Born on May 9, 1800, by the age of forty John Brown had committed himself to the abolition of slavery. Declaring a religious crusade, Brown first organized an 1856 raid that killed five pro-slavery men in Kansas. Brown and his followers were enraged by the persistence of slavery in the United States, and Brown also felt that the then up-and-coming Abraham Lincoln and official Abolitionist movement were not taking forceful enough action. Brown riled his small army into storming a federal armory in Virginia in October of 1859, with the ultimate plan of seizing the weapons within and using them for an uprising of Southern slaves.
Brown’s subsequent capture at Harpers Ferry led to his hanging on December 2, 1859. While his life had been violently zealous, his behavior in prison through to his execution was calmly unrepentant. Though many initially considered him a madman, Brown’s willingness to die for the fight against slavery eventually made him an abolitionist hero. By the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, “John Brown’s Body” was a popular ballad sung by Northern soldiers, with lyrics that declared that while Brown was now in the grave, his soul was “marching on” along with the Union army.
John Brown, The Martyr, and Last Moments
An 1870 Currier and Ives print shows a stony John Brown guarded by a scowling soldier, while an African-American slave woman holds her child and sits at Brown’s side. The child’s mother guides her baby’s hand to reach toward Brown, and the work’s title — John Brown, The Martyr — indicates how public opinion was still moving away from the perception of Brown as a murdering maniac.
Thomas Hovenden was an Irish-born artist who immigrated to the United States in 1863 and eventually settled in the Philadelphia area. His wife Helen and her family were part of the Abolitionist movement and had even turned their home into a stop on the famed Underground Railroad line. Hovenden shared his wife’s beliefs, and in 1884 he completed The Last Moments of John Brown. Hovenden’s painting also puts stern, armed soldiers around Brown, but Brown himself seems to be in a state of grace as he begins his trip to the gallows. There are a few slaves in the crowd, and as in the Currrier and Ives work, an African-American woman holds her child up to Brown. Hovenden’s Brown appears to kiss the baby with benevolence, however, as if to offer his hope for the child’s future.
John Brown Going to His Hanging
Most African-Americans of John Brown’s time clearly regarded Brown as a great champion for their freedom. Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner’s middle name was inspired by John Brown’s stand at Osawatomie in Kansas, and artist Horace Pippin’s 1942 John Brown Going to His Hanging indicates how Brown’s significance continued into the next century. Pippin’s style was unique and his painting does not depict a realistic scene in the manner of Hovenden. Pippin’s grandmother had seen the execution of John Brown in Virginia, and Pippin’s work gives a stronger sense of loss rather than martyred glory. The figures are simpler and precisely arranged, with a clear blue sky beyond the outlines of the wagon leading a rope-bound Brown to his death.
Jacob Lawrence’s The Life of John Brown
Jacob Lawrence, another major 20th century African-American artist, added John Brown to his series of historically significant scenes like Lawrence’s panoramic The Migration of the Negro. Begun in 1941 and finished in 1977, Lawrence’s The Life of John Brown offers 22 visual chapters in stark yet vivid color, taking the viewer from Brown’s initial calling to his final stand.
Finding the Works
Currier and Ives' John Brown, The Martyr is at the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Thomas Hovenden’s The Last Moments of John Brown can be found at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, while Horace Pippin’s John Brown Going to His Hanging belongs to Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Additionally, Jacob Lawrence’s multi-scene The Life of John Brown is viewable on-line through the The Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Virtual Resource Center.
Sources
- John Brown Going to His Hanging by Horace Pippin -- ExplorePAHistory.com
- John Brown, A Kansas Portrait -- Kansas State Historical Society
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