
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2005 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 1–4039–6992–2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The afterlife of John Brown / edited by Andrew Taylor and Eldrid
Herrington.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–4039–6992–2
1.Brown,John 1800–1859—Influence.2.Brown,John 1800–1859—
Public opinion.3.Public opinion—United States.4.Brown,John
1800–1859—In literature.5.American literature—History and
criticism.6.Abolitionists—United States—Biography—Miscellanea.
I.Taylor,Andrew,1968– II.Herrington,Eldrid.
E451.A33 2005
973.7(cid:1)114—dc22 2005048677
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:December 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgments x
List ofIllustrations xi
Introduction:The Anguish None Can Draw 1
Eldrid Herrington
1. Black People’s Ally,White People’s Bogeyman:A John
Brown Story 11
Louis A.DeCaro,Jr.
2. “The Blood ofMillions”:John Brown’s Body,Public Violence,
and Political Community 27
Franny Nudelman
3. John Brown,Bearded Patriarch 57
Jean Libby
4. “Earth Feels the Time ofProphet-Song”:John Brown
and Public Poetry 69
Joe Lockard
5. Consenting to Violence:Henry David Thoreau,John Brown,
and the Transcendent Intellectual 89
Andrew Taylor
6. Transforming the “Madman into a Saint”:The Cultural
Memory Site ofJohn Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry in
Antislavery Literature and History 107
Kristen Proehl
7. Meteor ofWar:The John Brown Cycle 121
John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd
8. Transatlantic Spartacus 145
Janine C.Hartman
vi CONTENTS
9. W.E.B.Du Bois’s John Brown: Placing Racial Justice at the
Center ofa Socialist Politics 159
Julie Husband
10. “I see your mouth calling / before the words arrive”:
Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Soul and Body ofJohn Brown”
and 1930s America 173
Bruce A.Ronda
11. John Brown and Children’s Literature 187
Tyler Hoffman
12. More Heat than Light:The Legacy ofJohn Brown in
Russell Banks’s Cloudsplitter 203
Kimberly Rae Connor
Works Cited 225
Index 239
Notes on Contributors
Kimberly Rae Connor teaches various topics in American Studies at the
University ofSan Francisco.She is the author ofConversions and Visions in
the Writings of African American Women (University of Tennessee Press,
1995) and Imagining Grace: Liberating Theologies in the Slave Narrative
Tradition (University of Illinois Press, 2000), which was selected by
Choiceas an outstanding academic title for 2000.She is also the editor for
the Academy Series,a joint publishing venture of the American Academy
ofReligion and Oxford University Press.
Louis A. DeCaro, Jr. is a religious educator, lecturer, and an independent
scholar.He holds graduate degrees from New York University and Westminster
Theological Seminary, and a PhD from New York University. He is the
author of“Fire from the Midst ofYou”: A Religious Life ofJohn Brown(New
York University Press,2002),as well as On the Side ofMy People: A Religious
Life ofMalcolm X(New York University Press,1996),and Malcolm and the
Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity (New York
University Press, 1998). He is also a contributor to New York Glory:
Religions in the City,edited by Tony Carnes and Anna Karpathakis (New
York University Press, 2001), and coeditor of Signs of Hope in the City:
Ministries ofCommunity Renewal(Judson Press,1999).
Janine C.Hartmanis Professor ofHistory at the University ofCincinnati.
Her translation of Joseph Déjacque’s utopian novel L’Humanisphère is
forthcoming.Her next project is the spiritualist press trance narratives of
the American Civil War.
Eldrid Herringtonis a professor ofEnglish literature at University College
Dublin and a recipient ofan AAS National Endowment ofthe Humanities
Fellowship and a Government of Ireland Fellowship for the forthcoming
bookCivil War,Revision,and Self-Representation.
Tyler Hoffmanis Associate Professor and Director ofGraduate Studies in
the Department of English at Rutgers University-Camden. His book,
Robert Frost and the Politics of Poetry, was published in 2001 by the
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
University Press of New England.He has published essays on a range of
modern American poets and is currently working on a book on John
Brown. He is the editor of the electronic American Studies journal The
Mickle Street Reviewand the associate editor ofThe Robert Frost Review.
Julie Husband is Assistant Professor of nineteenth-century American
literature at the University ofNorthern Iowa.She is the coauthor ofDaily
Life in the Industrial United States: 1870–1900 (Greenwood Press, 2004)
and has published essays on Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, the
antebellum writings offactory women,and Philip Roth.Her recent work
focuses upon the adaptation of antislavery rhetoric and icons to speak
about northern class relations in the antebellum era.
Jean Libby is a retired instructor of U.S. History and African American
History at community colleges in northern California.She has published
widely on John Brown and African Americans in the raid at Harper’s Ferry,
and on the restoration of the John Brown farmhouse in Maryland and
John Brown’s family in California. Her photo chronology of daguerreo-
types of John Brown prepared with analysis by Eileen Barrow of the
Forensics Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES)
Laboratory at Louisiana State University has been published in The
Daguerreian Annual 2002–2003.
Joe Lockard is Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University,
where he teaches early American and African American literatures. His
research interests lie in narratives ofU.S.slavery and he directs the Antislavery
Literature Project.He is a member ofthe Bad Subjects Collective.
Franny Nudelmanis Associate Professor ofEnglish and American Studies
at the University ofVirginia.She is the author ofJohn Brown’s Body: Slavery,
Violence,and the Culture ofWar(University ofNorth Carolina Press,2004).
Kristen Proehl is a PhD student in the American Studies Program at
the College of William and Mary.Her primary areas of research include
nineteenth-century literature, gender and violence in American culture,
and collective memory ofthe civil war era.
Bruce A. Ronda is Professor of English and chair of the English
Department at Colorado State University, where he also served as the
founding director of the American Studies Program.He is the author of
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, A Reformer on Her Own Terms (Harvard
University Press, 1999) and The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody,
American Renaissance Woman (Wesleyan University Press,1984).He has
also published a study of Harvard child psychiatrist and social critic
Robert Coles and essays on nineteenth-century American literature and
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
culture.He is working on a book-length manuscript called “Reading the
Old Man:John Brown in American Culture.”
John Staufferis Professor ofEnglish,History ofAmerican Civilization,and
African and African American Studies at Harvard University.His first book,
The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of
Race(Harvard University Press,2002),received four major awards,includ-
ing the Frederick Douglass Book Prize,the Avery Craven Book Prize,and
the Lincoln Prize runner-up. He recently published the Modern Library
edition ofFrederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom;is the coedi-
tor (with Zoe Trodd) ofMeteor ofWar: The John Brown Story(Brandywine
Press,2004); and the coeditor (with Tim McCarthy) of Millennial Vistas:
New Essays on American Abolitionists.His forthcoming book,which explores
the possibility ofracial equality,is called Dreaming ofDemocracy: American
Interracial Friendships in History and Myth.
Andrew Taylorteaches American Literature at the University ofEdinburgh.
His book,Henry James and the Father Question,was published by Cambridge
University Press in 2002.He has published articles on a variety ofsubjects in
nineteenth-century literature,and is currently working on a book project
called “Thinking America: the Nation State and the Nineteenth-Century
Public Intellectual.” He is also the coeditor of the Edinburgh Series in
Transatlantic Literatures,published by Edinburgh University Press.
Zoe Trodd is in the History of American Civilization PhD program at
Harvard, and also has a degree in English Literature from Cambridge
University.She has published Meteor ofWar: The John Brown Story(with
John Stauffer), and her book American Protest Literature is forthcoming
with Harvard University Press. She has won numerous prizes for her
writing and teaching, and edits an annual anthology of African folklore
forthe Zamani Foundation.