A thread to honor the memory of the abolitionist John Brown.

MidwesternGro

Well-Known Member
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John Brown was a man of action -- a man who would not be deterred from his mission of abolishing slavery. On October 16, 1859, he led 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan to arm slaves with the weapons he and his men seized from the arsenal was thwarted, however, by local farmers, militiamen, and Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Within 36 hours of the attack, most of Brown's men had been killed or captured.

John Brown was born into a deeply religious family in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800. Led by a father who was vehemently opposed to slavery, the family moved to northern Ohio when John was five, to a district that would become known for its antislavery views.

During his first fifty years, Brown moved about the country, settling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, and taking along his ever-growing family. (He would father twenty children.) Working at various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator, he never was finacially successful -- he even filed for bankruptcy when in his forties. His lack of funds, however, did not keep him from supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech. He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.

In 1847 Frederick Douglass met Brown for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the meeting Douglass stated that, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to Douglass to lead a war to free slaves.

Brown moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. The community had been established thanks to the philanthropy of Gerrit Smith, who donated tracts of at least 50 acres to black families willing to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish his own farm there as well, in order to lead the blacks by his example and to act as a "kind father to them."

Despite his contributions to the antislavery cause, Brown did not emerge as a figure of major significance until 1855 after he followed five of his sons to the Kansas territory. There, he became the leader of antislavery guerillas and fought a proslavery attack against the antislavery town of Lawrence. The following year, in retribution for another attack, Brown went to a proslavery town and brutally killed five of its settlers. Brown and his sons would continue to fight in the territory and in Missouri for the rest of the year.

Brown returned to the east and began to think more seriously about his plan for a war in Virginia against slavery. He sought money to fund an "army" he would lead. On October 16, 1859, he set his plan to action when he and 21 other men -- 5 blacks and 16 whites -- raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Brown was wounded and quickly captured, and moved to Charlestown, Virginia, where he was tried and convicted of treason, Before hearing his sentence, Brown was allowed make an address to the court.


. . . I believe to have interfered as I have done, . . . in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done."


Although initially shocked by Brown's exploits, many Northerners began to speak favorably of the militant abolitionist. "He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. . . .," said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts. "No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature. . . ."

John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1550.html
 
The original Battle Hymn of the Republic was actually a song Union soldiers sang about the hero John Brown because they viewed the war as a fight against the evil of slavery.

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, /|
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.
Chorus:Glory, glory, hallelujah, /|
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul goes marching on.


He's gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord, /|
He's gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
His soul goes marching on.
Chorus:

John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back, /
John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back,
His soul goes marching on.
Chorus:

John Brown died that the slaves might be free, /John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
His soul goes marching on.
Chorus:

The stars above in Heaven now are looking kindly down, /
The stars above in Heaven now are looking kindly down,
His soul goes marching on.
Chorus:
 
John Brown by William W. Patton
Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
His soul is marching on.

John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,
And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save;
Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave,
His soul is marching on.

He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on.

John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see,
Christ who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be,
And soon thruout the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free,
For his soul is marching on.

The conflict that he heralded he looks from heaven to view,
On the army of the Union with its flag red, white and blue.
And heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do,
For his soul is marching on.

Ye soldiers of Freedom, then strike, while strike ye may,
The death blow of oppression in a better time and way,
For the dawn of old John Brown has brightened into day,
And his soul is marching on.
 
lefties love murderous insane rabblerousing violent criminals
as long as the madman's agenda is in line with their current talking points.
 
lefties love murderous insane rabblerousing violent criminals
as long as the madman's agenda is in line with their current talking points.
HIstory lesson: this is credited by Historians (remember those?) as being more significant than the Lincoln-Douglas debates in the escalation towards Civil War. You can spin it any way you want. Slavery and free-labour are incompatible economic systems. The British moved off it in 1833, repealing their Corn Laws, and for the U.S. to move forward and develop into an advanced economy the issue had to be settled. Sadly, some issues only get settled by war. He has his place in history.
 
HIstory lesson: this is credited by Historians (remember those?) as being more significant than the Lincoln-Douglas debates in the escalation towards Civil War. You can spin it any way you want. Slavery and free-labour are incompatible economic systems. The British moved off it in 1833, repealing their Corn Laws, and for the U.S. to move forward and develop into an advanced economy the issue had to be settled. Sadly, some issues only get settled by war. He has his place in history.
he still aint no hero.

he is still a murderous thug who sought to change the system IN A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC by violence rather than persuasion.

his goal may have been ultimately right in hindsight but his ends did NOT justify his means.

of course "he has a place in history", he isnt a fictional character.

hitler, stalin, mussolini, pol pot, jack the ripper, emilio zapata, fidel castro, francisco franco, mohammed, ghengis khan and tammerlaine all have their place in history too, that doesnt mean they should be celebrated.
 
he still aint no hero.

he is still a murderous thug who sought to change the system IN A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC by violence rather than persuasion.

his goal may have been ultimately right in hindsight but his ends did NOT justify his means.

of course "he has a place in history", he isnt a fictional character.

hitler, stalin, mussolini, pol pot, jack the ripper, emilio zapata, fidel castro, francisco franco, mohammed, ghengis khan and tammerlaine all have their place in history too, that doesnt mean they should be celebrated.

John Brown was trying to avoid a civil war by collapsing the slave-based economy of the South. He would have saved lives if he was successful.

Men with honor do not compromise with the wicked.
 
he still aint no hero.

he is still a murderous thug who sought to change the system IN A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC by violence rather than persuasion.

his goal may have been ultimately right in hindsight but his ends did NOT justify his means.

of course "he has a place in history", he isnt a fictional character.

hitler, stalin, mussolini, pol pot, jack the ripper, emilio zapata, fidel castro, francisco franco, mohammed, ghengis khan and tammerlaine all have their place in history too, that doesnt mean they should be celebrated.

You forgot about the most celebrated butcher by potheads, Ernesto Guevara. Who Doer thinks was like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
 
John Brown was trying to avoid a civil war by collapsing the slave-based economy of the South. He would have saved lives if he was successful.

Men with honor do not compromise with the wicked.

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Victor Hugo on John Brown:

"As for myself, though I am but a mere atom, yet being, as I am, common with all other men, inspired with the conscience of humanity, I fall on my knees, weeping before the great starry banner of the New World; and with clasped hands, and with profound and filial respect, I implore the illustrious American Republic, sister of the French witness the assassination of Emancipation by Liberty. Republic, to see to the safety of the universal moral law, to save John Brown, to demolish the threatening scaffold of the 16th of December, and not to suffer that beneath its eyes, and I add; with a shudder, almost by its fault, crime should be perpetrated surpassing the first fratricide or iniquity. For---- yes, let America know it, and ponder on it well---there is something more terrible than Cain slaying Abel: It is Washington slaying Sparticus!"
 

On the morning of December 2, Brown wrote,

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."

So yes, John Brown did try to avert civil war by leading a slave rebellion that would collapse the economy of the South.
 
Wow, who couldn't love a man who tried to free slaves? What racists.

The guy was an emo terrorist, just like fruit cakes such as Timothy McVeigh, David Koresh, Valerie Solanis, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc etc etc. All of them thought their mission was just too.
 
He killed a freed slave to free slaves. That's some serious lack of logic.
He probably thought he was going to warn the white southern slave owners. House slaves and freed slaves were sometimes involved in the vileness that was slavery in the Old South. John Brown would have avoided the entire Civil War if he was successful. His cause was just and he was a great man.

I'm shocked that people are still racist enough to hate him.
 
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