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John Brown: People Like Us

J.W.M. Morgan

[Author’s note: The text includes historical documents. I have preserved the peculiarities of usage and spelling of the originals.]

Rochester, New York, January 1858

A vase of fresh greenhouse flowers sat atop a large lacework at the center of the round table. I was enjoying the gracious hospitality of Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass in their fine home after my train ride upstate. An assistant brought us our meal, positioned fresh wood in the fireplace (very welcome—just now a cold rain was falling), then gave us privacy. Anna and Frederick were noticeably well-dressed. Of their children, I had met only Annie, who was a young girl. The others were teenagers who I understood were busy in the town.

Thunder rumbled in the distant mountains. I had walked through slush and sleet and freezing rain from the grand new train station. “I enjoy the rain here,” I said. “There’s a special smell.”

“Yes. Pines. Our rocky soil. A northern smell,” Frederick said.

I smiled. A northern smell.

“Just a week ago, Harriet Tubman stayed in that same room you are in now,” Anna Murray said. “Harriet asked after you.”

I grew warm—self-conscious at being mentioned with interest in such company. We all knew of Harriet’s daring trips to bring people north to freedom. Like me, Harriet raised firearms in the struggle! At this time, there weren’t many of us.

“Harriet is a humbling example,” I said.

“Very much so,” Anna said. “You could meet her in Canada, you know. She would receive you, I am sure.”

“I would love to meet her. I would love to work with her,” I said. Just then, I was dreaming freely. I imagined Harriet with me for the attack in Virginia.

“Harriet is more leader than follower,” Frederick said.

“Ah. Noted. I am hoping to have you with me in the battle as well,” I said to Frederick.

Frederick looked stricken. We had come to this point in our talks before. He had made clear that he found the plan for the attack impressive and possibly important. But he resisted joining and this frustrated me. I wanted very much to have him with me to help persuade the newly freed to accept our plans for mountain hideouts, full rebellion—guerrilla war.

“You will change your mind. You will be there to help me light the fire,” I said, more in hope than in conviction. I was the great optimist now. We would provide the means and the moment. Oppressed people would bring their power. But I needed Frederick and others to help me.

“I am not a fighter,” he said.

“Two years ago, I would have said the same of myself,” I reminded Frederick and Anna. “We change. People like us find the strength that’s needed,” I said.

Frederick laughed, bitterly.

“Is it funny?”

He shook his head slightly. “I am thinking of people like us,” he said. “If you and Harriet are the models this is a small group.”

“I mean people who believe as we do. People who commit to the fight and are ready to do more than just talk. Not necessarily with a gun. We need every kind of supporter, every kind of believer.”

Frederick gazed on me, blinking, then nodded, his distress evident.

▪

Frederick and Anna’s hospitality provided me with precious days of quiet, convenience, and encouragement for a long-planned period of concentrated work. At the desk in that pleasant bedroom where Harriet Tubman had slept before me, I was able to elaborate and compose my thoughts fully and finally write my Provisional Constitution for the United States of America. This constitution was my map for reform, my guiding document for the struggle.

To put these words to paper, I had to set aside for a time all human modesty and write in the full power of the God-heat which spun and swirled within me. Episodes of intense work left me exhausted, sometimes weeping. Thus drained, I suffered grave doubts. I felt weak, pitiable, unequal to my task. I needed long periods of quiet rest to recover even ordinary human capacity. As soon as I was able, I returned to the work, only to again drain myself to exhaustion and suffer the accompanying self-dismay.

After many days, I was pleased to be able to read the full document aloud to Frederick and Anna.

Provisional Constitution and Ordinances
for the people of the United States.

PREAMBLE.

Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence:

Therefore, we, citizens of the United States, and the oppressed people who, by a recent decision of the Supreme’ Court, are declared to have no rights which the white man is bound to respect, together with all other people degraded by the laws thereof, do, for the time being, ordain and establish for ourselves the following Provisional Constitution and Ordinances, the better to protect our persons, property, lives, and liberties, and to govern our actions.

ARTICLE I

Qualifications for membership

All persons of mature age, whether proscribed, oppressed, and enslaved citizens, or of the proscribed and oppressed races of the United States, who shall agree to sustain and enforce the Provisional Constitution and Ordinances of this organization, together with all minor children of such persons, shall be held to be fully entitled to protection under the same.

Anna said, “I feel like a thirsty person who has just drunk a great glass of clear, clean water.”

“We are a thirsty nation,” I agreed.

Frederick smiled. He was a restrained and reflective man, not prone to open smiling. I saw the constitution had affected him, a fact I treasured.

I read out all forty-eight articles of the Provisional Constitution, outlining the three branches of government and the powers and duties of the Commander-in-Chief, the President, the Secretary of War, and other top officers. My Constitution included trial and impeachment in case of bad behavior. We would treat any prisoners with the full dignity and respect circumstances permitted. Only in cases of treason and in the extremes of combat would execution be carried out, with one special addition: all persons convicted of the forcible violation of any female prisoner would be put to death.

“You think more boldly of the future than anyone else I know of,” Frederick said.

“Everyone can see we must change,” I said.

Frederick nodded. “Yes. Everyone sees. Everyone knows.”

“I want to bring together as many people like us as possible in a convention to ratify the constitution,” I said. “From that point onward, we will live under the new laws. I’d like to have you both with me at the convention.”

“You are dangerous,” he said. “Dangerous in ways you cannot realize.” Frederick reached for his right eye, which had clenched. “Dangerous John,” he said, thereby christening me with my new name.

The name fit. I had always been Dangerous John though I had not realized it. The recognition came as a pleasant surprise. Now I accepted “Dangerous John” fully. To be worthy of the name, I would give up the last of fear and doubt and become as dangerous as possible to the cruel and shameless profiteers who maintained our country’s sick system.

“You should present your constitution to Martin Delany,” Anna said.

“Delany!”

Frederick smiled tautly and said, “Yes. Good idea. Draw Martin into your circle.”

I knew the great Martin Delany from his writings but I had not yet met him. Some years before, I had read his visions for racial justice in his newspaper, Mystery, and in another newspaper he and Frederick had published together, The North Star. Delany hoped to build a new nation in a new place, in the Caribbean, or in Africa. On this our thinking differed. He was ready to abandon all white people. For me, white racist abuse was always a moral affliction we could and must erase from within.

Frederick said, “Martin has taken his family to live in Canada. He intends this as temporary, until new just communities are built.”

“His view is radical,” I said.

“He is bold. You have that in common. He could be a powerful ally. You would do well to win his support.”

“Thank you. I feel we are approaching an extraordinary shift in the climate.”

Frederick smiled and somehow sighed in the same moment. Our shared hopes were grand. My faith was likely larger. But Frederick and Anna and I were seasoned, worldly people and even in the full flush of optimism and commitment well understood that disappointment and disaster also loomed.

▪

North Elba, New York, March 1858

In the grip of different, much more personal kind of fear, I rode up to my old home in the mountains in New York State. I really didn’t want to visit Mary Day and my children. The once-familiar farmhouse seemed like a signpost on a forgotten road to a place long lost from my life and irrecoverable. Stopping here, even for a few days, made me a bird who could not fly.

The rolling ground around the farmhouse was snow-covered to about six inches. Our few cows were in the barn. I heard pigs snort and I picked up the smells of animal and earth. Every one of these reminders of my past life opened pockets of longing and lost love and self-criticism. I was not even remotely the person I needed to be to fulfill my duties here and I knew I could never again be such a man. It had been two and a half years since I had last seen my family.

I wished I could have sent some money ahead. I had provided financial support only scantily. I was reserving almost all the money I had been able to raise for the fight ahead.

I dismounted at some distance from the house. I paused in the chilly woods for half an hour and ate my lunch, hoping to summon the confidence to make this visit a respectable performance. Such confidence did not come.

By direct application of will, I proceeded to my old home. I found dark-haired Mary Day in a squat, splitting kindling with a hatchet. She cried out and rose from her work, embraced me and kissed me on the cheek and on the mouth as I did not deserve. The daughter of a blacksmith, she had for twenty-five years been a rock of stability for me, always hardworking and loyal to me, even as my ambition placed ever more unreasonable burdens on her. Now, she was sobbing in my arms.

My adult daughter Ruth, occupied plucking a chicken, washed and gave me a more restrained hug.

“Henry is away. He means to buy a horse,” Ruth said, explaining her husband’s absence.

My young daughters Annie and Sarah gazed on me in wonder. I tried to show them a decent face. Apologies and excuses would serve no purpose. I played my great role as I felt God required and they suffered. I was a sliver of the father they deserved.

“And who is this?” I asked. My baby Ellen was already three, on her feet in a tiny dress. She ran to her mother and clung. She did not know me.

A hammer was banging out back.

“The well head is frozen,” Mary Day said. “Lyman is here to free it.”

Lyman Epps, an old friend, was a black farmer who owned and worked land nearby. In past years, I had urged Lyman and his wife Ann and many other black farmers to move here and commit their lives to working this difficult land.

I stepped out back to speak with Lyman. He gazed on me as though I had dropped from the sky.

“Good to see you,” I said.

Lyman nodded. He rose to his feet but did not put down his hammer. He regarded me with curiosity and, I thought, some distaste. I had once felt close to Lyman. Now it would seem wrong for me to press myself upon him. I had led him to bring his family here then abandoned them.

I ought to appear among the others who labored in this mountain community, encourage those who lived and worked here. They deserved and needed my smile and nod, a pat on the shoulder, assurance that they labored with righteous purpose. But my passion for this had flown. I could not be the confident patriarch these people deserved.

The night in our bed with Mary Day was most difficult. Two great stars burned within me. The first was our attack on slavery which I knew was coming soon. The second irrepressible vision was of the charms of Mary Stearns.

Unworthy scheming and calculation arose in my mind. I would run from this place which brought my failings into such painful focus and find a way to visit beautiful Mary Stearns. I was sure I could arrange it. My fundraising and promotion of the new Constitution would justify a trip to eastern Massachusetts. George Stearns, ignorant of the scope of my preoccupation with his wife, would welcome me for a night in the family mansion in Medford. I could spend some hours in the intoxicating company of Mary Stearns. I foresaw the impossible comforts of her touch.

I was a disgrace.

I embraced my wife Mary Day and held her as a husband must. When, at last, I slept, the other Mary, Mary Stearns, arrived, perfumed and chattering warmly to others at a Boston party. She wore a fine dark gown that swept freely on the floor. She was shapely. Her large forehead, her large eyes, her small, upturned nose, her cheekbones, her pouting, her ears were mysteriously harmonized and concentrated my attention.

Mary Stearns held a drink in one hand. With her other hand, she brushed back her full dark hair and revealed her long smooth neck in a touching clarity which caused me to whimper.

Her large eyes suddenly narrowed. She saw me! I was undone, helpless. A poor excuse for a man.

I awoke from this dream to find myself suffocating in the sagging, bad-smelling bed beside my wife. My life here, no longer animated to the proper duties of husband, father, farmer, and patron of this community, had become dull and lifeless, an empty husk.

▪

Northeastern United States, early 1858

For two months, I traveled and presented the Provisional Constitution in person to donors who were crucial to my project.  Practical ambition required me to set aside vain pride and show a servile face. I was again salesman and promoter, attempting to advance my plan to eliminate slavery in its totality to comfortable rich men who wished to do good without significant sacrifice for themselves. My well-off backers, who had been accustomed since boyhood to consider their own lives as the essence of the proper and good, believed in opposing slavery from afar, without interrupting their comfortable lives of lavish dinners, fabulous schooling for their children, and pleasant weekends in the countryside—none of which they would allow to be threatened. Despite occasional righteous claims about equality, these men inevitably appreciated hierarchies more than justice. They were always difficult to move—in the depths of their hearts they believed they were living according to natural laws.

George Stearns, Gerritt Smith, and other rich white men I had relied upon for guns and money now absurdly insisted I limit my use of the weapons to defending Kansas. I concocted a version of my plans sufficiently modest to not alarm these sadly compromised men. I was an accomplished tale-spinner by now. I promised them I would return to Kansas Territory and do …. something to oppose the spread of slavery.

▪

St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada April 1858

My friend Reverend Jermain Loguen arranged for me to meet Harriet Tubman. We traveled together to St. Catherines. Once we were lodged in the hotel, Jermain visited Harriet and suggested she visit me there. But Harriet preferred I come alone to her home on North Street.

I wouldn’t say I felt unworthy to meet Harriet Tubman. I was proud in what I tried to sustain as a moderate and righteous manner. My complex and uncomfortable view of myself had to include the aspects of a genuinely fierce and determined warrior for the cause, as well as the mysterious and unpredictable serpent of public legend. In this, I felt, perhaps presumptuously, that Harriet and I were soul-siblings already. We each had the burden of a public reputation far beyond our control. We each had a ferocious heart guided by Divine Love. Still, my sense of approaching the extraordinary perhaps beyond my deserving unsettled me that morning.

I went alone on foot to Harriet’s address. I took a roundabout route, hoping to avoid drawing any dangerous attention to myself or to Harriet or to any of her family or friends.

At my knock, Harriet eased her door open and let me walk in without eye contact or a single word. She was a small person. Her dark dress was almost transparent at the shoulders, thinned out from many washings. She covered the threadbare fabric with a whitish shawl. She did not smile. She squinted much of the time, as though straining to understand the nature of this white man who appeared before her.

Once standing alone with her behind the closed door I experienced a moment of impasse. I felt I should not let excessive reverence inhibit me. I did feel I bore my God-granted powers with some respect-worthy grace, as she did. But no moment like this had ever occurred in my life before and I did not know what to do. My nervousness suggested I would continue to feel at sea in Harriet’s presence.

I gestured with my open hands, attempting to suggest the possibility of handshake or a token embrace. Harriet drew back. She sat down very properly at a good distance on one of her three hardback chairs. She invited me with a hand wave to take a facing chair.

Once we were seated, she asked, “Who has God brought to me?”

I was determined to show common courtesy, at least. But my elation and my near-awe brought me into direct collision with the inadequacy of my command of language. Harriet now looked directly at me. I felt warmth in her features, but she still did not smile.

Our differing experiences—dictated by gender, race, and station—made my usual social behaviors mostly useless. I wanted to tell her that I felt I had known Harriet Tubman in the most intimate spiritual way for a thousand years. Instead, I gazed at my boot tips, like a boy.

She had the patience of a mystic. There seemed to be some chickens scrabbling in the alleyway, but she showed no indication of hearing the noise. She continued to gaze at me without smiling. I felt like a poor student in the presence of a great teacher. I had respect and appreciation, but only the most modest capacity. Despite my limitations, I must open my mind fully, apply whatever small abilities I could bring and try to take in her lesson as fully as I could.

I told her I hoped she would help me recruit freed people for the fight. She stared at me fiercely, then sent a young male assistant out into the neighborhood to invite certain others to our meeting. Seven men who had escaped slavery soon sat on the floor around us. I told them we would seize weapons from a federal arsenal then create new liberated communities. “We will maintain positions in the mountains,” I told them. “We will have the weapons we need to protect the new society.”

The men said very little to Harriet and nothing to me.

“I invite you all to join the fight,” I said to the group. And to Harriet, “More than anything I want you at my side when we attack.”

“You have a lot of nerve,” she said.

I nodded. “You have a lot of nerve yourself,” I said. At this, her expression softened. Her cheeks lifted. She came as close to a smile as she ever did in my presence.

I told her my plan for the attack and for the months and years which would follow. Harriet allowed me to carry on for some time. My words flowed freely. I likely said too much. Though utterly plain and fully elaborated for me and for God, the plan was, in this world of human habitation, a bud not yet fully bloomed, delicate and in need of nurturing and protection. I probably should have been more discrete. But in Harriet’s presence I lost all restraint. I wanted to tell her everything and more.

As we parted, she said, “May the breath of the Spirit touch all you do.”

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

I left Harriet’s house elated, believing we had an agreement: she and these men would fight with us. We were, I dared to believe, combining in a great alliance. We would triumph together.

A few days later, Jermain told me Harriet was asking for money for her rent. I sent this money forthwith. Thereafter, my messages to Harriet went unanswered. Jermain asked repeatedly at her house, but he was sent away each time with no information. We worried she was sick or had fallen afoul of slave catchers.

Our inquiries to other friends about difficulties Harriet might be having yielded nothing. The former slaves whom I had believed I had recruited for the fight also proved unresponsive. My arms remained forever open to these potential allies. Despite many attempts at communication, I never heard from any of them again.

▪

Chatham, Canada, April, 1858

My first meeting with the very bold and dynamic abolitionist Dr. Martin Delany was marvelous, like a visit to the swirling core of a warm spring thunderstorm. We met in a hotel conference room; his home was too crowded. Dr. Delany was rarely still and remained on his feet while I took one of the hotel chairs. He was round headed, with prominent eyes, mostly bald with long mustaches running down across his cheeks. He was almost a swordsman of speech, with a preference for short, penetrating sentences and a habit of thrusting his arm as he asserted his points. I liked him from the first moments. Martin saw the whole world as his to address and correct. We had this in common.

Martin knew “John Brown” by reputation, which is to say by reading newspaper stories about me. He was eager to understand the person behind the stories. At a rapid pace, he asked me penetrating questions which I answered easily. Here, for once, openness and honesty seemed just the thing.

Martin pinched his eyes tight at me, smiled, and said, “You are a rare creature.”

“Well, yes. As are you,”

Finally, Martin sat. “We have one big disagreement,” I said. He crossed his arms and leaned toward me. “We must not abandon the United States of America. The resolution does not lie in your moving to a new community in Africa or on some Caribbean island. No, we must transform the United States into this new welcoming community.”

He almost spat. “Impossible. Reforming the United States like that is impossible.”

“Not so,” I said. I was very excited. In the power of Martin’s objection, I felt the strength of an ally I wanted to pull close. Could I sway willful Martin to climb the mountain with me? If so, he would help enormously, maybe decisively.

He was staring at me, scrutinizing me. I pitied him a little for that. He was searching for the worthy ally, for the helpful friend—as we all do. I knew I was a disappointing creature. I hoped he could look on me generously. I had my merits, I had my strengths. I hoped he would see and appreciate the good and worthy. I felt somewhat blighted. I had a lot to hide. My leaves, I felt just then, were curled and shrinking.

“I am capable of sustained war,” I said.

Martin became quiet. He was quivering, both at the hands and the head.

I held a copy of the Provisional Constitution out for Martin. His forehead tightened. He seized the paper, drew it close to his eyes and read straight through, as though on a single inhalation of text.

“You are bold,” he said. He studied me.

“I am that,” I said.

Martin then transformed before my eyes. He smiled and nodded. His barely contained energy had held me at a distance. The tension of his hyper-alertness softened. His eyes and cheeks took on attentive warmth. In those delightful minutes, we began a true friendship.

“I am planning a convention, here in Chatham,” I said. “We will, I hope, ratify the new constitution, select officers, and begin to operate under the new provisional government.”

Martin hesitated briefly, then his smile spread from ear to ear.

“I almost can’t believe what I am hearing and seeing,” he said. “You are a decent man. And you appear to have the strength and vision to do the necessary.”

“Will you help me?”

Martin pledged to attend the convention and support the new constitution.

“You must invite George Reynolds,” he said. I did not know the name. Martin explained George Reynolds was the very outspoken head of a group called the League of Liberty. “Persuade George to your project and he will bring many along with him,” he said.

I was suddenly very nervous, not because I was sharing my views with Martin Delany whom I now trusted and was beginning to love. My ill-ease came from going too far, daring too much. Some say the truth can set you free. But I knew this Truth we were bringing to light would set us at war.

▪

John Kagi came up from the Iowa training camp to help me organize the convention. William Charles Munroe, a preacher friend of mine in Detroit, put us in touch with the pastors of several black churches in Chatham who, once they understood our purpose, discretely extended invitations to the appropriate people. We advertised the convention as a rally to form a Masonic lodge for black people and spread word of our true intention only by word of mouth. Our “public” declaration of the dawning of the new world would be made to only a small and highly select audience.

In person, by letter, and through friends, I invited Wendell Phillips, Gerritt Smith, and the other key donors who had sponsored my fight so far. My hopes were limited. The demand on them was great. But even my minimal hope was frustrated. I was asking too much of the wealthy and well-positioned. No matter how much they “sympathized” with the project of liberation, they would not extract themselves from pleasant, comfortable society. They could not disturb themselves that much. These “big” men of society were small in courage and imagination. They were afraid, not for me and my anti-slavery fighters, no, and definitely not for the newly freed community in Canada who would be taking great risk to participate in the convention. No, it was the threat to their own comfortable situations. They were buttons on a fine shirt, and we proposed to pop them off. Every one of these well-off white men turned us down.

Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray chose to not attend.

Forty-six extraordinary like-minded individuals attended the convention. Thirty-four were black men. Most of them lived nearby. And most of these were victims of slavery who had escaped and were therefore serious, sober men who well understood danger and loss. I had my armed and eager volunteers travel up from the training camp, including my trusted second-in-command Aaron Stevens and my ever more militant son Owen.

We were a tough and worldly group: my own fighters, experienced in Kansas combat, and those who had personally escaped the oppressors. Most knew violence personally. Each participant had endured a trail of suffering and held close to his heart hard lessons of pain.

All solemn believers, we assembled for this extraordinary Saturday in a rented hall in a French schoolhouse on Princess Street in this small Canadian town. I kept to myself the fact that the following day would be my fifty-eighth birthday.

John Kagi wrote minutes:

Journal of the Provisional Constitutional Convention,
held on Saturday, May 8, 1858.

CHATHAM, CANADA WEST,
Saturday, May 8, 1858.

10 a.m.—Convention met in pursuance to call of John Brown and others, and was called to order by Mr. Jackson, on whose motion Mr. William C. Monroe was chosen president; when,

On motion of Mr. Brown, Mr. J.H. Kagi was elected secretary.

On motion of Mr. Delany, Mr. Brown then proceeded to state the object of the convention, at length, and then to explain the general features of the plan of action in the execution of the project in view by the convention.

I told the participants we would create independent communities within and under the government of the United States, such as those of the Cherokee nation of Indians or the Mormons. These protected communities apart would demonstrate the better life that could be made available to all. Of course, we would have to defend these communities by force of arms. At first, the military aspect would be foremost. I explained my plans for small forts that twenty men could build in a day that would defy all the artillery that could be brought to bear against them.

Mr. Delany and others spoke in favor of the project and the plan, and both were agreed to by general consent.

Mr. Brown then presented a plan of organization, entitled “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” and moved the reading of the same.

Mr. Kinnard objected to the reading until an oath of secresy be taken by each member of the convention; whereupon,

Mr. Delany moved that the following parole of honor be taken by all members of the convention: “I solemnly affirm that I will not in any way divulge any of the secrets of this convention, except to persons entitled to know the same, on the pain of forfeiting the respect and protection of this organization;” which motion was carried.

The president then proceeded to administer the obligation. After which, the question was taken on the reading of the plan proposed by Mr. Brown, and the same carried.

John Kagi read the Provisional Constitution aloud. Kagi’s warbling voicing of my words took my heart on a wild ride. I felt no pride of authorship. I had found the way to stand aside and allow God to craft the document which would serve as mechanism of mass liberation. But I felt a terrible thrill nonetheless at hearing my own writing so boldly proclaimed. I was as enraptured as anyone here. This was the future! This was the better world! I was tickled, as charmed and fascinated as a child watching a kite dance in the wind.

 Kagi then read the articles of the constitution one by one for discussion and adoption. This went smoothly until, at the reading of Article Forty-Six, George Reynolds roared out his objection.

 ARTICLE XLVI.

These articles not for the overthrow of government.

The foregoing articles shall not be construed so as in any way to encourage the overthrow of any State government, or of the general government of the United States, and look to no dissolution of the Union, but simply to amendment and repeal. And our flag shall be the same that our fathers fought under in the Revolution.

The argument grew raucous. George Reynolds believed in a new revolution.

“We fight only to bring our country back to God’s purpose,” I insisted.

I won the day. George Reynolds voted no on Article XLVI, but the others took my view and the article was adopted. The remaining articles were then unanimously adopted.

Conflict melted away. Common vision prevailed.

Within my own old man’s chest my human heart continued to beat steadily, but I felt the throb of a much greater heart’s beat. For me, the earth and the sky had grown veins and now pulsed hotly with hope and promise.

▪ ▪ ▪

J.W.M. Morgan is writing a novel-in-stories called Dangerous John, The Immoderate Hopes of a Radical Heart about the inspiration of the United States religious mystic slavery abolitionist John Brown. Stories from the collection have appeared in Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Courtship of Winds, AvantAppal(achia), Unlikley Stories Mark V, Isele Magazine, and About Place Journal. He lives in Oakland, California.

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