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John Brown: terrorist or visionary?, Déc 11 2001
On his recent book-tour visit to Boulder, writer Barry Lopez said that he was reading this novel, which raises some fascinating questions about terrorism and patriotism. "When we gazed onto the world," abolitionist John Brown's last surviving son, Owen, tells us, "we stood as if on a peak bathed in the bright light of freedom, which enabled us to see the true nature of man, and therefore, simply by following our own true nature, we were able to follow the Lord God Almighty. And after much scrupulous examination, having confidently discerned the Lord's will, we naturally had determined to make all men and women free. If, to accomplish that great task, we must put to death those who would oppose us, then so be it: it is the will of the Lord: and in this time and place, He hath no greater work to set before His children than that they stamp upon the neck of Satan and crack the jaw of his followers and liberate all the white and black children of the Lord from the obscene stink and corruption of slavery. Simply, if we would defeat Satan, we must defeat his most heinous invention, which was American Negro slavery" (p. 567). In his 758-page narrative, Owen Brown triumphs in revealing the "Secret History" (p. 678) of his father's intriguing life. Through his son's eyes, we learn that John Brown was not only an "abolitionist firebrand," who changed the course of American history by slaughtering proponents of slavery in Kansas and by raiding the federal armory at Harper's Ferry in 1859, but also "a good Christian husband and father, a private man whose most satisfying and important acts were manifested in the visible comfort of his family" (p. 144). "He was a man who had pledged his life to bring about the permanent and complete liberation of the Negroe slaves" (pp. 144-45), Owen tells us. "The Lord speaks to me," his father explained. "He shows me things" (p. 678). Equally profound, chilling, and entertaining, Banks' historical novel follows "John Brown's little army of the Lord" (p. 570) from "helping Negroes escape from slavery to killing those who would enslave them" (p. 414), against a pre-Civil War portrait charged with the spirit of the times. "It was like a dream, a beautiful, soothing dream of late autumn," Owen recalls, "low, gray skies, smell of woodsmoke, fallen leaves crackling beneath my feet, and somewhere out there, in the farmsteads and plantations ahead of me, swift retribution! Freedom! The bloody work of the Lord!" (p. 451). Banks presents us with a mercurial John Brown, who will leave you long wondering: terrorist or patriot? madman or visionary? G. Merritt
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