The Tribunal

In the current climate, 500 pages on John Brown is a shock and a tonic. Few men in American history (other than Lincoln) are so subject to myth-making as the militant abolitionist who attacked Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October 1859… The documents reward reading, none more so than those written by Brown himself. -- Stephanie McCurry * Times Literary Supplement *
The voices assembled in The Tribunal include Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders, a Union spy and a Confederate assassin, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, influential international figures like Karl Marx and Victor Hugo, journalists, poets, soldiers, and widows, along with Hawthorne, Whittier, Emerson, and Thoreau… [A] valuable compilation. -- Christopher Benfey * New York Review of Books *
The life of John Brown, the militant abolitionist who helped trigger the Civil War by waging a holy war against slavery in the 1850s, raises provocative questions. Not least: Can someone who murders for a noble cause be embraced as a heroic freedom fighter?… The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid, skillfully edited by John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd, allows us to experience firsthand the debate that Brown generated during his lifetime. Reprinted in this bountiful volume are dozens of 19th-century writings—letters, speeches, articles, poems, diary entries—that bring this important debate alive… [It] demonstrates just how central John Brown was to the cultural and political life of his time. Included in the book are powerful writings about Brown by some of the century’s most notable people: Walt Whitman, Henry Ward Beecher, Jefferson Davis, Herman Melville, Stephen Douglas, Louisa May Alcott, Victor Hugo and Karl Marx, to name a few… The Tribunal doesn’t whitewash Brown. To the contrary, it recognizes his flaws and provides a broad sampling of just criticism. But it reveals as well that those most hostile toward Brown were pro-slavery types who felt threatened by his forward-looking views. Some of Brown’s strongest defenders were people like Thoreau, who had formerly espoused nonresistance but who came to realize that only violence could uproot an institution so deeply entrenched as slavery… Stauffer and Trodd should be commended for making available so many documents that were formerly hard to find and that reveal so much about this key figure in American history. The Tribunal confirms what has become increasingly clear in recent years: To understand America fully, we would do well to reflect on John Brown—on what he stood for and the ideals he embodied for some of the nation’s deepest thinkers. -- David S. Reynolds * Wall Street Journal *
Stauffer’s and Trodd’s main contribution is to provide a convenient assemblage of documents illustrating how Brown’s action accelerated the mutual alienation between North and South, but their book is valuable also for its selection of responses from abroad, including comments by Marx, Garibaldi, and John Stuart Mill. -- Andrew Delbanco * New Republic *
John Stauffer’s and Zoe Trodd’s The Tribunal is an invaluable resource for understanding Brown and his apotheosis. Their long introduction of forty pages is a model of clarity and usefulness. Its essential thesis is that although John Brown’s raid was a military failure, it was a political success, not in helping moderate but in exacerbating the sectional crisis. -- Richard H. King * Modern Intellectual History *
With The Tribunal, Stauffer and Trodd have assembled a fantastic collection of speeches, letters, newspaper articles, and journal entries that respond to one of the most significant antebellum moments. Following an erudite overview that proffers an excellent introduction to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid of October 1859…this impressive collection is a welcome addition to the study of this period. -- R. Walsh * Choice *
No one is likely to have the last word on John Brown, the abolitionist and leader of the 1859 Harpers Ferry raid that cut to the marrow of the slavery question and convinced many Southerners that the North had gone mad and wanted to incite slave rebellion. However, this superb collection of documents comes very close to doing so. In the wide sweep of texts collected here—150 speeches, editorials, letters to editors, pamphlets, poems, songs, and more, each neatly set in historical context by the editors—Northerners, Southerners, and foreign commentators are shown to be, in Frederick Douglass’s phrase, both ‘curious and contradictory’ in weighing the meaning of John Brown and his act. The documents display a mixture of awe and anger, hope and horror, at the man, especially after he went bravely to the gallows proclaiming the justice of his cause. And, as the documents further attest, Brown and his raid remained contentious in history and myth thereafter… To understand the power of conviction and the crisis of fear that brought on civil war, reading this brilliant collection is essential. From it, one will see that John Brown is not a-moldering in his grave. He haunts us yet today. -- Randall M. Miller * Library Journal (starred review) *
Beautifully, even lyrically written, The Tribunal shows the kind of even judgment that can only arise from long immersion in the materials. The editors are aware of how complex a figure Brown is, and how easy it would be, but also how fatal, to take a tendentious line about him. -- John Burt, Brandeis University
The Tribunal is an illuminating and indispensable resource. The responses themselves are truly the best that history has to offer on John Brown…a dynamic and vibrant collection. -- R. Blakeslee Gilpin, University of South Carolina