explicitly in his famous union speech. he talks about john brown at length. so i think it contributes to getting the other nomination and the other effect it has is that it begins the furry in the south. we can't trut any northerner so that steven douglas, who has sort of seen the like ly democratic nominee who could unite north and south, the party is split. douglas is one nominee, and then a whole other party forum. when you have the november election, no for candidates in the field and lincoln wins with less than 40% of the vote. if i had to guess i would say if you hadn't had the raid, probably douglas would have become president who was a northerner very con sill to her towards the south and this whole war would have been deferred for at least another four years. who knows? i mean, then any number of other scenarios could have unfolded. so that's just a guess. i mean, but it's a significant -- >> it's more than significant, and it's so compelling. because that, of course, you just unrolled that a little bit further, and suddenly you don't have an emancipation proclamation. you don't have, you know, exactly. what we're talking about here is so fascinating. >> you have no hallowed grounds. >> or different hallowed grounds. >> or different. we'd be in a different country. we would be in a literally different country. so in that vain and i know that you have actually slept in dpai -- >> that sounds kinkier than that. >> it's one of the very many devastating battlefield sights within the journey. tfls because of antetum that lincoln was then, if you will, free to release the emancipation proclamation. talk to us about the fact that -- that's just a stone's throw from harper's ferry, and it's three years but hundreds and thousands of lives in between. >> it's bizarre. the story comes full circle in this essentially very small geographic area. you have brown at the kennedy farm invading harper's ferry in 1859. harper's ferry is a flash point and the civil war changes hands a dozen times. stonewall jackson takes harper's ferry a awe few days before, and that's why the battle happened. the union realizes lee has divided his army. they attack, and as a result of antetum, which is seven miles from the kennedy farm, lincoln issues the emancipation proclamation. so, you know, this incredible journey in our history all occurs in this very tight geographic area. i mean, it really is quite stunning. this is the irony while i was sort of bashing lincoln but suggesting that he wasn't the great emancipator initially that people imagined. he actually was on the conservative end of the anti-slavery spectrum, and this comes through again very much in his attitude towards brown, the great irony is that he eventually comes around to brown's position and that slavery -- this must become a war against slavery and ends up, you know, taking the south that begins to fulfill brown's mission but like brown becomes a martyr through the cause. here's a final strange twist in their connection. one of the odd things about the harp harper's ferry story is it's almost a casting call for the confederate see. they lead the troops in a counterattack against john brown, stonewall jackson turns up there. it's almost a prequel to "gods and generals." jefferson davis is leading the charge in congress. but in the final twist it's at brown's hanging, one of the guards is john wilkes booth, who later writes about being quite inspired by brown or talks to his sister about it. she writes about it. she calls him the great man of the century. here's a man that took an act that changed the course of american history, and that's ultimately what john wilkes booth then does in assassinating lincoln. >> chill bumps. i got 'em. i hope you all do, too. when you read this book, you're going to get more, because i'm going to tell you something that you do so remarkably well, and that is these names, they're names on history book pages for most people. you actually open up their hearts, their lives, their thoughts and fears to us. there are stories in here that are just astonishingly powerful, one of which is the story of african-american newby who was a freed black man who had his wife and six children -- five or six. >> five or six children who were still enslaved, and he had raised 7$750 to buy their freedom. the master reneged. he was fed up and continuing to do that. this is something we do with our summer camp students and with our middle school students, is we make them go to harper's ferry as one of john brown's raiders. they have to know the story, and with dangerfield newby they have a code wo notes. in one fokt is the actual letter you write about here from his wife saying come get us. you can buy us now. come now. in the other personal note from john brown saying we must free the millions of enslaved. the man is looking at it saying, which do i do? tell us the rest of that story. >> yeah. i think it's not known enough that this was among the many astonishing things about brown and his band. this was a biracial guerrilla band. in this tiny mountain hideout -- you should go to the kennedy farm. it's a little log cabin. it's like a little log cabin in waterford. you had 20 men and women crammed into that hideout all that summer. they're all writing letters to their lovers and family, specially farewell letters because they know they might die. among the letters are astonishing are from harriet newby to dangerfield. most were illiterate obviously. it's unusually to have them illiterate and we have their letters. and he goes there really joins brown's band to rescue his wife and children. and the tragic part of it is he's the first of brown's band who is -- he's gunned down in the street in harper's ferry. his body is desecrated by angry whites. 50 miles short of his goal of rescuing harriet. and the virginians collected these letters that he had from harriet that appear to have been on his person and public lished them. the governor of virginia published all the documents, and they didn't see any indictment of slavery in these letters. they just published them. you just read these letters that are heart-breaking saying, you know, come save me, dangerfield, because like many virginia slaves of that era, she was scared she was going to be sold to a gang labor plantation in the deep south, and that's exactly what happened. six months later she's sold to a plantation in louisiana. you read these letters, and they're just heart-breaking. but we have them thanks to the state of virginia. >> you speak about the biracial measure of his band, and also his support. he had influential african-americans and very influential white northern americans from emerson and thoreau. the society and the secret six, who was funding this? >> brown was not a lone gunman. i think this is, again, a problem the way we remember him. we remember him as this possibly insane figure who this act was part of one man's disturbed imagination. in fact, this was a full-blown conspiracy. and just maybe your first point about his black support, he, unlike many abolitionists, really sought black support and involvement. you know, really this was a white supremacist nation before the civil war north and south. whites regarded -- most whites regarded blacks as racially inferior, including lincoln who wanted freed blacks to be resold in africa and central america because they couldn't live as equals to whites, and he's an abolitionist. many were very kond sending. their view was blacks were too dossile to fight for freedom and leave it to us benevolent whites to care of this issue for you. brown completely rejected them. among those he saw support from was frederick douglas. he meets with harriet tubman. he lived his believes in a quiet, astonishing way. as to the white support, the secret six, i believe one of my favorite parts of the story in an area where there's a little room for humor, they were really par local radicals. they were very wealthy businessmen mostly in the boston area who funneled brown money and guns. they fed it to him at salons in new england and brown dines with thoreau and emerson. alcott calls brown the manleyest man they've ever met. they're intoxicated by this. it's like the 1960s when you had wealthy folks in manhattan hosting black panthers and other radicals. in the end these people are not shall we say profiles in courage. when brown's raid goes bad and they're implicated, one of them is already overseas, three of the others flee for canada. my favorite, garrett smith, checks himself into an insane asylum in new york to avoid prosecution where he's treatedc says he remembers nothing of the events, which might well have been true. only one thomas higerson remains true to brown. he has very broad support from very prominent people, so this really isn't just, you know, a small band of in secret. a lot of people knew about this. >> i have about 1,000 more questions, but i want to open this because we did invite you for a conversation. so allow us to take questions from the floor. >> my name is peter. i'm the architect at harper's ferry national park. >> you're my heroes. >> thank you for hosting this event. i was with you in september of 2009 for the 150th, the trek from the kennedy farm. >> october. >> it was such a wonderful event. i have two questions. when can we do that again? when can the journey through hallowed ground encourage the parks service and other partners to do that once every five years or so? another question is, when are we going to put your book into a movie? >> on the night na brown did it in 1859 with his men it was wet and cold. so it didn't make for the most pleasant of hikes. but, you know, i found it very powerful. i was staying at a little motel outside harper's ferry, and we finished this whole thing at about midnight. i was sort in the research phase of my book, but i ran back to my motel and i merely sort of typed out my sort of experiences that night blended with the history of what happened. that became the pro loug of my book. aside from giving you materials, and there's other writers in the room, they put you in the right frame of mind. one of the hardest things about writing history is you're capturing the strajness of the past but also communicating to a contemporary audience. there was something about that nice, and the simple things. the steam coming off the horse as we, you know, walk -- marched in. the sounds, all of that just i felt would be able to write that scene in a way that otherwise from archival research alone would have been more difficult. on your second question there are movies that allude to john brown, some pretty bad ones. he's too hot to handle. what do you do with brown? he's not a hollywood hero. here's a guy we would feel was on the right side of history except that he shed blood to achieve his aims. he's sort of a quinn sental american with a bible in one hand and a rifle in another. i think he makes us very uncomfortable, and that's why i find him fascinating. why i think he's worthy of more study, but i think he poses a challenge. it's a very dramatic story, particularly all the other characters, and there's more romance in the story going into it. brown's followers are almost all young men unmarried, and they're working it hard with the girls in the entire lead-up, you know. we have their love letters and we have some wonderful romantic stories. but i think it's a great story, but i am not sure it fits an easy hollywood mold. it's like nat turner, another figure in our history there's never been a movie about that i know. >> want to go to tim? >> could you talk briefly about the true, organized military battles of the civil war that took place in kansas? >> okay. all right. yeah. in telling this story, i spent quite a bit a time in kansas because brown's career doesn't begin at harper's ferry. he really comes out of the closet so to speak in kansas, which in the mid 1850s which the front line in the war over whether slavery will expand to new western territories. i think what you're alluding to, which is quite remarkable and surprised me and i think people outside of kansas and month aren't aware of is five years before the first battle of manasis you have northerners and southerners killing each other over slavery in kansas in open field combat with musket and cannon. these are small battles, not huge numbers of people involved. it really is a preview of the civil war. john brown is right in the middle of it. he's, you know -- he's one of the principal warriors in this really, i guess you would call it, a low grade conflict, maybe more like in iraq than a civil war. it really is to me a fascinating and not forgotten but not recognized nearly as much as it should be. >> i want neil keller. >> do you think john brown was -- do you think the bloodshed was necessary to end slavery? >> you can count on neil to get right to the core. was john brown right and was bloodshed necessary? again, this is -- i'm not going to dodge that question, but i think this, to me, again, was one of the reasons i wanted to write about this. because john brown really kind of drives people crackers, even leading scholars. you read woodward or a great writer like robert penn war rer ren, they go right off the rails, everyone wants to see he was a monster and madman or a muir tur and freedom fighter and here row. there's very little middle ground. it's a mistake to try to fit him into either box. what's so fascinating about him is he raises these really prickly questions. is violence justified in the cause of justice? i think we would all agree he was right in recognizing not only slavery was the great moral wrong in the nation, but that we needed to address it and confront this issue. and also be uncomfortable with the fact that he dragged pro slavery settlers from their beds in dmantz middle of night and slaughtered them with broad swords. there was no swords. there is to way to feel all one way or all the other about john brown. there are many people that do. i personally am not able to do that. i am a human being. he is an immensely complex figure and the years i spent researching writers and one minute, i wopt say i love him, he is not a warm and cuddly guy. i would respect and admire him and another moment i would think how could you do this? again, that's part of what i find really compelling about him, but i am just not prepared to say all right, all wrong, you know, had to be this way or not. >> judith. >> in the context of the journey from slavery to ab olition, you mentioned several things, the northern. [ inaudible ] slavery from developing nation, but also the misperception of southerners as the greatest proceed tag nists and the be beneficiaries of slavery, at that point in our american history, recently within the past ten years there is a film and also mentioned a film that came up through sundance and is in distribution, a documentary called "traces of the tree" about the brown-dewolf family, bristol, rhode island. >> i went to brown university, yes. i know all about the brown family, yes. >> imported 33,000 african-americans out of ghana and ran the university and. [ inaudible ] through the slave trade and the documentary is available on youtube. it is a northern phenomena. these people live in bristol, rhode island, so i would like to enfold or have your opinion with regard to the greater sin of slavery and to be absolved somehow in this little area of the world. >> in waterford, i will ab solve waterford which is a quaker community. >> could you place the journey in the greater context of the slave trade. >> gosh, i guess what i maybe just to restate what i was saying, i was watching the lair hour the other night and there was a young man going around saying end black history month, and he made a movie about it, and his point is we shouldn't set this apart, that black history is part of american history. this is all our story. i guess that's what i was saying, that that in this era at least slavery is so much a part of national story, and we continue to do this with the south and in right up to the present in a different way. we still, i think, view the south at times as northerners do as a evil twin that somehow we project all what are really nation l problems, racism. violence, lack of education, whatever you want, and when that happens in mississippi or alabama, it is all over the news. when it happens in massachusetts or michigan, which it also happens all the time, somehow it is a different story. i just think with our whole history we have to -- i don't think it should be a blame game. i think we should recognize how much this was a part of our national story, and i think we all know this. when you read the details of it, when you read the dread scott decision in 1857 in which the supreme court, the majority opinion says that blacks have no rights that a white person, you know, is bound to respect, that essentially i think the woshd african-americans is inappropriate for the precivil war period because they weren't americans. they had none of the rights of citizenship and according to the supreme court even free blacks really had no standing at all. they were saying the founders never intended them to have any standing. you read document after document like that and you read northern born presidents like franklin pierce and really all the presidents of the 1850s essentially mouthing pro-slavery views, and you see the picture a little differently. after brown's raid, you have massive demonstrations in the north against brown and in support of the slave-holding south because they're scared the union is going to split and they're saying, you're right, slavery is positive good, you have huge crowds in philadelphia, new york, and other cities, so i think we should again stop thinking of this as somehow a southern story apart from the whole. i don't think that answers your question. >> one more question. >> okay. >> you reference going to the places history hasn't. how important is it that we continue to protect those places, places like the lincoln train station at gettysburg or harriet tubman's birthplace in maryland? >> i mean, we're speaking to the choir here. i think everyone in this room -- >> right out of the park. >> it braces this, and i know it can be hard to explain to people who either don't know or don't care about the history, maybe i will answer that since we would all be in agreement that these places should be saved, but we're history nerds and preservation and that's what we care about. i would say when i talk to students, i am very struck by there is so much you can do on the internet now, and it is a remarkable tool, and i did it with my research for this book. it feels like cheating. you can access all of these archives online now and it really is a wonderful tool. when i talk to students, i am struck by how many of them think somehow you can get it all through the computer and that you don't need -- i am talking about students in history classes and universities that somehow you don't need to see the place because you can get everything you need on google and you can even look at it on google earth. i think as we all know you do need to go to these places and every time you do, you find something more. you find things you didn't even come looking for, and you have a different kind of experience, so i would say particularly for the generation coming up that is their experience is so mediated in every regard to have real places that they can go and step outside of that laptop experience and be presented with the real places. i just think you can't replace that. of course, yes, save it all. [ applause ] >> on behalf of all of us i want to thank you for coming this evening, and i wanted to especially from the journey through higher ground give tony a small token of our appreciation and as jenn is getting that, what tony was just saying is why we, our team at the journey and i want those on our team to put your hand up, beth erickson, our vice president, john jones, our director of communications, jennifer moore, who runs our offices, robin myers, our director of educational programs. where is michelle kellogg? michelle is hopeful you will each buy a copy or two or three of tony's books, and we are also very blessed to have with us one of our finest, our national advisor ron maxwell, a producer and and director and with whom we were rabl to do an innovative and wonderful program with warner brothers on his remarkable work on doing limited edition for the ses kwi centennial of gods and generals and gettysburg partnering with national geographic for beautiful maps, beautiful special features, and ron agreed to stay and sign a few for those who would like a copy of this limited edition box, but most importantly what tony was just saying and, joy, thank you for the question. theres no other solution than us all working together to raise awareness that once it is gone, it is gone, and it is not just the bricks and mortar. it truly is our culture. it is the stories, allowing people to step back into the books, the booths and the minds, makes a huge difference in our work with students, so i want to thank you all for coming today because by your being here we have been able to raise additional funor

Related Keywords

New York , United States , Louisiana , Canada , Gettysburg , Pennsylvania , Philadelphia , Boston , Massachusetts , Rhode Island , Virginia , Brown University , Brown View , Mississippi , Iraq , Ghana , Hollywood , California , Maryland , Kansas , Americans , America , Virginians , American , John Browns , John Wilkes , John Brown , Robert Penn , Steven Douglas , Frederick Douglas , Neil Keller , Jennifer Moore , Sharper , John Jones , Beth Erickson , Dangerfield Newby , Garrett Smith , Jefferson Davis , William Seward , Robin Myers , Harriet Tubman , Michelle Kellogg , Ron Maxwell ,