The Washington bee., 1910-03-12
PROF DUBOIS

CrluClSm OF the Lie OF JOIl
Brown
Prof w. E. B. Dubois delivered
his lecture on John Brown, in this
city last week. 1t is hard at this
late day, to add anything to the his
tory of John Brown. However, Prof,
Dubois, is a very polished speaker,
and a man of great mentality. His
life of John Brown, from which a
purely literary view point, meritori-
Gus. according to The New York
Evening Post is full of inaccuracies.
The Post reviewing it said:
That so gifted writer as the au-
thor of Souls of Black Folk should
be tempted to write a new life OF
John B IN from the point of view
of the Negro is easily understood.
1t also goes without saying that DR..
Dubois has made a readable volume
of his appreciation of the martyr OF
1880. the fftieth anniversary CT
whose execution is now at hand. 30
little the Negroes themselves
done to honor the memory of John
Brown that this book might have
taken on a special significance. But
DR.. DuBois's work is disappointing
in that it betrays no original re-
search and abounds in inaccuracies
This is partly because he has relied
upon his predecessors in the held
His is the eighth serious biOgraphyot
John Brown to appear and untortu
nately only one or two of these were
written in the spirit or manner oi
the historian who desires to be i'm
partial and to go to original source:
for his information. Thus Col. K. J
Hinton's book IS frankly a brief fol
Brown. and Mr.. Sanborn's biOgra
phv, treasure-house Of material, sui
fers from the authors association
with the preparations for Harper's
Ferry. 1t is, moreover, twenty-fouI
years old and since its publication
much has come to light, both in Kan
sas and elsewhere. which is of I'M
portance to the interpreter of Brown
and his times.
For this and other reasons, DR.
Dubois leaned upon untrustwOrthy
slaves when he relied upon his pre-
decessors. A few examples will sui
fee. He accepts Col. Hinton's at
tribution to Edmund Babb of Gin
cinnati of the anonymous letter OF
August 20, 1859, betraying Browns
exact plans to Secretary Floyd. But
it has been known for years that
David !. Cue, now living in New
York city, was the author OF that
letter and that it was written not to
iniure Brown, but to save his llte by
heading off the raid. The full story
DR.. Dubois will find in Benjamin r
Cues valuable History of Iowa,
published in 1908, Again, he fol
lows Redpath in accusing the Bor'
der Rufians of wholesale assaultins
of women in the early Kansas days
In the entire range of Kansas lltera-
ture and manuscripts now available
there are but two recorded instances
of this crime, and these are by. nc
means wholly established, for at least
one rests only upon Redpath's word
when acting as correspondent OF ar
Eastern newspaper DR.. Dubois al
so assumes. with another biographeI
that John Browns victims on th(
PottowatOmie had the benefit OF some
sort OF trial. But not a sclntllla OF
evidence has yet been produced tC
confirm this belief. Indeed, the facts
all make against it. Again, DR.. Du-
Bois accepts without investigation
the repeated statements that John
Brown was descended from Peter
Brown of the Mayflower, although
this is denied by the foremost au-
thorities on the Mayhower geneal-
ogies. Finally, it must be noted that
DIR. Dubois follows Sanborn, Hinton
and others in justifying the abomin-
able Pottowatomie massacre, which
had it been perpetrated by Border
Ruffians. would have been denounced
as a crime against humanity.
But DR.. DuBois's own errors are
numerous enough. He makes OF
George B. Gill, Browns Kansas fol
lower. a Canadian (p. 223), whereas
he was an American; to Jeremiah G