Click Here To Purchase From Amazon John Brown: The Cost of Freedom

Author: Louis A. DeCaro Jr.

Publisher: International Publishers

ISBN: 10: 1717807428: 13: 978-0717807420

Much of my tenth grade American history class has long been lost, in the quagmire of chemically diminished neural tissue known as my brain. One thing I do remember, though, was an image from my textbook of John Brown. John Brown was, of course, the orchestrator and perpetrator of the infamous, ill-fated 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry, a federal armory. Brown conducted the raid in order to procure weapons for a guerrilla campaign he sought to wage against the intuition of slavery. Brown’s goal was to disrupt the economic conditions that made slavery profitable, thus destroying it entirely. In the end, the great Commonwealth of Virginia charged him with treason and subsequently hung him to death for the effort.

The picture, in my textbook presented Brown with hardened slate eyes, which were crazed and peering out through a tangle of wooly, unkempt beard and hair. As I recall, the imagery of Brown as a lunatic, pretty much summarized visually the paragraph of explanation it accompanied. According to the textbook, madness could have been the only explanation for Brown’s actions. However, in his new book, John Brown: The Cost of Freedom, Louis A. DeCaro Jr. challenges the notion that Brown was mentally deficient. DeCaro instead paints a picture of Brown as a rational, calculating man with a deep, religiously based, moral objection to involuntary servitude.

According to DeCaro, present day interpretations of John Brown’s life are jaundiced by the antebellum popular media accounts of the raid which created a portrait of Brown as an insane and quixote individual. Thus, DeCaro argues the media, either blindly or willingly, propagated the interests of Southern slave masters who were ravenous for the continued spoils of exploitation that slavery afforded and Northern politicians and elites who were eager to appease the increasingly pugnacious Southern establishment. The general pubic was more than willing to accept the simple explanation that the Harper’s Ferry raid was the work of an isolated madman. The possibility that not only blacks would begin to reciprocate the centuries of violence and humiliation they had been subjected to under slavery but that a white person like John Brown would help them do it was difficult to live with. Many Northerners where also keen to disseminate this characterization of John Brown in order to avert the militant Southern menace that would ultimately erupt into all out war just two years later.

In this book, DeCaro has crafted a thoroughly researched and eloquent case that exposes the fallacies of the conventional historic tale of John Brown. DeCaro’s main thesis that the social-political conditions of Brown’s time have unfairly shaped our understanding of the man today is a valid and fascinating social criticism for anyone with even a mild interest in the antebellum period or history in general.

However, John Brown: The Cost of Freedom is written in an academic style that lacks a lot of the color and intrigue of popular biographies or even that of other critical historians such as Michael Parenti. Still, there is an iconoclastic pluckiness to DeCaro’s book that is commendable. Furthermore, DeCaro has also demonstrated a remarkable mastering of the art of brevity, in this book. He has replaced the superfluousness and copiousness that characterizes most written work in the academy for a succinctness that is as cogent and coherent as it is laconic.

Indeed, DeCaro has drafted a work which thoroughly undermines the wild-eyed image of a deranged John Brown we learned about in our American history books. He has established Brown as an individual who, although a bit luckless, was thoughtful and principled nonetheless. DeCaro has elevated Brown to the heroic heights he deserves and has done a nice job in doing so.