In 1907, American Socialist E.V. Debs wrote an article for the Kansas based Socialist-Populist Appeal to Reason titled "John Brown: History's Greatest Hero." Debs begins his history with Thoreau's comparison of martyrs John Brown and Jesus Christ. Debs also borrows from the Civil War soldiers, "Old John Brown is not dead. His soul still marches on..." Debs continues "and each passing year weaves new garlands for his brow and adds fresh lustre to his deathless glory." In the Industrial Era, it seems Debs thinks Brown would have been a comrade, "Who shall be the John Brown of Wage-Slavery?" Out-of-power, Debs uses Brown (the revolutionary) to argue for more revolution. The powerful, counter-revolutionaries use Brown to support the myth that gives them status: American exceptionalism Reconstructed from the the end of the Civil War.

The seeming continuity between southern society before the Civil War and after (fugitive slaves, sharecropping, Black Codes, segregation, prison system) was only halted for a few years during the war and Sherman's pillaging of the South. After the war, Reconstruction re-established race relations in the South based on de facto institutional racism instead of du jure legal racism.

Many of the radical leftists who claimed Brown's legacy after reconstruction were either delegitimized, repressed or evaporated during the WWI era Red Scare. This includes Debs and the Appeal to Reason. Ralph Chaplin, of "Solidarity Forever", was a prolific I.W.W. writer who had a second career with the Washington State Historical Society. He was re-popularized during the Civil Rights movement by Pete Seeger. Then Debs and Chaplin were found again by the New Left in the 60s. Chaplin's lyrics were written to "John Brown's Body." This Civil War era tune was performed into the twenty-first century by I.W.W. affiliated singers like Utah Phillips. Singers in this tradition operate in a different musical ecosystem than American popular music--at strikes and meetings as much as concerts. Only a few (like Seeger, Woody and Arlo Guthrie and Phil Ochs) cross from the movement into popular music and these do it without explicit I.W.W. affiliations.

In 1928, American poet Steven Vincent Benét provided a depiction of Brown separated from the previous heroic stories. There are eight books in Benét's history of the Civil War titled "John Brown's Body" and Brown is only alive in the first. His raid is but the catalyst of the war history and his body is the totem that represents the transition between two American periods: old-fashioned and modern. This Brown was from the old world and was only a charismatic leader with "the shepherd's gift...no other single gift for life." He was inspired by "obstinacy, failure and cold prayers. Discredited farmer, dubiously involved In lawsuit after lawsuit...bandit...murderer...Cloudy apostle..." and was only worthwhile as a martyr to spur on the new era. After Brown is buried, along with him the country can bury all of the old inconsistencies from its founding that were only postponed by compromise.

John Brown's Body won a Pulitzer Prize. Benét is a product of a military family who graduated from Yale during a period of American patriotic chauvinism. This is the force that replaced internationalists like Debs and the Wobblies in the run up to WWI. Benét's take on Brown comes from this hyper-nationalist atmosphere. This critique comes from the book's otherwise glowing introduction by another Yale Professor, Henry Seidel Canby. At the end of the poem Benét puts to rest America before the war. This includes the slave holding aristocracy of the South and the radical vigilantes of the West. The things that Benét preserves from that era--Northern supremacy and the patriotism of the Union--are what some Yale men would recognize as exceptionally American.

Passages in Benét that stand out include "John Brown's Prayer" given before the raid. In this prayer one can see Brown's moral universe and mission just before the raid in Virginia. While "in Concord, Emerson and Thoreau Talked of an ideal state...in Boston Minister Higginson and Dr. [Samuel Gridley] Howe waited for news about" Harper's Ferry.

There is also a version of Brown's last speech which is just as contradictory in Benét as when Brown said it. But the poet resolves this contradiction by framing Brown as a vestigial American--the zealous vigilante patriot--extinguished forever by the Civil War along with slavery. This is not the same treatment that Debs and the Wobblies give Brown. Benét has "pity" for the "banner-beareres of abolition" now that they have brought the violence of revolution. Benét is describing New England elites but the violence was a national tragedy set into motion by the blunt "rock" that was Brown. This class distinction between the theorists (Transcendentalists/Secret Six) and their soldier is same as that of socialite abolitionist Howe of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the fighting soldiers of "John Brown's Body." They all contest the man's memory within the same country but some have different gravity than others.

Benét's memory of the period starts with informal citations including Edward Channing, John Bach McMaster, Oswald Garrison Villard, Carl Sandburg, Ida Tarbel and Captain Robert Goldwaite. The poet shares these sources with many of the historians that follow. The one obvious source that is missing from Benét is W.E.B. Du Bois' John Brown biography from 1909. To decipher Benét's appropriation of John Brown's Body one must first look to the long official memory of the Union maintained by Villard and Sandburg. This liberal abolitionist tradition are the Yankees who won the war. Benét's improbable ignorance of Du Bois (Debs and Chaplin) might be an internationalist blind spot. The two also use Brown's memory for competing traditions.

Benét's poem was adapted for radio in 1953 and directed by Charles Laughton. This version starred Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson and Raymond Massey and produced by Paul Gregory. This recording was added to the National Registry of the Library of Congress in 2014. This trend of legitimate media and authorized agencies adopting America's first executed insurrectionist might be a strange artifact of the Cold War, McCarthy and HUAC. Modern Hollywood star Ethan Hawke also adapted the Brown story by James McBride "The Good Lord Bird" which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2013. Hawke's version aired in 2020.

Currently Harper's Ferry is a National Historical Park where the myth is maintained for national purposes. The Department of the Interior published "John Brown's Raid" in 1974. This booklet presumably accompanied visitors to the site. The attached reading list did not include Benét but it did include some of Benét's sources such as Sandborn's "Life and Letters..." (1885) and Oswald Garrison Villard's biography (1911). This booklet also cites two well regarded histories--by Filler (1960) and Oates (1970)--that come after Benét. Between these books there is always a tension between those who use Brown to fan modern revolutionary discontent and others who use Brown to reauthorize the Union.

"John Brown's Body" was re-appropriated by the dissenters of the Civil Rights movement. Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers released the song on Talking Union in 1955. The popular versions of this song from the 1960s are inspired from this Pete Seeger rework of Chaplin's lyrics. Some other versions have been recorded by modern protest royalty: Tom Morello's The Nightwatchman and permanent protest hall of fame member: Paul Robeson. These three artists are are probably not known for affiliations with the IWW but they have read the theory and express labor international politics with broader socialist, anarchist and communist flavor evident in their music..

Oates' classic biography To Purge This Land With Blood published in 1970. This book fills in much of the ordinary biographical detail that the poet Benét carved away from previous histories, biographies and the Sandborn letters. Oates has a notation in his preface that describes the state of John Brown scholarship in 1970. Oates includes Du Bois, unlike Benét, but does not cite the Pulitzer prize winning poet or Louis Filler's history Crusade Against Slavery (1960) in this note. Oates does highlight Sandborn: "still a helpful volume" and Villard: "based on prodigious research...a well tempered version." Three other works get extended comments from Oates in this note. The first is Hill Peebles Wilson Soldier of Fortune (1913): a "high decibel, anti-Brown polemicism;" Robert Penn Warren's The making of a Martyr: (1929) "pro-Southern indictment of Brown" and David Karsner's Terrible Saint: a "eulogistic sketch." With these in mind Oates claims that his is the first to do an original biography of John Brown for decades.

Oates wrote something that was not "polemicism, historiography nor psychoanalysis" intended to fill in the gaps between the caricatures of Brown the "vicious fanatic" and "greatest abolitionist hero." One theme is Brown's series of failures into his fifties before moving to Kansas. Another is his version of Calvinism. A third is his "non conformist aboltionism." The result of this analysis is "the enigma of that messianic paradoxical, and essential tragic man."

Public intellectual and forensic historian Dr. Norman Finkelstein has mentioned work on a John Brown piece during his popular rediscovery following the Alan Dershowitz smear that cost Finklestein his tenure.