Steven Lubet's new book, "John Brown's Spy: The Adventurous Life and Tragic Confession of John E. Cook"

Book here. From the Yale press site:

John Brown's Spy tells the nearly unknown story of John E. Cook, the person John Brown trusted most with the details of his plans to capture the Harper's Ferry armory in 1859. Cook was a poet, a marksman, a boaster, a dandy, a fighter, and a womanizer—as well as a spy. In a life of only thirty years, he studied law in Connecticut, fought border ruffians in Kansas, served as an abolitionist mole in Virginia, took white hostages during the Harper's Ferry raid, and almost escaped to freedom. For ten days after the infamous raid, he was the most hunted man in America with a staggering $1,000 bounty on his head.

Tracking down the unexplored circumstances of John Cook's life and disastrous end, Steven Lubet is the first to uncover the full extent of Cook's contributions to Brown's scheme. Without Cook's participation, Brown might never have been able to launch the insurrection that sparked the Civil War. Had Cook remained true to the cause, history would have remembered him as a hero. Instead, when Cook was captured and brought to trial, he betrayed John Brown and named  fellow abolitionists in a full confession that earned him a place in history's tragic pantheon of disgraced turncoats.

Comments

[Monroe Freedman]

Steve,

You refer to John Cook as having a place in history's tragic pantheon of disgraced turncoats for his betrayal of John Brown. According to the United States Department of Justice, many cooperating witnesses [i.e., snitches] are “outright conscienceless sociopaths” who will do anything to benefit themselves, including “lying, committing perjury, manufacturing evidence, soliciting others to corroborate their lies with more lies, and double-crossing anyone with whom they come into contact.” (I have written defending lawyers who refuse to represent snitches.)

The Original Snitch, of course, was the Original Sinner (“The woman You put at my side – she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”). And history’s most notorious snitch is Judas (although there are some who believe that Jesus and Judas planned the “betrayal” together as the necessary prelude to the resurrection.)

But are there degrees of snitchness? What about a mafia member who risks his life wearing a wire to help prosecute organized crime? Or the snitches in Greylord who helped to expose judicial corruption? Or Serpico and David Dirk, who snitched on their fellow police officers to expose police corruption? Or what if a confederate of John Wilkes Booth had snitched to prevent the assassination of Lincoln?

Does the pantheon have levels?

[Steven Lubet]

Thanks for commenting, Monroe. Cook ended up a turncoat because he betrayed the cause to which he had earlier pledged his life. I think that is different from snitching on ordinary co-defendants. And of course, abolitionism is starkly different from Mafia-ism or the blue wall of silence.

But Cook's story is very complicated. He was one of the most important memebers of the Brown conspiracy and he initially managed to escape from Harper's Ferry. For ten days, he was the most wanted fugitive in American history. His brother-in-law was the governor of Indiana, who arranged for Cook to be defended by Daniel Voorhees, who eventually became one of the most famed trial lawyers of the late nineteenth century (specializing in the defense of crimes of passion). Voorhees also served in Congress, where he was one of Lincoln's most ardent adversaries during the Civil War.

[Rick Underwood]

I don't get how Eve was a snitch. Please explain.

[Monroe Freedman]

"With Adam's sin, we sinned all." Adam is the Original Sinner. When questioned by God, he snitched on Eve ('she gave me of the tree"). Eve was the snitchee.

Incidentally, Andrew Ayers suggested another interesting illustration: the brother of the Unibomber, who snitched on his murderous brother, but with anguish.

[Monroe Freedman]

David Durk died this week. He was an eloquent and courageous advocate against police corruption, and, in the long run, was more influential than Serpico. Durk was one of several guest speakers in a course I taught in the mid-1970s on Law and Social Change; Bill Kunstler was another. They and other guests were inspirational.