John Brown, Killer

Arielle wrote a post about the Not-So-Civil War, a few days back, prompting a supplemental and tangential post from me. (Thanks, Arielle).

Remember John Brown? Sure you do. He was the great abolitionist leader your "history" textbook gushed over in high skewel. The man who dutifully went to the gallows and died a martyr for the sake of justice and black emancipation. Remember him? What a hero.

Well, here's the other side of the story--the true side--the side your textbook omitted:

John Brown believed his was a divinely inspired mission to rid the U.S. of slavery. He scoffed at peaceful resolution attempts, believing only violence would bring about the end of the practice.

In 1855, he and his followers carried out a nice little massacre in Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas. Brown and his angels of death zeroed in on five non-slaveholding families whom they believed were on the wrong side of the issue. Approaching each family home, they dragged the man of the house from his bed, forced him outside, and butchered him with swords like a fattened pig for the slaughter in front of his family. Shortly thereafter Brown became a fugitive, finally leaping back onto the scene with his raid in Virginia.

In October 1859, Brown and nineteen others seized the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, with intentions of stirring up and arming a slave rebellion. He failed in this endeavor when the citizens turned on him, the militia arrived, and later, U.S. Army troops under Robert E. Lee marched into the vicinity. In a short-lived battle, ten of his supporters were killed, so Brown surrendered. Thereafter he and six followers were sentenced to death and hanged.

Certainly slavery was a terrible institution; of that there is no debate. But Brown's methods of violence against unarmed people who were not slave owners--in conjunction with his scoffing at peaceful denunciation of slavery--cannot be justified or pardoned. In short, his motivations possibly were good, but evil acts stemmed from them.

There was some evidence that Brown had the support of the Republican Party--the party of Lincoln, at the time--and that a group of Northerners known as "the secret six" had financed his actions. This further eroded the South's trust in the North, which in turn led to the secession of South Carolina in 1860.

In elementary and high school, I was taught nothing about his murderous acts. Textbooks and teachers offered only a benign, one-sided portrayal of him. He has achieved a kind of folk-hero status amongst the clueless and the politically correct--much like Nat Turner, another glorified murderer whose acts have been whitewashed by the public skewel system.