John Brown (1800-1859), a white American abolitionist, was hanged for treason, murder and insurrection after his failed attempt to take over the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to gain arms for a slave uprising.
Unlike Abraham Lincoln, Brown believed all men were created equal. Unlike George Washington, he fought for the freedom of all Americans, not just for whites.
Frederick Douglass said, “I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson said after Brown was sentenced to hang that he “will make the gallows glorious like the Cross.”
John Brown came from a long line of Connecticut farmers. His grandfather fought in the American Revolution. Brown grew up in Ohio and was taught that slavery is a sin before God.
Brown had a large family – 20 children born, 12 who lived – and moved more than ten times trying to find work to support them. For a while he lived in Pennsylvania where he took part in the Underground Railroad, helping slaves to escape from the slave states of the South.
In 1849 he moved to North Elba in upstate New York, a town of escaped slaves, whom he helped to become farmers.
Bleeding Kansas: More than any other man Brown helped to make Kansas a free state. In 1856 he became famous when he and his sons took part in the fighting there against those who would turn Kansas into a slave state by force.
Brown came to see that the slaves could be freed only through violence. He studied military history, particularly guerrilla warfare and the slave uprising of Toussaint L’Ouverture. Then he set about to lead a slave uprising of his own.
His idea was to create a new state in the mountains of Virginia where black slaves could flee and defend their freedom. The more blacks who joined him, the weaker the South would become.
In those mountains was Harpers Ferry. There the government kept 100,000 guns, more than enough for an army. Brown led a band of 22 armed men, both blacks and whites, and took it – but then lost it two days later to the Marines under Robert E. Lee. Brown was badly wounded in the fighting but not killed.
Many said he was a madman, but to blacks and to millions of whites in the North he was a hero. Thoreau said he was as great as any hero of the American Revolution.
Victor Hugo warned:
Let America know and ponder on this: there is something more frightening than Cain killing Abel, and that is Washington killing Spartacus.
Brown was tried and a month later was hanged with four of his followers.
His last words:
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.
After he was hanged church bells tolled across the North. In 16 months the civil war would start.
See also:
- John Brown the Abolitionist: A Biographer’s Blog – a whole blog about John Brown!!!
- slave uprisings
- Toussaint L’Ouverture
- Aqualtune
- white allies
- guerrilla warfare
- Lincoln
- Does the Bible say that slavery is wrong?
- drapetomania
Abagond 
Great post. After the Tim Wise article I searched to see if you had one for John Brown, and was surprised to not find one.
And to go off topic: a sugestion for a new post for mexican independence day. This year was the bicentennial anniversary.
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Good ole John Brown. One of the few who talked the talk AND walked the walk. A true brother of humanity.
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John Brown’s story is a compelling one. I have a strong tie to the Kanza, (Kaw) Nation of Kansas, none of whom live there now, the few surviving sent into Ok., or they would be hung. The massacres happening in Kansas would have been about the same time Brown was there. Is there any material, you know of, which includes any of thoughts on American Indians and whether they were correct in using retaliatory violence? I am hoping, and assuming, he was morally consistent. Fascinating man.
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He was said to have these piercing grey eyes and an imposing stature. Combine that with his passionate nature (especially when it came to the abolition of slavery) made him a very intimidating and (to some) frightening figure indeed.
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Let me get this straight: whites thought he was mentally ill for fighting against slavery?
I don’t think he was crazy, but if he were, it would be an amazing irony (that only a crazy person was able to see what was really going on).
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Great post. Thank you, Abagond.
Back in school in Bed-Stuy (NYC) in the ’50s, all I was taught about John Brown was that he was a crazy old white guy who thought he could take on the might of the U.S. gov’t and end slavery by force. The emphasis was on “crazy.” I’ll definitely be digging deeper.
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I just started reading your blog and I can’t believe it! Its like…you are in my head. I’ve always been a fan of Tim Wise and I’ve been reading up on Tim Brown. Its like the next person you’ll talk about is Huey P. Newton.
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Was he Altruistic?
what could have been his other motives for fighting against slavery?
Although motives matter little and end results count, I am still curious.
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An interesting side note, when John Brown’s wife came to northern California she was shunned and threatened. Luckily, another small town took her in and the house where she lived is still standing, I think it was Red Bluff, CA.
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Asada–>>Was he Altruistic?
what could have been his other motives for fighting against slavery?
Although motives matter little and end results count, I am still curious.<<
Altruism? What is altruism? John Brown perhaps believed in the equality of blacks, but in general the moral issue of abolition (there were economic issues) was not a matter of loving black people but of saving the souls of white people.
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Interesting man to say the least. Few montsh later and the guy could be seen today in whole different light.
What ever his motives and methods, he was against the slavery. And when the push came to shove, he did not back down.
From hindsight though, his idea of guerilla war and how to run it was doomed from the get go. You can’t have succesfull guerilla army without the support of the population. Even Castro and his little bunch survived with the help of the people and gained momentum from then on, not the otherway around. Just look what happened to Guevara in Bolivia.
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>>From hindsight though, his idea of guerilla war and how to run it was doomed from the get go. You can’t have succesfull guerilla army without the support of the population. <<
Well, actually you can. Most guerrilla wars are NOT fought with the support of the population, but with the support of an outside power and the acquiescence of the population.
His error was that he actually attacked the very power that would have been his support in a guerrilla war. As you allude, had he begun his operations after the CSA secession, he would have had the support of the Union for a guerrilla war in the CSA.
"Being right too soon is always socially unacceptable." — Robert A. Heinlein.
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I recommend reading the David C. Reynolds (2006) biography of John Brown. It’s available on Amazon.
John Brown treated all humans as equals, and not just blacks and whites; the treatment of Native Americans was a concern of his as well. History states he interacted with POC, treating each one as an equal. He dined with them, in his home and their homes, unheard of at that time, and he armed freed black folks to help free other black folks. White slave owners disgusted, and seeing as they couldn’t recognize the humanity in others, John Brown didn’t see why anyone should recognize the humanity in them. Lincoln suggested extending slavery another 100 years (IOW, extend it to about 1950), to help enslavers “transition” but Brown warned against delaying, letting slave owners get away with just “talk”.
So, quite naturally, he killed them whenever he could.
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I think John Brown’s motives and state of mind were quite clear – he thought slavery was wrong and should be ended by any means necessary.
The people whose motives and state of mind that should be questioned is not John Brown’s but those who either accepted slavery or saw that it was wrong and did nothing.
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Brown’s problem was the fact he didn’t have a clear plan. All he had was heart and the need to do something. But like we already know (do we?) these things don’t win battles or shape history. Clear objectives, rationality, wish to play dirty when necessary, gaining power on any cunning way possible and readiness to sacrifice your own people in the process (whether they know it or not) is what win these battles.
In short- he seems way to honest for that.
PS-I don’t think there was anything wrong with Brown. I mentioned his (alleged) mental illness not because I personally believe he was crazy, but because it would be incredibly ironic if he were> that only a crazy person was honest and pure and normal (no other way to put it) to see what was really going on.
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From what I understand, what John Brown had in mind was like what was done in the early stages of the Haiti uprising. Something very much like it had some success in Brazil too:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/aqualtune/
Also, the mountains of Virginia was a good place to base himself: like Chechnya it is in the mountains (easier to defend) and is next to a region that could unendingly supply him arms (the North). And that part of Virginia was no great lover of slavery either: during the civil war it broke away from Virginia and became what we now know as West Virginia.
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But he either didn’t have luck or didn’t have enough men/weapons or a good enough plan. Not sure what went wrong.
So, what do white people think about him today? That he was just a crazy and unpatriotic (I don’t think how this is possible) lunatic, or that he a rare individual who saw what was going on (and in this sense, was before his time)?
Why do they seem to be somewhat ashamed of him?
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“So, what do white people think about him today?”
I don’t think many white people think about him at all.
I don’t remember hearing anything about him in school or anywhere else before I took an active interest on my own.
But I didn’t study history in college so maybe he is more well known than I realize.
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John Brown wasn’t in my U.S. History textbooks in high school; not that I can remember.
I don’t remember reading about him until college when I took… African-American History. 🙂
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So in other words, they don’t see him as important.
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I grew up in WV. I’ve always known about him b/c he’s still revered here. Harper’s Ferry is mostly black, last I checked.
Legend has it that the death of abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy set John Brown off.
But no, he’s deliberately ignored in American academia. It’s a time-honored American tradition: Don’t ask, don’t remember.
And Mira…GREAT comment. If a “madman” could see the wrongness of slavery, what’s that say about everyone else?
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Anyone see a progression here? In the bad ol’ 50s he was misrepresented in history books. Nowadays, he’s not mentioned at all.
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Yeah, it is kind of funny that he is missing from the history books. Reminds me of old Soviet Union were some guys just dissapeared from the history because they became Non-persons :-D!
RD, you’re right about the guerilla war. It can done by the support of outside power and Afghanistan today is one example where weapons and money pour in from at least two sources out side of it while majority of the population just wants to be left alone. Vietnam was another, North supporting the southern vietcong and eventually replacing them specially after Tet.
HQR3, that is what I was thinking! I saw an old movie where he was portrayed as flaming fanatic but not totally insane, I guess the movie was from late 30’s, and if he was nuts in the books in the fifties and is now missing completely, it makes one wonder…
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@HQR3, I had to leave my country to winnow the truth distorted by history books that either romanticized or held in despair the history of First Nation people, as if we all disappeared or were huddled behind gas stations drinking from brown paper bags.
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Abagond, interesting post…that’s why I like your website…I have never heard of this man and I can see why he is not discussed much in the US history classes.
Many Caribbean islands (like Jamaica) had Maroons who fought guerilla style (without outside support) and managed to frustrate the British for years…The mountains and cockpits gave them a great advantage.
These guerilla fighters also helped to break the backs of slavery in the islands. The slaves who escaped would run to the deep mountains to join them.
Imagine if John Brown would have been successful, things would have been so different in the US.
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Good to know there were people that truly cared back then, not just the ones that went on with society. You wouldn’t believe it if you just read school history books.
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He was not mentioned in my state-sponsored U.S. history book, but he got a few paragraphs to himself in a U.K. textbook on U.S. history my class uses now (we use the English curriculum). Amazing how he’s totally missing in one version and important in another! It really highlights the need to look at history from many different viewpoints.
I wonder why he’s not mentioned. From what I can tell, he’s definitely an important figure (and some people think his actions were part of what led to secession). I would have thought that white Americans would want to be able to say “Hey look, here’s a white guy who believed in equality and stuff! Let’s all root for him!” I guess the idea of seeming to supporting violence for any cause is a big no-no for our textbook makers.
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John Brown was in my AP US History book, but then again, it was by Howard Zinn.
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I went to George Washington Carver Elementary and Frederick Douglass Junior High back in the segregated days–our black teachers taught us about him.
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In 1996, I was in Montgomery AL for a few weeks. During that time, my group did a community service project, some housecleaning in an elementary school.
At one point, I was in a third-grade classroom and happened to notice an Alabama History textbook on the teacher’s desk. I picked it up and leafed through it.
I noted, first, that the copyright was 1963. I noted then that it described the antebellum period as a “happy time” when everyone was satisfied with life….but that ended with the Civil War, and after that life in the South became hard.
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@RDKirk, one might say gone with a wind…
It is really puzzling indeed…
I mean, why would anybody be nostalgic about the days of slavery? It’s like being nostalgic about the good ole days of Auschwitz or Bosnian ethnic clensing, Stalins kulag or Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
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Sam—
I mean, why would anybody be nostalgic about the days of slavery? It’s like being nostalgic about the good ole days of Auschwitz or Bosnian ethnic clensing, Stalins kulag or Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
RDKirk—
That was in Alabama. I [b]know[/b] there were Russians Nostalgic for the Stalin days up through the 80s and I suspect there are Russians nostalgic for the Soviet days today.
I suspect there are Chinese nostalgic for the Mao days.
What has dismayed me over the last two years has been the number of white Americans in my generation–Boomers–who are nostalgic for Jim Crow. They have romanticized both slavery (“It wasn’t so bad–most black people lived better as slaves than when they were free”) and Jim Crow.
They see the Jim Crow days as a time when “at least there was common decency” and don’t understand that when a white man can kill black children or rape black women at any time with no social consequences at all, there is no such thing as “common decency.” That is an [b]indecent[/b] society.
We Boomers were raised in an apartheid society, and I’m afraid we have not risen above our upbringing.
And yet…a black man was elected president. The voting demographics, however, reveal who elected him. As I’ve said here before, I’m now convinced that the US won’t reach a post-racial state until we Boomers are dead.
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RDKirk: As I’ve said here before, I’m now convinced that the US won’t reach a post-racial state until we Boomers are dead.
Unfortunately, the death of the Boomers is a double-edged sword, especially in black America. True, the old hardline segregationists will be dying off; but, as many of Abagond’s posts indicate, the new racism is both subtler and harder to combat, replacing the flux of racial struggle under the old apartheid with the steady state of a solidified racial caste. A very big part of the problem is that much of our history was transmitted patrilineally. A boomer myself, I remember the stories of father, grandpa, and great grandpa regarding what black people went through. While all suffered, black men in particular were forced into the teeth of the buzzsaw, having to deal with an everyday world black women were partially spared. And the tales they told.
With the co-opting of the black family and the normalization of the single mother-headed household, much of this oral tradition has been lost and the disconnect between the present and past is beyond detrimental, even in this the age of the internet. Without the knowledge of our fathers, we enter the millenium virtually disarmed. And what makes this so lopsided is that family break-up is far less pronounced in the families of those old segregationists, who were able to pass down the flavor if not the form of their prejudices, prejudices duly updated to conform with modern sensibilities. That society will not be post-racial but post-examination of racial issues.
RD, I offer your very comments as evidence of what we’ve lost: I’ve lurked here a couple of months and found your comments to be as insightful and pithy as anything Abagond’s research has uncovered. We cannot afford to lose this.
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John Brown was amazing.
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Let’s be real clear about what John Brown did: he captured and killed five pro-slavery settlers. One of them his kids hacked to pieces with swords.
If you find him to be an “amazing man”, you need to make your peace with that, too.
Personally, I think that there were many other, more effective abolitionists who were not the 1850s version of the main character in “Falling Down”.
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Thad:
Like who?
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John Brown really was amazing.
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I mean, he is so amazing, that black folks will revere him looooong after the last white racist draws his final breath and dies.
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@ RDKirk, yep, you’re right. Some russians are nostalgic about the good ole days of Stalin, because “back then there was on order”. Some chinese are indeed nostalgic about Mao, but I have no clue why the hell. BUT very,very few germans are nostalgic about the days of Third Reich. Some east german youths are, though.
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@Thad…I had this very conversation with a friend last month after reading up on John Brown (while doing research on the Kanza nation) and was stunned by the violence, the use of the sword, his decision to spare someone (based on youth) and another who Brown believed was not involved on the precipitating earlier attack), but otherwise wielding what must have been a scene of incredible carnage. I review newspaper clippings from the midwest during the 1860’s and though violent deaths are very very frequent, the level rarely rises to what Brown did, except when First Nation and Settler or Government forces, were battling.
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Myth formation 101: A heroic individual is always seen in an extremely positive light, and his bad sides are downplayed. In case of ANY military leader, the fact that he murdered children and other civilians is NEVER mentioned (and ALL military leaders always kill civilians. Don’t fool yourselves about it).
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Similarly, Thomas Jefferson and Lincoln myths downplay the fact they were racists (to say the least).
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@Mira, true, as a Native American I grew up knowing what Lincoln did right before going into the Civil War, (ordered the largest single government hanging of men ever in US history, all First Nation people), so I didn’t have illusions. But John Brown used his own children to exact revenge for a principle, that however much anguished him spiritually, did not apply to him as a White man. I’m not saying that there are not other examples of people doing the same thing based on principle, or that there are not examples of those people recruiting their children to support a cause, but this was hand on hand, bloody, not distanced, and put everyone in his family, and sons families, at risk. This was not part of a government or underground campaign, as far as I know, which means he really was on his own and that is dangerous. The fact that hindsight shows he was right about the requirement of violence to undo the dispicable culture built upon slavery, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t examine his violence carefully, I would think it gives cause for examining the violence closer regardless of how right we think he was now.
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Old adage: one mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist.
If you look at the times these things happened, they don’t jump out that much. Yes, the newpapers surely brought these up as horryfying massacres. And lets face is, they were from our perspective.
But what about the killing of indians that had been going on for a while? And only few decades ago in the same region I might add. Was that such news? Hardly so. They where called “Indian Wars”.
Native americans had been butchered for centuries, the shawnees and cherokees and whole lot of them; women, children, old folks; with muskets, guns, knives and swords by white settlers all over the place. That was the rutine. Some white soldiers used to chop up indians and carry their bodyparts as souveniers after massacres. And this went on at least to 1860’s. In Sand Creek white men cut of womens labias and pinned them on their hats as signs of victory, mens genitals, scalps, arms and legs were also taken as trophys and the heads of course.
John Brown was a product of that period. There was nothing new nor unique in killing ones enemies, hack them to pieces etc. It was normal way of dealing things back then.
What was so terrible in this instance was that a white man was killing other white men in belief that he was doing it for the good of black people. Unheard of at that time. That was shocking for the white audience and readers.
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Sam,
I agree with your comment, but I disagree it’s about Brown (or anybody else) being product of “that period”. It’s the same today. Nothing has changed.
There is no war without civilian victims. Civilians are often tortured and murdered today. They may use different weapons, but the principle is the same.
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Mira–
I agree with your comment, but I disagree it’s about Brown (or anybody else) being product of “that period”. It’s the same today. Nothing has changed.
There is no war without civilian victims. Civilians are often tortured and murdered today. They may use different weapons, but the principle is the same.
RDKirk–
Nothing about John Brown’s methods were covered up at the time–all the worst of it was well known. Yet he became a figurehead and a hero at that time with all the “dirt” known.
That’s why Sam is correct in pointing out that “John Brown was a product of that period. There was nothing new nor unique in killing ones enemies, hack them to pieces etc. It was normal way of dealing things back then.”
If it’s the same today, that only magnifies the sin of today–we should know better.
And to a great extent many of us do.
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@Abagond
For starters, I think Beecher-Stowe did a lot more good for whipping up public opinion against slavery than Brown. And she didn’t have to hack up anyone to do it.
@Ank Me
I mean, he is so amazing, that black folks will revere him looooong after the last white racist draws his final breath and dies.
I doubt it. most black people, like most white people, haven’t the slightest clue as to who he is.
@Roxanne
[Nods] Which is why I’m a bit skeptical of all this Brown cheering going on. I mean, most people posting here think that getting insulted on the internet is some form of “traumatic violence”, but they’re SERIOUSLY proposing the brutal murder of one’s political adversaries as a viable solution to racism?
In the immortal words of Joe Gideon, riiiiiiiiight….
I bet you dollars to donuts, frex, that Ank Me is a vegetarian. Ya think she’s gonna chop Glenn Beck up with a sword? 😀
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Here’s a song by CRASS which sucinctly expresses my feelings regarding all the people here who are going “Cool… John Brown!”
You talk about your revolution, well, that’s fine.
But what are you going to be doing come the time?
Are you going to be the big man with the tommy-gun?
Will you talk of freedom when the blood begins to run?
Well, freedom has no value if violence is the price.
I don’t want your revolution, I want anarchy and peace.
CHORUS
You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool.
You speak of liberation and when the people rule.
Well ain’t it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me.
But what about those people who don’t want your new restrictions?
Those that disagree with you and have their own convictions?
You say they’ve got it wrong because they don’t agree with you.
So when the revolution comes you’ll have to run them through.
You say that revolution will bring freedom for us all.
Well freedom just ain’t freedom when your back’s against the wall.
CHORUS
Will you indoctrinate the masses to serve your new regime?
And simply do away with those whose views are too extreme?
Transportation details could be left to British rail,
Where Zyklon B succeeded, North Sea Gas will fail.
It’s just the same old story of man destroying man.
We’ve got to look for other answers to the problems of this land.
CHORUS
Vive la revolution, people of the world unite!
Stand up men of courage, it’s your job to fight!
It all seems very easy, this revolution game.
But when you start to really play things won’t be quite the same.
Your intellectual theories on how it’s going to be.
Don’t seem to take into account the true reality.
Cos the truth of what you’re saying, as you sit there sipping beer.
Is pain and death and suffering, but of course you wouldn’t care.
You’re far too much of a man for that, if Mao did it so can you,
What’s the freedom of us all against the suffering of the few?
That’s the kind of self-deception that killed ten million jews.
Just the same false logic that all power-mongers use.
So don’t think you can fool me with your political tricks!
Political right, political left, you can keep your politics!
Government is government and all government is force!
Left or right, right or left, it takes the same old course.
Oppression and restriction, regulation, rule and law…
The seizure of that power is all your revolution’s for.
You romanticise your heroes, quote from Marx and Mao.
Well their ideas of freedom are just oppression now!
Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created.
It’s just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren’t clearly stated.
Nothing’s really different cos all government’s the same:
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game
Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created.
It’s just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren’t clearly stated.
Nothing’s really different cos all government’s the same:
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game.
There’s nothing that you offer but a dream of last years hero.
The truth of revolution, brother………………. is year zero.
I mean I think it’s just too precious for words that a bunch of mostly Americans, the majority of whom are apparently
middle class and college educated, think that bloody murder in the name of revolution is a rilly bitchin’ idea.
Mira, why don’t you graphically describe to these clueless Yanks what a mortar round does to the human body?
Christ…
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@ Mira & Sam
Of course it’s a problem when the children of pro-slavery folks get killed. Fuck what happened to the children of the enslaved & the Native Americans. Of course it’s an issue when white folks of that era reaped what they sowed…if only for a moment.
After all, karma is a wrong & immoral notion.
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Thad–
Mira, why don’t you graphically describe to these clueless Yanks what a mortar round does to the human body?
RDKirk–
What makes you so sure none of the Yanks here has seen it?
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RD, I know quite a few combat vets and every one I’ve met so far doesn’t think human hamburger is something one shrugs off.
Of course, I HAVE met a few REMFs who feel that way…
@Ank
Of course it’s an issue when white folks of that era reaped what they sowed…if only for a moment.
Those kids were personally responsible for the deaths of millions of Native Americans, huh?
Ank, give it a rest. You’re the kind of person who’d puke at the site of an actual dead body, yet here you are cheering on murder, as long as it occurs to the people who think are evil.
Frankly, if you can’t do it yourself, you’ve no call to be cheering on someone else.
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Let me ask this: was the butchering of the Romanov’s and their children justified? To many they were the figureheads responsible for millions of serfs who died young from overwork and being yanked from villages to serve in war. What reactions are provoked looking at Mussolini’s dead body swinging while being torn apart? The selections referenced about violence in the Plains misses my point; which is John Brown was not retaliating because his family or he himself was attacked, his wife wasn”t raped, his children left dying in ravines. My direct ancestors were and still try to accommodate through diplomacy to share their sacred grounds. Just like the African American experience it makes me gnash my teeth when I hear commentators say that “Native Americans did their own fair share of killing.” As if. As if. Of course, they won’t say it to me directly. Even today, Russell Means, is behind bars, but would I recommend that First Nation people raise up arms to attack Whites in their environs, suggest to Lakota to use violence to reclaim the Black Hills? Or if a sympathizing White person wanted to do it on our behalf would I condone that? Saying that Brown was simply a product of his time is akin to dismissing racists who say enslaving human being was okay because it was culturally acceptable. Would you have approved of Waco sympathizers butchering FBI agents? Native Americans were involved in a battle as ruthless as the Civil War, fighting for their very existence. John Brown was not.
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As some one who has seen and experienced some violence first hand, I do not promote it. I have no desire nor wish for it. I think all violence is truly evil. It is bad. Simple as that.
BUT when we are talking about a guy who lived at that time we must understand the surroundin realities of that time. We are not living in the same social parameters any more. It is very easy for us to see the wrongs of the deeds of those people who lived in those times. But in order to try to understand what made them do what they did, we have to understand the surroundin realities, how the life was at that time.
The romans had a certain rule concerning the people they conquered. If the conquered lost their fight for freedom, they became romans and/or subjects to romans. They could try to get out once, that is the romans thoughed that it was only natural to try to break free. But once the opressed nation was put down second time, there was no third. If the said opressed people rose up again in arms, the romans did their best to wipe out the whole nation, the people, their towns and cultures. They were thinkin rationally according to their ideas. They did not think it is morally wrong to kill third of the gauls, wipe out the dacian nation, destroy the jews etc. It was normal practice for them.
Now, from our perspective these romans do not differ from, say, the nazis. The nazis even idolized the romans. But for the romans at that time, their behavior and actions were only natural. They were normal. When ever we talk about the romans we have to keep in mind that these were the people who went to the “theater” to watch such amusing matinee shows as midgets getting their skulls crushed, virgins raped by baboons and then butchered and eaten as well, different foreigners being gorged by wild animals and eventually some venatores killing those same animals. Trajanus had “games” which went on more 100 days in a row, during which some ten thousand people were murdered publicly, and thousand and thousand of animals were wiped out. And all this on the cheers of the romans.
And yet, for these same romans the law was very important. They loved litterature and many arts. What they were thinking??
I’m not saying that John Brown was a great guy because he killed. But I am saying that killing somebody was not so outlandish as it is today. I’m not saying that anybody should go out and start chop up people with swords. But I want to say, that this was excately what they did in Sierra Leone, and I belive they did it because of the surroundings.
So we can be judgemental here and say that John Brown was a nut, a zelot, a murderer, and maybe so. But what made him such a man? His opposition on slavery? Or the times he was living in?
Maybe he had seen a lyching and two? Maybe he had seen a black man castrated alive? I have no idea. He had seen something for sure which made him that desperate.
And let me be clear on this: I am not saying the murder is a magnificent thing. I am saying that in order to understand this guy, we must try to understand the world in which he was living, where he grew up etc.
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Thad–
RD, I know quite a few combat vets and every one I’ve met so far doesn’t think human hamburger is something one shrugs off.
RDKirk–
Yet, we still understand that war can be unavoidable and will do it as necessary.
No, it’s not something someone shrugs off. That’s why in my family we have three generations of men who, during family gatherings, often just sit together quietly in our own private VFW meeting.
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Means is behind bars again? When did that happen?
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Yet, we still understand that war can be unavoidable and will do it as necessary.
The vast majority of wars are completely avoidable and – for most Americans, at least – participation in them is voluntary. Even during Vietnam, people had a choice. My uncle, for example, went to Canada. It wasn’t impossible to dodge the draft.
No, it is not necessary to kill, even when the State tells you to do so.
Now, I’m not trashing on the vets who – for whatever reason – went and fought. There are a lot of them in my family, too. They made their choices and have to live with them and I respect that.
My point is, when I see militant types like some folks here frothing at the mouth over how cool bloodshed is when it happens to the right people, I have to chuckle. I mean, these are people who’re probably pro-gun control in real life, who’ve almost certainly never fired a weapon in anger and probably never fired one at all, except maybe on a summer camp riflery course when they were kids. And oh yeah, they’re gonna pick up an AK-47 and do The Man dirt, probably with the themesong to “Shaft” playing on their I-pods at the time…
It’s the “Oh yeah, killing kids is cool when we hate their parents” crowd, whose closest approximation to real life slaughter is a widescreen T.V., that I have trouble taking seriously.
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@Sam
BUT when we are talking about a guy who lived at that time we must understand the surroundin realities of that time.
Sam, most mid-19th century Americans were not gleefully chopping up people with swords. Sorry. Brown’s acts shocked people at the time and rightly so. Many abolitionists supported his struggle, but not his means – check out Thoreaux, for example.
This isn’t a case of “hye, it was normal at the time”. People were appalled by Bloody Kansas.
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“John Brown treated all humans as equals, and not just blacks and whites; the treatment of Native Americans was a concern of his as well.”
How can one make this statement when John Brown killed innocent men? If John Brown treated all humans as equal, John Brown would go about his business of abolishing slavery in a manner that didn’t cost human life. To say John Brown treated all humans equally and yet not call him a murderer is preposterous
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Jay completely misses the point. Who says the five men killed in Kansas were innocent? That’s not an established fact of history; indeed, the evidence is that they were conspiring to enable an overpowering terrorist assault upon the Browns and others. There was no police to support the free state side at any level, local or otherwise. Brown and his men acted strategically and reasonably in striking them first. (Incidentally, Tony Horwitz’s portrayal of the killings in his latest, Midnight Rising, is biased against Brown and does not portray either the full context of the Pottawatomie killings or all of the evidence, so don’t throw up his work in a counter-argument.)
Secondly, Jay, the notion that slavery could be “abolished” in “a manner that didn’t cost human life” is ludicrous. Do you even know U.S. history? Are you even on the same planet? NO ONE could abolish slavery in the U.S. without violence. If anyone could have done so, it was the moderate, compromising Lincoln, and even he had to come around to the fact that the Slave Power was not satisfied with just keeping slavery (Lincoln was willing to let them do that too); they wanted to expand (Lincoln was not willing to let them do so). Even though Lincoln did not go to war at first to end slavery, he was obliged by circumstances and political pressure to put an end to slavery, and it took the blunt force of the federal government in military terms. Ending slavery was not like a labor strike or even like the Civil Rights movement, where much could be done by “non-violence” (although it is arguable that what really advanced Civil Rights was the threat of violence and riots, etc.).
Slavery was institutionalized, culturally embedded, and economically integrated into the nation’s existence. Powerful forces in the North and South were engaged to sustain it. Secondly, slavery was a state of war against black people as John Brown said–and really, against all black people, whether they were enslaved or free. By 1850, the racist laws of the land were embedded to the advantage of slave owners and certainly to white supremacy. By 1859, there was no civil, legislative, or “peaceful” avenue toward abolition left. Non-violent abolitionism was losing adherents. John Brown wasn’t the only one who came to believe only violence could destroy slavery; he was just the only “white” man who did anything about it. And don’t cite Lincoln. Lincoln wanted to compromise, including buy slaves into freedom–of course, nothing was said about compensating slaves or paying reparations. Yet many slave owners didn’t want compensated emancipation. They were making too much profit. The ringleaders of secession were the heartland states of slavery, and the politicians who championed secession were strategic pro-slavery activists.
In short, if you think slavery could have ended without violence, you’re stupid. If you would have preferred that slavery be allowed to “die out” over fifty to one hundred years, then you are an insensitive racist with no evident concern for the real suffering, brutality, and inhumanity of chattel slavery. Would Jay be satisfied if I enslaved his family and then promised to gradually free them and their offspring (some of which would be sired in rape) over the next fifty to one hundred years?
People who bash John Brown typically suffer from a large degree of ignorance and misunderstanding about U.S. history. They often also suffer from some measure of prejudice, historical and otherwise.
The “shibboleth” of U.S. history and culture is this–ask it, and you can determine which ideological side a person is on, whether s/he is even conscious of it or not:
“Did enslaved blacks have the right to rise up, strike down their “masters,” and otherwise use force in order to gain freedom?”
Regardless of rationale–political, social, ideological, or theological–no matter what people say otherwise, the answer they give will show precisely where they would have stood in 1859, and probably also whether or not they really understand the problems of generational, institutional, and systemic racism today.
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@Louis DeCaro Jr:
I agree with you 100%.
John Brown had the right idea; he just didn’t have enough manpower.
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[…] John Brown (1800-1859), a white American abolitionist, was hanged for treason, murder and insurrection after his failed attempt to take over the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to gain arms for a slave uprising.Unlike Abraham Lincoln, Brown believed all men were created equal. Unlike George Washington, he fought for the freedom of all Americans, not just for whites.Frederick Douglass said, “I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him.”Ralph Waldo Emerson said after Brown was sentenced to hang that he “will make the gallows glorious like the Cross.” […]
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