29 pages • 58 minutes read
Henry David ThoreauA Plea for Captain John Brown
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1859A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Question of Violence in a Civil Society
The essential question of “A Plea for Captain John Brown” is when violence is permitted in a civil society. To counter reports that made Brown out to be wild and unstable, and his attack thus unjustified, Thoreau sought to portray Brown as a committed, disciplined man who was faithful to his cause. This apologia is predicated on comparing Brown with revolutionary leaders of the past, and also on presenting Brown as a modern transcendentalist man living by his values. Thoreau’s rhetorical approach is to build up Brown’s moral and rational perspective, and then to contrast this with the daily unremarked violence of slavery. The juxtaposition damns the situation in the US and looks forward to a future beyond slavery when Brown would be regarded as heroic.
Thoreau argues for the validity of anti-government violence by appealing to his Concord audience’s pride in the city’s Revolutionary War history. Thoreau traces Brown’s own ancestry to the Revolutionary War, implying that he has inherited its ideals. Meanwhile, Brown’s Puritan upbringing connects him to English revolutionary Oliver Cromwell, who also employed violence to establish his political goals, deposing and beheading King Charles I to establish a theocratic dictatorship in England. Brown, like these men, took direct action, Thoreau argues, while his audience holds their beliefs passively: “We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing them at a distance of history or space” (27). Brown attacked Harpers Ferry to free enslaved people—actions that, to Thoreau, are as relevant to the cause of liberty as those of any of the canonical figures of the past. These historical allusions reframe Brown from terrorist to rational radical reacting to a hypocritical political establishment.
Next, Thoreau considers Brown’s violence in the context of the violence of the brutality of slavery. He reminds his audience of the brutality of the slave trade and accuses the country of being one enormous enslaver: The US has “a coffle of four million slaves” (53), a statement that indicts Northern abolitionists as well as Southern enslavers. Using force to end slavery is justified because having abolitionist beliefs but doing nothing about them is the same as not having those beliefs at all, since the status quo means accepting much greater violence than that unleashed by Brown: “We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day” (57).
Finally, Thoreau invites the audience to consider the logical inconsistency of the current Union, noticing that “[t]here is hardly a house but is divided against itself” (24), a biblical allusion to Matthew 12:25—“A house divided cannot stand.” Thoreau thus agrees with a point made by Abraham Lincoln a year earlier during his campaign for the US Senate: that the country’s state was unstable. Thoreau abhors violence but sees that it may be an unavoidable response to state violence: “I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable” (57). In his conclusion, Thoreau imagines a not-so-distant future in which slavery is abolished through force, and Brown regarded as a champion of liberty.
The Self-Delusion of the Christian Church
A persistent theme throughout “A Plea for Captain John Brown” is the empty morality of the Christian Church. Thoreau recognizes a “stagnation of spirit” (26) in the Church; he contrasts its moral failings and unwillingness to get involved in the issue of slavery with Brown’s martyr-like behavior. Thoreau plays on the sympathies of the audience by comparing Brown to other famous religious figures, such as the Puritan demagogue Oliver Cromwell, portraying Brown as a guiding light for a Christianity that Thoreau feels has lost its way.
Thoreau establishes Brown’s religious credibility early in the essay: Brown’s men were a “God-fearing,” almost perfect “Cromwellian Troop” (10), comparing his forces with the religious zealotry of the English revolutionary whom American Christians of the time held in high regard. Thoreau also depicts Brown as a man of principle who can serve as a role model, unlike the modern Christian who “shows the whites of his eyes on the Sabbath and the blacks all the rest of the week” (26). Elevating him even further, Thoreau repeatedly compares Brown with Christ: “Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain that is not without its links” (68). By positioning Brown as the spiritual inheritor of Christ’s ideals, Thoreau argues that he is the “angel of light” (68) that the complacent Church needs to follow.
In contrast, Thoreau blames the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions directly for not allowing the topic of slavery to be brought up in church or school. He excoriates comfortable Christians who valorize the bravery of bygone religious heroes and put their faith in Christian organizations that do nothing to counteract slavery—behavior that Thoreau calls akin to idol worship, a practice specifically condemned by Christianity. Moreover, Thoreau argues that the Church is so inimical to Brown that it would probably have condemned Christ’s rebellion against the religious and political powers of his day as well: It “can never have done with excommunicating Christ while it exists” (25).
The Cowardice of Mass Media
“A Plea for Captain John Brown” excoriates the reactionary cowardice of the press. From the beginning, Thoreau seeks to “correct the tone and statements of the newspapers” (1). He challenges the press’s characterization of Brown as an irrational terrorist by exposing the press’s financial incentives, accusing them of preferring the optics of goodness to the complicated realities of moral action.
Thoreau rails against the uniform disapproval of the press toward Brown, a bias that prevents objective and truthful coverage. For example, Thoreau points outs, the newspapers refuse to print Brown’s full speech, instead picking and choosing elements that make him seem unhinged out of context: “I have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the report of that conversation and still call the principal in it insane” (45). The press wants to moralize against slavery without having to do anything about it; dismissing Brown is the easiest way to continue the comfortable lives of luxury supported indirectly by slavery and to avoid uncomfortable conversations: “So ye write in your easy-chairs” (70).
Thoreau then accuses the editors of playing it safe to enrich themselves. All editors focus first on their newspapers’ bottom line, so no editor “will deliberately print anything which he knows will ultimately and permanently reduce the number of his subscribers” (29). Instead, editors prefer addressing abolition through the slow and ineffectual processes of political conventions, grooming their subscribers into the complacent belief that abolition can’t be achieved outside of politics: “Newspaper editors argue [that] the agent to abolish Slavery could only be someone appointed by the President” (63). Thoreau charges these editors with ignoring their principles; they are angry with Brown because he put the lie to their claim of the moral superiority of the North: “He has taken the wind out of their sails, the little wind they had, and they may as well lie to repair” (30). This metaphor contains a play on words—just as boats have to lie in dock to get fixed, so newspapers now tell lies about Brown to restore their reputations. Thoreau instead challenges them to exert their power and influence to lead the nation in the fight for what is right.
Related Titles
By Henry David Thoreau
