(Book Review )
Another
Flashman book. (See also: Flashman, Royal Flash, Flash for Freedom, Flashman at the Charge, Flashman and the Great Game, Flashman's Lady , Flashman and the Redskins, Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, and the original source material Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes.)
In this
volume, Flashman joins John Brown and the raid on Harper’s Ferry.
In my
opinion, John Brown is one of the more fascinating characters in history (back in 2007, I listed him as one of the top ten Hollywood biopics I would like to see) John Brown may have
been slightly crazy, but he was also a figurehead for one of the great idealist
movements in history. Because much of
human history is just greed and selfishness, stories of true of idealism are
always refreshing to hear (and need to be told more).
The problem
is getting Flashman into the narrative.
Since Flashman
is first and foremost a self-preservationist, and since he despises all forms
of altruism, joining John Brown’s suicidal raid into Harper’s Ferry is the last
place you’d expect to find him. It’s a
problem acknowledged very early on in the book.
You will wonder, if you’re familiar
with my inglorious record, how I came to take part with John Brown at all. Old Flashy, the bully and poltroon, cad and
turncoat, lecher and toady—bearing Freedom’s banner aloft in the noblest cause
of all, the liberation of the enslaved and the downtrodden?
….as any of you who
have read my other memoirs will have guessed, I’d not have been within three
thousand miles of Harper’s Ferry, or blasted Brown, but for the ghastliest
series of mischances: three hellish coincidences—three mark you!—that even
Dickens wouldn’t have used for fear of being hooted at in the
street. But they happened, with that damned Nemesis logic that has haunted me
all my life, and landed me in more horrors than I can count
[Pages 20-21]
..and then after contemplating for a couple more pages how
strange his life has been, Flashman finally gets around to beginning the
strange story.
It began (it usually does) with a wanton
nymph in Calcutta
at the back-end of ’58. (Page 23).
And thus
the wheels of the story are set in motion.
Because of
all the convoluted plot needed to force Flashman into (unwillingly) joining
John Brown, 200 pages pass before Flashman and John Brown even meet.
But the
good news is that these 200 pages are not wasted. They’re packed with the usual sort of
fascinating historical details you’ve come to expect from these Flashman
books. And a full 40 pages of footnotes
and appendixes further expanding on the historical events and personages that
intrude into Flashman’s story.
(A
co-worker of mine who is also a Flashman fan commented that the detailed
footnotes are the best part of a Flashman book, and I’m inclined to agree.)
Which
brings me to:
The History
I thought I
had known the history of John Brown and Harper’s Ferry, but reading this book I
was continually surprised to realize just how much I hadn’t known.
George
MacDonald Fraser has thoroughly researched the event to bring to life the
little details surrounding Harpers Ferry that
don’t usually make it into the history books.
Take for instance this description of one of the exchanges between John
Brown’s men and the hostile town’s people.
And then J.B. [John Brown] sent out another white flag. There was a great howl of fury when it
appeared in the armoury gateway, but a militia officer bawled to them to hold
their fire, for it was borne by one of the hostages, who came marching towards
the hotel with young Bill Thompson by his side.
The crowd surged out and surrounded them, drowning the hostage’s plea to
be heard, the flag was torn from him, and Bill Thompson was dragged into the
Wager House, battered and kicked with yells of “Lynch the bastard! No, no
hangin’s too good for him—burn the son-of-a-bitch!” The drunken din from
beneath was now so deafening that there wasn’t a word to be made out, but since
they didn’t haul Thompson out for execution I guessed he was still alive—for
the time being.
You’d have thought J.B. would have
learned from that incident, but not he—not long after, another white rag was seen
waving in the armoury, the order to cease fire was shouted again, and this time
it was Aaron Stevens and Watson Brown who came out, side by side. You bloody fools, thinks I, you’re done for,
but on they came towards the hotel, Watson stiff as a ramrod, with his head
carried high, and big Aaron ploughing along with one hand raised like an Indian
in greeting. For a moment it was so
still I could hear their boots squelching through the puddles—and then a rifle
cracked, and Watson stumbled forward and fell on his hands and knees. A great
cheer went up, a volley of shots followed, and Stevens seemed to hesitate, and
then he came for the Wager House like a bull at a gate, hurling the flag away,
and was cut down within twenty paces of the hotel—I absolutely saw his body jerk
as the slugs hit him, and then the hostage who had been with Bill Thompson came
running out, arms spread wide, turning to put himself between the two shot men
and the mob. Another hostage who must
have been following Stevens and Watson from the armoury ran forward to join
him, and together they dragged Stevens to the Wager House, one of them yelling:
“You cowardly scum! Stop it, damn you—cain’t ye see the flag?” For a moment the
firing stopped, and then it was seen that Watson was crawling on all fours back
toward the armoury, and the mob set up a great yell and let fly again. He scrambled up and ran, clutching his
stomach, with the bullets churning the dirt around his feet, and went down
again, but he still kept crawling and managed to roll to cover behind one of
the gate posts. That sent them wild, and
they poured in fire harder than ever.
The following is a list of all the really interesting
historical things I learned from reading this book:
* I really
had no idea about the various men who joined John Brown on his crusade, or what
their various back stories and motivations were. In many other histories of Harper's
Ferry, all the other men besides John Brown are regulated to the
background, but George MacDonald Fraser does a very nice job of rescuing the
other 21 men from historical obscurity and telling their stories. It’s historical fiction, of course, not hard
history but through Fraser’s fiction we get very colorful pictures of John Kagi
(W) (the young Swiss idealist who was one of John Brown’s best
strategists) and Shields “Emperor” Green (W) (a freed slave, and one
of Fredrick Douglass’s former companions, who ends up deciding to leave Douglas
and join John Brown).
* I also
learned about the bizarre role that George Washington’s great-grandnephew, the
sword of Lafayette and the pistol of Fredrick the
Great all played in the Harper’s Ferry incident.
* I had
previously thought John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry failed because the black
slaves didn’t rise up as he expected them to.
Although this is partly true, George MacDonald Fraser also makes very
clear that the real reason the raid failed is because John Brown himself got
caught up in indecision. The original
plan had been to simply raid the armoury at Harper’s Ferry and then retreat to
the hills, but John Brown froze up and failed to do evacuate when the time
came. (Fraser portrays John Brown as a
great charismatic leader who is great at exciting the passion of abolitionist
crowds in the North, but not a great military leader.)
* Speaking of
which, I had previously thought that John Brown’s reputation was mostly made at
Harper’s Ferry, but Fraser portrays him as already being a hero and celebrity
in the North even before the disastrous raid.
* This book
also gives an interesting portrayal of the Secret Six (W), the group
of Northern Abolitionists who funded much of John Brown’s activities. Interestingly enough, the author of the
infamous Battle Hymn of the Republic,
Julia Ward Howe, was the wife of one of the Secret Six.
* After John
Brown was wounded and captured at Harper’s Ferry, there was a bizarre scene in
which he got into a long discussion with the public and members of the press
from his wounded cot. (George MacDonald
Fraser includes all this in his story, and also references it in his endnotes.)
* The long
prologue to the book (the 200 pages before Flashman even meets John Brown)
affords George MacDonald Fraser the luxury of going on several historical
digressions. For those of us who love
history, these various digressions (backed up by long endnotes in the back) are
a real treat. No doubt people who don’t
care for history would find it annoying, but then people who don’t care for
history probably wouldn’t bother reading the Flashman books.
A throwaway
comment by Flashman at the beginning of the book leads to a page and a half
endnote in the back telling the story of Jack Johnson, the first black to win
the heavy weight title, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jack London.
Apparently
Jack London was so appalled by the idea of a black man beating a white man at
boxing that he started the “Whip the Nigger” campaign to “remove the golden
smile from Johnson’s face”. It’s a
rather unflattering detail about Jack London which makes me think I was too
nice to him in my review of The IronHeel. (I had heard before that Jack London was a
white supremacist, but had always imagined he was a white supremacist in the
way most people back then were racists of some stripe or another. I had no idea Jack London had been such a
vehement bigot.)
* I also
learned about William Seward, another character in this book, who was in 1858
widely believed to be the next President of the United States, but who would lose
the 1860 Republican nomination to the relatively unknown Abraham Lincoln. (Again, the endnotes give a brief but
interesting political biography of Seward.)
* And
finally, the fascinating story of Allan Pinkerton.
Everyone is
familiar with the Pinkerton Detective Agency that was so infamous for breaking
labor unions around the turn of the century.
It turns
out, however, that the founder of the agency, Allan Pinkerton (1819-94) was
actually a member of the Chartist movement, a radical workers rights group in England in the
1830s and 40s. He had to emigrate to America
to avoid arrest after participating in violent Chartist protests. George MacDonald Fraser notes the irony that
the detective agency he set up was later used to suppress radical workers.
Allan
Pinkerton was also a friend and supporter of John Brown
* This book
also describes in detail the meeting between John Brown and Fredrick
Douglass. The meeting between the two
men is a historical fact, although oddly enough George MacDonald Fraser breaks
with his usual method and doesn’t include any endnotes for the meeting.
He does,
however, include some endnotes on the life of Fredrick Douglass. Another interesting fact I learned is that although
Fredrick Douglass had not been involved in Harper’s Ferry, the political
fallout from the event was such that he still had to flee the United States afterwards.
*****************************************************
When
discussing the problems of slavery on page 103, Flashman offers the following
theory:
…but what astonishes
me today is that all the wiseacres who discuss its origins and inevitability,
never give a thought to where it really began, back in 1776, with their idiotic
Declaration of Independence. If they’d had the wit to stay in the Empire then,
instead of getting drunk on humbug about “freedom” and letting a pack of
firebrands (who had a fine eye to their own advantage) drag ‘em into a
pointless rebellion, there would never have been an American Civil War, and that’s
as sure as any “if” can be. How so? Well, Britain abolished the slave trade in
1807, and slavery in 1833, and the South would have been bound to go along with
that, grumbling, to be sure, but helpless against the will of Britain and her
northern American colonies. It would all
have happened quietly, no doubt with compensation, and there’d have been
nothing for North and South to fight about. Q.E.D.
Possibly. But allow me to pick a few holes in this
theory.
For one
thing, although Britain
abolished the slavery about 30 years ahead of America, both countries abolished
the slave trade at around the same
time. And in fact, Britain was motivated
to abolish the slave trade because America was also abolishing it, at least
according to The Decline and Fall of the
British Empire by Piers Brendon (A),
For various reasons they [British
parliamentarians] believed it
[abolishing the slave trade] would no
longer be economically damaging, particularly as America was also outlawing the
slave trade and other countries were expected to follow suit.
(page 31)
So if America had never left the British
Empire, the slave trade might not have been abolished. Or at the very least, it might have continued
for much longer. And then perhaps Britain might
not have abolished slavery in 1833.
Besides
which, Britain
was able to painlessly abolish slavery in 1833 because the American South
(whose economy depended on slavery) had cut itself loose. If America
had still been part of the British Empire, would
slavery still have been outlawed in 1833?
I’m not
sure myself, but it’s certainly not as simple as Flashman (and George MacDonald
Fraser) are making it out.
***************************************************************************
The
abolitionists and underground railroad workers are not always favorably
portrayed in this book, and often come off looking like crackpots in this
book.
For
example, on page 198 Flashman observes Franklin Sanborn (W) (a member
of the secret six):
He was one of your tiptop babblers, I could
see, smiling, fidgeting, and suddenly remembering to offer us refreshment, with
more prattle about the fatigue of travelling, and the crowded of railway cars.
If this is a sample of our abolitionist conspirators, I can see American
slavery flourishing for a century or two yet, thinks I
The poor
Northern abolitionists—historians and historical fiction writers seem to have never really forgiven them for
being on the right side of history, and so they always get portrayed as preachy
and insufferable and often cowardly.
But if
Fraser is a bit harsh on the abolitionists, he also balances things out by
showing the extreme violence and hatred on the other side. The citizens of Virginia are so outraged by the
abolitionists that the mob shoots down John Brown’s men who come out under a
flag of truce. One of the men who comes
out under a flag of truce, Bill Thompson, is lynched by the mob, and then his
dead body is used by them as target practice.
In one of
the appendixes at the end of the book, Fraser debates the question of John
Brown’s sanity, but then concludes with these words:
The question of his sanity cannot be
answered now. He was held fit to plead at his trial; rightly, so far as we can
tell, but not many layman would, on the evidence, call him normal or balanced. “Reasoning
insanity” is the judgment of one eminent historian, and it will do as well as
any other. We cannot know him, but it does not matter. He is part of history and historic legend,
and if what he tried to do was not heroic, then the word has no meaning.
(From Appendix I, page 354).
Sensationalism?
On page 24, Flashman says:
It’s always been the same. Suppose some
learned scholar were to discover a Fifth Gospel which proved beyond a doubt
that Our Lord survived the Cross and became a bandit or a slave-trader, or a
politician, even—d’you think it would disturb the Christian faith one little
bit? Of course not; ‘twouldn’t even be denied, likely, just ignored. Hang it, I’ve
seen evidence, in black and white in our secret files, that Benjamin Franklin
was a British spy right through the American Revolution, selling out patriots
for all he was worth—but would any Yankee believe that, if ‘twas published?
Never, because it’s not what they want
to believe.
Fraser
attempts to back this up in his footnotes:
For evidence that Benjamin Franklin (“Agent
No. 72”) and his assistant, Edward Bancroft, were working for British
Intelligence during their time at the American Embassy in Paris, and passed
information to London which resulted in heavy American shipping losses, see
Richard Deacon A History of British Secret Service, 1980.
(Endnote #4, p. 365)
It’s a
shocking charge, but my own research (10 minutes on Google) seems to indicate
that this isn’t really a credible mainstream theory on Benjamin Franklin.
In the
context of the book, this is a throwaway comment by Flashman which has no
impact on the rest of the story. All the
same, this may be an indication that George MacDonald Fraser has a weakness for
using sensationalist sources, and that perhaps I should take start taking him
with more of a grain of salt?
There is
another conspiracy theory advanced in this book that is much more central to
the story—the idea that the United States Government had known in advance about
the raid on Harper’s Ferry, but chose not to do anything.
How credible
is this? I’m not really qualified to
say.
Connections with
Other Flashman Books
Previously I had said (in my
review of Flashman on the March) that
it doesn’t really matter what order you read these books in.
I now wish
to take that back. It does matter. This book makes repeated references back to
Flashman’s previous to adventures in America: Flash for Freedom and Flashman
and the Redskins. Both books should
really be read before this one.
Connections with
other Books I’ve Been Reading
Richard
Burton never appears as a character in any of the Flashman books. (Which is a shame. It would have been really cool to have a
story about Flashman going along on one of Richard Burton’s expeditions.) But in many of the Flashman books Flashman
will namedrop Richard Burton as a friend of his.
* In the
beginning of the book, there’s about a 40 page digression where Flashman is in South Africa, and talks about what South Africa
was like in 1858.
This is
close to 20 years before the events described in Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa, but
the politics seem to be largely the same.
The same problems, balancing the interests of the Boers, the British,
and native Africans, are already present.
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on Palestine and Israel
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on Palestine and Israel
Flashman and the Angel of the Lord by George MacDonald Fraser: Book Review (Scripted)
Part 2: Flashman and the Angel of the Lord by George MacDonald Fraser: Book Review (Scripted)
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