John Brown, the radical abolitionist, had strict rules for bringing up his children. Brown kept this list in his ledger:
For disobeying mother……………….8 lashes
For unfaithfulness at work…………..3 lashes
For telling a lie…………………..8 lashes
One of his sons had a habit of daydreaming during his chores. Brown often showed this son the book and ordered him to reform his ways. Finally, he decided the boy’s “debits” outnumbered his “credits” and left him “bankrupt.” He took him into the barn for an “accounting.”

Brown took a beech switch and gave the boy a third of the lashes he was due. Then he stopped unexpectedly, took off his shirt, and bent down. He commanded his son to whip him. The terrified boy administered the whip softly. His father cried out, “Harder, harder, harder!” until he had received the rest of the strokes. Blood bubbled on the father’s back.

The boy could not understand why the innocent should suffer at the hands of the guilty. Then again, he had not read the collection of sermons by Jonathan Edwards that his father owned. John Brown, by having his son whip him, was not just making a parental point. He was expressing a Calvinistic conviction of sin.

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Adapted from “John Brown: Abolitionist. The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights” by David S. Reynolds (New York: Random House, 2005), 43.

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