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The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown's Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism
John Brown was fiercely committed to the militant abolitionist cause, a crusade that culminated in Brown's raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and his subsequent execution. Less well known is his devotion to his family, and they to him. Two of Brown's sons were killed at Harpers Ferry, but the commitment of his wife and daughters often goes unacknowledged. In The Tie That Bound Us, Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz reveals for the first time the depth of the Brown women's involvement in his cause and their crucial roles in preserving and transforming his legacy after his death.
As detailed by Laughlin-Schultz, Brown's second wife Mary Ann Day Brown and his daughters Ruth Brown Thompson, Annie Brown Adams, Sarah Brown, and Ellen Brown Fablinger were in many ways the most ordinary of women, contending with chronic poverty and lives that were quite typical for poor, rural nineteenth-century women. However, they also lived extraordinary lives, crossing paths with such figures as Frederick Douglass and Lydia Maria Child and embracing an abolitionist moral code that sanctioned antislavery violence in place of the more typical female world of petitioning and pamphleteering.
In the aftermath of John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, the women of his family experienced a particular kind of celebrity among abolitionists and the American public. In their roles as what daughter Annie called "relics" of Brown's raid, they tested the limits of American memory of the Civil War, especially the war's most radical aim: securing racial equality. Because of their longevity (Annie, the last of Brown's daughters, died in 1926) and their position as symbols of the most radical form of abolitionist agitation, the story of the Brown women illuminates the changing nature of how Americans remembered Brown's raid, radical antislavery, and the causes and consequences of the Civil War.
1114990072
The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown's Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism
John Brown was fiercely committed to the militant abolitionist cause, a crusade that culminated in Brown's raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and his subsequent execution. Less well known is his devotion to his family, and they to him. Two of Brown's sons were killed at Harpers Ferry, but the commitment of his wife and daughters often goes unacknowledged. In The Tie That Bound Us, Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz reveals for the first time the depth of the Brown women's involvement in his cause and their crucial roles in preserving and transforming his legacy after his death.
As detailed by Laughlin-Schultz, Brown's second wife Mary Ann Day Brown and his daughters Ruth Brown Thompson, Annie Brown Adams, Sarah Brown, and Ellen Brown Fablinger were in many ways the most ordinary of women, contending with chronic poverty and lives that were quite typical for poor, rural nineteenth-century women. However, they also lived extraordinary lives, crossing paths with such figures as Frederick Douglass and Lydia Maria Child and embracing an abolitionist moral code that sanctioned antislavery violence in place of the more typical female world of petitioning and pamphleteering.
In the aftermath of John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, the women of his family experienced a particular kind of celebrity among abolitionists and the American public. In their roles as what daughter Annie called "relics" of Brown's raid, they tested the limits of American memory of the Civil War, especially the war's most radical aim: securing racial equality. Because of their longevity (Annie, the last of Brown's daughters, died in 1926) and their position as symbols of the most radical form of abolitionist agitation, the story of the Brown women illuminates the changing nature of how Americans remembered Brown's raid, radical antislavery, and the causes and consequences of the Civil War.
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The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown's Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism
John Brown was fiercely committed to the militant abolitionist cause, a crusade that culminated in Brown's raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and his subsequent execution. Less well known is his devotion to his family, and they to him. Two of Brown's sons were killed at Harpers Ferry, but the commitment of his wife and daughters often goes unacknowledged. In The Tie That Bound Us, Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz reveals for the first time the depth of the Brown women's involvement in his cause and their crucial roles in preserving and transforming his legacy after his death.
As detailed by Laughlin-Schultz, Brown's second wife Mary Ann Day Brown and his daughters Ruth Brown Thompson, Annie Brown Adams, Sarah Brown, and Ellen Brown Fablinger were in many ways the most ordinary of women, contending with chronic poverty and lives that were quite typical for poor, rural nineteenth-century women. However, they also lived extraordinary lives, crossing paths with such figures as Frederick Douglass and Lydia Maria Child and embracing an abolitionist moral code that sanctioned antislavery violence in place of the more typical female world of petitioning and pamphleteering.
In the aftermath of John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, the women of his family experienced a particular kind of celebrity among abolitionists and the American public. In their roles as what daughter Annie called "relics" of Brown's raid, they tested the limits of American memory of the Civil War, especially the war's most radical aim: securing racial equality. Because of their longevity (Annie, the last of Brown's daughters, died in 1926) and their position as symbols of the most radical form of abolitionist agitation, the story of the Brown women illuminates the changing nature of how Americans remembered Brown's raid, radical antislavery, and the causes and consequences of the Civil War.
Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz is Assistant Professor of History and Social Science Teaching Coordinator at Eastern Illinois University.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Searching for the Brown Women
1. The Brown Family's Antislavery Culture, 1831–49
2. North Elba, Kansas, and Violent Antislavery
3. Annie Brown, Soldier
4. Newfound Celebrity in the John Brown Year
5. The Search for a New Life
6. Mary Brown's 1882 Tour and the Memory of Militant Abolitionism
7. Annie Brown Adams, the Last Survivor
Epilogue: The Last Echo from John Brown’s Grave
AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
What People are Saying About This
Carol Faulkner
The Tie That Bound Us is an essential read for anyone interested in John Brown, the fight against slavery, and the coming of the Civil War. Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz offers a new and fascinating look at John Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry from the perspective of his wife and daughters. She shows how the Brown women participated in John's war on slavery in essential ways: by moving to North Elba; by sacrificing their husbands, brothers, and sons; and by housekeeping at Harper's Ferry. In addition, after John Brown's execution, the Brown women, especially his wife Mary, became public symbols of his martyrdom. As Laughlin-Schultz argues, their story is both ordinary, in their daily labors for their households, and extraordinary, in their famous connection to the antislavery warrior.
Evan Carton
Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz has opened up new territory. Among its important original contributions, The Tie That Bound Us brings the women of John Brown's family into rich and critical relation to Brown himself, explains how this relation continues to develop and change long after Brown's own death, and, for the first time, shows that these crucial associates of Brown are at the center of his story rather than at its margins. Such recentering casts new light on that story and on the larger stories of antislavery reform and militant abolitionism.
Tony Horwitz
In The Tie That Bound Us, Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz liberates the John Brown story from its conventional manliness. She reveals the pivotal roles played by Brown's wife and daughters, who melded ordinary domestic duties with the extraordinary demands of militant abolitionism. Deeply researched and lucidly told, this is a pioneering exploration of the dramatic, often tragic lives of women in the Civil War era.
