6.

JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

THE INVISIBILITY OF ANTIRACISM IN AMERICAN HISTORY

TEXTBOOKS

It is not only radical or currently

unfashionable ideas that the texts

leave out—it is all ideas, including

those of their heroes.

—FRANCES FITZGERALD^1

You may dispose of me very easily. I

am nearly disposed of now. But this

question is still to be settled—this

Negro question, I mean; the end of

that is not yet.

—JOHN BROWN, 1859^2

I am here to plead his cause with

you. I plead not for his life, but for

his character—his immortal life; and

so it becomes your cause wholly, and

is not his in the least.