A Plea for Captain John Brown

“A Plea for Captain John Brown” is a defense of radical abolitionist John Brown that seeks to set right the allegations of mental illness leveled against him by the press and to excoriate the Church for its complacency on the issue of slavery. The Church’s central place in early American history informs the tone and diction Henry David Thoreau employs as well as the metaphor and allusion present throughout the essay. This makes the location of the speech quite important. Thoreau first delivered his address at the First Concord Church in Concord, Massachusetts. The church had been established by Puritan leaders in 1636, and the first battle of the Revolutionary War took place partially on church grounds. Thoreau himself had once been a member of this congregation but left it in 1841 when membership was no longer compulsory. This layered history made Thoreau’s presentation all the more significant, as he connected Brown’s actions to freedom, one of the founding principles of the US, and to the moral imperative at the heart of Christianity—both ideals central to the Concord Church in which he spoke.

The essay is novel in its advocacy for a guerrilla fighter whose actions at Harpers Ferry would come to be understood as a prelude to the Civil War. Thoreau’s essay does not simply raise The Question of Violence in a Civil Society but valorizes it, framing abolition as the fulfillment of the Christian and American projects. While Thoreau’s recognition of the paradox that slavery presents to the Union echoes the convictions of many of his peers, he separates himself from the more commonplace sociopolitical and philosophical views of his time by suggesting that the violence of slavery is too glaring to be peacefully sustained and so pervasive that it justifies the use of force. Thoreau thus extends the argument of his influential 1849 essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” which promoted positive moral action—here, he positions even violence as the right kind of positive action on the issue of slavery.

“A Plea” seeks to prove the innocence of Brown by bolstering his character through literary and historical allusions. To recast Brown’s failure at Harpers Ferry, Thoreau evokes Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which extols the bravery of a doomed troop unit in the Crimean War. Thoreau then argues that Brown is the spiritual descendant of a Revolutionary War officer, comparing him to famed heroes Israel Putnam and Ethan Allen, thus appealing to his Concord audience’s patriotic spirit and encouraging them to count Brown as one of their own, since they too saw themselves as the inheritors of Revolutionary heroism—though Thoreau stresses that Brown’s respect for the union and the values of the Constitution are “firmer and higher principled” (6) than that of other men; he is all the more heroic because he is at odds with his countrymen. Finally, Thoreau compares Brown’s fervency and commitment to Puritan values to those of Puritan revolutionary Oliver Cromwell, who became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth after the English Civil War that saw the beheading of King Charles I in 1649. Thoreau invokes Cromwell to remind his audience of the noble violence of eras past.

The Church, to Thoreau, is a troublesome organization that deludes its followers by preventing the discussion of slavery in missionary work and school. The Self-Delusion of the Christian Church is anathema to his principles of transcendent truth: “We aspire to be something more than timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles” (19). Thoreau envisions Brown as an “angel of light” (68), embodying the Christian ideal. He often compares him to Christ as a fellow rebel and morally driven iconoclast: The two men’s actions are “two ends of a chain which is not without its links” (68). In contrast, Thoreau calls Christian abolitionists too comfortable and inactive, too willing to throw up their hands and criticize anyone who fights for the cause. His language is mocking and sarcastic; at one point, he accuses those in his audience who think Brown went too far of taking the bedtime prayer “Now I lay me down to sleep” (26) as their guide for daily behavior, preferring safety and comfort over justice.

Thoreau wants to expose the hypocrisy and The Cowardice of Mass Media that claimed Brown had mental illness—dismissal that he sees as willful misreading of Brown’s ideas to avoid having to account for their own inaction. Thoreau accuses William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator in particular of doing no favors to the cause of abolition by enforcing a strict pacifism on the movement. Instead, Thoreau calls out Garrison’s misplaced hope in politicians who agreed with his principles but told him, “[D]on’t make a noise about it” (54). The politicians only care about abolition when they need the votes; otherwise, “the government, its salary being insured, withdraws into the back shop, taking the Constitution with it” (54). To illustrate his point, Thoreau quotes Brown’s writings from Europe, in which the latter observes that “in England, the peasantry live on the soil which they cultivate, but in Germany, they are gathered into villages at night” (4). The implication is that, like the German peasants, the Northern abolitionists are removed from the violence of the South: Gathered in cities, they can look the other way on the issue of slavery.

Thoreau suggests that classism is at work—that the editors of the newspapers look down on Brown and his “rural exterior” (6) from the comfort of their “easy-chairs” (70). These editors, he suggests, resent Brown for getting his hands dirty, while they hide their hands in their pockets. This language juxtaposes Brown’s sun-weathered skin from a life spent outdoors to the plush interiors that cushion editors’ lives; it also compares Brown’s working hands with the soft, uncalloused ones of the upper class. In pointing out that the editors’ lack of lived experience is so pronounced that it tells on their bodies, Thoreau undermines the ethos, or position of authority, from which they speak. Thoreau dismantles their moral standing, arguing that while the typical editorial stance is to look down on the South, Garrison and his ilk are hypocrites for indirectly profiting from slave labor: “We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day” (57). Then, they force their futile convictions on their readership, prohibiting them from understanding the spirit in which Brown acted. Finally, Thoreau accuses them of being profiteers, too afraid of losing financially to take a principled stance: They “know very well on which side their bread is buttered” (29).

Many in Concord and throughout the abolitionist movement felt Brown was irrational to attempt such a far-fetched plan, but Thoreau wants to dismantle the claim that Brown’s attack was a failure. First, he reframes what happened, arguing that Brown didn’t win only because his fellow abolitionists didn’t stand behind him—his plan wasn’t to be a one-man army but to kick off a mass movement. Next, Thoreau points out the scope of Brown’s ambitions, reminding his audience that four million enslaved Americans would have considered Brown a savior had he succeeded. Brown was, after all, willing to live and die in support of his radical values—commitment that makes him a martyr rather than a symbol of futility: “No man has appeared in America as yet, who loved his fellow man so well, and treated him so tenderly. He lived for him. He took up his life and laid it down for him” (58). Brown’s death makes meaning out of his life; meanwhile, most people do not truly die, as they have not truly lived: “Do you think that you are going to die, sir? No! There’s no hope of you. You haven’t got your lesson yet” (59). Finally, Thoreau rejects the idea that Brown needs to have won for his actions to be just: Brown’s heroic action will inspire others, which is all the victory he needs.

On the question of slavery, Thoreau lets Brown’s words speak for themselves: “All you people of the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question” (76). Thoreau utilizes Brown’s warning to remind the audience who and what to fight against: the insanity of slavery, the violence of the state, the press that props up the state, and the silence of the Church.