The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown’s Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism by Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz

Abstract

Book Reviews 295 a much-needed addition to the literature on slavery in lower New York. It also challenges the idea of race as a useful method of categorization of colonial laborers in the mid-seventeenth-century North. Finally, Hayes’ book reminds us that in the construction of historical narratives, what we forget, deliberately or accidentally, is often as important as what we choose to remember. The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown’s Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism. By Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013, 296 pages, $29.95 Cloth. Reviewed by Evan C. Rothera, The Pennsylvania State University In The Tie That Bound Us, Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz analyzes John Brown’s wife and daughters. In doing so, Laughlin-Schultz makes an important contribution to the scholarly literature on John Brown. She argues that women are largely missing from the prevailing narrative about John Brown and she correctly asserts that the study of these women offers “insight into nineteenth-century American women’s lives and into how memory of radical antislavery and the Civil War was incorporated into popular understandings about Brown and his kin” (3). Not only were Mary Brown and her daughters involved with Brown’s antislavery activities, but they were also active in the process of memory making. Although Brown’s wife and daughters did not manufacture his martyrdom, they nevertheless helped shape the memory of Brown, his life, and his achievements. Laughlin-Schultz’s impressive book follows the Brown women from Mary and John Brown’s marriage in 1833 to the death of Annie Brown, the last Brown daughter, in 1926. John Brown is one of New York’s more famous residents. Not only did Brown purchase land from the abolitionist Gerrit Smith and set up a home in the African American colony in North Elba, but, after his execution, Mary decided to bury him in New York. In the John Brown literature, Mary Brown is often portrayed as an unquestioning and devoted helpmate who faithfully acceded to her husband’s wishes. In contrast, LaughlinSchultz offers a subtler and more nuanced depiction of Mary. While she 296 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY accepted many of Brown’s radical ideas, Mary did not always agree with him or the family culture of duty and self-sacrifice, as evidenced by her departure to the water cure in 1849. However, despite several disagreements , Mary and the Brown daughters, not just the Brown sons, were committed to a family culture that stressed duty, self-sacrifice, and militant antislavery activism. Laughlin-Schultz illustrates this commitment by focusing on Annie Brown, who receives scant attention from historians. Annie embraced antislavery and violence, grew close to many of Brown’s soldiers, and, during the preparations for the raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, took pride in her months as an “outlaw girl” (52). Although Annie did not participate in the raid, her work, like that of Mary and Brown’s other daughters, facilitated the work of Brown and his raiders. The second half of the book features Laughlin-Schultz’s innovative exploration of two familiar themes in the Brown literature: martyrdom and celebrity. Specifically, how did Mary and Brown’s daughters influence and shape Brown’s celebrity and martyrdom? Laughlin-Schultz observes that Mary and her daughters often found themselves involved in battles between competing factions of Brown admirers. These quarrels, and the burdens of being known as John Brown’s wife, drove Mary to resettle, with several of her children, in California. Mary and her children were largely reliant on charity, but charity could not sustain the family indefinitely and the move to California was intended to help them achieve economic selfsufficiency . This quest was, however, only one facet of the life the Browns carved for themselves in California. In the 1880s, Mary Brown traveled east to participate in a celebration of Brown in Chicago and became a highly charged symbol, but, critically, “did not work to shape or direct whatever she perceived the ‘John Brown feeling’ to be” (133) and chose to confine her action to the private sphere. On the other hand, Annie Brown, like several of her brothers, strove to shape...