Harpers Ferry – Southern Reaction

The South’s reaction to John Brown’s attack is often characterized as a violent one. “The shock and fear John Brown had instigated fueled widespread panic…[that] fed into paranoia vented in aggressive acts,” as historian David Reynolds explains. Yet not all southerners accepted violent actions. Protecting their communities remained a high priority, but these southerners argued that extralegal means should not be employed. Not only were existing laws more than sufficient, but violent actions impugned southern honor. Someone who “was tarred and feathered” “for sympathsing [sic] with old Brown” may have “richly deserved his punishment,” but the Greensboro Patriot argued that the best solution was “to let the law take its course.” Other editors in North Carolina reached similar conclusions. “The laws are ample to protect the South,” as the Fayetteville Observer explained in November 1859. The Observer later implied that southern honor was at stake: “in some places the prejudice against Northern men has been carried to an extent at once injurious to the interests and disgraceful to the character of the South.” Brown attacked Harpers Ferry 150 years ago, but as historian William Freehling observers, we still have much to learn about the “subtleties of the southern  response.”