"Cariy the War into Africa": Who Turned Negroes into Revolutionaries and Why?
by E. Michael Jones
During the summer of 1830 Heinrich Heine cut his cast, descending as it did" from the enthusiast vacation on the island of Helgoland short and rushed millennialist sects which had proliferated in England off to join what came to be known as the revolution of during the 17'*' century, many of whom ended up emi 1831 in Paris. "Gone," he wrote, "is my longing for grating to America. peace andquiet. Once again I know what I want, what I Slave rebellions had occurred throughout history, ought, what I must do .. .1 am a son of the revolution probably as long as the exiscence of slavery icself One and will take uparms,"' could cite the rebellion of Spartacus in Rome or the On February 12, 1831, Nat Turner, a slave who had story of Moses and the Exodus as examples. The his been born in Southhampton, Virginia in 1800, cook a tory of Negro chattel slavery in the NewWorldwas no solar eclipse as the sign chat he was co begin planning different. Slave revolts had taken place in New York for a slave rebellion on che coming July 4. When an- City in 1712, at Stono, South Carolina in 1739, and in ocher eclipse cook place on Augusc 13, Turner, who had Southern Louisiana in 1811. Numerous conspiracies been receiving visions with increasing frequency, was had been broken up before they could emerge as full confirmed in his belief chat the Lord wanted him to blown revolts. The conspiracy at Point Coupee, Louisi lead a rebellion. One week later, on August 21, Turner ana in 1795 was one example. To that could be added freed 50 fellow slaves and urged them to "kill all the conspiracies of Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, Vir whites," regarc less ofage orgender. By the time the Vir ginia in 1800 and of Denmark Vesey in Charleston, ginia militia put down the rebellion 48 hours later, 57 South Carolina in 1822.- men, women and children had been murdered by But there was a new and disquieting element to Nat Turner's band of revolutionaries. Turners rebellion. The Turner rebellion sent a new wave Turner eluded capture for another two months, but of fear throughout the South because it included "the on October 30, he was found hiding in a cave, brought new forces that had been building since the American to trial, and hanged on November 11. His body was and French Revolutions."' These new forces "had secu then dismembered and its various parts distributed as larized thecause o^ national-popular liberation and pro souvenirs of the crushed rebellion. His lawyer, Thomas claimed the Rights of Man."' The slave revolt which Ruffin Gray, interviewed him in jail before his exccu- bestepitomized those"newforces" was the rebellion led cion, and published The Confissiom ofNut Turner after byToussaint COvercure in Haiti. his deach. In chis account, Turner recounted rhe visions Toussaint's rebellion had been set of} not so much by he had had throughout his life. As one has conic to ex the miserable conditions of servitude as by the arrival of pect, revolutionary fervor in Anicnca had a religious French troops on that island in rhe wake of the revolu tion in France. Fhearrival in Sant Domingue of French soldiers inihued with the principles of liberty, fraternity, L Michael Jones istheeditor ofCulture Wars magazine. and equality and determined to spread those principles rliroughout the world convinced 'Ibussaint I.'Overture
6 / CULTURE WARS Nat Turner
howcvcr. che interest of revolutionaries of Paris ill breaking the counterrevolutionary .. rV .. - f-?.: 'i.-' t tionpowerof olilicirIfnglandown Girondists,and Spain,resultednot to inmenef forts. often carried hy French-speaking blacks, to encourage slave revolts and move ments for national liberation.''
Toussaint L'Ovcrture could invoke 'S^M j the Rights of Man, Denmark Vesey could claim thac he was actingon the principles ar- ticulaced in the Declaration of Indepen- wi"! dence. The fact chat the leaders of slave re- (v V bellions appealed to the Declaration in this 1 • Hp manner led Edwin Clifford Holland to de- ir'.. scribe blacks in the aftermath of the Vesey W\ plot as "Jacobins": "Let it never be forgotten that our Negroes are freely the Jacobins of the country; that they are the Anarchistsand the Domestic Enemy: the common enemy thac these revolutionary principles had a direct applica of civilized society, and the barbarians who tion to the lot of Haiti's black slaves, and he spent the would if theycould become the destroyers of our race."^ rest of his career creating a new revolutionary synthesis, The spectre of Toussaint in Haiti evoked fears in the and playing off the factions which opposed him against mind of the South which refused to go away. Playing on each other. The slave rebellions which had occurred those fears, William Watkins, told a meeting of free Ne since time immemorial now had a new ideological groes in Baltimore in 1825 that Toussaint's rebellion foundation in the principles which leaders of the French provided "an irrefutable argument to prove that the de Revolution had articulated in the wake of their success scendants of Africa were neverdesigned by their creator ful overthrow of the nnden regime. to sustain an inferiority, or even a mediocrity m the In the wake of Tous- saint's rebellion in Haiti in 1798. the world was a different place. W. E. B Du Bois argued that The Turner rebellion sent a new wave of fear Toussaint changed Amer throughout the South because it included "the ican history, largely bc- new forces that had been buildingsince the The interlocking French American and French Revolutions." and Haitian revolutions shattered the tranquil- ity ... ol'the .slave hold ing regions everwvhcre in the hemisphere and generated rational fear chain of being." Thonias Jefferson noticed the same among the slave-holders. I hcv stirred theslaves and thing when he .said, "the West hidies appears to have free Negroes te consiiriiietl a binary weapon. As soon as the two attempi to re-enslave the islanil. Huring the I79()s, elements of that weapon niaile contact, an explosion
Febniaiy 2008 / 7 would occur. Toussaincs revolution in Haiti was the ethnic political liberation movements, certainly not in first indication that the two elements had made contact. the 19''' centuryin America. "The Haitian revolution," writes Eugene Genovese, "in The Southwas of a different theological mind on this contradistinction to one more rising of slaves, would matter, but they had not descended from the Puritans, a have been unthinkable without the French Revolu group which their Cavalier ancestors had always identi tion. . . . The revolutionary ideology that emerged in fied with regicide and revolution. This split between the 1790s was fed from both sides of the Adantic.'"' Cavaliers and Roundheads was present in America at The situation in America was compounded by the the moment of that nations birth. Intellectually the fact that that country was based on two documents United States were an uneasy alliance, held together at which contradicted each other when it came to the issue best by Enlightenment premises that papered over ( of slavery. The constitution of the United States ac deeperdivisions, divisions whichbecame moreapparent cepted slavery asone of theconditions of union, but the onlyas time went on. The South never got over its am Declaration! of Independence repudiated it when it bivalence toward the Declaration of Independence. And claimed that all men were created equal and had the the North never got over itsambivalent feelings abouta right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Thus constitution which accepted slavery. "The southern it was not jsurprising that slave-holders discouraged Federalists," according to Genovese, "... berated the black attendance at 4''' of July celebrations. Nor was it Jeffersonians for spreading a French gospel of liberty, surprising that the leaders of slave rebellions used the equality, and fraternity that the slaves would hear, inter language of rebellion found in the Declaration of Inde pret with deadly literalness, and rally around. Increas pendence a^inst their own masters. That and the fact ingly, during the 19''' century, slave-holders lectured that Puritanism had never been repudiated in America, each other on the need to keep blacks away from Fourth as it had in jEngland, led to astrain of revolutionary of July celebrations. ... Every election campaign ech thought thatj was uniquely America because it was made oed the language of the American Revolution and up of a mixture of Puritan and Enlightenment thought threatened to generate slave unrest, no matter how that in other:parts of the worldwasconsidered self-con much care was taken to control the rhetoric."'-' tradictory. Tom Paine perfected the rhetoricof this dual The Nat Turner rebellion was a sign that those hybrid vision in pamphlets like Common Sense. It was part of seeds were now germinating on American soil. It was the lingua franca of American lifeand so it should come also a sign of the fault lines within the revolutionary as no surprise that the leaders of slave rebellions in movement itself Unlike America, which retained the America would make use of it as well. "Each of these rhetoric of the Bible in its own revolutionary move outstanding rebel leaders," Genovese notes, "blended ment, the 19"'' century European revolutionary was religious appeals to the slaves with the accents of the radically secular and radically anti-Christian. When the Declaration of Independence and the Rights of Man. French Revolution arrived in Haiti, it was radically anti- Each project^ an interpretation of Christianity that Christian as well. The revolutionaries went out of their stressed the God-given right to freedom as the funda way to eradicate any traces of Christianity from the mental doctrine of obligation underlying a political vi hearts of potential black revolutionaries. Christianity sion that itself reflected the new ideologies."" Even was portrayed as an alien imposition on the black soul, Denmark Vesey, who looked to Haiti for both spiritual which needed to be extirpated if the revolution was to guidance and material support for his rebellion, "com have any chanceof success. bined the language of the Age of Revolution, as mani The atheism of the French Revolution only made fested in the Declaration of Independence and the Con matters worse. Stories circulated of how the revolution stitution, with the biblical language of the God of aries in Saint-Domingue tried to get the Negro slaves to Wrath."'- Neither Paul's Episdes, which counsel recon abandon Christianity. In the early stages of the revolu ciliation and moderation in relations between masters tion in Saint-Domingue, the Voodoo priest Boukman and slaves, nor the Gospels seem on first reading con urged his followers to discard their crucifixes as the first gruent with the revolutionary manifestoes of the 18''' step to waging war against their oppressors: "Throw century. But in America, scripture had always been re away the Symbol of thegodof the whites who has often fracted through the lens of 17''' century Puritan caused us to weep and listen to the voice of liberty, Judaizing, and no one could read the accounts of which speaks in the heartsof us all."" Gideon or of Moses and the exodus and not think of The Haitian revolutionaries' abandonment of Chris-
8 / CULTURE WARS rianity led ro rcvokinonury cxccss which oxaccrbatcd rhe rist)n. Turner had taught himselfhow to read, but there tears of rhe shive-hiilder.s in the Sourli. One of those i> no indication that Nat Turner had ever heard of tears was thac Negro slaves in rlirowing off (."hrisrian Heinricli Heine. Whether he had heard of William moralic)' woiiki rise up and violate white women. Nat Lloyd Garrison was another matter. The South was con Turner's rebellion did norhini» to allav those (-ears, nor vinced that Ciarrison's Liberator was responsible for the did the remark of the one oi the Denmark Ve.sey rebel Nat Turner rebellion. The Nat Turner rebellion of 1831 leaders that "the shives would know wliat to do with had tnade Ciarrison a household word in America. Gar white women,"'"* nor did the stories of how the rebels of rison was rhe impoverished son of an alcoholic seaman Sainc-Domingiie had raped white women over the dead who learned the printing trade from the bottom up and and dyingbodiesof their husbands. launched his own newspaper. The Liberator, at around The new fear which swept the American South in the the same time that Heinrich Heine was heading off to wake of" Nat Turners rebellion was that the Haitian re Paris. No one in the North or the South had read any bellion, which the French Revolution had inspired thing like this before. The first issue was "unbelievably among bkick slaves there, would spread to the chattel inflammatory."''^ The fact that within eight months of slaves in the South. The South feared that Nat Turner the first issue, Nat Turner had butchered entire white was an imitation of Ibussaint L'Overture and that what families and burned down plantations was seen as proof had happened in Haiti was destined to happen across in the South that the Liberator had inspired the upris the South. The South feared further that ing. "The Georgia senate," Scottwrites, "tried Garrison in absentia, found him guilty of inciting insurrection, tlie French Revolutit)n provided the condition in which a massive revolt in Siiint-Domingue could fined him S500 and seta price of S5000 on hisdelivery. become a revolution in its own right.1 he brilliancc That was a higher sum than Garrison and circle com- with which Toussaiiit L'Overture claimed for his en- bined could raise, and hiscontinued liberty remained as much of a marvel as the speed with which he had en tered the consciousness of the nation through words The atheism of the French Revolution alone."''' But behind the outrage, only made matters worse. a deeper more troubling thought began to emerge. Were rhe United States, which at this point were slaved brothers and sisters die rights of liberty and less than 50 years old, really a nation, as it claimed in its equality—of universal human dignity—that the founding documents? Or had two nationsemerged over French were claiming for themselves constituted a the short period of time following the American Revo turning point in the history of slave revolts and, in lution. Revolutions throughout history had invariably deed. of the human spirit."' led to civil wars among the victors. Now for the first time in its history, citizens of the United States were The result of this fear was a hardening of the lines. forced to confront the possibility that the same thing The South felt beleaguered, and any of the human con might occur in the wake of their revolution as well. tacts between skive and master that led to a natin'al ame Ckirrison's role in the Nat Turner rebellion called into lioration of the harshness of servitude were subordi question racial solidarity aswell. "What shocked White nated to rhe fear of revolution and the necessity of self- southerners," Scott writes, "was the realization that men defense. Realizing that unity was the sine ijtiii nmi of o( their own race, iti their own country, woitld consign survival, die slave-hoklers persuaded whites {>f all classes rhcm to death at the hands of another race."-" The fact to close ranks, somethini! which coincided with the Nat that the North did nothing to stop (Harrisons attempt 'lurner rebellion. After Nat Turner, "the staves con to foment slave rebellion undercut whatever national fronted a solid and overwhelming white majority until solidarity the Southerners might have felt otherwise. the end ot the regime. Ciarrison fueled "thesuspicion that a Nat Turner might The crucial link between N.u Turner and the liuro- be in everv family: that the same bloody deed tnight be jiean revolutionary moviineni was William i.Ioyil (lar- acteil over at any time and in any place: that the materi-
Febniaiy 2008 / 9 als for it were spread through the land, and were always Unitarians a political party and not a religion, and ready for a like explosion."-' wanted them shut down as inherently seditious. Simi The Turner rebellion and Garrisons propaganda po larly. "Theentire abolitionist movement was essentially larized the| nation le.ss than 50 years after its inception. a revolt of young clergymen and seminarians."-' The question of slavery divided the North and the Chief among them was Dr. William Ellery Channing, South, and that polarization would find its ultimate ex the father of American Unitarianism, an open admirer pression in a civil war which would break out 30 years of the French Revolution who "had been influenced in the future. The theoretical divide in the United States early by the writings of Rousseau, Voltaire, and other was based on that nations two founding documents, 'bearers oflight.'"- *Dr. Channing, according toScott, The citizens of the United States were forced to choose had been deeply impressed by the English Unitarian between the Constitution, which accommodated the Richard Price, whose book he said, "Probably institution |ofslavery to make the union possible, and molded my philosophy into the form it has always the Declaration of Independence, which opposed sla retained, and opened my mind into the transcen very in theory when it announced that all men werecre dental depths. And I have always found in the ac- ated equal and had an inalienable right to liberty. By the coimts I have read of German philosophy in Ma time of the civil war, the revolutionary party felt that dame deStael. .. that it was cognate tomyown."-'' the Declaration of Independence had rendered the Constitution morally inoperable. It was precisely this influence of Unitarianism from The slave rebellions created a determination in the England—with its denial of the divinity of Jesus south to resist no matter what the cost, and that cost in and the literal truth of the bible, its open scorn and cluded union. At the same time, Nat Turner and the dislike ofwhatever remained of Calvinism and Puri slave rebellions in the Caribbean became an inspiration tanism and Presbyterianism—that made Dr. for northern white revolutionaries like John Brown, Channing anathema to the older, more orthodox whose Messianic Politics, in true American fashion, par clergymen of Boston. It was precisely his approval of took equally of the Declaration of Independence, the the higher criticisms of the German scholars who Rights of Manand Cromwell's appropriation ofselected were shredding traditional Christianity into moun passages of the Old Testament. Tom Paine had used the tains of footnotes, denials and arguments and icy same volatile mix of Enlightenment science and Old drops ofwater that made Channing so popular with the young.-'" Testament Judaizing to enflame the colonists against King George. Now thesame revolutionary spirit was re Channing's intellectual progeny were even more radi born among|the abolitionists: cal. GeorgeTicknor and Edward Everettreturned from John Brown, who had taken in.splration and in Germany to spread the gospel according to Kant, struction from the experience of the Jamaican ma Hegel, and Strauss at Harvard University, where they roons, missed the point to his cost when he envi found Channing as one of their supporters. Ralph sioned impregnable guerilla bases in the Allegheny Waldo Emerson found himself in much the same situa Mountains. Long before Harper's Ferry, he planned tion. He imbibed German idealism indirectly via to secure these bases with the support of dissident Coleridge and Carlyle, but when he considered study poor mountain whites, whose racism he seems to ing for the ministry, it was to Channing that he went have underestimated and whose ideology and poli tics he certainly misjudged.-- for advice. I Over the course of the first halfof the 19''' century, As in England during the 1790s, so in America dur Unitarianism begat Transcendentalism, and Transcen ing the first halfof the 19''' century: the descendents of dentalism begat Abolitionism as its political arm. Scott the Puritan revolutionaries had become admirers of the sees abolitionism as ulrimately the revolutionary off French Revolution. Like Rev. Price's congregation in springof Cromwell. England, the revolutionary partyin America, before the Some of these echoes were buried very deep in the advent of the German refugees of the failed revolution American psyche, e;:pecially among the descendants of of 1848, was overwhelmingly Unitarian. Edmund the Presbyterians and Puritans. Their movements had, Burke, who wrote his reflections on the I'rench Revolu after all. begun against the reigns of Mary Stuart and tion in response to Rev. Price's sermons, considered the (Charles II, when John Knox and his successors under Oomvvell had argued that resistance to "ungodly" au-
10 / CULTURE WARS ihoriry wasa C!liri,stiaii Jury.' In addirit)n ro the (Tomwellian version of revolution New Knglaiul was popiil-irctl wicli tIk- JcsccnJatHs of whith (!hanning and his peers imbibed with their ruriraiis; sonic ot whom h.iJ cniigratcil hchnv mothers' milk, Unitarianisni had also been influenced Cromwell, in rhc ixiirn ot farm-s I. .ukI otiicrs h'oin by (lerman idealism. Transcendentalism was the Ger those who Hcd during ihc IvcsKtratitm. I'hcir himily tra man Enlightenment adapted by the children of the Pu ditions were that thcv should not obey a Parliament ritan (.livincs. Transcendentalism was the confluence of or a congress—that \ioIared Cio«.l"s law. rvvo revoltitionary traditions, epitomized by Cromwell, I he Southerners were dumhtountlej wiien tlie Bible, the Puritan, and Kant, the father of German idealism, which nowhere prohibits slaverv, got turned into an aboli respectively. tionist tract at the liands oF Northern revolutionaries: This same synthesis becamc the basis for America's rc\ohitionary party, which focused on the abolition of The Southerners' ... minisrers assured theiti tliev slavery as its ultimate polirical goal. Theodore Parker were not sinners in the eves ot rhe And what began as a polirical liispute took on nuinv of^ rhe as was a revolutionary who "denied Protestantism, dis pects of a religious one... .the call to apply the rules missed concepts of sin, denied atonement, summarized ot Heaven on earili.-"^ Ciod as goodness, and 'each man as his own Christ.'"^' "I\)verty," Parker opined, "can only be eliminated when The Southerners began to suspect that rhe version oF its causes are removed. The alternative is revolution. the Christian hiith being preached by the radicals in Eventiially, a small cabal of the most radical figures in Boston was nothing more than the Prcnch Revolution the Transcendentalist/Abolitionist movement coalesced recast in biblical language: into a group known as the Secret Six. and they became the men who financed John Brown, who precipitated To confuse phy.sical slavery, as it existed in the the crisis which led to America's second revolution, oth United States in the 1850s, with slaverv of the soul, erwise known as the Civil War. 11 In 1835 two German teenagers The faith being preached bythe radicals in from Hamburg, Ottilie and Ludmilla Assing, made a literary Boston was nothing more than the French pilgrimage to Paris, where they saw Revolution recast in biblical language Heinrich Heine. We do not know if they actually spoke with the man who had become a demigod among liberated and subversive-minded Germans, but the pilgrimage was as did the radical abolitionists, was to tnount an un answerable challenge and to revive heresies dormant certainly religious in a literary wtiy. Ottilie's biographer in the Western world since the French Revolution.-'' assures us that, in addition to their encounter with Heine, the Assing sisters made "a special pilgrimage to worship the goddess of their literary and feminist It was then, after all. that liberty, equality, and fra dreams. George Sand. ternity were linked -and death threatened to all Ottilie Assing was born in Hamburg on February 11, who opposed thai linkage. For this ami similar rea sons, therefore, the eyes of Eurt)pean revolutionaries 1819, rhe offspring of the salons of Berlin that had were irresistibly drawn to the United States and the arisen during the late phase of the German enlighten abolitionist movement. Its eonihination ot religious ment and were swept away by Napoleon's invasion and rhetoric -used even bv per.sonN uneoiuieetcil with the reaction against all things foreign and French which any church or ereed—its calls tor violenee ami its followed his defeat. Ottilie Assing was al.so in quite lit denial ot the laws ot the majority eonstituted a eral fashion, the offspring of the merger of Jewish and movement ot great and novel [xiiential. It marched Protestant culture which the .salons aspired to bring imder the banner of .iniislavcry. bui as it grew ir he- about. Oiiilie's aunt was Rahel Levin Varnhagen, one of came clear that in.uiy causes eonki he lunhereil by Perlins most famous bluestocking salonniercs. Otnlie's the tactics ir devcl(»pi-d."' graiulparents had been enthusiastic disciplcs of the Trench Kevolucion. Ottilie's mother, Rosa Maria, was
February 2008 / 11 Ottille Assing
tral theme: "love and controlled passion.""^ 'J"he pattern ot all these texts is identical: beautiful
w- young lovers of a sensuous innocence encounter violent opposition to their relationship from their elders, who plan to marry them oft to socially unsuitable partners, > and they either overcome this opposition by faithful perseverance, defy convention by consummating their love against official morality, or escape into death.'" Ottilies heroines were Rahel Levin and George Sand, and in the salonsshe frequented, she imbibed an intoxi 1^ / - -fr cating mixture of love, champagne, cigars, and revolu tion. Goethe was another hero, particularly as the au ipk ^ ^ thor ol" Die Leiden des Jungen Wenhers, which sparked a craze of wearing yellow vests and committing suicide. Ever the pedagogue, Ottilie's mother taught her that suicide, "hir from being a sin, a crime, an act of escap ism or a sign of weakness, can express individual au tonomy, personal integrity, and strength—and act of seU-liberation, a sensuous embrace."^" It was a lesson Ottilie learned well and one which ended her life many years down the road. There were other literary models as well. There was an ardent supporter of the Enlightenment In both the "the German George Sand,"'" Fanny Lewald, a con political and sexual arenas. As a young woman she had verted Jew from Koenigsberg who preached free love an affair with the poet Justinus Koerner, who intro and agonized over loss ofJewish identity. And therewas duced her to the man she would eventually marry, Clara Mundt, the pen name of Luise Muehlback, who David Assur, a Jewish physician from Koenigsberg, the wrote Aphm Behn, thestory of an English bluestocking capital of East Prussia and home of ImmanucI Kant, who became sexually involved with Oroonoko, the godfather ot theGerman Enlightenment. leader of a slave revolt in the New World. It was Aphm Though raised in an orthodox Jewish environment, Behn, perhaps more than any other book she read, David, growing up in Kant's Koenigsberg, could not which provided Assing with the template upon which avoid being exposed to Enlightenment philosophy, and she would model her life in the new world. Like Rahel to his fathers chagrin he became a disciple of the En Levin Vlirnhagen in Berlin, the Assings had their own lightenment and its Jewish counterpart, represented by salon in Hamburg, a salon which was always open to leading intellectuals like Moses Mendelssohn and "violators of convention." '- As a result of her upbring Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. ing, Ottilie Assing became a revolutionary for whom As a result, Ottilie referred to herself for the rest of transgressing what she considered bourgeois morality her life as a "halt Jew."'' Ottilie "grew up in an intellec became the highest form of virtue: tual environment in which education was regarded as a Intellectually she was a daughter of the most radical sccular form ot individual salvation"'^ and "dcfiance be segment of the German Enlightenment and of German camea family tradition.""' Romanticism, and the models she chose were proud Rosa Maria, Ottilie's mother, sublimated her sexual members of a small elite of exceptionally, aggressively desires into literary channels. "We drifted in an ocean of unconventional individuals of turn-of-the-century salon lust '• was the phrase she used to describe her affair culture in Berlin. LivingC> with a lover was regardedO as with Koerner. Unlike Aunt Rahel. who continued to perfectly legitimate, even fashionable in the circles the have aftairs atrer her marriage, Rosa Maria confined Assing girls had been taught to idealize by their mother, herself to steamy short stories in which chimney sweeps provided that the lover was of an "exotic" background and fish ermcn married voung women above their sta atul had the right attitude.'* tion, and love triuniphcd over considerations of race In this milieu, revolutionary virtue meant transgress and class. All of Ro.sa Maria's stories had the same cen ing both moral and racial boundaries. Concretely, that
12 / CULTURE WARS nicMiu having aflaii's in which Jews. (Hn-i.stian.s and hxv- fifties, and that marriage ended in divorce less than a chiiikcrs intcrniinglod prc)niisi;iu)Li.sly: month after it began. " The Assings most intimate friends," Dledrich assures Rahcl's fiiinoLis salon hail hci-'ii a meeting placc nor only N)r intcllcetiials and artisis, radicals, anil niihlo- us, "were Jews,"' but Jews of a particular sort: mcn. hur for lews, ('hrisrians. and fieeihiiikcrs: par Ottilie and I.udmilla knew Jewish rituals and tradi allel to sophistieatcii disciivsions t)l" literaiiire and tions bv heart. The girls spent every Mondaywith poliiics, a young poet eonkl make advances to a Johanna and Salomon Steinheim. both strict oppo Jewisli fetnme faiale. a nobleman lllrr wiih an ac nents of rhe Jewish Enlightenment, yet intimate tress, a married w)inan ct)uldsignal her interest in a enough with the Assings to identify themselves as would-be revolutionary. . . . The "business ot mis iheir ainu and uncle. David had moved away from tresses" tho.se violations oF "race" boundaries, was Orthodox Judaism, but he wanted his children to central to die seh-deflnition of these salons. Rahel accept it as an important segment of their past, an Levin herself-"had hatlseveral passionate affairs." essential part of theircomposite present Identity.'*'*
Jewish cu.stoms were "carefully respecrcd"'"' in the Judaism was considered inferior to Protestant Chris Assing household, as long as rhey were congrucnt with tianity and was considered "a dying remnant of the the Enlightenmenr, st)mcthing that was an on-going past."'"' destined to merge in true Hegelian fashion with source of concern to David, who became more melan the deracinated Protestantism that was the state religion choly and withdrawn as time passed. David Assing be of Prussia. Togetherboth would give birth to a newsyn lieved in the Enlightenmenr intellectually, but was intel thesis, otherwise known as German culture, which was ligent enough to see that these itieas would influence both Protestant (as the new biblical exegetes understood the behavior of his daughters in ways that he could not the term) and Jewish (as Mendelssohn understood the condone. The fact that the Enlightenment cut David term) but ultimately neither. German was the only off from his Jewish roots meant that he could not re word which could adequately describe the newsynthe prove either. And so he remained for the rest of his days sis, as long as one excluded Catholicism as practiced on "an outsider in bisown house," frightened by the "radi the Rhein and in Bavaria from the mix. calism and aggres.siveness of the Young Germans," "ap Tolerance was the essence of the new religion, and palled by their love affairs, their irreverence about reli tolerance had been defined for the Germans by Lessing, gion [and] their challenge to marriage as an institu whose play Nathan der Wehe had been modeled on the tion," and yet unable to do anything that might have life of Moses Mendelssohn. The Assing girls were left to saved his daughters from the destructive consequences figure out on their own how Judaism and the Enlight enment fit together. Diedrlch gives a postmodern reading of an identity crisis that was unde Intellectually, Assing was a daughter niably real; of the most radical wingof the German The Assing girls, ostracized by Enlightenment. conservative Germans on the one hand, and orthodox Jews on the other, may have suf fered severe "category" crises. I'hev learned the painful lesson that identity was of the ideas which got espoused In his own house."' not a mater ol choice but defined by those who held Assing was worried about the elTcct of these radical the power to define, yei theyclung to the creed they ideas on his daughters, and history would show his tears had inherited from their parents. "Lhe ostracism to were well-h)UiKled. The girls became atheists as a result which (hey wereexposed sharpened their eyes h)rall of hearing texts like Daviil hriedrich Strauss's Life ol expression.s of discrimination, hur it also hiirdened lesus deb.ued in the faniil)' salon. The girls also liecanie iheni widi a neetl lo belong, at times overwhelming. The almost excessive pride they t(»ok in the elitist lifelonii devotees of five love. Ottilie hail a number ol cirLles thev moveil in, the arrogance rhey displayed aflairs ami never m.nrietl. Ludmilla married an Italian agalnsf the petty h()urgeois and "philistine" hirttuie lunuer 20 years ber junit)r when she was in her peopk-. •"
February2008 / 13 Two women at the barricades in Berlin during the revolution of 1848
Baison died on January 13, 1849, and Ottilie had spent the revolution of 1848 raking care of his himily and nursing him through his final illness. Throughout Baison's last days, Ottilie, according to Diedrich, "re fused to seek solace in religion. In fact, it appears that S }'H. Baison's death consolidated her atheist commitment."^" johann Steinheim blamed the Baison affair for Ottilie's political ideas; "Without this unfortunate rela "s/\ tionship to the Baison family she would never have de veloped such quixotic ideas. But it seems clearin ret rospect that Steinheim has the moral cart before the horse here. IfOttilie had not been morally corrupted by a steady diet of toxic culture in the salons run by her ^ mother and her aunt, she most probably would not ||L ^ have begun the affair with Baison in the first place. Ottilie Assing had squandered her fortune on Baison. In addition, her affairwith Baison had ruined her repu tation in Hamburg. No one was willing to hire a fallen woman as a tutor to their children. That and the failed revolution of 1848, which sent thousands of Germans a=>. •.' ; into exile, got Assing thinking about America, and on August 16. 1852 Ottilie Assing put theory into practice once again when she sailed out of Hamburg bound for -.r-vsr.i i?r. New York and the New World. Her sister Ludmilla saw the voyage to America as an admission that Ottilie had ruined her life. Unable to admit that fact, Ottilie chose America as an escape from the unhappiness which In the absence of coherent principle as a guide to life, flowed from her own "character traits,which willalways the Assing girls fell back on imitating members of the accompany her!"'"* older generation, and that meant that, next to their Ottilie, however, felt that "America spelled prom mother, Aunt Rahel was their primary role model. ise."""Amerika, dii hast es besser," was Goethe's verdict. Eventually all of the talkabout free love and thestultify The land without a history proved irresistible to those ing effects of convention and marriage had their effect who wanted to escape from history, personal and other on Ottilie. During the mid-1840s she became involved wise. In addition to all that, America was the home of in what came to be known as the "theater wars" in the noble savage, and in particular it was the home of Hamburg, and in 1846 Octilie moved in with Jean- millions of Negro slaves waiting for liberation of the Baptiste Baison, one ot the great actors in the German sort that Ottilie had imbibed from her mothers and theater of his day and star of Hamburg's Municipal aunts salons. Diedrich iseven morespecific: Theater. Baison came from Huguenot stock in France, but in her biography of Baison, Octilie characterized Like all educated Germans of her day, she had read him as favored "by Nature herself" and destined for the Hcinrich voii Klei.st's "Engagement in Santo stage where "his tali slim figure had an innate gracc Domingo" (1811) and sheshared the enthusiasm of which was ennobled by a perfect physique, and his ex Ciorman radicals lor the Haitian revolution and its quisitely and regularly formed features mirrored each hero. Toii.ssaiiu L'Oiivcrture."''' emotion with lightning speed. Kleist wasn't Ottilie's only source of information The fact that Bais()ns wife did not move out when about the racial situation in the New World. In 1849, Ottilie moved into their household only underscored three years before she left fi>r America and one yearafter the unconventional nature of their relationship and the revolution of 1848 had failed. Ottilie read Glara their scorn for moral propriety. Ir was hecause of Muntlrs Aphm Belni, a book which evoked in her "vi Baison, that Ottilie missed the revolution t)f liS4(S. sions of a black revolution, of a militant alliance tran-
14 / CULTUREVm scciKliiii^ csr.iblisiicil lujuinlaric.s dl" fiicc aiul licnilcr l.awson, that Ciod had granted Oougla.ss extrjordinary sure c«5 in;i!
February2008 / 15 Frederick Douglass
Douglass broke with William Lloyd Garrison and
•1*-:i££>^ ^ "* moved to Rochester, New York, where he starred his own newspaper, the North Star. When he returned W . I . I' home in triumph from his speaking tour in England in ^J the same year. Julia Griffiths, an ardent English aboli tionist and the daughter of a friend of William Wilberforce, not only followed him back to America, she moved into the Douglass household and became his constant companion for the next seven years. Griffiths helped .set up his pre.ss and raise the money needed to •lit launch his magazine. She even accompanied him on the piano when he played the violin. Worse than all of that, she accompanied Douglass on his speaking tours, ap pearing in public with him at a time when this sort of behavior was a huge source of public scandal for the abolitionist cause and a source of comfort to the en emies of black emancipation. Diedrich tries to put Douglass's behavior in a positive light by claiming that Douglass was artracted co vvhice women because they "Julia seemed to have everything that AnnaMurray was symbolized not only forbidden fruit for the brmer slave lacking."''^ But the real message of their cohabitation from the South, but because chey represented every was much more damaging than that. If Frederick thing that his wife was not. They represented the higher Douglass was to be construed as a role model for his culture that blacks needed to appropriate to raise them race, then it looked as if the first fruit of emancipation selves to the level ot whice culture. In a poem he wrote was going to be emancipation from sexual morality. later in life, when contemplating marriage to another Douglass did not abandon his black wife, but the fact white woman, he described both white women and the that he took up with a white woman in the same house culture they represented as forbidden fruit and himself made the situation that much worse in the eyes of the as the Adam willing to seize chat fruit no matter what public, who were treated to numerous "insinuating" ac the consequences. Modern commentators try to pick counts in the press over the course of the next few their way through this minefield without stepping on years."' anything that might set offan explosion of political cor Since the creation of the North Star was tantamount rectness. Douglass, weare told, to a break with Garrison anyway, Garrison lost no time in leading the attack against Douglass. It may well be was surrounded with ciuinu)ri.-*.l whiti; women oJ his that Douglass showed lack of gratitude and that Garri class wherever he traveled, and his interest in them and their obvious enjoyineiit his presence both son was loathe to have a competitor as the chiefcham fascinatcd and shocked his cotuenijioraries, as it pion of abolitionism, but the political and social reali continues to oeciipv his bii)gr;ipher.s. I'he observa ties of the times made these considerations secondary tions of the "while woman phenomenon" in anyway. The main issue was Douglass's sexual mores. Douglass's life which Willi.ini S. Meleclv oilered in "The abolitionists," Diedrich tells us, "had been his biography of l'^)')! h lypieal. " I'luTe was. and is. alarmed at how excitedly women lionized and besieged much priiriciu speculation—noi alvva\'s tievoid oi Douglass on his tours; they feared lest these encounters racistn—about the si-xu.tl components of IXni^las.vs threw a negative light on their movement: did they not friendship wiih white wonten .mil luikitig within confirm the allegation that abolition of slavery would are Kuuastic images of.i noi-.so-noble .savage iiiriiei.1 expose white women to the sexual lust of black men?""'' gleaming black beast and proving l.ir.illy atti-.ietive As Douglass's behavior became more brazen, the Lib- to pale virgins anxious to yield their cha.stliy to cniior increased the vehemence of its attacks on him. some imagined luigeness.""' wondering out h)ud how a man who cheated on his Eighteen hundred and forty-seven was an lU/uiis wile could be trusted with the responsibilities of leader mimbilis of sorts for IVederick DduuLiss. In (hat vear ship in the atuislavery movement. The feminists agreed in this with CJarrison. Julia Cirifflths had become a
16 / CULTUREWARS sourcc of in rlic .ihoiicionisr niDvcincnc hec.uise main concern was preserving the union, noted that ol" Douglass's affair with her. hi a letter to l.iarrison, Su "There are men who ... if their perispicacious vision san B. Anihonv-clainicii that Iitrr friends Iclt th.ir he had enables them co detect a spot on the face of the sun, been right to osiracize Diniglass. [lecause, as Amy Post thev think it good reason why the sun should be struck [lilt it, ir was niaile Fredcric hate all his down from heaven."''"* President Fillmore was getting old friends. Saitl she, I don't care anythingalu)ui her he- letters from Theodore Parker, one of the Secret Six, in inii iti tlie office—bur I won't haw her in niy house. forming him that it was his duty to break the law and Isinorin" the threats of his erstwhile allies, Dousjiass engage in illegal activity: did nothing to hide his affair with Julia Griffiths. Irav Forthe first time, the UnitedStates government was eling rogetlier with her and appearing with her in public faccd witha revolutionary movement that denied its were deliber.irc acts ol provocation which called into authority and its power to exert that authority. The question the strict segregation of black men and w^hite movement was a minority, but its leaders held high women which [^otiglas had grown up under. Bur it also and respected positions. The number of clergymen alienated support in the North for the abolitionist in its ranks and their arguments—in Parkers cause. [Douglass's behavior seemed calculatcd to prove word.s—that "antislavery is the Law of God," and the Sourherners right when they claimed that emanci "the constitution was not morally binding" made pation was the first step toward miscegenation and them difficult and embarrassing opponents.'"'' black men taking up with white women. Once the af fair with Julia Griffiths was made public. Garrison The South, like President Fillmore, was now aware found himself in the position of Dr. Frankenstein. The that rhe existence of chattel slavery had been used to man he had promoted as the leader of the black cause create a revolutionary situation in the North, which un der the orchestration of figures public and private urged was now more useful to the propagandists for slavery the destruction of the South and what it stood for. Slavery, in a sense, was only the tip of the iceberg. The real issue was that the South had remained unchanged, an es While in England, Douglass noticed that sentially feudal society in the heart of what he cast a sexualspell overthe white was becoming a revolutionary republic, ever since the colonies separated from En women who came to hear him speak. gland. The South for its part responded by sit ting back and taking a beating at the hands of the northern radicals who controlled the organs of public opinion. Otto. Scott describes their re than he was for the abolitionists. A break was inevitable. hi spice of the break with Douglass, Garrison contin treat into sullen silence: ued to be a major player in the psychological warfare The South smarted under a wave of denigration campaign against the South, a campaign which was chat issued from hundreds of Northern presses and predicated on rhe threat of black rebellion. (larrison hundreds more lecture platforms. The South's cul wasn't alone in waging this campaign. The New York Tri ture and religion were denied, its classes mocked, its bune under the editorship of Morace Greeley was only heritage and accomplishments ignored. Millions of slightly less srrident than Garrison, and because of its Northerners regarded theSouth as a region ofnight mare and evil.... Southern anger rose steadily un high speed presses the Tyihiuw reached a nuich wider dera Morthern barrage that insisted che South revo- audience in the North. The pundits frt)ni rhe North lutioni/e itself", dislocate its economy, and change its were careful lo couch (heir calls (or revohuii^n in pattern of relations between the races —ail to please phra.>:es tliai souiuled as if they hail come fn)m tlie the consciences of men in another region who Bible. Ihose who opposed their extremism IouikI would suffer no pain, loss, or clumgc of status from themselves powerless to resist nuich less op[i<)se ihe pull such changcs. " of ihe rex'olution.iiv tale. In a si.uemeiu which I Icrman Melville woultl apinopriaie aiul pui into the niouih ol Scoii claims that "The realitv was far different. The Gaptain Ahab in Xlohy lianH.'l W;'bsrer. whose
February2008/ 17 South was a region .., where the bible was revered as the South was hampered by its religious roots in sola the base ofWestern civilization."-' But the existence of scriptura and the political legacy ofthe American Revo- slavery as the cornerstone of southern culture made a lution. The South turned to the Bible to find ajusdfica- coherent defense ofthat culture an impossible task. As a tion for its way oflife, and found that it was impossible result the Southerners retreated into sullen silence, and to fight against the revolution armed with revolutionary increased t leir vigilance over and oppression of the assumptions. The Christian religion tolerated slavery in slaves, who seemed to be the main target of northern ancient Rome, but it did notendorse it in theway that propaganda efforts. the South found necessary. Against the South was arrayed the power of the North, dominated by the spirit of Puritanism, which, NORTHERN PROPAGANDA with all of itsvirtues, has ever been characterized by the pharisaism which worships itself, and is unable to per At first the South was content to seal its mailbags ceive any goodness apart from itself, which has ever ar against Northern propaganda and to issue denials and rogantly held its ideas, its interests, and its will higher refutations. In time, abolitionist propaganda led to a than fundamental law and covenanted obligations, worsening of the conditions of blacks; efforts to educate which has always "lived and moved and had its being" slaves were halted and emancipations made more diffi- rebellion against constituted authority.'^ cult. The conditions of free blacks declined remarkably. in his warning to the South, John Calhoun raised the The South moved toward the condition of a garrison specter of black insurrection leading to black hegemony. state m its own nation. - The Negro would become the pawn of northern revolu Long after the South had lost the batde for the public tionaries, whose goal was nothingshort of the destruc mind, Richard Weaver would concede that the South tion ofthe Souths culture: had produced no one who couldarticulate the Southern point of view or defend the Southern way of life. A shift in power [from the balance of power which Weaver called the South "the last non-materialist civili had been maintained since the Missouri compro mise of 1820J, said Calhoun, would be accompa zation in thej Western World. If so, it failed nonethe nied by a reinterpretation of the Constitution, the less to come up with an effective critique of the materi emancipation of slaves, and "the overthrow of alist revolutionaries who were determined to destroy its Southern whites." He warned that "in the hours of way oflife: abolitionist triumph the blacks would be raised to The Sout1 spoke well on a certain level, but it did favor, office and power. The South would then be not make the indispensable conquest of the imagi- come the abode of disorder, anarchy and wretched nation. From the Bible and Aristode it might have ness." Calhoun argued that a unified South might produced itsSnmrna Theologia, but none measured avert this fate, and that its appearance alone might up to theIask, and there is noevidence that theper deflect the Northern drift and direction."*' formance jwould have been rewarded. It needed a Burke or a Hegel; it produced lawyers and journal As a result of losing the scriptural war to the propo ists. Perhaps the sin for which the South has most nents of German scripture scholarship, the South fully though unknowingly atoned is its failure toen sought to preserve its culture by clamping down on the courage the mind. Negro slave. Had the South been allowed another cen tury to work out its problems, the balm oflocal affinity It has had to compete against the great world with could have come up with a modus vivendi which al second-rati; talent, and to accept the defensive lowed for the preservation ofall thatwas good inSouth where an offensive was indicated. One may under ern culture, but the whole point of the revolutionary stand the feeling which could boast of the Souths strategy was to deny them this time and to provoke a freedom trbni isms, but this implies the existence of crisis by thesystematic use ofpropaganda, andeven ter a satisfactory theology and metaphysics, which were rorism if necessary. not on hand. The lack continues..
1 he hital flaw was chattel slavery. Pushed to the wall by the northern propaganda offensive arrayed against it,
18 / CULTURE WARS ther. Browns new organization was called the United TERRORISM States League of Gileadites, a name which gave a clear indication that Brown, like his revolutionary forebears The campaign of terrorism began in rumor. There were rumors of slave uprisings on theborders of Arkan in 17''' century England, was drawing on the story of Gideon as the source of his inspiration. He also made sas and Louisiana. Other slave rebellions were reported along the Kentucky-Tennessee border as well as in the reference to contemporary national liberation move ments throughout the wodd. If the Greeks could rise up Cumberland Valley, Virginia, vSouth Carolina, Alabama, against theTurks, and the Poles couldrise up against the Florida, and Mississippi. Russians, and the Hungarians could rise up against the When Douglass broke with Garrison in 1847 to form Austrians, then the Negroes of the UnitedStates, whose his own newspaper, oneof his backers was GeritSmith, sufferings far exceeded those ofthe groups already men the richest man in New York State because of extensive tioned, could certainly rise up against the white slave property inherited from his father. The fact that Smith owners of the South. Brown concluded his new mani was also a member of the Secret Six, the cabal which festo with instructions on howto spread "confusion and backed John Brown, makes the fact that Frederick Douglass met with John Brown in 1847 seem like terror."®" something other than coincidence. After arriving in IV On May 19, 1856 Senator Charles Sumner took the Rochester, Brown carefully explained his plan to floor of the UnitedStates Senate to give what heconsid Douglass. Ever a man who saw the hand of God in the ered"themost philippic [speech] ever uttered in a legis movements of his will and appetites, Brown explained lative body.""' The subject of this diatribe was "The to Douglass that he planed to create an army of aboli Crime against Kansas," and it took the better part of tionist liberators in the Allegheny Mountains, which. rwo days for SenatorSumner to expatiate on the magni Brown claimed, had been "placed [there] by God forthe emancipation of the Negro race."" Brown would sally tude of this crime. Scott characterizes Sumner as "an ideologue in the Robespierre mold: austere, aloof, warm forth from his mountain redoubt periodically and liber only toward those who agreed with him, cold as ice to ate ever-increasing numbers of slaves, who would then everyone else.""' During the course of his speech, regroup at this mountain hideout until further raids Sumner described the citizens ofthe state ofMissouri as could swell their numbers even further. "I know these "hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of mountains well," Brown told Douglass, "andcould take an uneasy civilization,""-* but in this was only warming a body of men into them and keep them there despite up to the point where he could deliver the full force of all the efforts of Virginia to dislodge them."" Brown his literary blow squarely on the head of the South in was, of course, totally unfamiliar with the mountain general and the state of South Carolina in particular. range which stretched from Gerit Smiths home state Stephen Douglas, who at thispoint was trying to lower intoenemy territory in Virginia, but knowing that God the temperature of debate and Save the union, was ap had created the mountains for him to use in his war of palled at whathe heard. "Is it his object," Douglas won liberation was knowledge enough for Brown. Brown felt dered "to provoke some of us to kick him as we would a that "Slavery was a state ot war, and a slave had a right dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon the to anything necessary to his freedom." That was an anticipation of the later sermons of Theodore Parker, just chastisement?""' Equally amazed was South Carolina Representative who would argue that slaves had a right to kill for free dom. How Douglass reacted to Browns proposal is Preston S. Brooks, who felt that Sumner had be smirched not only his state but his uncle, SenatorAn anyone's guess. Years later, when he had to flee to En drew P. Buderas well. On May 22, Brooks approached gland in the wake of Browns disastrous attack on Harp ers Ferry, Douglass made light of Brown, claiming that Sumner on the Senate floor and informed him that after reading over his speech twice carefully, he considered it he wanted no part of what was sure to be a suicidal as sault. Bur his daughter told a different story and a libel on South Carolina and Mr. Butler. Before Sumner could respond, Brooks began beating him with claimed chat Douglass promised to support Brown. his gutta percha cane. The beating continued until Four years after his initial meeting with Douglass, Brooks' cane broke into slivers and he was physically re Brown had refined his plans for revolution based on strained from continuing. Normally, Brooks would black insurrection and the murder of whites even fur have challenged theauthorof such insults to a duel, but
Febn]aiy2008 / 19 7s John Brown
ernment failed completely. Villard went on to liken Brown "to the Hebrew prophets or to a Cromwellian roundhead,"^ situating him squarely in the tradition of the Judaizing revolu tionaries who had emigrated out of England in the 17''' century and went on to leave an indelible mark on the American colonies, where they sought refuge. Browns Puritan heritage becomes clear in Villard's biographical sketch: John was born on May 9''^, 1800 at Torrington in Litchfield County, Connecticut of poor but respect able parents; a descendant on the side of his father of one of the company of the Mayflower who landed at Plymouth in 1620. His mother was de scended from a man who came at an early period to New England from Amsterdam in Holland. Both his Fathers and his Mother's father served in the war of the revolution.^'"'
On May 28, 1856, a warrant was issued against John Brown, Jr. for treason. One day later, a journalist by the name of James Redpath mysteriously appeared at Brown's camp in Kansas. Redpath, whose articles on Brown would appear in the New York Tribune, then em barked on a publicity campaign which created the first and subsequently indelible image of Brown in the pub lic mind. Brown was neither a criminal, nor a terrorist, duels were reserved for resolving disputes between gentle nor a revolutionary who could only function if he was men, and Brooks didn't consider Sumner a gentleman. supported by people wealthier and better connected Three days later, on May 25. John Brown and his than he. No. Brown was Oliver Cromwell come back sons made their way to a remote farm cabin near from the dead: "a new Cromwell had appeared in Kan Potawacomie, Kansas in the middle of the night and sas."'*'' Redpath was not alone in portraying Brown as asked the farmer who lived there tor hospitality. When Cromwell redivivm. When Julia Ward Howe, wife of he opened the door to admit them. Brown and his sons Dr, Samuel Gridley Howe, another member of the Se slew the man with swords in the sis^ht of his wile and cret Si.K cabal, met Brown, she exclaimed, "He looked a children and then released the man's slave, who was now Puritan of the Puritans, forceful, concentrated, and self- free to wander olfonto the prairie by himself and starve contained.'"'" Her husband felt the same way, seeing CO death. The slave insurrectic^n which the South had Brown as Cromwell, as well as other feared ever since the Nat Turner rebellion had be^un, even though it didn't seem that way at the time. Brown parallels everywhere he looked, with the English had begun to "carry the war into Ah'ica,"^^ his phrase Civil War. He meiually considered the antislavery for the slave insurrection that would usher in the second forccs. . . the equivalciK ol the Puritans and Presby terians of chat earlier conflict. These were nocions American Revolution and the AVmerican version of derived frotn Sir Walter Scott rather than history: heaven on earth. Flowc did not recall what the religious principles of Fifty years after Brown's ilearh Oswald (I.irrison the Puritans might have been: in his mind antisla- Villard, William l.lovtl (."i.irrison's '^raiulson. .uul one oi verv hatl assumed the h)rce and coherence of a reli- the founding; fathers of the NAA( ci.iiini'd ih.u •"loiin Brown still remains il\c iHii.sranuii'.s: ol- a lite in which man's spirit um! in fiie ol certain Rcv. riiomas Wentworrh Hi^jiinson, another mem death achieved imtnonai!(\ loi him. viKrc his ri.-s
20 / CULTURE WARS Kansas ("ivc S()ilLTs", who as a rcsiilc ol" Hro\\'n's laitl were for the Cileadites of the United States was to be the Al "better prepared h)r reNnliuion than the\ had been a legheny \k)untains, Forbes' expertise in these matters few nionrlis previously." I'iiey were ncnv, in Kict, "ready woultl be of benefit to him and the cause of Negro in-
to add their lives hir re\()lii(i(Mi." biirrtction. Redparh's accounts Brown's raid tired the imagina fiventuallv Brown met with Forbes in New York, tion of the Secret Six. His willingness ro kill unarmed where Forbes introduced Brown to his magnum opus, farmers cotivinceii them that he was their man. Browns his Conipcndio elfl Volu)itiirio Pntriotko, which had been counterproposal was fairly straightl(»rvvard. "Me wanrcd published in Naples in two volumes. The fact that 530.000 to arm a provisional force ot 100 men under Garibaldi had made Forbes a colonel and had endorsed his leadership to "fight for freedom' in Kansas and carry his bookseetns to have impre.ssed Brown, whoagreed to the war into Africa. ""'" pay Forbes SIOO a month {plus S600 in advance) to On March 13. 1857. the Supreme Court of the translate his work Into English and distil what ic had to United States handed down its Dred Sccur decision and say into a form which would be accessible to the volun transformed Brown from a criminal into a hero. Brown teers who would follow Brown in hisefforts to carry the was "lioni/ed in a manner later made familiar to many war into Africa. After the translation was completed, niomcncarily famous revolutionists when received by Forbes was to join Brown and his "army' in Tabor, wealthy radicals. Iowa. Forbes then met with Geric Smith and tried to sell The I^red Sc{>tf decision prompted Higginson to him the same book. Smith, who knew of Browns write an artlcIc in the Atlantic Monthlyadvocating revolu dreams of mountain warfiire, was equally delighted and tion as the only solution to the slavery problem. "The gave Forbes another Si50. Forbes then got S20 from question of slavery is a stern and practical one. Give us the Horace Greeley and an undisclosed sum from the power and wc can make a new Constitution .. .how is Garibaldi-Mazzini colony in New York. Fortified with this new-found wealth, Forbes made his way to Iowa, where, on August 9, 1857, he found an "army" made up of Brown and When Julia Ward Howe met Brown, she ex his crippledson Owen. At this point Forbes realized claimed, "He looked a Puritan of the Puritans, that he, and everyone else in forceful, concentrated, and self-contained." volved with the Secret Sl.x, had been duped into believing Brown's grandiose rhetoric. Un deterred by Forbes' skepticism, Brown T)egan to elaborate on his that power to be obtained? By politics? Never. By revo plan indetail. The entire black population of the South, lution and that alone.'"'"' Brown assured Forbes, was ready to rise up in rebellion By the time Higginson used the term revolution in as soon as a leader like Brown arrived on the scene. Bas his Atlantic article, he was nor referring to some anti ing the rest of his plan on that dubious assumption, quated movement of l'"nglish ranters from the 17''' cen Brown went on ro assure Forbes that "ber\\een 200 and tury. SenatorCharles Sumner, the same Charles Sumner 500 slaves would swarm to his standard the first who had endured a thiashing at the hands of IVesttin nii;ht.""" Brooks, knew many l^uropean revolutionaries, ft was Forbes, however, remained skeptical of John Browns Sumner who introduced Migginson to an adventurer by [>lans to carry the war into Africa and pointed out the rhe name of Colonel Hugh I'orbes. I'orbes had fought flaws ro its author. The foremost consideration was with C.uib.iMi tluring ilie Italian revoliiiion ol 1S-hS whether, in lact, the slaves would rebel, even if Brown and fancieil himseU an expert in mountain w.nlare. oflercd ihcm weapons antl commissions at the rank of Since Brown had ahvadv made contact with the Secret lieiiienani in his "army." Forbes felt that they wouldn't. Si.K. it was presumablv Higginson who iiurothiceil He also fch ihar ihe milirary forces in rhe South would I'orbes to Brown. Anyone coukl see thai tlie two niens quickly tlele.u any milirary force which lacked experi- gifts dovetailed nicelv. Since Brown's base ol npir.uions i-nce. as the Nei:ro slaves did. Southern whites had been
February 2008 / 21 ^ and the signs are multiplying that OR O N O K O, this deliverance is at hand.""'
V At around the same time that XE PHINCE[CE NEGKiiNEGKiii Colonel Forbes conferred with .TaAD.'"lTr DK L'A>;r.i.AisL'A>;~.i.AlS John Brown in Kansas, Ottilie
.U L -ni* r XlXT AT Assing, decided to move to ' DE MA Mi: B E H IN'. Hoboken, NewJersey, By the time
Qij«r4l« •.tihuHr.t,"ivLivLiKKtura"Ktura^ sf'iujui. she arrived in Hoboken,' 1,500 of tt.tt-c.iNC the town's 7,000 inhabitants were German, and many of them were German intellectuals who were ex- 7" iles from their country because of their participation in the Revolu-
APAA ;ir;l IS, •' tion of 1848. It was in Hoboken Cho'/ AycELi.E,u, Mb::;:e , lucmc «Iu that Assing first met Dr. Hans Kfiiti-.Sriiiu- .Tu-:«[ui5ru-:«[ui5,, tol.tiiutolitiiu «I« Kudlich from Lobenstein, libera- •••rif It /.'/.////.' C.f rvuis , ti« -o.. f 'M. /.
22 / CULTURE WARS struct viiioii ot ;i composite nationality coiiiJ be tested comparison. and realized. ... The ideal American societv slie envi Within a year, which is to say, by the summer of sioned was raceless.Assintr went our ot her vvav to I85
Febniaiy 2008 / 23 Ludwig Feuerbach
The fact that the radical Hoboken German emigres accepted Douglass on Assings terms and that access to Douglass gave her the journalistic edge in becoming Germany's Negro expert when the racial situation was the big story in America only confirmed Assing in her 0.^ belief that her life had finally settled onto its proper path. Assing was fulfilling her destiny as the child of the German Enlightenment by bringing freedom and revo lution to the slaves ofAmerica. Her first task as the bringer of high culture to the American Negro was the education of Frederick Douglass himself It was Assing who introduced Douglass to the literature of European revolutionary k.^- -- - thought, and Douglass, for his part, seems to have been a willing pupil. As some indication of his personal pan theon, Douglass decoratedhisstudy with buses of Ludwig Feuerbach and David Friedrich Strauss. He also displayed portraits of the abolitionists Wendell most advanced form, namely, the German Enlighten Philips, Charles vSumner, and John Brown in his ment. Assing was, quite literally, a childof that Enlight study, as well as portraits ofToussaint L'Overture enment and well versed in all of its literature. She could and Abraham Lincoln.'""' lead Douglass into the company of Goethe, who had frequented her Aunt Rahei's salon in Berlin, and Kant, Under Assings tutelage, Douglass read Marx, who was still taking his daily walks when her father was Mazzini, Bakunin, and Lassalle. But her crowning growing up in Koenigsbcrg. In addition to all that, she - achievement was introducing Douglass to the thought could accompany him on the piano when he played the of Ludwig Feuerbach. Assing had heard about violin, and could manage his affairs with a combination Feuerbach for years, both before and after she had ofJewish financial acumcn and Germanic efficiency. moved in with the radical emigre community in What Douglass offered Assing was even easier to dis Hoboken. But then one day in the fall of 1859, she cern. Douglass, with his boxer's body and leonine head, stumbled across George Eliot's translation of embodied the idea of"Rousscauvian naturalness" which Feuerbach's attack on the Christian religion in a book Ottilie had imbibed from her early education in the sa store in NewYork City. It was an important moment in lons of Berlin and Hamburg."" Douglass was Ottilie's the intellectual history of their relationship, because up noble savage, or, better still, he was the embodiment of to that point, Assing had been unable to convert Oroonoko, the noble Negro revolutionary whom Douglass to atheism. Or as Assing put it in a letter she Assing had read about in the pages of Clara Mundt's wrote to Feuerbach himself, 12 years later, "Personal novel, Aphra Behn. By uniting in an Illicit adulterous re sympathy and concordance in many central issues lationship, both Assing and Douglass could live lives brought [Douglass and me] together, but there was one that testified to the intrinsic illegitimacy of bourgeois obstacle to a loving and lasting friendship—namely, the morality: personal Christian God."""' It took no less a thinker than Feuerbach, combined with the sexual wiles of the hi a society chat wor.shippai cluiMity, she gloried in German/Jewish Delilah, to push Dark Fred over the her role as a black and married nt.m's lt)vcr. She ridi brink into atheism. culed her contemporaries' notions ofiiiety with her The sexual and intellectual seduction of Frederick bclligerciu atheism, ller life as a professional woman appeared like a denial of'wuman's irue des Douglass was a moment of historical significance be tiny—wile and motherhood. Dougl.is.s was en cause for the next century the chief obstacle which chanted hy a rehelliousne.ss ihat neither apologized America's largely Jewish revolutionaries would find to nor e.xplaincd."" their goal of turning the Negro into the avant gardeof tiie revolutionary movement in America was the Negro's huth in (Christ. Now, almost eiuht decades before
24 / CULTURE WARS Wilhclin Reich would conic up wirh the scicntific ex Slavery became the occasion which both intensified planation of how sexuality and (icrmaii revolutionary and justified his rebellion. As Assing well knew, the thought could he used as a potent Form of discipline seeds of rebellion were already there. Midway through and control, OitilieAssing had used the same combina his affair with Julia Griffiths, on the 4"'' of July 1852, tion in corrupting Americas black Moses, the man Douglass gave a speech in which he attacked the whom horh his wife and his preacher mentor consid prosl.-ivery distortion of Christianit)- by exclaiming, ered as marked h)- God to deliver his people from bond "For my part I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome age. From Feuerbach, Douglass learned that atheism! Welcome anything! In preference to thegospel God is a projection of the human imagination, of as preach by the Divines!" Diederich goes on to tell us human needs and desires; the substance of religious that Douglass's "belief in human perfectibility and the dogma is human. Man, Fcuerbach declared, created need for human moral action was strengthened when he God in his own image, and then God returned the encountered Theodore Parkers Transcendental Unitari- fav(ir. This analysis aboli.shed the opposition be anism."'" Feuerbach finished the conversion which tween the divine and the human and defined reli Theodore Parkers transcendentalism had begun, and gionasa first step toward self-knowledge.'" Assing described Douglass's conversion to atheism in frankly religious terms. Besorted by the sexual charms of his German/Jewish concubine. Dark Fred found himself incapable of an They struck him like a ray of light, and accom swering Feuerbachs critique and so he succumbed, as plished a complete revolution of his opinions. I add she hoped he would, to his ideas. "The book," Assing with great satisfaction that ir was German radical ism which worked that revolution, and that to our wrote to Feuerbach referring to The Essence ofChristian great, venerated Feuerbach, above all others our ity^ "resulted in a total reversal of his attitudes."""^ The thanks are due for having pointed out the path to final result of their long evenings of reading and discus intellectual liberty to the disnnguished man, after sion, Assing continued, was that "Douglass became he hadfreed himself of thefetters ofslavery."* your enthusiastic admirer, and the result isa remarkable progress, an expansion of his horizon, of all his atti- Chattel slavery was only a metaphor in the mind of German radicals like Assing for the intellecrual^ bondage which flowed from Christian ity. In this regard, Assing's ap It took no less a thinker than Feuerbach, proach conformed precisely to combined with the sexual wiles of the the reproaches which the southerners were making German/Jewish Delilah, to push Dark Fred against the northern radicals. over the brink into atheism. Slavery was a pretext, the southerners had claimed all along; the real issue was revo lution. With slavery as their cover, the Secret Six were bent tudes."'"'^ Part of that progress meant repudiating the on exporting revolution to the South. It was at this prophesy of Charles Lawson, the slave from Baltimore point in their relationship that Douglass introduced whom Douglass had always considered his "spiritual fii- A.ssing to Gerit Smith, the financial power behind the ther." It was Lawson who claimed that Douglass had Secret Six cabal. Assing was in complete agreement with been freed from the bondage ofslavery and illiteracy be the revolutionary goals of the Secret Six, but still found cause die Lord "had a great work for him,""" namely them, like virtually all Americans, disagreeably reli preaching the Giospel. Douglass's sense of mission and gious. "The freethinking German visitor," she wrote in vocation disappeared when his lust-darkened mind, one of her Morgenhlntt articles, "is bothered only by a weakened by Assing's wiles, capitulateil intellectually certain aura of religious orthodoxy that unfortunately before a German cultural icon whose writing he could infccts even the best of men over here."'" dimly decipher but was unable U) relute. In the early autumn of 185*), Frederick Douglass re-
Febniaiy2008 / 25 ceived a visit from John Brown, Jr., a fugitive from jus among the free blacks of Brooklyn, knew better. The tice since he and his flither had murdered three men in one area where a slave rebellion was most likely to suc Pottawotomie, Kansas in May 1956. Browns son had ceed, namely, the predominantly black counties of come to recruit Douglass into his fathers guerilla army. Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi was hundreds of Assing wasjstaying at the Douglass household when the miles removed from the arsenal which Brown had cho younger Brown arrived and, sincesheconsidered Brown sen as the starting point of his rebellion. It would take a hero (even though she had never met him in person) weeks for the news to travel to where it was likelyto do she was probably favorably disposed to Browns request. the most good, if it ever got there at all. The slaves of It seemed as if her Oronooko fantasy was about to be Virginia, far removed from theonerous work of the cot come a reality. Diederich does agood job in articulating ton fields and often integrated into the households of those fantasies: "There would be an insurrection, per their masters were the candidates least likely to rise up haps the beginning of a revolution and she and and follow Brown. Douglass, of course, knew all this Douglass would be in the midst of it all—Douglass as much better than Brown did, and concluded that the liberator and leader of the African American people, Brown was marching his little band of dreamers into "a and she as his faithful companion. White America had perfect steel trap.""^ created a wall of scorn around the Douglass home; his tory might someday celebrate it as the place where the second American revolution was launched!"'" DOUGLASS REASONS WITH BROWN Douglass, however, had his doubts, or at least this is how he portrayed his reaction after the attack on Harp Like Colonel Forbes before him, Douglass tried to ers Ferry had failed. To be fair to Douglass, four years reason with John Brown: "I looked at him with some before Harpers Ferry, he had written that "I never see astonishment, that he could rest on a reed so weak and much use iri fighting, unless there isa reasonable prob broken, and told him that Virginia would blow him ability of whipping somebody,""'' and the more he and his hostages sky-high rather than that he should heard about Browns plan from Browns son the morehe hold Harpers Ferry an hour.""' When Brown e.xplained concluded that Brown was going to get whipped. And that he also planned to take prominent citizens as hos yet, the idea of taking the war to Africa still had an at tages and, if worse came to worst, use them to negotiate traction to Douglass. Douglass had raised money for his freedom, Douglass was more convinced than ever Brown in black churches, but when he mentioned John that the plan to usethe arsenal "as a trumpet to rally the Brown to a black audience in Brooklyn, no one in the slaves to his defense" wastotallydelusionaland doomed audience volunteered to join the American Cromwell. to failure."" That, at least, is how Douglass described This was a badomen, especially if one considers the fact the meeting years afterthe fact. One of Browns daugh that Brown'sjplan for insurrection was predicated on the ters later claimed that Brown and John Kagi told their fact that slaves would swarm to his banner the minute men that Douglass "had promised that he would follow he raised it. Brown 'even into death'"and would join them as Unable toj resolve his doubts on his own, Douglass soon as possible. decided to rneet with Brown in person in Chambers- Douglass was, of course, correct in his assessment of burg, Pennsylvania, a town on the Maryland border 80 Browns plan. It was doomed from the moment of its miles west of Philadelphia. There in a abandoned stone cockeyed inception. But Brown carried it out nonethe quarry, Douglass met with Brown and his "secretary of less. On Sunday, October 16, 1859 Brown showed up war," the Swiss revolutionary John Henry Kagi and at the firm of Lewis Washington, greatgrandnephew of learned that Brown had abandoned his plan to create a George Wiishington, and announced that "We have refuge forfugitive slaves in the mountains and was plan come f-br the purpose of liberating all of theslaves of the ning insteada frontal assault with fewer than two dozen South."'-" He then tookWashington as his hostage and men on the whole slavery system as symbolized by the appropriated a pistol which his illustrious forebear had federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry. The whole scheme was received from Lafiiyette and a sword Washington had predicatedon the assumption that the slaves would rise received from Frederick the C^reat. Armed with these up and support Brown once they heard of his insurrec symbolic weapons and Washington's slaves, who were tion. Douglass, who had grown up in neighboring dragooned at gun point into fighting for their own lib Maryland and had just failed n) generate any interest erty, the small party moved tt)ward Harpers Ferry.
26 / CULTURE WARS where Kagi and A. D. Stevens had already struck "the By Monday morning, the headlines of the nations first blow for liberty"'-' by inadvertendy shooting Hay- newspapers were screaming that "A Slave Rebellion of ward Shepherd, a Free Negro watchman in theirattempt Immense Size" was underway in the South. The long- to take the train trestle over the Potomac River. Shep awaited slave insurrection had started, and terror spread herd died 12 hours later, and Browns biographer, in through the land. As some indication of the sympathies spite of his sympathy for Brown, was unable to ignore of the northern press, the Netu York Herald printed a the irony of the situation. "This was, indeed," Villard, speech calling for armed insurrection by Gerit Smith oneof his mostsympathetic biographers, writes, "an ill alongside ofJohn Browns"provisional constitution." omen for the armyof liberation. The first man to fall at Washington lost no time in reacting to this provoca their hands was neither a slave-owner, nor a defender of tion. On Monday, October 17, President Buchanan or slavery, nor one who suffered by it, but a highly re dered Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lt. J. E. B. Stuart to spected , well-to-do colored man, in full possession of Harpers Ferry to apprehend the insurrectionists. By his liberty and favored with the respect of the white noon theJefferson Guards had seized the Maryland side community."'-- of the bridge over the Potomac, effectively cutting Thingswent downhill from there. Brown off from his base of operations at the Kennedy According to Villard, Brown was not only "without Farm and any possibility of retreat. Resistance folded any clear and definite plan of campaign," he also quickly after that. When Lee and Stuarts men stormed "seemed bent on violating every military principle.. . the arsenal, Browns men could hardly defend them by placing a river between himself and his base of sup selves. Brown would have been killed on the spot had plies—the Kennedy farm—and leaving no adequate not Israel Greens sword struck his belt buckle. As a re force on the river bank to insure his being able to fall sult, Brown was captured, and from that moment until back to that base. Hardly had he entered the town he was hanged at Charlestown Court House, he was al when, by dispersing his men here and there, he made lowed to propound his own legend to the press which his defeat as easy as possible. Moreover, he had in mind gathered at his feet during his last incarceration. The no well-defined purpose in attacking Harpers Ferry, great slave insurrection which was the lynchpin of his save to begin his revolution in aspectacular way, capture military plan never happened, but in its place Brown a few slave-holders and release some slaves."'-' In addi got something better than that. He got to goad the tion to that blunder. Brown failed to secure the heights whole country into war. above the town, which allowed sharpshooters placed The South was appalled at the way that the North there to pick off his men at will. When Browns men at turned Brown into a hero. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who tempted to flee by swimming the Potomac back into had entertained John Brown at his home in Concord, Maryland, theywere picked off in this manner. Massachusetts, referred to Brown as a "transcendentalist Villard feels that Browns failure as a general made saint."'"' Both Emerson and his protege Henry David him a much more likely candidateas martyr: Thoreau had conversed with Brown, and it was during Asa wielderof"arms, John Brown inspires no enthu those conversations, according to Franklin Benjamin siasm; not even the flaming swordof Gideon in his Sanborn, another member of the Secret Six, that they hands lifts him about the ordinary run of those who gained "that intimate knowledge of Brown's character battled in theirdayfora greatcause. Forall hisyears and general purposewhich qualified them ... to make of dreaming that he might become another those addresses on his behalf which were the first re Schamyl, or Toussaint L'Ouvcrture, or the Moun sponse among American scholars to the heroism of the tain Marion of a new war of liberation, he was any man.. .During chose conversations. Brown had thingbut a general, hi his knapsack ... lay instead a convinced both Emerson and Thoreau that he was a humble pen to bring him glory. For when he was transcendentalist, and after his death the sage of Con stripped of his liberty, of the arms in which he ex cord and the poetofWalden Pond both participated in ulted, the great power of the spirit within was re Browns canonization as a "transcendentalist saint." On vealed to him. The letters which now daily went the dayJohn Brown was hanged,Thoreau told a crowd forth to friends and relatives, and speedily found their way into print, Found their way also to the of true believers that "Some 1800years ago Christ was hearts of all who sympathized with him misguided crucified: this morning, perchance. Captain Brown was us he was, herewas another martyrwhose hloodwas hung. These are twoends of a chain which is not with to be the seed, not of his church, but of his creed.'"' out its links. His is not Old Brown any longer; he isan
Februaiy2008 / 27 angel of light. . . Not to be outdone by his protege, THE SOUTH WAS APPALLED Emerson called Brown, "that new saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of men Needless to say, the Southwas appalled by this sortof into conflict and death, —the new saint awaiting his rhetoric. According to Otto Scott. martyrdom, and who, it he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross."'-'* Americas most be The South [was] first amazed and then driven into loved poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had similar fury bytheNorthern elevation ofJohn Brown. Rev things to say in his diary, where he claimed that the day elation that his raid had been incited, financed and armed by flunous persons in the North, and that of Browris hanging would mark "the date of a new other Northerners rose to praise the terror he cre Revolution—quite as much needed as the old one. Even atedimbued the people of theSouthwithfear—and now as I^rite, they are leading old John Brown to ex with a rising realization that something new and ecution in Virginia for attempting to rescue slaves! This dangerous in racial conflict was upon them."- is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will come soon."'-^ The only member of the New England When Lincoln claimed that "John Brown's effort was literary pantheon who disagreed with Emerson's equat peculiar," because "it was nota slave insurrection. It was ing of John Brown with Jesus was Nathaniel an attempt by white men to. get a revolt among slaves," Hawthorne, now recently returned from Europe, who the South for once was in full agreement with Lincoln. opined that no man was more justly hanged thanJohn In fact, Scott continues. Brown. It was that peculiarity the white Southerners found This was not simply a question of elites talking to inexplicable andsinister. The idea that men of their each other. When five men and a Boston constable at own race would kill them on behalfofanother had tempted to arrest Franklin Benjamin Sanborn in Con never really been credible to them, until Harpers cord on April 3, 1860, his sisters mobilized the entire Ferry. Until then they had scorned the Northern town to thwart the arrest. One day later, the Supreme concern for black slaves as a cloak for political Court nullified the arrest and Sanborn received a hero's power. The abolitionist clergy and its attempt to welcome when he returned to Concord. paint all the people of the South as Christian pari Once Emerson and Thoreau had taken the plunge, ahs had not shaken the Scotch-Irish inheritors of comparisons equating John Brown and Jesus Christ be the faith ofJohn Knox; they knew better. But when came cortimonplace. Virginia, Henry Ward Beecher white men were shot dead in the streets of Harper's claimed, had made John Brown a martyr, and Brown Ferry and their murderers heldaloftasexamples of a did nothing to dissuade his transcendentalist acolytes. higherlaw, the South felt itselfat bay.'" During his final imprisonment, his words were broad Before Harpers Ferry, men on both sides of the Ma- cast by sympathetic newspaper accounts across the son-Dixon line struggled to keep the Union together. north. Taking his cue from Emerson and Thoreau, After Harpers Ferry, when the White House, Congress, Brown nowbegan to refer to himself as theChrist: "You and the Supreme Court proved either unwilling or un know," he stated on November I, 1859, "that Christ able to indict the Secret Six or deal effectively with the once armed Peter. So also in my case, I think he put a threat they posed, the South concluded that it would sword into my hand, and there continued it, so long as he sawbest,and then kindly took it from me.... I wish have to deal with that threat in its own way: you could know with what cheerfulness I am now The Southerners agreed that Harper's Ferry was wielding the "Sword of the Spirit" on the right hand merely a harbinger of more raids to come. Led by and on the left.""" whites, financed and armed by the North, directed "I do not feel conscious of guilt in taking up arms," by men safe in Northern sanctuaries, these raids Brown claimed, and then he added brazenly that "Jesus would strike against plantations and homes alike, to creatc a guerilla war unprecedented in its pattern, of Nazareth was doomed in like manner. Why should perilous to thesafety of all white Southerners.""' not I be?""' After Harpers Ferry, the South began to treat the North as not only a separate nation, but asa hostile na tion which threatened invasion from without and
28 / CULTUREWARS which allowed all of its organs of public opinion free Charlestown and escape with Brown to the North. It rein in calling for a slave rebellion within its borders. was only with the greatest reluctance that Sanborn The threat of armed insurrection among the Souths called off the attack. "Object abandoned." Sanborn blacks producedasa result the same effect which it had wrote to Higginson. "So I suppose we must give up all produced in the aftermath of the Nat Turner rebellion hope of saving our old friend."'-'" and which it wouldalso produce in the aftermath of Re John Browns raid convinced the South that it had to construction; the whites cracked down on their black arm itself in self-defense. In the view ofSenator Mason slaves and barred the movement of free black in the ter of Virginian: "John Browns invasion was condemned ritory they controlled. [in the North] only because it failed. But in view of the The South was appalled at the cult of John Brown sympathy for him in the North and persistent efforts of which arose as a result of the collaboration ofNew York the sectional party there to interfere with the rights of newspapers and Transcendental pundits from Concord; the South, it was not at all strange that the Southern "To them [theSouth] he was a fanatic who sought not States should deem it proper toarm themselves and pre only to steal cherished property, but to establish anar pare for anycontingency that mightarise."'-'' chy, to reenact Nat Turners horrors, to make the ter After an extensive investigation, theJoint Committee rible scenes of the Haytian Negro revolution insignifi of theGeneral Assembly ofVirginia concluded on Janu cant beside the atrocities he would set on foot.' " ary 26, 1860 that as long as the Republican party Once it became clear that they were not going to be "maintains its presentsectional organization and incul indicted for treason or conspiracy, the Secret Six joined cates itspresent doctrines, theSouthcanexpect nothing in the propaganda offensive against the South. less thana succession ofsuchtraitorous attempts to sub vert its institutions and to inciteits slaves to rapineand Parker was in Europe on a futile search for health, when Harper's Ferry was attacked; but he bore his murder. The crimes ofJohn Brown were neither more testimony manfully: "Of course, I was not aston nor less than practical illustrations of the doctrines of ishedto hear that an attempt had beenmade to free the leaders of the Republican Party. The very existence the slaves in a certain part of Virginia.. . Such 'in of such a party is an offence to the whole South. surrections* will continueaslongasslavery lasts, and Browns intention to "incite insurrection" among the will increase, both in frequency and in power, justas slaves was clear; it was only because of "the loyalty and the people become intelligent and moral ... It is a well-affected disposition of the slaves that he did not good Anti-Slavery pictureon the Virginia shield: a succeed in creating a servile war, with its necessary at manstanding on a tyrant andchopping his head off tendants of rapine and murder of all sexes, ages, and with a sword; and I would paint the sword holder conditions."'"*' black and the tyrant white, to show the immediate Less than two days after Brown launched his ill-fated application of the principle."' raid, the full scope of the catastrophe began to dawn on The South felt that the North was conspiring against OttilieAssing and Frederick Douglass. John Brown had it and wanted to nip the revolution in the bud Browns been captured;mostof his men were dead, and the slave raid on Harpers Ferry and his apotheosis at the hands of insurrection he anticipated had produced not a single the pundits "revived with tenfold strength the desires of Negro willing to fight at his side. But worse than that, a Southern Confederacy.""^ from Assing and Douglass's point of view, when Brown The Souths determination to hang Brown confirmed was captured. Browns carpetbag was captured along theNorth in itssuspicions that they were dealing with a with him, and in it were letters from Gerit Smith and barbarous race of people who were essentially un- Frederick Douglass implicating them in a conspiracy behind the attack. Virginias governor, Henry Wise, re American, members of a different culture which was not compatible with Americ;js foundational principles. quested President Buchanans assistance in arresting the The outrage was so great that it spawned plots to liber conspirators, and he left no doubt that the one he ate Brown beforehis c.xccution. Lvsander Spooncr plot wanted above all was "Frederick Douglass, a Negro man ted to kidnap Governor Wise and hold him hostage ... charged with . . . inciting servile insurrection. aboard a seagoing rug until Brown wa.s released. A Douglass was in Philadelphia at the time, hoping that a group of Clerman "48ers fniin New York, planned with crowd of his white friends there would accompany him ro the Walnut Street Ferry and shield him from possible the collaboration of the Secret Six, ro attack arrest by US marshals, l.iickily, Douglass made it out of
Febniaiy2008 / 29 town without their assistance. For none ot them were on the altar of their own megalomania. Rather, it willing to risk their lives or fortunes on Douglass's be showed in Assing's view that "Only a society that per half. verted law to justify its transgressions against humanity Once the immediate danger of arrest passed, could persecute this man as a criminal, she charged; Douglass had other equally pressing concerns. Locked only a corrupt world, only a debased law could de in his desk in his house in Rochester were several letters nounce him as a terrorist."' linking Douglass to Brown and the other Secret Si.x Assing's defense of Douglass was, if anything, more conspirators as well as a provisional constitution in outrageous than her defense of Brown. Assing claimed Browns bwn hand for the revolutionary regime that was that "the famous orator Frederick Douglass" was the supposed to have taken power after Browns success at only man who stood up toacknowledge frankly his par Harpers Ferry. Fully aware of the magnitude of the ticipation in the conspiracy, even though the conse charges that could be leveled against him, Douglass fled quences for him are more dangerous and pernicious first to Canada, and then, on November 12, from New than for mostothers."'"*'' She then added, seemingly un Brunswick to England aboard the steamer Scotia. "I aware that she was contradicting herself, that after cold butj feel that I was going into exile, perhaps for Douglass was identified as one of the leaders of the life," he later wrote. "Slavery seemed to be at the very Harpers Ferry conspiracy, that it was "only by his hasty top of its power.... No one who has not himself been flight to Canada did he escape the clutches of the compelled to leave his home and country and go into United States marshals, these henchmen of [the] gov permanent banishment can well imagine the state of ernment."'-" mind and heart which such a condition brings.""* The Douglass was reluctant to accept the honors which Baltimore Sun was unimpressed by Douglass's self-serv Assing offered him. In his autobiography, he claimed ing account of his role in the Harpers Ferry massacre, that he himselfwas unsure whether it was "my discre calling it "a curiosity, a rare specimen of craven impu tion or cowardice"'"^' that prevented him from joining dence."'"*' Brown. But he was adamant in assuring his readers that Assing eventually published her own account of the "The taking of Harpers Ferry was a measure never en events of October 1859, in a piece entitled "The Insur couraged by my word or by my vote."'" In her article, rection atjHarpers Ferry." Heraccount showed "beyond Assing twists Douglass's frank admission of indecision doubt that she had knowledge of Browns venture pos at bestand cowardice at worst, into "a magnificent, bril sessed onlybymembers of the innercircle."'"*"' In herat liant manifesto dictated by that implacable hatred for tempt tolexonerate Douglass of any wrongdoing, she slavery and that dedication to liberating the oppressed only implicated him further. Much of what the world which knows noconsequences, no matter how devastat knew about Brown came from Colonel Forbes, who ing their effect on his life."'^' had turned on Brown when Brown failed to come up In retrospect, Assing's motivation in writing this with the rnoney he demanded. In the course of her nar frankly biased apologia forwhateveryone else saw as an rative, Assing revealed that Forbes had met with act of cowardice is not hard to fathom. Douglass was Douglass at his home in Rochester in November of now out of the country living on an island a mere 30 1858 and thatDouglass had given Forbes money as well miles from the European continent where Assing still as contact among, as Douglass put it, "my German had contactsand thousands of miles away from the Ne friends in |New York," a reference, for those who knew, gro wife Assing had come to believe had usurped her to Assing's circle of radical friends in Hoboken.''^' position as Douglass's one true love. If Assing posi Assing eventually came to the conclusion that Forbes tioned Douglass in the right way in the mind of the was a con man, but not before implicating herself and German-speaking world, her articles in combination Douglass even deeper in theconspiracy behind Brown. with the German translation of his autobiography In the same piece, Assing referred to Brown, as "the might bethe beginning of their new life together on the hero of Kansas," a superhuman figure who was "Stern continent. One canonly imagine how many daydreams and implacable like death itself," but "never guilty ot Assing savored of Dark Fred, the noble savage from needless cruelty; to the contrary, he often proved his in America, being paraded around by an even nobler nate kindness and humanity."'*' The raid on Harpers Ottilie, the half-Jewish Delilah, who opened Dark Ferry had shown not that America was underassault by Fred's mind (and by implication the mindof his race) to terrorists who were willing to offer human sacrifice up die blinding light of Feuerbachian atheism. What a tri-
30 / CULTURE WARS uinph tor Cjenniin ciilrure that would be! progress will be made by the people that could not be And yet It never happened. Doii^Lis-ss daughter died, effected by fifty, even 100 years of peace. By taking this forcing him to return home no matter what the conse- step the nation has decidcd its fate, and there is a great tjuence.s. Bythe time he got home, wliatever role he had future ahead."'""' played in the Harpers Ferry aftair had become moot. The real contribution of the German *48ers who Virginia could no longer extradite him because Virginia came to America was that they ignited the second wa.s now at war with the United States. Atnerican Revolution, otherwise known as the Civil In April of 1861, the Civil War broke out, and the War: revokitionaries rejoiced when it did. Fligginson was ju rheir reward was that they were able to participate bilant. A.ssing saw the Civil War as the outbreak oFher in a rev{>lution that resurrected the American long-awaited revokition. Assing repeatedly referred to Dream: "One great revolution will educate a nation the Civil War as a revolution: "The circumstances that more rapidly than a centuryof peace. Less than ten have led to the outbreak of this revolution at this time years have elapsed since we sheltered in our houses are accidental: however, the deeper seminal cause ex the fugitives from Harpers Ferry and their allies, isted already at the inception of the republic and has since we helped them across the borders, and only grown along with the country until it assiuned its four years later our volunteers entered the con present dominance: it is the eternal conflict between sla quered Southern cities and fortresses with the very and freedom that no power in the world can re soundsof the hymn:John Brown's body lies a mold- ering in the grave; hissoul is marching on. solve.""^ According to Assing, the Civil War was a continua In the lecture Assing worked up on Brown's at tion of the American Revolution. Everyrevolution leads to a civil war. War, according to her view, was revolu tempted insurrection at Harpers Ferry, John Brown's true errand was not the bloody slave raid but the peace tionary progress in fast forward; ful mountain republic he planned for fugitive slaves. "I The last ten days have made a tremendous revolu keep still a letter from John Brown to Frederick tion in all thingspertaining to the po.ssihle hirureof Douglass, written a few weeks before the attack on the colored people of" the United States. VCe shall Harpers Ferry: He warmly advocated his demand, and stay here and watch the current of events, and serve ever represented it as Frederick Douglass's duty to com the cause of freedom and humanity in any way that ply with it. If Frederick Douglass could have been persuaded, he would in all War, according to Assing, was revolutionaiy probability have shared the fate of the others, who were progress in fast forward. either killed or executed as high traitors. In the months leading up shall be open to us during the struggle now going to the war and throughout its duration, both Assing on between the slave power and the government. and Douglas used their journalistic skills and contacts When the Northern people have been made to ex to call for the same black uprising which John Brown perience a little !nt)re of the savage barbarism ol sla failed to provoke. "Should the dreaded Negro uprising very. they mav he willing to make war upon ii, and actually erupt," Assing wrote in January 1861 in that ease we stand ready to lend ;i hand in any way wecan he of service. At .my rate, this is no time it would squelch :ill rebellious movements more for us to leave the couiury'" quickly and moresurely than ail repressive measures ol the government would do, lor none of the slave I'Ven aftei" the war. Assing never wavered in her belief •sr.ues has the means to fight a superior bljck force. that wai" was the best metboil for bringing about revohi- At the first news of the destruction of a k-w planta tioniiry change: " The regular development ol nations is tions anil the killingof some slave-holders and over a slow process, .so that one century in that respect seers. these verv loutlinouths and rufllans who roday cbangcs less than live years in an intliviilicil lile, but lei .ue onh' ton eager to curse the North wotilil come crawling lor its protection and assistanee.'""' a revolution eru|H. antl within the shorteM [K-riotl
Febniaiy 2008 / 31 On July 4, 1861, Douglass denounced Union Gen she VDWcd that she would do everything she could eral Butler as a traitor because he ol^fered to use United to save "her" successful American revolution from States troops to put down a slave insurrecticm in Mary Hilling in to the hands of the enemy. The lesson of land. Assing could not have agreed more. Both l84tS deeply implanted in As' mind could never be erased. The revolution in Germany had not just Douglass and Assing criticized Lincoln's Emancipation been defeated by military forces but had also fallen Proclamation because it did not include an explicit ap by a process ofself-deconstruction—undermined by peal for black insurrection. In a speech he delivered in political wavering and bickering, by lack ofcourage, Philadelphia on January 14, 1862, Douglass advocated by cheap compromises, by betrayal of radical com arming the slaves in theSouth as insurrectionists. mitments." Before long, Assing and Douglass's campaign to set off a slave rebellion began to bear fruit, although prob Nowit looked as if the same thingwere going to hap ablynot the fruit they had hoped for: pen in America in the wake of the Civil War. The ex cesses of the Reconstruction era had led Nathan In December 1862Jefferson Davis dcciarcd that the Southern slave code would be used against African Bedford Forest to found the Ku Klux Klan. Confronted American soldiers caught by the Confederates— with ever increasing resistance, the Republicans began that is. they would be treated as insurrectionists. As to lose their revolutionary fervor in dealing with the a result of this proclamation, black prisoners of war South and began tocutdeals that would lead toa modus were executed in the South, the wounded were re vivivendi rather that revolutionary reform. Andrew fused medical treatment or murdered on the spot; Johnson's restoration of home rule in the South began a exchange of black prisoners was ruled out."'" process which led eventually to what the South would call its "redemption," which is to say the all but total Once again, the dialectic of the NatTurner rebellion disenfranchisement of the Negro and the reassertion of reasserted Itself. Calls for armed insurrection from the the hegemony which white Southerners had lost during North were met by renewed repression in the South, and the hapless Negro was caught in the middle. He re the war and Reconstruction. This chain of events caused Frederick Douglass to rethink his retirement sented theoppression oftheslaveholder, butat thesame from the abolitionist struggle which the Emancipation time, as John Brown's raid had shown, he was reluctant Proclamation seemed to invite. Instead of retiring, to become the pawn of northern revolutionaries as well. Douglass retooled and came upwith a new slogan: "Sla The Ernancipation Proclamation seemed to put very is not abolished until the black man has the bal Frederick Douglass out of a job, but as the reaction to reconstruction spread throughout the south after the lot."'^'" By 1870 Ottilie Assing had succeeded in bringing the war, Doug ass began to have second thoughts. Ottilie light of atheism to Dark Fred. The result was that he continued to be the apostle of German atheism and lost his constituency among the Negroes, who retained continued to write to Feuerbach about the progress of their faith in Christ. Shortly after President Grant an her star pupil: nounced the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, there jwas one obstacle to a loving and lasting on March 30, 1870, Douglass addressed a celebration friendship—namely, the personal Christian God. of theevent in Philadelphia andsucceeded in scandaliz Early iinpressions, environments, and the beliefs ing all present by talking like a German Marxist. stilldorninating this entire nation held sway over D. Douglass began his speech by refusing to engage in any The ray of light of German atheism had never "hackneyed cant about thanking God for this deliver reached!him, while I, thanks to natural inclination,' ance.""'"^ He then proceeded to attack the churches training, and thewhole influence of German educa tion and literature, had overcome the belief in God which "led everything against the abolition of slavery, at an eai-ly age."'' always holding us back by telling us that God would abolish slavery in his own good time.""''' The black But as a Ihalf-Jew she still remembered the reaction clergy in attendance were shocked and dismayed by which had' swept through Germany in the wake of Douglass's atheism. Douglass's response, which Napoleon's defeat. Assing feared "a tragic repetition of Diedrich claims probably came from Assing's pen, did the flite to which the Jewish community in Germany little to mollify them. Freedom had come about had been forced to submit during the restoration pe "Thanks not to faith, but to the enlightenment of the riod.""'- As a result age, and the growth of rational ideas among men, to
32 / CULTURE WARS differ with the church todaydoes not bring torture and America. The main reason for this volta face was the physical death.""'" In a letter to a comrade in arms, wretched excess of the Reconstruction era, which the Assing exulted in the fact that she had goaded Douglass North imposedas punishment on the South, but which into doing battle with what she termed with thinly it felt it could no longer justify. When men like Gover veiled contempt as "the pious party." nor Vance of North Carolina pointed out that during Finally, Douglass is in open battle with the pious Reconstruction "the criminals sat in the lawmaking chamber, on the bench and in the jury-box, instead of party, after they had long ceascd to know what to make of him. On the occasion of the ratification standing in the dock,"'^' the North had no reply. celebration for the Fifteenth Amendment in Phila During that same year, the event which Weaver terms delphia he spoke up against the silly drivel about "the final Confederate offensive" also took place when "divine providence" and the resolutions "to thank the men who had defended the South in her hour of God for this miracle," saying "I deal here in no need assembled in Chattanooga and formed the United hackneyed cant about thanking God for this great Confederate Veterans "to breathe defiance at Yankee deliverance; I look upon this great revolution as civilization."'"- The South could now portray itselfas having been brought about by man, rather than by "high-minded Cavaliers fighting fanatical Roundheads" any special intervention of Divine Providence.""*" or as "La Vendee, destroyed and desecrated by infidel armies,"'^' but in its hatred ofYankee culture it failed to Missing from Assings account was any understanding understand that there was a difference between a Tran- that the "pious party" was largely made up of the black scendentalist zealot like Thaddeus Stevens and an in preachers who comprised the backbone of political and dustrialist like Andrew Carnegie. Nor did they under ethnic organization in the black communityand would stand that the Civil War marked the passing of the remain so for the foreseeable future. Assing failed to see former as the cultural icon of the North and the rise of that in alienating Douglass from the "pious party," she the latter. Both men were conflated in the image of the also alienated him from his own people. hated Yankee, and as a result theSouth fought a culture Cut off from his own people by the German-Jewish war on two fronts, often batding an enemy which no Delilah, Douglass became of necessity tied more and longer existed. more closely to the Republican Party at a time when it The promoters of southern Redemption failed to un was willing, if not eager, to abandon its revolutionary derstand that the Civil War had destroyed not-only the claims in favor of more stable and longer-lasting politi South but Concord, which is to say, the high cultureof cal power. Eventually, as Reconstruction gave way to the North, as well. Symbolic of that demise was the Redemption, Frederick Douglass abandoned revolu death in 1864 of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the flower of tionand allowed the Republicans to buy him offwith a New England culture. In the aftermath of the Civil series of increasingly demeaning patronage jobs. After War, New York displaced Concord as the literary capital working tirelessly for the election of Rutherford B. of the United States, and money becamethe criterion of Hayes, Douglass received his reward when the Senate literary merit as well as every other kind of merit. Once confirmed Douglass as Marshal of the District of Co "Puritan zealots trailing clouds of Transcendentalism" lumbia on March 17, 1877. One month before receiv had been replaced by ing this honor, Hayes had taken Douglass aside and in formed him that he planned "to pursue conciliatory the money-seeking class which, as Dc Bows Review policy toward the South." had once declared, "cared nothing for the Negroes The Redemption of the South began in 1877 when unless to dislike them."and "nothingfor the Aboli President Hayes ordered thewithdrawal of federal garri tionists. unless to wish that they would hold their tongues and staytheir pens, or transport themselves sons from the South. In 1890 Senator Henry Cabot en masse to Exeter Hall, never to return to Lodge of Massachusetts introduced the "Force Bill" into America."'^* the Senate, a bill which would have "authorized Federal supervision of elections in all districts where there was Once the Republicans backed away from Reconstruc evidence of fraud or intimidation."' " The bill was an tion, the punishment of the South took a back seat to attempt to guarantee the franchise to the Souths Ne its financial and industrial exploitation. At this point groes, but it was soundly defeated and signaled that the the disenfranchisement of the Negro made perfect sense cause of white supremacy was now in the ascendancy in to the Yankee robber barons if, by that gesture, the
Febn]ary2008 / 33 s 7 Heien Pitts
suit never knew who his father was. In abandoning Anna Murray, the woman who had bought his freedom and by whom he bad children who knew who their fa ther was. Dougla.ss would be banding a victory ro the slave owners who felt that slaves could breed but not if marry. According ro Diedrich, Assing never understood chat Douglass's attitude toward marriage and family dif fered fundamentally from hers. For her, as for Clara Mundc's Aphra Behn, "it means profaning marriage when you turn ic into indissoluble feccers which may not even be shattered when it haschained us to a hell of pain."'" For Douglass, however, slavery had already nullified marriage and "made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted the mother chat bore me into a myth; it shrouded my father in mystery and left me without an intelligible beginning in the world.'' " There were other more obvious things that Assing ei peace that allowed for rhc financial exploitation of the ther didn't understand or refused to admit. The most South could be secured. At this point Yankee financiers obvious was thatshe was no longer as se.Kually attractive arrived in their private railway cars and bought up the as she had been 22 years ago. Assing cried to disguise resources of the South at 10 cents to the dollar. this flict by writing long letters abouc che "rejuvenacion" By accepting his patronage job as Federal Marshall, she was experiencing in Europe, but intellectual rejuve Douglass signaled his acquiescence to those plans. nacion could only go so far in a relationship like this, es Douglass was 59 years old at the time and cut off from pecially since she had lost her teeth and was showing both his own natural constituency and the men who other signs ofage. In the absence of the legal bond of were willing to fund him when he was younger. As a re marriage, which she had scorned openly for her entire sult the temptation to trade in principle for asteady in adult life, what exacdy was to bind her to him? Her come was too great to resist. mind? More discussions of Feuerbach? These were slim Assing heard about Douglass's capitulation while in reeds indeed, especially when confronted with the Europe, with the unfulfilled hope still in her heart that power ofhuman passion unconstrained by reason for so hewould eventually join her tiiere. That hope was given long. Whatever she had to offer Douglass at this time in new life when news of Anna iVlurrays death reached her life, there were indications chat it wasn't enough. Af Assing. Now the way was dear for the fulfillment of the ter his demotion from Federal Marshall to recorder of fantasy she had been nurturing for over two decadcs as deeds. Douglass hired an adoring white feminist 20 the other woman. years his junior as his clerk. Before long, the old pattern The fundamental flaw in this plan was Assing's failure reasserted itself Douglass agonized for a while, writing to understand the Negro slave's attitude coward mar poems in which he compared himself to Adam in the riage. For Assing and her revolutionary friends, the issue ijarden of Eden, and Helen Pitts, his clerk to forbidden was quite clear. Marriage was, ro use the term of Will fruit: "Amazed I stood in wonder sound/Till then such iam Godwin which so impressed Percy Shelley, "the fruit I'd never found,/I needed help and looked around/ most odious of all monopolies." Ihe war on the south For means to gain possession."' liberating the slaves was only a prelude in Assing's mind All the while As.sing became increasingly despondent, to the greater revolution which would abolish nuirri- writing him reproachful letters from Europe, where she niony, private property, anti religion. Only after that act still hoped beyond hope chat they could crcate a life to of cicansing destruction had t.iken place ct)uld a man gether. Douglass continued to resist the call to Europe, call himself free. nor did he invice Assing to come to America. By the Douglass having been raised as a slave in the South, summer of 1883, "the conflicc becween inclination and however, had already been libcrarctl by char very slavery obligation had become so fierce char he was 'depressed from the burdens ol tnaninn)ny anil properly. In fact he almost to che poinc of a breakdcnvn.'"' " Early in 1884, himself was a product ol sexual liberation, and as a re- Douglass resolved che conflict by marrying Pitts. As if
34 / CULTUREWARS this were not rejection enough, Douglass made the theJews in bondage in Egypt, so I have frequently, since break with Assing even more dramatic by marrying his freedom, been compelled to compare the prejudice, new bride in a Presbyterian Church in Washington, at a even persecution, which the Jewish people have to face ceremony at which a minister ofTiciated. and overcome in different parts of the wodd with the Assing held fire For eight months, but then, on Au disadvantages of the Negro in the United States and gust 21, 1884, she responded to Douglass's double be elsewhere.'"'' trayal bycommitting suicide in the Bois de Boulogne in Negroes, in other words, could succeed in the harsh Paris. When he heard the news, Douglass was quick to realities of post-Reconstruction America if they imi put his own spin on her final act ot defiance and despair tatedJews. In The FutureoftheAmerican Negroy Wash by claiming that she was sufi-'ering fiom bre;Lst cancer, ington wrote; "Unless the Negro learns more and more thereby absolving himself for any responsibility for her to imitate theJew in thesematters, to havefaith in him death. If Douglass was hoping to forget her, Assing, self, he cannot expect to have any high degree of suc who knew Douglass's weaknesses well enough, made cess." surethat thatwould not happen when shewilled himas In the wake of this and similar utterances, affluent her legacy the yearly interest on her Si3,000 fortune. German Jews began to pour their money into Upon Douglass's death the principle would go to the Washington's school. In 1904 Washington created a Society for the Prevention ofCruelty to Animals. "Jewish seat" on Tuskegee's board and persuaded Paul M. Warburg to take it.'"- Among the wealthy Jews who were subsequendy to contribute toTuskegee were Jacob AN ACCOMPLICE and Mortimer Schiff, James Loeb, and Felix Warburg (all members of Kuhn, Loeb), as well as the Seligmans, Douglass lived out the rest ofhis life as an accomplice the Lehmans, Joseph Pulitzer, Jacob BillikopfandJulian both in the death of Ottilie Assing and in the redemp Mack. Schiffcontinued this arrangement annually until tion of the South. Instead of proposing revolution, Washington's death in 1915. Friedman sees in the rela Douglass ended his public career by giving lectures on tionship which Washington established with "Jewish himselfas a "self-made man," urging other Negroes to philanthropists like Schiff, Rosenwald and Warburg follow his example. He was succeeded as America's pre who supported him with money, time, and effort .. . mier Negro by Booker T. Washington, who was smart the first organized ties between the black and Jewish enough to understand that Douglass's new message was communities,""'-' ties that would eventuate in what tailor-made for their age. Inan era ofreaction to the ex came to be known as the Black-Jewish alliance. That al cesses of warand revolution, it was the onlymessage the liance, culminating in the rise of Marrin Luther PQng Negroes were allowed to share with each other in the and the Civil Rights movement, would become the public forum. main source of revolutionary activity in the United Booker T. Washington had founded the Tuskegee In States for thegreater partof ehe 20*'' century. Friedman, stitute, his school for blacks who were to be given in however, iswrong in thinking thatthe Black-Jewish alli dustrial and agricultural training, in 1881, right around ance began with Jacob Schiff linking upwith Booker T the time Frederick Douglass was falling in love with Washington. The pattern for the Black-Jewish alliance Helen Pitts. Four years later, Washington gave a speech hadalready been setin Frederick Douglass's relationship entitled "Cast down your buckets where you are' at the with Ottilie Assing. For more than a century after John Atlanta Exposition which catapulted him to a position Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Jews (or half-Jews) like of leadership among America's Negroes. In a country in Ottilie Assing, Jacob Schiff, Norman Mailer and Robert which both North and South had offered up the Negro Scheer, creator of Eldridge Cleaver, would attempt to onthe altar ofpolitical expedience and where the prom remake theNegro in their own image andturn him into ise of emancipation had faded into the reality ofsegre the avant garde of the revolutionary movement in gation and disenfranchisement, Washington looked America. around tor a ray ofhope and found it in the Jews: Ever Support for Tuskegee was only one ofJacob SchifF's since I can remember," he wrote, many philanthropic projects. Another one was the Rus I have had a special and peculiar interest in the his sian revolution. tory and progress of the Jewish race. As 1learned in sla very to compare the condition of the Negro with that of
Febniaiy2008 / 35 ^