What think ye of John Brown?

[DerekG]

I've been at the DU since 2001 May, and I can't recall a thread centering on one of the most controversial figures--and the most fiery of abolitionists--in American history.

Personally, I look upon Brown with admiration, moreso than the Founding Fathers, who were more apt to defend the elite than they were the poor and disenfranchised (witness their reaction to Shay's Rebellion). While I abhor violence, I do not dismiss the possibility that force can birth positive results; Brown's campaign in Kansas and failed assault on Harper's Ferry did indeed draw the attention of the country, and his tete a tete with Southern authorities (as recounted in DuBois' novel) put the South on trial.

His words during the trial are among the most indelible in American history:

"This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book here which I suppose to be the Bible…that teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further, to ‘remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.’ I endeavored to act up to that instruction."

I confess that my sympathies lie with shit-stormers like Eugene Debs and Huey Long, and not with their respective adversaries, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. But does anyone else consider Brown a great hero?

And if you agree with the omnipresent contention that Brown was insane and/or villainous, then what is your perception of Abraham Lincoln, who forged through the deaths of 625,000 human beings what Brown had sought to do with only small-scale violence? Can you admonish the one, laud the other, and preserve logistic and moral consistency?

[AP]

1. Have you read Cloudsplitter by Russel Banks?

[Diego360]

2. Amazing book

eom

[CO Liberal]

3. Methinks His Body Lies a Moulderin' In The Grave

But his soul goes marching on.....

[tom_paine]

4. DU has discussed John Brown. He was a controversial figure, to say the

least, but in the end what he did was RIGHT!

Evil MUST be opposed. Now that I live in the Land of the Confederates, Imperial Amerika a Totalitarian Slave Nation, I empathize with Mr. Brown's plight and his response even more.

Once you see what monsters you face, murders, thieving, enslaving people who care NOTHING for human life but that of their friends and those who share the same views.

Well, if Mr. Brown was here I'm sure he'd tell us how it feels once you make that realization.

"His soul is maaarching oooonnnnnnnn....."

[olddem43]

5. I don't think that John Brown was anything but

a religious zealot. He did not accomplish much by trying to take on the Federal Govt. with a small band of followers. It is an irony that the other side of the slavery argument did the same thing, thereby accomplishing what he could not.

[Kolesar]

6. "But what think ye of the John Brown Jayhawk"?

[MajorFlaw]

7. John Brown was an American terrorist and murderer.

The abolitionist sentiments that he used to justify his bloodthirsty acts in no way excuses the murder of innocent civilians. He also hurt the cause that he claimed to serve as he presented a very bad picture of anti-slavery activists. He probably delayed the actual end of slavery in this country. Not a hero by any measure.

Flame away.