Midnight Rising – Tony Horwitz

I was taught that John Brown was a religious fanatic that lead a mob of people to sieze guns at Harper’s Ferry to arm Blacks and free the slaves.

How wrong was this characterization?

Yes, John Brown had a tremendous faith but no fanatic. He used that faith beautifully to feed his actions that slavery was an evil on society and should be abolished. He taught that to his children, community and every person that he came into contact with. His mob consisted of a couple of his children, some others that shared his beliefs on slavery and a couple of free black men who’s experience influenced them to join. Now his plan seemed crazy but here’s where the book shined because was it? The plan: march 25 men to Harper’s Ferry, an inlet surrounded by water and hills, the wrong place to be in battle, take over the loosely protected artillery of the US army and secure thousands of guns then arm slaves and battle in the Appalachian mountains. Even Frederick Douglass, when John Brown approached with the plans, thought it ludicrous and Douglass would approve of anything the resulted in the banishment of slavery. With the recruitment of only 16 men, the plan still moved forward encouraged by the monetary contributions of many northern abolitionists.

It’s execution was immediately doomed. Although the arsenal was quickly overtaken, where were the escaped slaves to arm? The death of an unarmed free Black man seemed counterintuitive to the overall plan but that didn’t deter John Brown one bit. As his ‘mob’ was quickly overpowered and sporadically killed, he pressed on eventually holed up in a small room with hostages. Even facing death, he never surrendered. Captured, now begins his true quest. Able to defend his motives with dignity, John Brown was given the platform to spread his message that all men are created equal. Eloquently, he mastered the courtroom and solidified compassion from many northerners. Condemned to death, he wrote and faced his doom as the martyr he soon became.

Less than a year later began the civil war which thanks to John Brown, resulted in the termination of slavery.

Midnight Rising
Tony Horwitz