John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave….

One of the ironic facts about John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, is that the leader of the small force sent to take it back was Colonel Robert E. Lee.  Yes, that Robert E. Lee.

Now, I happen to think that Lee was one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, in spite of his treason and taking up arms against the nation. He was a slave holder, inherited from his wife’s father – but they were freed according to his father-in-law’s will, remarkably in the middle of the Civil War in 1862.  He considered slavery an evil far more damaging to whites than blacks.  He vigorously opposed secession and agonized over his decision to abandon the Union.  He was one of the greatest battlefield tacticians in history, winning victories against lopsided odds.  But Lee’s greatest moment – the moment that transformed him from a great general into a great man – was when, at Appomattox, he refused his younger officers’ wishes to retreat to the mountains and continue fighting.  He became a great man when he gracefully accepted defeat.

From that moment on his life’s purpose was to reconcile the North and South.  He worried that newly-freed slaves were too ignorant to be capable of self-governance – a widely-held opinion in both North and South, and hardly beyond the pale – but saw that they must.  So, in 1869 he led the successful effort in Virginia to establish state-funded schools for blacks.  He warned the Radical Republicans that harsh measures against southern whites would trigger a violent backlash, which they did.  He warned southern whites not to give in to the temptation of bitterness, which they did.  And he warned both sides not to give in to hatred – which they did.  His greatness after the war lay in the wisdom of his advice and his constant, unwavering efforts to reconcile North and South, black and white.

But what of his opponent at Harper’s Ferry, John Brown?  I’ve never found anything to admire in the man.  He was a charismatic zealot who saw nothing wrong with murder in the holy cause of abolition.  He was a terrorist who rampaged through Kansas.  He was a warmonger out to start a race war by seizing weapons at Harper’s Ferry and distributing them to slaves he would free by force. 

That’s right.  John Brown, the mad zealot, was out to start a war.  Robert E. Lee, the professional soldier, was out to stop one.  John Brown epitomizes the wrong way to go about great change, even as we acknowledge the righteousness of his cause.  Lee largely failed in the war and after, but his example – his grace and courage and the generosity of his spirit – is one to admire and follow, even as we rightly condemn the cause he fought for.  Irony of ironies.

This little historic commentary has been brought to you by the fomenters of the Stop the Steal riot at the Capitol on January 6, whoever they were.  It will be interesting to see if this atrocious event and national embarrassment is dumped down the memory hole or if it becomes part of our national legacy.  I’m not taking bets.

The thing that concerns me is:  Will the Stop the Steal riot be our John Brown moment?  That was when the slave states became utterly convinced that the northern abolitionists would stop at nothing to destroy their culture and way of life, and they were left with no choice but to leave the Union.  And it was the moment the abolitionists realized that, yes, men were willing to fight and die to end the accursed evil of slavery.  The die was cast.  There was no turning back.  God and arms would decide the righteous victor.

The analogy isn’t perfect.  Donald Trump, the egotistic fool, didn’t storm the barricades and won’t hang.  Joe Biden, poor, senile old man, didn’t ride in to save the day.  But the angry rhetoric issuing from both sides indicates that the lessons learned are the wrong ones.  One side says, see, just like we’ve been saying for 4 years, those people really are deplorable, and crazy and violent to boot.  The other says, see, we told you, just like we’ve been saying for decades, they really are out to destroy our way of life, take away our God-given rights and fundamentally change America.   How far from that is it to, the only way to settle this is to fight it out?

As a conservative, I revere the Constitution, the American way of life, and the “permanent revolution” embodied in the process of democratic election of our leaders, which allows change without resorting to war.  I understand that we are all at times frail, foolish, and wrong.  I deplore the manifest inhumanity of man.  I recognize the difficulty of change, the foolishness of change for changes’ sake, and the attraction and folly of Utopian ideas that always fail us.  And I denounce the idea that the only way to settle anything in our great nation is to fight it out.

If this national disgrace is not to turn into national disaster, cooler heads must prevail.  Leaders on both sides must say to their more-passionate followers, if we are to avoid calamity, this is no time to act precipitously – and we are determined that there will be no calamity.  We can and will find a way to work this out equitably, but it will take time and an understanding that neither side will come away fully satisfied; that’s the nature of compromise, and we will have to compromise.

The initial responses, though, are not encouraging.  The House of Representatives has voted to impeach; and while it’s almost impossible to argue with the logic, it’s a move that can’t help but inflame the situation.  As the crafty French politician Talleyrand said, this is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.  Although Trump himself has been largely sidelined, his surrogates continue to stir the pot by screaming that the election was stolen.  Why is it so hard to believe that this time around, in an election that was just as close as it was in 2016, things went the other way, especially given Trump’s 5-year, nonstop campaign to insult, denigrate and enrage his opponents?  These two things can be true at the same time, and I’d argue almost certainly are: that there were serious irregularities in the electoral process, and that Trump really did lose.

At the moment the calm voices of reason are being drowned out by a hurricane of red-hot, unmoored passion.  Perhaps the Constitution will once again come to our rescue by doing what it was designed to do – slow things down to give tempers a chance to cool, allow all sides to be heard, and allow logic and reason to assert themselves.  Unfortunately, there is little that those of us who would avoid civil war can do now other than wait and see.  The crisis is at hand.

John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave.  So does Robert E. Lee’s.  Leave them there in peace.

• Kenneth D. Gough © 2021