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Kire Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 01:57 AM
Original message
John Brown: Homegrown Terrorist
Today's Review From
The New Republic Online

John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights
by David S. Reynolds

<<>
Read today's review in HTML at:
http://www.powells.com/tnr/review/2005_10_27
<>>

Homegrown Terrorist
A review by Sean Wilentz

John Brown was a violent charismatic anti-slavery terrorist and traitor, capable of cruelty to his family as well as to his foes. Every one of his murderous ventures failed to achieve its larger goals. His most famous exploit, the attack on Harpers Ferry in October 1859, actually backfired. That backfiring, and not Brown's assault or his later apotheosis by certain abolitionists and Transcendentalists, contributed something, ironically, to the hastening of southern secession and the Civil War. In a topsy-turvy way, Brown may have advanced the anti-slavery cause. Otherwise, he actually damaged the mainstream campaign against slavery, which by the late 1850s was a serious mass political movement contending for national power, and not, as Brown and some of his radical friends saw it, a fraud even more dangerous to the cause of liberty than the slaveholders.

This accounting runs against the grain of the usual historical assessments, and also against the grain of David S. Reynolds's "cultural biography" of Brown. The interpretations fall, roughly, into two camps. They agree only about the man's unique importance. Writers hostile to Brown describe him as not merely fanatical but insane, the craziest of all the crazy abolitionists whose agitation drove the country mad and caused the catastrophic, fratricidal, and unnecessary war. Brown's admirers describe his hatred of slavery as a singular sign of sanity in a nation awash in the mental pathologies of racism and bondage. Alone of the northern white abolitionist leaders, they say, Brown was willing to put his life on the line by taking up arms alongside blacks against the accursed institution; and in doing so he fired the shots that triggered the Civil War. Unlike inconsistent moderates such as Abraham Lincoln (who, Brown's champions assure us, had no interest in destroying slavery at the war's outbreak, only in saving the Union), Brown saw slavery for the enormity that it was, and fought for racial equality as well as emancipation. He was, as W.E.B. DuBois wrote in a celebratory biography, "the man who of all Americans has perhaps come nearest to touching the real souls of black folk." Most important, DuBois concluded, "John Brown was right."

More: http://www.powells.com/tnr/review/2005_10_27


It's pretty long. I haven't finished it yet, even; but it's a pretty interesting review, especially for a newbie like me.
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RoyGBiv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-27-05 10:36 PM
Response to Original message
1. Brown is a difficult subject ...
DuBois was right in saying Brown was right. The problem is that you can be right about one thing and wrong about a number of others, and in my view, Brown was wrong in many, many ways.

I do not view Brown as insane and would argue that point vehemently. He was very calculated in all his actions, even when he calculated poorly. He also had a very clear understanding of "right and wrong" in its legal sense. Much evidence of this exists. The people that call him insane tend to fall into one of two camps The first includes those who view history through a lens of progressive interpretation (not a political term) that concludes, generally speaking, that the the sum of the history of humanity is one of constant progressive, positive advancement through mainstream, positive movements. Brown's movement was one of destruction, not construction, and so does not fit this model, but because he was so clearly right by modern standards in his opinion of human slavery and spoke much the same language on many specific points, progressives find him difficult to handle. Rather than do so, many simply write him off as insane. He had a good idea, the theory goes, but no sane individual would do what he did.

This line of thought tends to view any sort of violent protest as "insane."

The other camp naturally consists of those who think Brown was wrong on all points.

I personally view Brown in much the same way I would view a Bin laden type figure. He has a point, but the way he goes about making his point is entirely wrong.

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David Zephyr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-31-05 03:28 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. WTF? You equate John Brown with Osama bin Laden who killed children?
John Brown did not attack civilians and murder children.


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RoyGBiv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-31-05 07:13 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Yes, he did, or wanted to ...
Edited on Mon Oct-31-05 07:48 PM by RoyGBiv
Brown simply wasn't as successful.

Regardless of that, the tactics he used and tried to use were quite similar. He was a violent man who sought social and legal change entirely through the spilling of blood based on his version of the word of God. His targets were slaveholders, the families of slaveholders, and anyone who in any way supported slaveholders by his own definition. That meant anyone who tried to stop him. Such targets provide us with a bit of moral ambiguity about whether his tactics were right or wrong, but of course the same could be said of any extremist, viewed through the eyes of those who agree with the larger purpose.
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David Zephyr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-31-05 08:45 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. George Washington spilled a lot of blood, too.
How do you rationalize a rebellion by wealthy landowners like Washington and Jefferson and Hancock who used violence to achieve their goals against what you have written.

And, by the way, Abraham Lincoln did exactly what John Brown did...just later.

You do a great disservice to John Brown by equating him with Osama bin Laden.

I won't respond to anything you write below as you have already made your point about how low you hold John Brown to be.
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RoyGBiv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Oct-31-05 08:58 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. Oh, that's excellent ...
Edited on Mon Oct-31-05 09:07 PM by RoyGBiv
Taking your ball and going home.

Whatever floats your boat. Silly semantics like that won't shut me up, however, so I'm not sure what your point might be other than to note you really have little to add. If so, okay.

Here's the thing though. I'm not rationalizing anything. I'm offering an interpretation of the actions of an individual who, by his own words, sought change exclusively through violence. If you support that, fine. I don't. The others you mention, particularly Lincoln and Jefferson, explicitly tried to avoid violence and fought with ideas and words until violence was forced upon them. John Brown set out to kill people, set out to bring down a blood bath upon first Kansas and then Virginia and further if possible. He envisioned and tried to instigate a race war, again, based on religious extremism.

As an aside, I do a disservice to no one. That is flatly absurd. John Brown is now dust and has been for a long, long time. His actions are as subject to interpretation as those committed by any historical figure, great or small. If some people are offended by my not interpreting senseless killing and incompetent leadership that resulted in the deaths of more of those he purported to want to free than those who were their oppressors, I can't help that and frankly don't care.

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enigami Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-15-05 01:24 PM
Response to Reply #2
8. yes he did
sorry
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Faygo Kid Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-05 07:46 PM
Response to Original message
6. Whew. Everybody take a deep breath. Here's my take.
John Brown was the product of a system that had inevitably to create a John Brown. A firebell in the night, as it were. Of course he was a "terrorist," no excuse for the massacre, and his belief that he could foment a successful slave rebellion was madness. He was no Martin Luther King. But I believe he was an inevitable creation of his times, and he came along at the right time, just before Lincoln. His methods were bizarre, his cause was just, and there is no use refighting it here. Absolutely fascinating, for an American history buff. And if you have not seen Raymond Massey as John Brown in Santa Fe Trail (Errol Flynn as Jeb Stuart, but forget that), you have missed one of the great performances in American cinema.
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RoyGBiv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-05-05 09:30 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. I have no issue with that ...

I think you've summarized it rather nicely.

I have no idea why the previous "discussion" became so heated. Historical analysis is full of ambiguity, and if you go into with the notion that disagreement with your own analysis is a personal affront either to yourself or the people/subject being examined, you're going to be angry a lot. Of course there's the other side of the coin. Encountering those who have been so offended requires not taking it personally and maintaining a calm demeanor.

In any case, I think this is a subject ripe for discussion with room for varying points of view, much like I thought the discussion last night in GD about Lincoln and a recent book claiming to answer the questions regarding his sexual orientation was a good subject. But, that was locked for apparently being a "who cares" type of subject.

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