"Fire From the Midst of You": A Religious Life of John Brown

by Louis A. DeCaro Jr.

Reveals a complex new portrait of John Brown, radical abolitionist and leader of the 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry

John Brown is usually remembered as a terrorist whose unbridled hatred of slavery drove him to the ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Tried and executed for seizing the arsenal and attempting to spur a liberation movement among the slaves, Brown was the ultimate cause celebre for a country on the brink of civil war.

“Fire from the Midst of You” situates Brown within the religious and social context of a nation steeped in racism, showing his roots in Puritan abolitionism. DeCaro explores Brown's unusual family heritage as well as his business and personal losses, retracing his path to the Southern gallows. In contrast to the popular image of Brown as a violent fanatic, DeCaro contextualizes Brown's actions, emphasizing the intensely religious nature of the antebellum US in which he lived. He articulates the nature of Brown's radical faith and shows that, when viewed in the context of his times, he was not the religious fanatic that many have understood him to be. DeCaro calls Brown a “Protestant saint”―an imperfect believer seeking to realize his own perceived calling in divine providence.

In line with the post-millennial theology of his day, Brown understood God as working through mankind and the church to renew and revive sinful humanity. He read the Bible not only as God's word, but as God's word to John Brown . DeCaro traces Brown's life and development to show how by forging faith as a radical weapon, Brown forced the entire nation to a point of crisis.

“Fire from the Midst of You” defies the standard narrative with a new reading of John Brown. Here is the man that the preeminent Black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois called a "mighty warning" and the one Malcolm X called “a real white liberal.”

Genres: History, Biography, Religion

349 pages, Hardcover

First published December 22, 2002

Reviews

[Gerald McFarland · Rating 5 out of 5]

DeCaro's book is especially relevant in the year of the Black Lives Matter movement. Its subject, John Brown the abolitionist's religious convictions and his struggle against the deep racism of a nation that not only tolerated slavery but brought the weight of the federal government to bear in its defense, contrasts strikingly with the widely held view of Brown (especially since 9/11) as a violent fanatic, in a word, a terrorist. Yet as DeCaro points out, the practice of holding millions of Blacks as property, was state-sanctioned, institutional terrorism. Anti-slavery from his early youth, Brown long hoped that the slave system could be abolished through political persuasion, but as proslavery Southerners (and their allies in the North) became ever more aggressive in defense of slavery from 1850 onward, Brown became convinced that slavery would never end without a militant response. At a minimum, radical abolitionists would have to defy the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 by aiding slaves to escape from plantations and blacks would have to arm themselves to protect runaways. When in the mid-1850s armed proslavery Southerners invaded Kansas, burning Free-State settlements, killing or intimidating free-state settlers, and engaging in massive voter fraud in elections intended to determine whether Kansas would be a free or slave state, Brown took up arms. In so doing he won the lasting respect of African-Americans as one of the few whites willing to risk his life to end slavery.

[NIGEL PEARCE · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decaro presents the life and times of John Brown, who as a Christian abolitionist could never justify slavery in this country! Fro when Jesus said, "What you do to the least of my brethren you have done unto me!" right there presents a challenge to anyone who would use the bible to justify slavery. He was a friend to Frederik Douglas and assisted Harriet Tubman with the underground railroad.

Here is a man that was the first American tried for treason. The Harper's Ferry plan may have failed but John Brown's name will live on forever as one who tried to save his brethren.

[Denise Kettering · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presents an alternative and interesting view of John Brown's life. Other accounts have painted him as a razed eccentric, whereas this account attempts to present a view of how his feelings about slavery intersected with his religious perspectives, particularly coming out of a Reformed culture. His father, Owen Brown, was an abolitionist and leader in his local congregational church. The book demonstrates how Reformed views of Providence shaped Brown and his notion that God's goodness fell on the good and the punishment fell on those who were not fulfilling their assigned role in God's kingdom. Further, he believed that God had pre-ordained him with the role of helping to free the slaves. As a biography, the book encapsulates the various facts and dimensions of Brown's life, but the book also effectively demonstrates how Brown's particular religious worldview impacted his experiences.

[Zach McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely intriguing book. I sifted through it quickly for a paper I wrote on John Brown's theology. Hope to read it slower in the future. I am no John Brown or antebellum scholar, but this is a heavily debated man and DeCaro makes some interesting points.

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Brown was first and foremost a religious warrior, a Christian jihadist, committed to the duality of spiritual and military struggle. DeCaro gets this, and helpfully focuses on the fine religious distinctions between various strains of Christianity in John Brown's life prior to Kansas, and the evolution of his religious thinking. This is really key to understanding what happens later at Harper's Ferry. Unlike other biographers, who are sometimes only nominally sympathetic to Brown, Decaro's attitude is unequivocally favorable. He grasps that John Brown was right about the need to oppose slavery with violence, and that all the equivocating pacifist abolitionists were simply wrong and behind their times. While this book is less useful than some others as an event by event chronicle, it does cover all of the major milestones. In its grasp of the early John Brown and the cultural and religious context of his life this is the best of several John Brown biographies I've recently read.