美国内战与重建美国内战与重建transcript09.docVIP

Civil War and Reconstruction: Lecture 9 Transcript February 12, 2008 back Professor David Blight: On a morning in the second week of March, 1857, Americans grew up living--they didnt all quite understand it yet--but they grew up living in the land of the Dred Scott decision. And if you were African-American, that really meant something. Now 1857 is, of course, the final year of the playing out of Bleeding Kansas and well return to that in just a second. And were going to discuss mostly today the story of one abolitionist; you could say the most famous abolitionist, certainly the most notorious American abolitionist, John Brown. John Brown never made it easy for people to love him. In some ways he wasnt very lovable, until he died on the gallows, and the gallows made him heroic--at least to some people--and it made him all but the devil to others. There are catalytic events in history, that is, events around which ideas, forces, movements, problems coalesce. Unfortunately, they often have a lot to do with violence, and well come back to this point at the end today. But John Brown was far, far, far, far more important dead than hed ever been alive. Poets, songwriters, lyricists, biographers, those who would come to love him, those who would come to hate him, and those who cannot quite figure out what to do with him, would never stop writing about him. And we still havent. And were in the midst right now of a John Brown biography revival. Thats in part because next year is the 150thanniversary of the Harpers Ferry raid. Almost all major African-American poets in the twentieth century attempted their John Brown poem. So did Stephen Vincent Benét in a famous and classic lyric, epic poem called John Browns Body, published in the 1920s. And embedded in that poem is this verse where Benét, I think, captured the dilemma of John Brown. John Brown--its not easy to decide--was he a heroic revolutionary or a midnight terrorist? This is Benéts verse, embedded in a 250epic poem.