the zealot and the emancipator john brown abraham lincoln and the struggle for american freedom anyone who's observed the controversies this past year over lincoln statues? that celebrate his role as an emancipator or seen the new and current tv series the good lord bird. which dramatizes john brown as a zealous of freedom fighter knows that this is a piece of history. that could not be more current and relevant. and professor brands has responded as they always does with a book of great insight and high drama work of deep research sound analysis and good old-fashioned narrative drama and momentum and few people do it better. so now to use a quote from publishers weekly, let me bring on the insightful and entertaining jack blanton chairman in the in history at the university of texas at austin hw bryant so bill over to you. thank you harold for that very kind introduction and thank you to the lincoln forum for the opportunity to address you and i'm especially drawn to the forum aspect of this because i hope we can have a lively conversation toward the end of my panel so i'm gonna explain why i wrote a book about john brown and abraham lincoln and part of the short answer is that i couldn't write a book simply about abraham lincoln. it's well known to this audience there are lots and lots of books about abraham lincoln. so i needed to bring somebody else into the story and this actually reflects some of my experience in writing biographies. i've written several biographies and i discovered in writing biography that try as one might the biography cannot help. but give the impression that his or her subject is the center of the universe. and as important as any individual might be that individual is not at the center of the universe. so i wanted to try something that would decenter somebody like lincoln and look at lincoln from another perspective. but also pearl lincoln with somebody else. and john brown was a near contemporary of lincoln, but he was also very useful to me because i wanted to pose a question to my readers a question that i posed to my students. i teach at the university of texas and i make a point of teaching introductory classes to students who are 18 19 years old who are on the cusp of becoming citizens of this republic. and it's a question that well. i thought of it as a timeless question and it is certainly important for citizenship, but it goes beyond this and the the harder the question is what does a good person do in the face of evil? now you can interpret that any way you want the way i chose to interpret is well in the context of the mid 19th century. what does a person convinced of the wrongness the evil the bad policy aspects of slavery? what does that person do about it? what do you do if you're convinced as john brown was as abraham lincoln was if you're convinced that slavery is wrong. john brown would have emphasized the evil aspect of at the sinful aspect of it. but abraham lincoln conceded nothing to john brown in his conviction that slavery was wrong lincoln would and did bring in other aspects as well. it's bad policy. it's bad for white people as well as black people. it's bad for it threatens the future of democracy. it is wrong. so. the question is though. what do you do about it? and so i wanted to look at two people who agreed that this thing was wrong, but took diametrically opposite views about what to do about it. and so i look at john brown. i look at abraham lincoln. primarily through the lens of their attitudes towards slavery and more importantly their actions towards slavery. and they were both born in the first decade of the 19th century and this is important for this story because american attitudes towards slavery. we're changing during this time. i think it's fair to say that at the time of the founding of this republic. in 1776 nearly everybody who thought about the question at all thought that slavery was at best a necessary evil. almost nobody at that time fought slavery was a good thing other things being equal. they thought it fell in the category of necessary evils like like war i mean almost nobody thinks that war is a good thing. but on their hand, they aren't very many people who say the countries like the united states should forceware war under any circumstances. so it falls in the category of we don't like it but sometimes in this world you get wrapped up in this stuff and attitudes towards slavery in the 1770s 80s 90s fell largely in this category. and so you would find people like thomas jefferson george, washington who were slaves holders, but also opposed to slavery in principle. and thomas jefferson his whole life tried to figure out how to end slavery because he concluded that slavery is not good for the republic slavery. is this bad thing? it corrupts slave owners at corrupts their children, it corrupts democracy and it might very well bring down america's experiment in self-government now an obvious sort of response to this and and sort of the 21st century obvious response to thomas. jefferson is well. okay. he thinks slavery is wrong. why don't you start by freeing your slaves? well, i would pose the question to people today comparably if you think war is wrong. why don't you simply not wage war? because today people can't figure out sort of how to deal with their world. most people without war there are some committed pacifists out there, but they're very small minority. anyway. oh i should add and this is actually crucial time the position that jefferson took that washington took. they thought that slavery was on its way out that it was a dying institution. they lived long enough to see that slavery was being ended in the northern states. so by 1800 by beginning of the 19th century, the northern states had all consigned slavery to the past or it was on its way out and this not because northerners were grabbed by a fit of morality, but because their economies had evolved in a way that rendered slavery unprofitable unnecessary. and so if you have this sort of formula of a necessary evil, and it's no longer necessary, then you can focus on evenly scale. okay, let's get rid of slavery and jefferson thought washington thought that slavery was falling in the same category in the south what they doing and they they noticed that slavery for example. no, i'm sorry that tobacco cultivation which in the south was done by slaves and actually was done by slaves in connecticut as well. it was exhausting this oil and they figured that okay, it's time is common gone and soon enough southern states will come to the conclusion that the northern states are already coming to that slavery is on its way out and the southern states will choose to end slavery what jefferson didn't see or washington didn't see most people the time didn't see was first of all the invention of the cotton gin and secondly the and the consequent enormous growth in the cultivation of cotton which made slavery really profitable in the states where new land could be found and so slavery spread and it had this sort of backflow influence on profitability of slavery in places like virginia, so, slavery was never particularly profitable in virginia and other states of the eastern seaboard. i'll leave the side maybe south carolina but in virginia, which was kind of the key to all this slavery wasn't particularly profitable on its own merits in virginia by the beginning of the 19th century. what made slavery profitable in places like virginia was and this is going to seem paradoxical maybe was the ending of the international slave trade to the united states the cutting off of imports because that raised the value of slaves if you put a tariff on things or if you block imports and things and the value goes out and then virginia could export slaves to the new gulf coast states and places like, texas. and so this made slavery really profitable and what this meant was that for people like well by the time jefferson died, he realized. oh i was wrong about this and a new generation of statesman of political leaders came along. can we play henry clay was that in many ways thomas jefferson's air. he was a kentuckyian. he was a slave holder and he was also against slavery. so and now back to that question, why didn't jefferson just emancipated slaves? why didn't clay emancipate his slaves clay did emancipate his slaves after his death, but why not in his life and the answer they would have given was that if thomas jefferson freedous slaves if if henry clay free his slaves that would have an effect on the lives of those slaves, which is no small thing. but it would lose them any political leverage they have over persuading their fellow slaveholders in virginia or in kentucky to free their slaves because they would simply have become another abolitionist but for a slave holder to argue against his own material interest and say let's end slavery that would give that person much more credibility anyway. this so by the 1830s by the 1830s it became clear that slavery was in it for the long haul and it caused people who were supposed to slavery to fall into a couple of different camps and in one camp was john brown. john brown was born in new england, but his family moved to ohio when he was a young boy and he grew up in the southern part of ohio near kentucky slaves day, kentucky where slavery he had contact with slaves on a regular basis people who owned slaves in kentucky would bring them across the board and people in ohio would go into kentucky and let's see slaves. so john brown was sort of used to this as a kid except he didn't understand quite what it meant until one day and he recalled this in his later life. he was about nine eight or nine years old and he remembered he was playing one day with a playmate a boy who happened to be a black boy. and john brown didn't realize that it didn't sink in that this boy was a slave until until after they've been playing together essentially as equals then this white man came along and started yelling at the boy and beating over the head, you know, and just abusing him. and it dawned on john brown. well, wait a minute. okay, so this black boy is in a very different position than i am because nobody could ever do that to me and get away with it. obviously. this guy can do it to this blackboard. and so at that point john brown realized there's something really wrong with slavery. but he didn't know what to do about it. and this again is my fundamental question once you agree. that slavery is wrong. what do you do about it? john brown didn't know what to do about slavery for years. he was have kind of mildly opposed to slavery as many people were mildly opposed to slavery, but it wasn't until it wasn't until the 1830s that his opposition to slavery sort of galvanized in the form that made him the john brown who became known to history now. i have to say something here. and that is that john brown was not a successful name. he was not successful as a farmer. he was not successful as a sheep herder or a cow herder. he was not successful in there. he's business ventures he tried and it's a hypothetical but i think is probably fairly reasonable to say that if john brown had been more successful at something else. he might never have become the person that history knows and as this is not unusual people often find their calling sort of by the process of elimination. but the critical moment in john brown's evolution on slavery. came in 1837. when elijah lovejoy and abolitionist editor was murdered by a pro slavery mob. and 1837. this is several years into the birth of the full-throated abolitionist movement in the north. there had been well called an emancipationists earlier quakers for example in the 18th century and there had been people who thought slavery is wrong that's moved to end it but many of them had been gradualists. so for example when new york ended slavery it did so in a phase manner and this was very common and one of the reasons it was common. was that the people who were emancipating the slaves had to get around a fundamental problem and a source of opposition to the ending of slavery and that is slaves slaves were a valuable form of property. and if some person had just invested $1,000 in a slave and then was told the next day. oh, we're freeing your slave. well that person would have an economic complaint leave aside the moral question, but there would be an economic incentives say wait wait, we're not going to do that. so typically the emancipation in order took this phase form. so after 10 years any after 10 years then slave children who become adults? okay, they will be freed and anybody born after certain time will be free so we would give people time to factor this in the abolitionist took a different view the abolitionist took the attitude. that slavery is so wrong. so evil that it must be ended immediately. and essentially at all costs now what did all costs really mean? for many abolitionists william lloyd garrison was probably the best known of the publishing abolitionists. it meant that opposition to slavery overrode an attachment to the idea of the rule of law william lloyd garrison famously burned a copy of the constitution saying this is what i think of the constitution because the constitution allows slavery. so abolitionists the real hardcore abolitionists took the i took the attitude that opposition to slavery justifies almost anything but few of them were willing to go as far as john brown and john brown himself was unwilling to go as far as he did until events of the 1850s shocked him into action. the 1850s was the decade. when does the decade of truth for the american republic and for dealing with the dual problems that persisted since writing of the constitution. so the constitution the constitution was not revered in those days the way it often is today in part because people were still living who knew the people who wrote the thing and it's hard to think of your next-door neighbor as a demigod or something like that, you know, okay, they're politicians and their trying to solve the problems that they can solve but there were two fundamental flaws with the constitution and one was how do you square? the existence of states within a federal republic. where does the balance lie between the authority of the states and the authority of the national government? and this one was deliberately fudged by the frangers of the constitution because they knew if they said okay if they wrote it down very clearly. the federal government always takes precedence over the states. then the small states would have said forget it. we're not gonna join this because under the existing government the artwork confederation, the states were sovereign and and all the states were equal. and in this new government the big states would be more equal than the small states by virtue of their larger representation in the house of representatives and and in the electoral college. so if they had said quite clearly the federal government is always supreme. they wouldn't have gotten anybody to sign if they had said. oh the states are always supreme when push comes to shove then it would have been no improving over the arctic as confederation. so they left this one deliberately vague and the people who wrote the constitution understood that we didn't answer this question. we will just hope that when the question has to be answered there will be people smarter than us or they'll be in a position to answer the question and way we can't at the moment. so there's that problem and the other problem is the existence of slavery in a republic a republic is political system based on the principle that people are equal thomas jefferson, of course, it's stated very clearly all men are created equal exactly who he was talking about and what he was trying to say then has been the source of debate ever since but it was very clear in the context of a republic one person one vote and all this again who votes and so on that's it's an issue that we've all over time, but when you had a class of people slaves who were so clearly unequal to everybody else then you were asking for trouble and again, the frame is the constitution new they were asking for trouble except that the reason that i explained earlier in 1787. they pretty much all thought that slavery was gonna die of its own weight within 10 or 15 years. they also knew that if they spelled it out exactly in the constitution, you know, if if they couldn't come up with a fudge the three-fifths compromise and all that stuff then the the large slaveholding states in the south simply wouldn't sign and they wouldn't get this constitution. so in that case as in the case of the federal government versus the state governments they kick the can down the road and basically they took the position articulated by benjamin franklin the clothes that constitution convention is this constitution isn't perfect, but it's the best we can do under the circumstance. so let's take it out there and let the next generation the generation after that fix it. okay. well there's this iou and these pair of iou use and they're hanging over the country until the 1850s and it becomes pretty clear that the debts are gonna have to be paid. the the flaws are going to have to be remedy by one means means or another so kicking off the decade was the compromise of 1850 which outraged elements on both sides of mason-dixon line the south was really upset that california was admitted as a free state this delivered the senate into the hands of the free states. they i'm not going to call them exactly the antislavery forces because not everybody in the north was particularly opposed to slavery and us only a small minority made it an overriding issue, but the north was a different region and people did think regionally in those days even when they do today. i'm much more than they do today. so the south lost control incentive it lost even it's veto in the senate because there were more northern states now more northern senators. there were southern senators but the north was outraged because as the quid pro quo that the south insisted on it was a new fugitive slave act and it was a new fugitive sayback that made more necessary than ever the work of people like harriet tubman of we just heard. because it before 1850 before then the new future to say it was often. sufficient if someone free at fled slavery, it was often sufficient simply to cross the ohio river and get into a free state like ohio and then you could kind of melt into the population the way frederick douglass melted into the population of um, philadelphia when got away from maryland and but the fugitive the fugitive slave act meant that you had to get all the way to canada because the fugitive slave act required northern sheriffs judges even private individuals to assist in the return of fugitive slaves and for northerners who were posed to slavery to say i have to help in the capture of you just slaves. this was a clear violation of their conscience. they were outrage. so northern south both thought the compromise of i should say there were large elements in north and south that low part of the compromise of 1850 and they began to point fingers more seriously. they never the other side. the kansas-nebraska act of 1854 the work primarily of illinois center steven douglas this is one that blue the tops off the heads of many northerners and especially people oppose to slavery the the crux of the kansas-nebraska act was to repeal that portion of the missouri compromise 1820 that had barred slavery from the northern part of the louisiana purchase. that was 18 20. this is 1854 it fell in the category of what the juris called settled law. it's been around for a long time and northerners those people who are opposed to slavery. they presume that that was the permanent deal and their hope was still that if the growth of slavery could be contained then slavery eventually would fall under its own weight, but the kansas-nebraska act says sorry we're taking that lid off of slavery. and this was compounded three years later when the dreads got case the grotes got decision said that. the missouri compromise that part of the missouri compromise had been unconstitutional from the beginning because it after the the kansas nebraska act. it was possible for people like abraham lincoln who returned to politics in illinois largely because of the kansas nebraska act. it was possible for him to say, okay. congress made a bad decision in repealing that ban on slavery in the northern part of the western territories but if congress made a bad decision in 1854, it could make a good decision in 1856 and restore the ban. the dreads got decision said no congress cannot do that the basis of the dreads got decision was that slaves were property and just as congress could not tell a guy in missouri who wanted to take his horse into kansas and because properties property and you can take your private cross state lines. it couldn't tell a slaveholder in missouri that he couldn't take his slaves across the lines into kansas territory. what the kansas-nebraska act did on the ground though was to give both sides? pro slavery antislavery and opportunity to basically flex their muscles ahead of some sort of military conflict because the principle on which kansas kansas territory was open to settlement was what steven douglas called popular sovereignty and it sounds innocuous on its face. it's as democratic as can be so i've settlers from any states in the union can go into kansas territory and they can take their property with them or that property happens to be mules and horses or slaves so they can come in from the slaves out. they can come in from the free north and when kansas territory gets a population large enough to warrant a constitution estate constitution those people then resident in kansas territory will write a constitution and at that point they'll decide for slavery or against slavery. it's up to them. this is a democracy people ought to get the government they want who could argue with that. well, in fact lincoln argue with it because it overturned this basic principle of event around for a long time john brown decided to argue it in another way. so once the doors of kansas were open then settlers came into kansas territory from the south and they had an advantage because kansas assumed kansas right next to missouri. missouri was a slave state naked poor across the line. but settlers came in from the north john brown at this point was living in upstate new york. and so he decides to go to kansas territory actually a couple of his before his adult sons precede him into kansas because they've decided here is the time to make our stand for freedom and they're gonna be part of that migration from the north to get to kansas and to settle the territory in greater numbers than the settlers from the south. so when the time comes to write the constitution freedom will win and they write letters home today and say dear father come to kansas. this is where the battle over slavery is being fun. so john brown says sure i'm coming. and john brown sort of found his calling in kansas because he discovered. that he had a kind of personal magnetism people were drawn to john brown. and they were drawn to john brown in a way that some of them didn't particularly like they were drawn to commit actions of violence that they almost certainly never would have done. without the leadership of john brown. so what did john brown do first of all he watched when the pro slavery immigrants to, kansas. they stuff ballot boxes and they elected a bogus territorial legislature this annoyed him. and bans of pro slavery malicious descended on the free state. that is the northern colonized community of lawrence, kansas, and they basically destroyed the tam. and the people living in lawrence didn't put up a fight and john brown was incensed at this he could hardly decide whether he was more incensed at the pro's slavery. militia the so called the border ruffians from missouri or more incensed at the the antislavery forces in lawrence for not standing up for themselves. so john brown decided to send a message to the pro slavery side. one dark night. he led a small band of his followers including a couple of his sons. and they descended on a small hamlet on the banks of potawatomi creek in kansas territory, and they dragged five pro slavery settlers man from their beds and brutally murdered them pack them to death with broadswords and left the corpses in pieces lying on the ground. the purpose of this was to send a message. to others who are thinking about coming to kansas for similar purposes that this could happen to them. now i'm always love to import to the past terminology from the present. i'll just say that if this happened today without blinking an eye people would describe john brown as a terrorist because this was an act of political violence done to send a message done to people the john brown had no particular gripe against him. they hadn't threatened john down's life or anything like that. so this is john brown. he has decided that slavery is so evil that it can justify even murder. so john brown discovers. well, that doesn't exactly save kansas the the battle goes on. and john brown was a little bit frustrated because he didn't get the kind of response. he wanted i should add something here. john brown became semi-famous as a result of this and he was also wanted for murder in kansas territory. so you might think that john brown he's going to be arrested and tried or something like that. but in fact this was in the days before photography at least before convenient photography and so there were no photographs of john brown's circulating. so the end i should add there was no federal law enforcement agency. nothing like the fbi to chase john brown. so there were written descriptions of john brown, but the the federal government because it's the feds who govern kansas territory. they have to rely on local law enforcement to apprehend him and all the locals sheriffs and various parts of the country had to go on was a written description of john brown. oh and john brown could grow his hair out cut his beard and vice versa and changed his name and so he could very easily blend in the population. there's something else going on here, too. and that is it gets back to this question of the states versus the national government. there were a lot of people in the north including northern sheriffs who had really resented the fact that they had were being required to do what they consider to be the dirty work of the slaveholders who could very easily turn the blind eye to john brown and okay. they heard john brown's in their county. well that he'll be somebody else's problem if we just let him go because he's going in the next county. so john brown circulated in north and he circulated among the abolitionist community as far east as boston and mostly was raising money. he was raising money for his new project and his new project was an attack on harper's ferry harper's ferry virginia in those days west virginia. now why harper is very because there was a federal arsenal there and john brown's idea was to seize the weapons in the arsenal and distribute them among slaves in the vicinity of harper's very in the slaves would use these weapons to rise up against their masters killing their masters if necessary to achieve their freedom and so shake the institution of slavery that slaves would lose their value and eventually the slaveholders would have to concede. okay, we have to give up this institution. so this is john brenner. and he's trying to start a war two free the slaves. it turns out to be a fiasco and without getting into the details. he is captured. he's arrested he's tried he is hanged. and in going to the gallows he slips out a note to his jailer in which he prophesied. that the evils of this country will be purged only by blood. well this sent shockwaves as you can imagine through the south, you know, his attack was on virginia. he was convicted of treason against the commonwealth of virginia as well as murder and some people who were killed in the raid. and so southerners began to think oh my gosh, if people like john brown are running around. we are not safe in the union. so this is oh and then we're made it worse. was that people in the north? those northern abolitionists? they hailed john brown as a martyr upon his execution and when southerners are sort of this age. oh my gosh, not only do we have this murder and we have people in the north who are praising who are canonizing this terrorists this murder and it was not outlandish for southerners to think southern slaveholders to think if they remained in the union first of all their institution of slavery would be in jeopardy and possibly their own lives would be in jeopard if there are more people like john brown who are getting guns to the the slaves who would kill them in their beds. so this is the situation in the sound. but it's not the entire situation. in fact abraham lincoln is watching all of this and he shakes his head he shutters when he hears of john brown because abraham lincoln looked at slavery and said, this is evil. this must be undone. but it must be undone lawfully. it must be undone under the constitution lincoln as i say conceded nothing to john brown in his belief that slavery was evil, but lincoln believed that in the short run actions of people like john brown would make the situation of slaves worse. i should point out that john brown's raid on harpers very freed. not a single slaves. in fact, john brown was far less successful than harriet tubman in freeing slaves. john brown wants to start the war the war doesn't start and further than no slaves take up his offer to you know, rise up against their masters because they realize this probably a suicide mission. so lincoln thinks first of all that people like john brown band in actions like the rate and harper's ferry slaves in the short run, but they're bad for the slaves in the long run too they would cause southerners to basically to to circle the wagons and to resist any idea any arguments that it might be in their own self-interest and slavery. now. this was lincoln's. hope this this was what lincoln held out lincoln believed that slavery would end when southern slaveholders concluded that it was no longer in their interest to maintain slavery now, you might think many people at the time thought. oh boy, you know, this is a long shot but lincoln could point to this states of the north who at one time had allowed slavery and they changed their minds because lincoln did believe that economies modernized and what a modern economy needed was a flexible workforce and slavery is not flexible at all. it's just the opposite. so anyway, this is lincoln's hope but it but it's something the has to believe because lincoln puts great. he has reference for the constitution and he knew that the constitution guaranteed slavery lincoln's interpretation the constitution 70 years of yeah 70 years by this time of interpretation of the constitution had concluded that the states could have slavery as long as they wanted lincoln's position basically was congress can't tell the states that they can't have slavery and that if virginia of georgia, south carolina if mississippi wants to have slavery till kingdom come those states can have slavery until kingdom come. or until the constitution is amended that was lincoln's idea now. he wouldn't have to get unanimity among the slave states, but he would have to get some support. so this is what lincoln is aiming for there's another thing about this that lincoln is trying to revive his political career. and he he can read the demographic. charging read the census returns and he realizes that the arithmetic of the electoral college. pretty much guarantees that if this new political party the republicans, which he has joins essentially a charter member of the republican party if they can nominate. a moderate candidate a candidate. who's that? who's not does not scare people. and they will win they're just that many more electoral votes in the north and the republicans don't have to get any electoral votes from the south. the republican candidate doesn't have to get any votes from the south. so lincoln is trying to sort of tamp down any idea that republicans are extremists and when he heard about the raid on harpers ferry and this guy john brown, he's often called osawatomy brown after a battle. it was fought in kansas territory where he played a starring role. that brown was not a republican and that he lincoln was not an abolitionist and he basically put as much distance as he could between himself and john brown as i say for the reason that he thought that brown's work was not only morally, well problematic to put it mildly murdering people in cold blood. this is not something that lincoln was willing to endorse but also it was politically counterproductive. so lincoln sort of treads this narrow path. he's a moderate on the subject of slavery. he's opposed to slavery. but what that means for lincoln is slavery shall not expand into the western territories. so he campaigns against stephen douglas for illinois's senate seat in 1858. he loses that election. he really didn't expect to wins douglas was a so the lion of the senate but what lincoln did was to make a name for himself? nationally. he was lincoln was running for president in 1858 when he was running for the set. and in fact his name. spread around the country and he was seen by the republicans by the sort of professional republicans to be the safe candidate got the nomination in 1860 and lincoln was right the arithmetic electro college meant that he's gonna win and he did he won the presidency. and at that point well at that point the plot thickens, we know the story and so lincoln gets elected and south carolina leads a parade of southern states out of the union. and you know, we sort of we think we know what was going on here. and and you know for the most part the general perception is true that the south is concerned about the future of slavery and therefore southern states decide to leave and the issue is slavery. and yeah, that's part of the story but states like south carolina had contended well in fact the north some northern states as well at times looking back to that. i talked about the two flaws and the constitution, you know, what's the what's the boundary between the federal government and state governments, and this was one that remained. unclear and states would assert their rights in the federal government assert its rights and and nobody had come up with a solution. and there was a strong school of southern thought but i should add that daniel webster daniel webster subscribe to this at an early stages career that the states had formed the national government and therefore the states could opt out of the national government. and so every southern state that seceded did so claiming that it was their right as a state to do so. and south carolina had just about left the union in 1833 1832 and 1833 over a tax issue. they didn't like a revenue a tariff. and they acclaimed the right to do so and so they left the union on the issue of state's rights. now the state's right. that was of greatest importance to them as most of the ordinances of secession indicated. it was slavery, but there's something weird about this because the president of the united states has just been elected and what he's saying, is that south carolina, virginia, you can keep slavery as long as you want the constitution guarantees it well, leave the union and the constitution of the united states doesn't guarantee you anything at all. and if you just think about the way things turned out. if slaveholders in the south wanted to preserve slavery and they seceded for that purpose. they sure did a terrible job because within two years of secession two and a half years of secession slavery was on its way out and by 1865 it was gone if the southern states at the slaves states had not seceded. they could have had slavery until 1870 1880 until maybe well basically when they wanted to give it up. so anyway, lincoln has to decide what to do about southern secession. and he makes very clear that south will not be allowed to succeed. but also makes very clear that his complaint with the south has nothing to do about slavery. it has everything to do with states rights in particular. he rejects the southern contention that the states have a right to lead the union so lincoln makes very clear that this war is not about slavery. he has to make this point because first of all, he's said all along that the federal government doesn't have control over slavery in the states and the sun station keeps slaves as long as they want. but secondly not all is not all the slaves states succeeded. and maryland did not succeed and kentucky, missouri delaware did not secede and if lincoln declared war on slavery, then he would affect be declaring war on those border states, which were absolutely crucial strategically to the preservation union if maryland had seated then the united states government would have had to evacuate washington and it would be on the run. so lincoln has to say that this war is about states rights is about the way but the war is about the union. he states don't have the right to leave and more than a year into the war or is greeley the abolitionist editor. you know i said mr. lincoln, you know, you got to realize that this is really his war caused by slavery and make i said, well, he understood this slavery was at the bottom of this particular dispute, but lincoln said that you know this my war is not about slavery said, you know if i could at my voice to save the end if i could save the union by freeing all the slaves. i do that if i could save the unit by free none of the slaves. i do that if i could save the union by freeing half of them keep the other half and bondage i do that. my job is to save the unit. eventually eventually lincoln was persuaded that saving the union required. bring the slaves or at least freeing the slaves of the rebel slave holders. because his generals pointed out and people like frederick douglass argued very strongly that slave labor was a major war resource of the south. take that. resource away all promise freedom to the slaves and entice southern slaves to flee the plantations and come to the union side and all the sudden things that you change the balance so lincoln issues the emancipation proclamation, but he immediately said, you know, this is a stopgap what we need to do is to amend the constitution so lincoln, you know as the sort of the last act of his life. he didn't realize the last activists life, but he gets the 13th amendment through congress and it's fairly smooth sailing to ratification. so i'm gonna stop there because it's time for questions. well, thank you bill. that was wonderful. that was a wonderful talk. we got a lot of great questions that came in during your remarks. and the first one has to do with john brown's family. were there strong antislavery sentiments among other members of his family for instance his father. john brown's family. john brown was quite a family man. he had 20 children by two wives. and the children the the children they didn't quite know what to make of their father. they all grew up opposed to slavery given john brown's powerful personality. it could hardly be otherwise and of course they lived in an abolitionist community where this is what they heard and being northerners, of course, they had no material interest in slavery. so with that kind of education they would all be opposed to slavery, but some were more opposed to slavery than others. so he had i can't remember exactly how many male children but not all of them joined him basically on the battlefront. so the older boys did he had a daughter i had several daughters and one of his daughters married a guy who was initially kind of taken by john brown and joined john brown in kansas, but then when this son-in-law sees the lengths to which john brown is going to go. he basically says okay enough. he says i got to go back and tend to my family and he goes back to new york with the extended family was living and he doesn't come back john brown implores him to come back. so no, i'm not coming back any he made up excuses the john brown's sons had a really sort of ambivalent relationship with their father. they couldn't decide whether he was the most impressive person that they had ever met or this kind of emotionally morally abusive son. one of his son said that his their father, um, sort of looked like a bird of prey and he thought that this bird of prey was gonna come down and get them if they didn't do what he wanted them to do. so but interestingly have john brown was very tender toward the younger children the older the boys, especially expecting to take up arms and join his slavery army, but the younger children he was tender toward and he was as tender as could be toward his wives. even well, i'm not there's no contradiction here, but they were the ones specially his second wife who had to tend the homestead. well, he was off, you know waging war against slavery and his family at home lived on the kindness of abolitionist strangers. so there was a subscription taken up to support john brown's family so he could go off and wage his fight and there's an interesting dynamic that goes on among the the philanthropistic abolitionist if one wants to be a little bit less charitable one could say the armchair abolitionist who are funding john brown because he impressed them enormously because he had the courage of their convictions. he would actually do what they wanted to do. maybe thought they ought to do but couldn't bring themselves to do. and it's important. i think that they knew the stories of this guy who had committed murder in, kansas. but they conspicuously declined to ask john brown. did you do that captain brown? they always called did you do that? they didn't ask? and he made a point of not saying so he had this air of mystery around him and they well in fact when when john brown was arrested at harper's ferry and he just was interrogated. oh and some of his personal possessions were seized and it was published that he had a bunch of letters. that had been taken so these people who had been writing him letters. they fled the country and we got to get out of here because we might be rounded up and hauled to virginia and tried for treason against virginia to right. how about his parents? do we know how his parents thought about slavery? as far as i can tell his parents were opposed to slavery, but they were of an older generation where the issue of slavery seemed to be much less immediate and and that sort of the story of john brown and and why the 1850s is this time when everything comes to a head because it looks like finally a decision is gonna have to be made things are going in the wrong direction on slavery from the point of view the the opponents of slavery in the days of john brown's parents slavery, the the general issues like things seem to be going in the right direction. so there isn't that much known about his parents beyond that. okay. now one of my favorite historical documentaries is the american experience one about john brown and one of our one of the issues in that film has to do with whether or not he was crazy and we got a question from mel moore which asks says you call brown a zealot in the title of your book. did he become a madman? if by madman somebody means that he lost touch with reality and he couldn't tell what was actually going on the world. he couldn't tell reality from his imagination. no, john brown never fell into that category now john brown. did fall into call at the trance of the person who realizes he's going to be a martyr. and this is something that i'm really intrigued when i try to get inside john's ground's head and i can read his letters from jail in west in virginia and you can read his statements and comments of people who talk to him at the time. there comes a point when john brown entered harper's ferry. he was fully convinced that he was more valuable to the freedom movement alive than dead. but between the time that he is captured and the time he is executed. he realized that he's of greater value to the movement dead than alive. and so he makes very clear. that he will not countenance nor cooperate with any effort to free him from jail and some of the people who had rode with him in kansas. we're thinking seriously of going to harpers ferry charlestown was where he was jail and springing and you know, they thought well how hard can this be? it's just a country jail. in fact, it would have been pretty hard because the governor of virginia and then the government of the united states just surrounded the place with militia and eventually federal soldiers. but he didn't want anything of it because he realized that well he was going to his maker. and he was going to his maker suffering. what amounted to in his mind martyrdom for this just cause and and this was this was what so moved people like henry thoreau and ralph waldo emerson that this guy would give his life for a cause that at least so far. they had only been writing for and speaking for so this was the power of john brown's. example and it's you know, it's a powerful statement, you know, you can't make a more powerful statement than that, and this is of course the reason that john brown has resonated throughout history down till now. yeah, i think of the line from the melville poem the portent that calls him meteor of war and that union soldiers go marching off to fight to the tune of john brown's body. that's an inspiring song for them. so if you want to ask yourself, what was john brown's contribution to history? you have to be prepared to answer a corollary question, but the corollary question is actually a bigger question than john brown. do you think? that the civil war or something very much like it was necessary to end slavery in the american south. and if your answer is yes, then like melville you'd say john brown is the meteor that signals that the war is about to start. it's you know, the opening shot of the civil war but in if you believe that then you will say that okay, john brown was simply joining the battle ahead of when the battle formally started and you're gonna applaud john brown, you know soldier goes gives his life. on the other hand if you think as lincoln thought that a war was not necessary. then you take a rather different view of john brown because john brown was a cold-blooded murderer and he was someone who tried to start a war private citizens a tried to start a war. and if john brown's actions contributed to that war then there's additional blood that john brown has on his hands lincoln himself. couldn't quite decide i say before the war lincoln was convinced that slavery would end without a war. by the end of the war in lincoln's second inaugural address. he's talking about how it may be god's will that every drop of blood drawn by the slaves lash? shall be paid for with a drop of blood drawn by the sword lincoln's taking the position and he sort of from emotional perspective. he pretty much has to take this position. otherwise my god, you know, i'm responsible more than anybody else for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and nobody could bear that lincoln became much more religiously inclined at least he talks and thanks a lot more about religion during the war. it's almost as though he has no choice, but i'm just gonna put one thing to the listeners and that is that slavery was very common in the world in 1800 essentially every country in the world allowed slavery in 1800 in 1900. almost no countries in the world allowed slavery. there are a couple around. but it was only in the united states that the ending of slavery required this great civil war. i have to make it partial exception for haiti which actually started revolution a bit earlier than that, but you get the point. yeah, and so there doesn't seem to be anything in sort of the history of the world of freedom of evolving attitudes that says you have to have a civil war to do it. and so if the civil war could have been avoided then as i say it puts john brown a very different light. that's great. um, we've gotten a lot of questions about ethan hawke and the good lord bird now. i haven't seen the film have you and if you have can you speak to how it depicts him? i have not seen it partly because i don't have showtime but also because i make a point of not mixing my fiction with my fact. and when i am writing about a subject i avoid reading any fictional accounts of the subject, so i didn't read the james mcbride book the good lord bird. the series is based on when it came out precisely because anoma brides a good author and he can spin a convincing story and i could just imagine that i would read something about john brown in there and it would stick in my h ... i've read reviews and i gather that john brown appears on the series to to have one or two screws. mildly loose. he he doesn't seem like someone who is is all there again, i get this only from reviews, but that's that's all i can say about the depiction, but i will reiterate what i said before that john brown certainly could tell reality from illusion. so if anybody makes a claim, i'm not saying that the series does the john brown brown was this crazy man, then i think i should add the republicans like abraham lincoln. they were the first to say john brown was as crazy man, because they didn't want to be blamed for john brown the republicans lincoln had trouble already. he was always called a black republican and black republican reflected both their black hearts ascribed to these republicans and the fact that they seem to be they favored rights for the black people in america. and so, you know lincoln would not go anywhere near an abolitionist any abolitionist, but let alone any violent abolitionist. yeah, i think of lincoln in the cooper union address where he's addressing southerners and he says you try to make us out to be john brown's. that's not who we are as a party. right and it's but also there's a great irony here. and that is the john brown tries to start a war to free this slaves and fails. he doesn't start to worry didn't free any slaves lincoln tries to avoid the war and when he does go to words not to free this slaves to say the union but lincoln's war is the much bigger war and it does end by freeing the slaves. so if there's a lesson here, it's the history is full of irenees and what you start is not necessarily where you end up. yeah, that's right and you know connected to that one thing. i just thought of when lincoln meets with frederick douglass in 1864. can you talk about that for a second or no for my literary purposes if frederick douglass had not existed. i would have had to invent it. yeah, because i tell the parallel and intertwining stories of john brown and abraham lincoln, but the two never met. and so i needed somebody not only who had met both who would tie those parts of the story together, but also because i could tell the story of john brown sir. i could get inside john brown's head. he writes his letters and you know, i get that i get same with lincoln, but i need to know what they look like to people on the outside and it would be great if i had the same person looking at both of them because i'm doing an effect this comparison and frederick douglass knew john brown. he met john brown in the 1840s and so he sort of new what john brown was up to and the kind of things that john brown hope to accomplish he eventually met abraham lincoln and well, actually there's a striking moment in the story the story in my story where john brown tries to talk frederick douglass into joining the raid on harpers ferry, right and frederick douglasses. no, no, basically what frederick douglass says is i'm a writer not a fighter but in addition he knew that john brown's raid his mission was gonna fail because frederick douglass had been a slave and he know that slaves were gonna weigh their chances of coming out of this alive, and they would realize no they're not very good. and so frederick douglass was less out there on the subject of abolition then john brown, but he was farther out there than abraham lincoln and so frederick douglass tries to slow john brown down and she tries to speed abraham lincoln up until during the first part of the war frederick douglass in his newspaper named the douglas journal. he is berating abraham lincoln for being so slow. this is a war about slavery you have to declare war on the slaves you have to do this, and he just thinks that lincoln's going so slow so slow until finally the emancipation proclamation and then he finally says, okay lincoln, you know, you finally got right on this and lincoln brings douglas into the white house. he considers him a confident in invites link into the reception if his second inaugural and so and and douglas again as i say from literary standpoint, i needed some of that this douglas has the last word in my book because he talks about the significance of both john brown and abraham lincoln any concludes in essence that they were both necessary in their individual ways to the cause of emancipation yeah, well, thank you so much bill. we are out of time. that was a wonderful talk. i know our audience really appreciated it you can get bill's book the zealot and the emancipator from the gettysburg heritage center at gettysburg museumstore.com and bill has presigned these book plates. and so please order from there and you can get your own copy signed by bill. thank you. again. this has been a wonderful talsof introducing our first guest. ted widmer ted has worked at the intersection of presidential politics and history for many years making him perfectly positioned to contemplate the idea of presidential transitions a subject on which we're all focused in 2020 as we meet. ted is a distinguished lecture at the macaulay honors program at the city university of new york and has been a