Osborne P. Anderson: A Voice from Harper’s Ferry

Impact

Brown’s raid has often been referred to as the “catalyst of the Civil War” because it widened the breach between the North and South. In the North, the philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson and the naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau spoke out in Brown’s defense, justifying his violent acts, labeling him a hero, and comparing him to Christ because he had sacrificed his life for the slaves. Even northerners, who disapproved of Brown’s violent means, believed that his end—the destruction of slavery—was ultimately good. Indeed, on the day of Brown’s execution, northern church bells tolled for the martyred hero. While Brown’s belief that violence was required to destroy slavery had not yet gained universal approval among northerners, his actions and his much-quoted antislavery testimony during the trial had given them food for thought; thus, his ideas began gaining support.

In the South, of course, Brown’s actions were universally condemned, but, more important, southerners lived in fear of similar future attacks. Before Brown’s raid, slave owners had focused on the threats posed by northern abolitionists who had established the Underground Railroad to aid runaway slaves and on their attempts to keep new states from being admitted to the Union as slave states. After Brown’s raid, slave owners feared abolitionists who would arm their slaves and lead them in slave insurrections. Such fears led many southerners to support South Carolina’s Governor William Henry Gist when, in November 1859, he called for what he believed was the only possible solution to the threat posed by Brown’s raid: secession from the Union and the establishment of a confederacy of southern states.

Anderson’s book seems to have had minimal impact on any general audience in its own day, and indeed it almost disappeared. But it has become a popular source among historians of today who focus on black studies and the abolitionist movement, particularly those seeking to establish proof of participation by local blacks in the raid on Harpers Ferry.