ABSTRACT
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s momentary fascination with John Brown’s terrorist tactics is indicative of the sense of helpless frustration felt by American abolitionists during the 1850s. Thirty years of moral suasion had failed to inspire a revolution of sentiment, and Daniel Webster’s abdication had signaled the triumph of moral compromise and the inevitability of slavery’s proliferation throughout America. Sensing that silence was complicity and devotion to scholarship was social myopia, America’s leading intellects violated their apolitical inclinations and radically sounded the trumpet in support of a man who independently decided that society’s ills were so signifi cant that arbitrary murderous rampages were essential to reversing social inertia and midnight raids on sleepy government facilities were justifi ed. They celebrated the freedom fi ghter-not for his murders or for his bravery-but for his righteousness. He gave them a champion-even a martyr-but he also gave them an impetus to expression-expression of their moral indignation and sense of powerlessness.
