Existing comment:
Martin M. Lawrence
John Brown
ca. 1858
salted paper print
Humboldt was championed by the New England abolitionist community, including John Brown's supporters. In 1858, the year before Brown's famous raid on Harper's Ferry and the year after the town of Humboldt, Kansas, was established on Brown's home turf in Allen County, Humboldt was honored for his humanitarian concerns by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in a speech delivered by Theodore Parker and printed in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. Though there is no proof that John Brown read Humboldt's books, it would be hard for him to have been unaware of Humboldt's views.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.74.76 |