John Brown, Soldier of Fortune: A Critique . By Hill Publes Wilson . (Lawrence, Kansas: Hill P. Wilson. 1913. Pp. 450.)

This volume was evidently written as a protest against the conclusions of Mr. Villard in his recent work, “John Brown, A Biography Fifty Years After,” but it is based upon studies begun many years ago. Mr. Wilson holds that Villard's book, though scholarly, is fundamentally unsound because the author has constantly endeavored to explain Brown's career and to justify his acts in accordance with the traditional view, and that, in doing this, he has suppressed or neglected evidence which would have led to very different conclusions. Mr. Wilson's own conclusions are that Brown was a horse-thief in Kansas, and a military adventurer at Harper's Ferry, hoping by the aid of a slave insurrection to establish a military empire in the South. This view was reached as the result of investigations begun with the purpose of writing a eulogistic sketch of John Brown's career in Kansas.

The book will repay careful reading. Following the lead of Villard, the author reviews Brown's varied business career in 1852, and reveals a number of shady transactions with the idea of portraying the character of the man. He also makes it clear that Brown showed no discernible interest in the slavery question prior to 1850 and then only incidentally. Having failed in business in 1854, the next year Brown followed five of his sons to Kansas as a settler, bringing along by request some arms for the free-state men furnished by the abolitionists. After examination of the evidence, the author declares that Brown took no conspicuous part as a free-state leader; but that, discouraged by the gloomy outlook for farming, he plotted to steal horses, organized a small band for that purpose, committed the murders on the Pottawatomie to cloak the theft, and exchanged the horses thus acquired for “fast running horses from Kentucky.” As proof of Brown's sense of guilt in this, he always denied participation in the crime. So far from taking a prominent part in the warfare with the pro-slavery men, Brown was present at only two engagements, Black Jack and Osawatomie, in both of which he was overtaken while endeavoring to get away with stolen horses and cattle. He even left Lawrence on the eve of an expected attack by the pro-slavery forces (September 14, 1856).

Brown's campaign in the East, October, 1856, to November, 1857, for funds with which to equip a company of men for warfare in Kansas, Mr. Wilson stigmatizes as a “colossal graft upon free-state sentiment,” the more palpable because conditions in Kansas were becoming peaceful. Though he raised the funds, Brown did nothing in Kansas except to make a raid into Missouri for more plunder.

About this time Brown conceived the plan that carried him to Harper's Ferry two years later. Believing that a slave insurrection would be easy to start, he began training a band of his former confederates, men of desperate character, for the conquest of the South. He plotted to seduce United States soldiers from their allegiance, and drew up a provisional constitution for his proposed conquests, which was adopted by a convention of his followers in Canada.

The fiasco at Harper's Ferry was due to the failure of the slaves to rise. Here Villard is taken severely to task for total misapprehension of Brown's plans, which Mr. Wilson thinks were not ill-advised except for the reliance upon the negroes. Brown's courage after capture, his concealment of his real plans, and his assumption of the attitude of a martyr, together with the state of the public mind resulting from the Civil War, have beclouded the memory of his crimes and selfish aims, and built up the tradition which envelopes his name. In this a series of eulogistic biographers have played their part.

Mr. Wilson has without question made out a strong case for the prosecution. At times he weakens it by making too much of uncertain evidence and by sundry harsh criticisms of Mr. Villard for the omission of material that must have seemed to the latter unimportant or irrelevant. But, on the whole, it is a very salutary corrective for much of the customary laudatory twaddle about John Brown, and it will have to be reckoned with by the students of the subject.

Chas. W. Ramsdell .

How to cite:
Ramsdell, Charles W., "John Brown, Soldier of Fortune: A Critique", Volume 017, Number 3, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 318 - 320. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v017/n3/review_28.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 14:16:44 CST 2009]