Rescripting a Troubled Past: John Brown's Family and the Harpers Ferry Conspiracy

Abstract

The John Brown family was unique among famous nineteenth-century American families: it owed its public reputation largely to a single dramatic civil disturbance the Harpers Ferry crisis. That desperate effort to free the slaves cost the lives of John's sons Watson and Oliver and nearly that of their half brother, Owen, who escaped Virginia's justice. John Brown's raid, his trial, and his execution on December 2, 1859, gave his wife and children a notoriety reborn with each new tale of the Old Man's fanaticism and daring.' But the Browns remained in the public eye only as witnesses to his deeds, defenders of his cause, and bearers of his legacy. None ofJohn Brown's eight-surviving children or his score of grandchildren gained public attention in his or her own right. Unlike such celebrated American families as the Adamses, Byrds, Harrimans, Roosevelts, and Winthrops, the Browns could boast neither wealth nor learning nor conspicuous careers, apart from the brief tenure ofJohn himself as a guerrilla leader. And whereas the histories of other wellknown families begin with the success stories of the founders, the Browns' fame was rooted in spectacular failure. In a profound sense, the family was born anew in the heroic gesture that ended with the hanging of its founder. It is not the family's modest achievements, but its rebirtha remarkable mutation of consciousnessthat commends Brown's heirs to our attention. That transformation emerged gradually in their long struggle to come to terms with the troubled legacy of Harpers Ferry. It set new emotional and social parameters for their lives. To be sure, children of the famous must often learn to live with burdensome family traditions. But John Brown's sons were adults when their father suddenly became a martyr to the antislavery cause. All of them, and one of Brown's daughters, had played some part in his war against slavery. The need to justify their own roles