Magpie performing Old John Brown by Si Kahn 04/08/2015:
The song does include one mythological embellishment, the image of John Brown on his way to the gallows stopped to kiss a black child. That imaginary scene was depicted by Thomas Hovenden in a painting called "The Last Moments of John Brown (1882–84)":
Fergus Bordewich describes the immediate political effect Brown's famous raid on Harper's Ferry had (John Brown’s Day of Reckoning Smithsonian Magazine Oct 2009):
The raid that Sunday night would be the most daring instance on record of white men entering a Southern state to incite a slave rebellion. In military terms, it was barely a skirmish, but the incident electrified the nation. It also created, in John Brown, a figure who after a century and a half remains one of the most emotive touchstones of our racial history, lionized by some Americans and loathed by others: few are indifferent. Brown's mantle has been claimed by figures as diverse as Malcolm X, Timothy McVeigh, Socialist leader Eugene Debs and abortion protesters espousing violence. "Americans do not deliberate about John Brown - they feel him," says Dennis Frye, the National Park Service's chief historian at Harpers Ferry. "He is still alive today in the American soul. He represents something for each of us, but none of us is in agreement about what he means." [my emphasis]The persistence of John Brown as an important symbol understood in varying ways is a reminder that narratives of history existent on a continuum. On one end is the scholarly discipline which attempts to discover, describe, understand, and interpret the past. And it extends to individuals who use historical narratives for learning, interest, fiction, inspiration, caution, marketing, and political symbolism. That's why Confederate monuments are still a hot topic in American politics 155 years after the Civil War ended.
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