By the way the many images portray the man that was John Brown as he is led to his death, someone with absolutely no knowledge of who he is and his place in history could probably see him as a matyr and a hero. In each image here he looks like a calm and proud old man, unconcerned with what is about to happen to him, only satisfied with what he has done. From reading the texts one would discover less of an esteemed martyr and more of a violent rebel, but the lithographs and paintings give no such clues that this would be the case.
In each image John Brown and his large white beard tend to take up the majority of the frame, putting him as the focus of each of the images. Even the exceptions to this have Brown in focus in another way, by color or by only having three characters within the frame. And usually John Brown’s face is the most detailed compared to the other people. The southerners taking John Brown to his death tend to be all similarly-faced, just like the Mexicans in the paintings of Davy Crockett’s ‘last stand’. When there are many of them they tend to fade into the background, all dressed in the same uniform and with no particularly identifying facial features. Obviously this is how the artists of the time saw the ‘evil’ Southerners– the same way that painters of Davy Crockett saw the ‘evil’ Mexicans– as faceless evil soldiers, doing only what they are told, but with evil intent.
The African Americans in the images, despite being a prominent figure in the scene of the kiss, are, for the most part, painted or etched as subservient figures to both John Brown and the white Southerners. The mother and her child are placed below or sitting compared to John Brown and the other white men in the images. So while Brown is fighting to see them become equals, the creators of these paintings and etchings still present African Americans in the same subservient position they have always been placed in. The image labeled as “John Brown – the Martyr”, where the woman, sitting and colored fairly lightly, is reminiscent of the Mother Mary in Catholic imagery, with her child looking Christlike. This image only has two other people in it, John Brown and the man who will lead him to his death, filling the symbolic places of God and Satan next to Mary and Christ. This religious theme continues into “John Brown’s Blessing”, where Brown places his hand upon the child’s head, not unlike a priest does to a child being baptized.
So the artists seem to have less of an opinion of African Americans than they feel the need to portray them in a light that makes Brown look even more the part of a martyr.