{"id":12512,"date":"2024-02-14T21:22:44","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T02:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=12512"},"modified":"2024-03-08T01:28:37","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T06:28:37","slug":"the-john-brown-way-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2024\/02\/the-john-brown-way-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe John Brown way\u201d (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span>n 1859, John Brown led an armed raid into northern Virginia. The raiding party included fourteen white men and five Black men. They left three others behind to work on repositioning weapons closer to Harpers\u2019 Ferry, which was the site of the raid.1

The operation had several objectives. One was to strike fear into slaveholders throughout the South. Another was to free some captive Black people and to arm those who wanted to join the fight. The third main objective was to retreat into the mountains with the new recruits. The big idea was to repeat the process of raids and to build guerrilla bases through the whole length of the Appalachians.2

The raid succeeded in the first two objectives: striking fear into slaveholders and arming some Black fighters. They didn\u2019t pull off the third objective\u2014the retreat\u2014so there was no chance to start the guerrilla war. Nevertheless, the raid did have a huge impact, and I\u2019ll say a few things about that later.<\/p>\n

But to start with, I want to mention the common suspicion that Brown was a White Savior who thought he could bestow freedom on Black people. I\u2019ll try to show instead that John Brown and his comrades were trying to open opportunities for Black self-emancipation. That is, they were trying to lower some of the obstacles to the formation of Black collective agency.<\/p>\n

Obstacles to revolt<\/h4>\n

Let\u2019s start by looking at that problem\u2014the difficulties in pulling together collective resistance.<\/p>\n

Most people in slavery worked on plantations. A plantation, of course, was a labor camp for captive workers\u2014a special kind of prison. As with all prisons, plantations developed methods for stopping collective resistance. One of the methods was preventive. That was to set up different levels of repression\u2014as in a prison\u2014where the warden dispenses \u201cprivileges\u201d to some of the prisoners. They allow certain kinds of freedom that are denied to other prisoners\u2014and in return, these \u201ctrustees\u201d serve as informants. In slavery as in prison, people were recruited to perform various tasks of supervision and surveillance. They were thus rewarded for spying and treachery against the other captives. The people typically doing these jobs on the plantation were the work foremen known as drivers, plus the workers at the Big House like coach drivers and household servants.<\/p>\n

Another weapon in heading off collective action was the overwhelming asymmetry in physical force\u2014just as in a prison. This included a regular resort to torture. And as in a regular workplace, troublesome workers could also be \u201cfired\u201d; that is, they could be sold away from friends and family.<\/p>\n