John Brown: Terrorist, Hero or Terrorist Hero?

a bit of a tradition here. Well is now the second time we've done it, so now it's officially a tradition where we break with our tradition of telling stories about the worst people in all of history and instead highlight a hero. Last year I told everybody the story of Raoul Wallenberg, a man who risked his life and spent the entirety of his considerable privilege saving lives from the Nazis. And this year we're going to talk about

another hero of mine, John eff and Brown. And today my guest is my producer, so be Airhorn air an air Horn, Sophie. Are you how's your how's your holiday going? It's holiday? You know? Yeah? You you? You do you enjoy this time of year? Are you big Christmas her? No? No, I mean I don't dislike this time here, But I'm not like, yeah, what's your what's your favorite holiday? Easter? Well that's the wrong answer, but they don't. Just give

me the funniest look. But it is actually true. The Easter is our favorite holiday, such a ship holiday, other than the Cadburry cream eggs, which are objectively great, like candies, the best for Easter. It is the best for Easter. And that's a serious injustice because the pies are best for Christmas. Um so, Sophie, so fee so fee so fee um. Here we are. What do you know about John Brown? For the second podcast? I know nothing. You know nothing, You don't know any of the name, doesn't

ring any bells to you. Let's just let's just know really, okay, Well, uh yeah, he's probably somebody people heard about in high school. For like a paragraph or two. He's usually like right before the Civil War starts, you get a couple of paragraphs, are like one of those little insert boxes about John Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry. Um, and he's a He's an interesting guy because, like Wallenberg, he gave

his life fighting against the greatest evil of his age. Um. But Waldenberg was kind of like almost a saint like in terms of his personal character and conduct. Um. And John Brown was a terrorist, It doesn't mean he was wrong in a well, he grew up in the like early eighteen hundreds when life was terrible, so like he probably looked that way by the time he was fucking twenty. But yeah, he he looks rough. The only pictures you that exist of him, his skin looks like tanned leather.

Um Like, he looks like he's been getting punched in the face by sandpaper for a living for fifty seven years. Um. Yes, he's hard life so well. I was researching this episode, I came across an article by the Smithsonian magazine. It includes a quote from Dennis Fry, the National Park Services chief historian for Harper's Ferry, where John Brown conducted his famous raid to try to liberate the slaves of the American South. Uh And Fry said this about John Americans

do not deliberate about John Brown. They feel him. He is still a life today in the American soul. He represents something for each of us, but none of us is in agreement about what he means. And that's really interesting to me. Because John Brown's legacy has been cited by bombers of abortion clinics, and most recently by William Van Spronson, who assaulted an ice facility in Tacoma, Washington and died attempting to destroy their buses to stop him

from being able to deport people. Um So, John Brown is the kind of guy who speaks to a lot of people. Was gonna said, range of audience? Yeah, literally the whitest range possible if you're looking at folks who were influenced by this guy. Um So, this is a more complicated story, I think morally than the story of Wallenberg. But I do think John Brown was still a hero. Um So, Well, we'll see how you feel at the

end of this tale. John Brown was born on May nine hundred to Owen Brown and Ruth Mills in the town of Torrington, Connecticut. Well, there you go. He might be the descendant of John Brown. Yeah. Uh. John was the fourth of eight children between his father and his father's first wife. John's namesake was Captain John Brown, a farmer and revolutionary war hero who had briefly fought against the British and seventeen seventy six before dying of dysentery

in New York barn. The I guess that qualifies you's a hero. When Captain Brown died, he left behind a pregnant widow and ten children, including Owen Brown, who wrote that after his father's death, we lost our crops and then our cattle, and so became poor. Uh So John Brown does not come from money unlike Wallenberg. Um, he's he's he's he's from a family that's been poor since his dad was little. Um. Now, the Browns were strict Calvinists,

and in brief Calvinism, Yeah, do you know what Calvinism is? Yeah, how would you describe Calvinism, Sophie. It's like it's like super strict Christianity our phrasing. It's like it's intense. It's like they like really really believed in like the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like the kind of a lot in a lot of ways, the predecessors of a lot of today's evangelicals. Um. Because they believe that you can't do good things to save your soul from from hell. Um, like it's totally

God's choice. Um. And so a lot of them believe that like where you go end up after death is like predicted or is like decided before your birth. Um, so they were. They were pretty hardcore fundamentalists. Um. Yeah, it's not great. It's not my my particular choice of religion, but it was a pretty common one at that point in time, and in the plate part of America where Brown grew up. It's like, hey, it wasn't a great time. But also you're going to hell. But also, yeah, it

doesn't matter what you do. Yeah, that's very depressing. Yeah, when you read religious tracts from people back then, the kind of God they worship seems more like a terrorist to me. But um, and not the good kind of terrorists, which we're talking about today, not this kind of a terrorist. Like. Yeah, Now, some of what we know about John's early life comes from a note he wrote a twelve year old who was the son of one of the men who financed

his crusade against slavery. So he like wrote this summary of his life for the kid of one of the people who was backing this guerrilla war that he fighting. Yeah, that's my starch of choice. Yeah, I write notes to a lot of twelve year olds just waging a grill a war. It does it sounds creepier than it was? Um, yeah, it wasn't really creepy, but it does sound creepy when you sum it up that way. Um. And in that note, here's how Brown described his childhood. Uh and he wrote

this in the third person because he's a weirdo. I cannot tell you of anything in the first four years of John's life worth mentioning, save that at an early age, he was tempted by three large brass pins belonging to a girl who lived in the family and stole them. In this he was detected by his mother and, after having a full day to think of the wrong, received from her a thorough whipping. So this is what John Brown thinks it's important to tell a little kid about

his childhood. He's like, hey, kid, back in my day pins, Yeah, well that guy he punishment is important to him. He's like, listen, listen, you think you had it bad? Whipping all, I'm gonna say whipping. Oh I bet that kid get whipped too. I think they were whipping kids all throughout the eight hundreds.

But is it wasn't like that normal? Yeah? Yeah, for sure, right, yeah, the the abuse like obviously, like we can say that what happened to John Brown as a kid was abuse um by our standards, but at the time it was pretty much just how kids grew up. You know, you give them some whippings. They were harder times, Robert. Yeah. And it was also a time in which the most common reaction to gut wrenching poverty was to pack up

everything you owned and just move vaguely west. Uh. And in Brown's case, this took his family to Ohio, which at that point was called very funny. It sounds like half my relatives or like, you know what what I did? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it sounds like my parents. Yeah, it's it's it's kind of the defining emotion of this country. Not happy here. What if I had Westmore and you're like, all right, I'm I'm now I'm in San Diego. What

do I do? It's like I guess the sea. Yeah, if you're miserable in San Diego, you just gotta walk into the ocean. Yeah, don't walk into the ad. Don't do that unless you're like walking. But like you're still you can still yet, we don't, we don't, we don't contron drowning um continue. Yeah. So Brown's family moved to Ohio when he was a wee lad which at that point was not called Ohio. It was called the Western Reserve by Connecticuttians. I don't know what you call people

from Connecticut, and I refused to learn. Um so Owen, Yeah, no, the well they should have lived in a state that should have gone with a better name. Yeah, the fucking uh. Iowa's right there, Rhode Island. All find names now. Owen Brown considered this move west to be an active religious devotion as well as practicality, part of a glorious attempt to extend the benefits of Christendom further into what he saw as an untamed continent. John Brown, however, loved the

wild nature of the west in Reserve. He wrote with excitement that it was a quote wilderness filled with wild beasts and indians now. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Brown and his family were on friendly terms with the natives. One of John's friends was a Native American boy who gave him a yellow marble as a gift. John was heartbroken when he lost it, according to the book Midnight Rising by Tony Horwitz. Quote. He also displayed an unusual

tolerance towards the native inhabitants of Ohio. Some persons seemed disposed to quarrel with the Indians, But I never was, he wrote, Nor did he proselytize or damn natives as heathens, as Puritans of old would have done. Instead, he traded meal for fish and game. He also built a log

shelter to protect local Indians from an Indian tribe. Young John used to hang about Indians as much as he could, the beginnings of a lifelong sympathy for natives that stood in start contrast at the prevailing hostility of white Americans. So we're seeing a guy here who's capable of at least transcending from an early age, capable of transcending the biases of his time to an extent right, that loves to mention sources of young boys. Well, he was a young boy. He was like he was like five, six

years old. Yeah, he was a little kid. He was not a young man. At this point. You're like that it was a yellow marble. Yeah, it was a yellow marble. That's the best color of marble, I assume. Obviously I don't know much about marble. Yell is my favorite call it. That's why I'm saying, And I'm a narcissist. So continue weird, Sophie. Now. During this period, John Brown started will become a lifelong practice of living in difficult conditions and surviving off of

his wits. He spent basically his whole childhood camping and hunting for meat. His father dressed him in the hides of animals that his family had killed, and John grew up living off of animals but also holding great affection for them. As a young boy, he found a baby bobtail squirrel which he raised and hand tamed. When his beloved pet died, he mourned it for years. Very sensitive boy. Yeah, Yeah, he's he's He's got some sweetness to him Nowaday j.

John's mother died in childbirth. His father remarried almost immediately, and John considered his stepmother a very esteemable woman, but he never got over the loss of his mom, and he would mourn her of the rest of his life. In total, John's father, Owen, married three women, the last time when he was in his sixties, and he had sixteen children totally with him, which is a number that John would best. Yeah, the Browns make a lot of people, I mean, damn John. Yeah. Now, as a boy, John

is what you would call spirited. You would have to be to be one of sixteen. You gotta stick out, yeah, you gotta stick out. Yeah. And he seems to have. Um. He lied to his parents a lot, and he was punished for it regularly. He played very hard and was notable for like playing in a kind of a violent manner. He probably hurt a lot of his friends. Um. He seems to have been one of those people who was just unreasonably full of energy from a very young age. Um,

And that he was that way his entire life. He always had way too much fucking energy. Like reading about John Brown's life is fucking exhausting. Um. So John wrote that he was quote ambitious to perform the full labor of a man when he was already a young child, and he started working full time at age twelve when he drove his father's heard of cattle one hundred miles on his own. So he's just immediately doing like more work than most grant women today. How many cattle are

in a herd? Um, I don't know, but it's probably a few, doesn't at least? Is that like a thing that people are going to be like? How do you know that well, no, there's no set number for a herd. It's just a group of cows. Um. So by the time this kid is I hate cows. Why they're just stupid fat horses. That's what I think. The average hard size in the US is just over two hundred I think,

but that's now the Canadian dairy herds average. That's probably closer to so interesting they would have expected, yeah, I don't think you would have that. That would have been a pretty large herd back then. But I don't know. Farms with more than a hundred cows makeup just oh no, less than that, less than less than a percent of the total jerry farm population. This is so interesting. Sorry, I continue far marcro up on head about a hundred hundred head of cattle. But you don't like cows, Well

that's part of why I don't like cows. I lived close to him for years what they mean, so you know, in all fairness to the cows, I was worse to the cows than the cows were to me because I was a little boy and it was fun to hurt them with a broomstick. And uh, all right, Harry Potter, alright, Harry Potter, Well know you just you just hit him in the ass and they run around. I would love to see Anderson with like a herd of cow. Oh, they let dogs love it. I mean she has herding instincts.

I mean she's a little of the ground, but she is technically a cattle dog. Yeah, Anderson, do you hear this? Yeah, she would love that now. Uh So, by the time John Brown is like a teenager, and by that I mean like thirteen or fourteen, he's probably done more hard physical labor than like most of the grown men in the US today have done in their whole lives. Um and most stories you'll read about John will emphasize that he was almost supernaturally tough and had an endless tolerance

for hard work in physical pain. This was matched with a fanatic, religious sort of distaste for comfort. He would later write with pride that he had never attempted to dance, never learned any card games, and nursday profound dislike for Vein. In frintless conversations, He's like, I never learned a dance. Oh my god, he foot loosed himself real hard, dude. Oh man, that's hard to hear. Bacon, he did need

Kevin Bacon. One Kevin Bacon could have really and that makes me think if you had, if you had Kevin Bacon and John Brown starring side by side in the first Tremors would have been a fun movie. So sad, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, his his religions a bummer um. So John later would write that his eternal war with slavery also started when he was twelve, when he came upon a young black slave boy being beaten with shovels for some minor crime. He wrote in his letter to that

little kid. This brought John to reflect on the wretched, hopeless condition of fatherless and motherless slave children. Now, I'm sure he saw stuff like that, and it may not have happened when he was twelve. He was writing a letter to a twelve year old. Maybe he giitted a bit, but it does seem accurate to say, basically, why is he writing a letter to a twelve year old? Do we know? Yeah? Yeah, one of his like as a

as an older man, will get to this. He's funding like a guerrilla insurgency to try to free the slaves of the South, and he gets a bunch of rich backers and while he's like dining with one of them, this kid asks about his life and asks him to write a letter. Oh, so it's a Hallmark movie, but kind of. I mean it's more like, Uh, this guy is illegally funding a terrorist and the guy's kid wants to know more about the John Brown's life. So John Brown writes in a note, so we can buy more guns.

Got it. So it's a lifetime movie. Yeah, lifetime movie. Yeah. So Brown studied to be a pastor but wound up not choosing that life, and it's likely that he would have been bored to tears by the work, but he remained a devoted Calvinist his entire life, following in his father's footsteps. Yeah, and he was like he was still like really woke as a Calvinist. Like when his church, uh, he learned that black people weren't allowed to sit at the front of the church, they had to sit in

the back. He made a big point in the middle of service of getting up with his family, marching to the back, uh, walking up to one of the black families and offering them his seat at the front of the church, and then sitting in the back with his family. Um. So, like he's committed from the jump to to racial equality, not just to abolition, but to like total racial equality, which fucking nobody is at this period. Like most abolitionists

are still pretty fucking racist, but not John Brown. Um. Yeah. At twenty, following his dad's advice, John Brown married Diane Lusk Lusk Dianne Lusk. Yeah. Weird name, Yeah, Diane d I A N T h E. Dianne Lusk. We name. I don't hate it though, No, it's it's a nice name. He describes her in his letters as remarkably plain but industrious and economical. So it's like she wasn't a bad bitch, but she's ugly. But I'm like she this is this

is trash and does not pass the Bechdel tests. Continue. Yeah, well you're asking for too much if you want someone to be racially and gender woke. Eighteen thirty Yeah, definitely can of both. No where. Yeah. Their first child was born a year after they married. Jane Jr. Knows Owen. Um, come on, no, no, no, I'm I'm getting that name wrong. I write it down somewhere later. Um. Yeah. John and his father Owen do not sound like there would have been fun people to hang out with, but they were

on the right side of the debate. He has an Owen, He has a John Brown Jr. Oh, he has a Salmon. His son's name Sam Holy. He had some weird names. Wait he also he's a fun ten of children too. Yeah, he has twenty and more than half of them survived to adulthood. Some of them die fighting with him. Yeah. Ellen, my mom's name is Ellen high Mom. She listens to our show and there you go. So John and his dad were on the right side of the slavery debate

from the beginning. Owen had been a fierce abolitionist in an era when that really wasn't the thing. He was also a pacifist, and for a time John Brown was a pacifist too, So they fought slavery without fighting the people who kept slaves, largely by helping escaped slaves with shelter and food on their way across the underground railroad. So well, John is a kid. He and his family are like helping to hide escaped slaves as they make their way up to Canada. So this is like a

part of his life from like the teenage years on. Um. When John was twenty one, he moved his young Emily to Pennsylvania and bought two hundred acres of land. He built a house and a tannery on it. Now, the tannery had a hidden room which Brown used to hide escape slaves from the South. From the mid eighteen twenties to eighteen thirty five, the Brown family hosted an estimated escaped slaves, playing a critical role in their journey to freedom.

So he's a committed abolitionist and like putting his money where his mouth is his entire life. Now, while he was helping to work the underground railroad, John was also helping to found a new settlement in rural Pennsylvania. He's built a school, and he built a church, and he was the area's first postmaster. One of his neighbors described him as an inspired paternal ruler, controlling and providing for the circle of which he was the head. Have a question, Yeah,

how is he funding all this? I mean, it doesn't take that much money. Like he works, and he like you could buy two hundred acres was like a few bucks back then. Like, because they're trying to most of this area after the whole genocide of the Native Americans thing, there's an unspeakable amount of empty territory that the government

wants people farming. So there's all these deals where you can get most of the land for free or basically for free, you can get alone or there's no interest because they're they're just trying to get people farming and using it um to make sure it was realistic and it wasn't like an episode of Friends. No no, no Um. Now, as you might imagine, there were a lot of people

who didn't get along with John Brown. His wife's brother was only able to visit the family on Sundays, and so John hated him because visiting on Sunday was a sin against God. Uh. John was so strict about keeping the Sabbath that his church banned all worldly conversation on that day, so you couldn't talk about anything but religion on on Sunday. Making cheese and hanging out with your friends was also forbidden on Sunday. Work Yeah, it's it's

a lay mass religion um. Workers on John's tannery were required to attend his church and hold daily worship sessions with their families. One of John's apprentices described him as friendly as long as the conversation did not turn towards anything he considered profane. Or vulgar. Brown's younger brother described him as a king against whom there is no rising up. So that one word, a king against whom there is no rising up. So it's basically like my way or

the highway. Yeah, he is absolutely convinced that he's right. Um. And he will not like he's personable unless you disagree with him. And he is not not open to being disagreed with about the things he believes. Yeah, he's that kind of guy. Um So again, a religious fundamentalist, kind of a dick about it um, but also like a really dedicated family man, dedicated to his community. Uh and an anti slavery crusader um So yeah. Uh he's an interesting fella. Uh. And when we come back from ADS, uh,

we will talk about how he raised his kids. I love ADS, to Sophie. I love ADS products a good service. I don't have a fun. It's it's usually more fun when like I say something horrible about like a bunch of kids getting murdered, and then I say, you know what, won't murder all your kids? Should we try to try? We try a transition. I mean I am about to talk about how what he did to his children by the standards of the modern era was abuse. Um now I'm sad that one of them after my mom. Child

abuse by the standards of our modern era. What isn't child abuse is the products that support this show. Wow, brave hum. I'm Robert Evans, host behind the Bastards, And like a lot of you, I use contacts. My life doesn't really work without them. But you know, sometimes it's a pain ordering them online because like you get in there and you can't find your prescription or maybe it's expired, and then like, what are you gonna do? You gotta get your contacts? So what you go pay two hundred

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check out for twenty dollars off Simple Contacts. We're back. We're back. So we were just talking about John Brown, the father. Um. Now, obviously, like everybody was an abuse parent by modern standards in this period of time, but even by the standards of the mid in early eighteen hundreds, John Brown was considered a very strict parent. Uh. And

I'm gonna quote again from the book midnight rising. His firstborn, John Jr. Was required to keep a ledger listing his sins and detailing the punishment due each unfaithfulness at work earned three lashes. Disobeying mother brought eight. The second born, Jason, had a vivid dream about petting a baby raccoon that was as kind as a kitten, and described the encounter as if it had really happened. He was three or four at the time, and his father thrashed him for

telling a wicked lie. Five year old Ruth muddled her shoes while gathering pussy willows and then fibbed about how she'd gotten wet. Her father switched me with the willow that had caused my sin, she recalled, Yeah, subdiction. Yeah, it's fucking rough man. Also, like Jason's kid a vivid dream about petting a baby raccoon, maybe like, no, don't try that. Yeah, well, yeah, Jason. Jason feels like a

really weird name for that era. Oh yeah, No, there's a lot of Jason's that's like a Bible name, right, Like like a guy that hangs out at like a hip coffee shop and says he's working on his screenplay. Yeah, that's Jason, but he goes by Jay. You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. Okay, my apologies. Jason continued having vivid dreams about petting baby raccoons, So you agree he should have been beaten for that. That's good to know.

Sophie is pro abusing children who dream about raccoons. I mean he's want to talk. I mean, yep, it's settled. It's settled to talk. Wasn't his best friend a squirrel? Well yeah, but that was a real squirrel, not a dream raccoon. I mean that we know of. I mean, nobody's friends with a squirrel. Nobody I've been friends with a squirrel. Yes, I was. At my last place in l A. We hand tamed a squirrel, even pet it briefly.

We have a sworn enemy named that's a squirrel named Edward that we deal with every morning at my apartment complex. Named him. I don't I never named our friends squirrel, but I loved her, and I hope she's okay. I hope Edward gives away. Continue. Brown apprehended two men he had countered on the road who were stealing apples, and smashed a neighbor's whiskey jug after taking just a few

SIPs and deciding the liquor had dangerous powers. Despite his severity, Brown was beloved by his children, who also recalled his many acts of tenderness. He sang hymns to them at bedtime, recited maxims from Aesop and Benjamin Franklin, and cared for his little folks when they were ill, and was gentle with animals. He warmed frozen lambs in the family washed up as long as they're real animals. Like, what, this is very weird. He's a he's a weird guy. He's

a complicated person. Um in like clearly is capable of being a giant dick as a parent to his kids and is also capable of being a really loving father. Um, he's he's a strange guy. He's a flawed man. But and he's a child of a brutal time. You know. Uh, people wound up rougher back then. Um, which is an excuse, bad ship, But it was a tough time to come up. Um. You try working from age twelve and losing your mom, Like,

you're not gonna be a softie. Um So. Diane, John's wife died in childbirth Yeah, all the Browns have wives that die in childbirth, which again not super uncommon the number of kids they're having. Yeah. John took this very hard, obviously, and he and his five children moved in with another family briefly while they dealt with their grief. When they returned home, John hired a housekeeper sometimes. Her sixteen year

old sister Mary came along to help. John Brown proposed to marry by letters several months after meeting her, and they got married in July. He is thirty one. Nope, sorry, he is thirty three. Not common back then, but still not that uncommon, but still creepy. Yeah. A year after his wife's death, Uh, he marries a woman half his age. Uh and four years older than his oldest child. Um, sounds like he sounds very Hollywood at this point. Well, I think it's more like Honestly, I think with him,

like it's not even like a lust thing. It's a I want to have a lot more kids, and so the younger she is, the tougher she'll be, like, the better her odds of surviving. Um. And yeah that she they would stay married the rest of John's life, and she bore him thirteen children. Yeah. Uh. And it was not an easy marriage for her. John Brown was all the time and had to do with his grumpy, hating

of imagination ass. I think actually she would have loved to have dealt with his grumpy ass more because he was fucking gone most of the time, which we're about to talk about. Yeah. Um. But for the early years of their marriage, the biggest problem, well, he came back long enough to get her knock her up again. So um. For the first years of their marriage, John was constantly on the edge of bankruptcy. He spent money as quickly as he made it, and often a lot quicker than

he could make it. The story of his um like life, uh farming having kids like businesses like start. Yeah, he would start businesses and they'd fail. Um. So like he had a bunch of failed businesses. He was terrible and everything to do with money. Um. He was a good worker and like had a great work ethic, but was just awful at making money or like spending his money wisely. And while John struggled to get ahead economically, the United States lurched closer and closer to violence over the issue

of slavery. In the year of Birth eighteen hundred, nearly one fifth of the five million people in the US were enslaved. Ever since the invention of the cotton gin in seventeen ninety three, the South had grown increasingly wealthy and influential in American politics. By the eighteen fifties, all twelve of the United states is richest counties were in the South. On its own, the South was the fourth largest economy on Earth. For some perspective, the South and

the eighteen hundreds was wealthier than California is today. So all of the money's in the South, and they have most of the political influence. Yeah, this is like, yeah, eighteen fifties and stuff, they just get richer and richard. Yeah.

The whole Industrial Revolution worldwide was driven in large part by the production of cotton by slaves in the American South, like even down to like the countries that had banned slavery, like England, Um, like cotton was critical for like the building of boats and ships, and like a lot of different like factory equipment, and it was all made possible

by enslaved black people. So like the whole Industrial Revolution is undergirded by black slavery, even in the countries that didn't have slave was legal at that point um, which is important to note. Yeah. Now, the sheer mass of money in the South uh and thus behind slavery, made it impossible for most people in the eighteen thirties to

imagine an end to the institution. In eighteen thirty one, as John Brown entered his thirties, the abolition movement was growing, but still firmly fringe in the context of national politics. This started to change that August, when an enslaved preacher named Nat Turner gathered up a small band of his fellow slaves and launched an insurrection. Armed with hatchets, knives, and muskets, they executed roughly sixty white Virginians and gathered

a small number of slaves to their banner. Like John Brown, Nat Turner had also been born in eighteen hundred. Also, like John, he came to view himself as something of a prophet and believed that he had been chosen by God to bring about the end of slavery. Turner's band did not just kill slaveholders. They executed women, school children, and even a baby in a cradle. Um. So Nat Turner's raid is a complicated thing to talk about morally, Okay, okay, what no, no, yeah, these they are they are just

killing They're killing all of the white people they come across. Um. And in terms of like sort of parsing that out in a moral context, I found an interesting CBS article UM that interviewed Bruce Turner, who was a great great great grandchild of Nat Turner, and Rick Francis, who's a descendant of one of the slaveholding families that Turner massacred.

I'm gonna quote from that now. Both Turner and Francis are avid students of history who have researched their own families as well as the historical record of the rebellion. Anderson Cooper put the question to them both. Is Nat Turner a hero? Yes, he is, says Bruce Turner, because he saw an opportunity to try to correct something that was an extremely bad evil. He believes Nat Turner was a freedom fighter who started a movement that helped in

the institution of slavery. Prior to the insurrection, slave owners actually believe that the slaves were happy in their condition. He says, Nat Turner's changed that Rick Francis is no defender of the horrible institution practiced by his forbears, but he does not see Nat Turner as a heroic figure. France's questions whether a desire to end slavery is what motivated Turner to kill. He also points out that Nat Turner and his followers killed many women and children. There

were a means to an end, says Bruce Turner. Women were slave owners, children were slave owners. And the baby and the brad Old question mark. Yeah, I mean I think what Nat Turner would say, if you could bring him back and pose that question him, is that baby would have grown up to be a slave owner. Almost none of the children of slave owning families grew up

to repudiate those beliefs. It was very uncommon um. And Turner's argument, I think would have been something along the lines of, they were all part of this institution, um, and they didn't spare our children, so why should we spare theirs? You know? And uh, it's just like on a sixty minutes thing or something with Anderson Cooper. Yeah, I think so. I just found it in an article, but I think it was part of Anderson Cooper's show. Yeah,

shout out Anderson Cooper, the father of my dog. Yeah, it's a complicated story the tale and Nat turn how you how you feel about how justified it was a matter of your own personal morality. I feel like you can't really judge it. Likely I would argue that you can't judge. I don't think you can judge the actions of an enslaved person taking action against the people who kept him in bondage. Um, no matter how terrible, uh they seem based on the morality you get to have

in a much less fucked up era. Um. But I'm not gonna I'm gonna slam my opinions on Nat Turner on the audience. We have a lot of John Brown to get through. So NAT's uprising did not work out. Um. While he eventually gathered about forty slaves, they failed to make it to the town of Jerusalem and its armory, which is where they were headed to try to get guns. White militiamen succeeded in scattering turners men and executing or

killing most of them. Turner's insurrection inspired a vicious white reprisal um, and gangs of armed whites murdered hundreds upon hundreds of black people and impaled their severed heads on road signs as a warning. To others. Turner's body was decapitated, quartered and skinned. His skull and brain were sent off to be studied because people were like, why would a

slave not want to be a slave. The fat from Turner's body was rendered into wagon wheel grease, and his skin was tanned and sent off to the families of the people killed in his raid as a souvenir. U. This is a fucking brutal time. Like you really got to remember that whenever you try to think through these people's actions and decisions and morality. Is like it was fucking rough, and like how do we like did somebody

write all this down? Like this is they weren't They weren't ashamed of it, And like if you're the fucking if you're the white oppressors, who want who are who are doing? Who are massacring these people and chopping up Nate's body, Like you want all of the black people who might come across the story to know what happens when they stand up, Like that's part of how you oppress people. Yea, this would have been a great time for an ad transition. I would have been like, you

know what doesn't oppress people? The products? But you're early bro, We're early. I know, I just it would have been good. So um. Prior to Nat Turner's uprising, most abolitionists supported a slow, piecemeal emancipation of enslaved blacks and sought to basically ship them to Africa or the Caribbean. The nation of Liberia was born from this basic idea. And this is like what Abraham Lincoln and others like him kind of would have advocated in the period um prior to

NAT Turner. This is about the best you could hope for from woke white people, that they'd be like, slavery is wrong, but we don't want them here. Um Now. After Nat Turner, abolitionists were increasingly likely to urge an immediate into the institution of slavery, and the figurehead of this new wing of the abolitionist movement was a guy named William Lloyd Garrison, who was the editor for a

newspaper called The Liberator in Boston. Um Now. The Liberator started publication eight months before Turner's revolt, and Garrison's prose could have knew an utterly uncompromising tone that fitted well with the era ignited by Nat Turner. Garrison had nothing but contempt for the interests of his day and their advocacy of gradual reform. He wrote, tell a man who his houses on fire to give a moderate alarm. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not

retreat a single inch, and I will be heard. So after Turner, some stronger voices start to speak up in favor of abolitionism. Yeah, and not like, oh, we'll do it piece by piece and like will slowly. They're like, no, this ship has to end. It's fucked. Not like, Okay, we'll transfer you to another department, none of that bullshit. Yeah, fuck this ship. Garrison is a fuck this ship kind of guy, but he is a pacifist. He's also a pacifist.

Should I not say that? No, no, no, no no. I don't agree with everything Garrison thought about how to end slavery, But you can't fault him on a moral level. He just didn't believe in violence. Um, and it turns out violence was the only way to end slavery. But um, you can't fault him for not wanting the nation to be convulsed by a bloody war. Um. Yeah. So for a time, John Brown approached his abolitionism through the lens of passive bism too. But in the years after Nat

Turner's rebellion, the debate over slavery turned more violent. Pro slavery Southerner saw what had happened in Virginia with Nat Turner as the culmination of their worst nightmares. The sheer number of slaves, who in some areas outnumbered whites, terrified them. They believed that any talk of abolitionism deserved an immediate and violent response. In eighteen thirty seven, a pro slavery mob murdered Elijah Lovejoy, the abolitionist editor of what was

effectively an anti slavery zine. They tossed his printing press into the Mississippi. Love Joy had feudally armed himself in self defense, which William Lloyd Garrison disapproved of, but which John Brown seems to have taken as something of an inspiration. At a meeting of Brown's church convened to protest love Joy's murder, John Brown swore a declaration here before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I

consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery. So he takes love Joy's murder as a rallying call, and he buys a gun shortly after this point, so he's so far no weapon up to this point. He was like he was he was on like his dad had been a pacifist. His dad was a pacifist. Um he was a pacifist. He didn't like he had been a child during the War of eighteen twelve, and he had a really negative idea of soldiers because he'd seen what they did in the areas where they like bivoact and stuff.

So he was very anti violence. This starts to change after love Joy's murder. He starts to think, maybe violence is the only way we're going to get rid of slavery. Now. Brown did not follow this declaration by joining any of the abolitionist groups in his area. Instead, he decided to turn his large family into what amounted to an abolitionist insurgent cell um. John surviving children later that recall the night he sat down with his wife and his three

oldest sons. Quote, he asked us, who of us were willing to make common cause with him and doing all in our power to break the laws of the wicked and pluck the spoil out of his teeth? Are you married? John, Jason, and Owen John's wife and children all prayed with him and swore an oath to fight for slavery's defeat. Of of the years, John would bring the rest of his enormous brood into this anti slavery pact, boys and girls included. His relationship with his sons is fascinating to me, and

I think this paragraph from Midnight Rising makes it clear why. Quote. None of Brown's sons adopted their father's orthodox faith, and several openly challenged it, an apostasy that vexed him tremendously. But all seven of his unregenerate boys who survived childhood would take up arms against slavery. They held firmly to the idea that father was right. Samon recalled where he had led. We were glad to follow, and every one

of us had the courage of his convictions. Brown's brothers, in laws and other kind would also lend support to his anti slavery crusade. There was a Brown family conspiracy. His eldest son said to break the power of slavery's kids. Yeah, none of his kids follow him and his religion. They're like, you're kind of nuts on this. But like the old dudes write about slavery. That ship. They're like, they're like, listen, you know, I can't funk with you on that, but

I'll get behind you on that. So they're like the slavery ship. I mean, I mean like they're kind of right. Yeah. And it's kind of like you get a feeling from John in doing this with his family that he kind of recognizes once he commits himself to this cause that like, I'm gonna wind up breaking the law, I'm gonna wind up being a terrorist, I'm gonna commit a shipload of crimes.

And so I can't trust joining a group full of people that I don't know, Like, it's got to just be me and my family, um, Like otherwise somebody's going to wrap me out. He's got nepotism. Yeah yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's nepotism for terrorism. Maybe it's just the smart way to do it. Um. But he does commit to using his family in this way. It's somebody you know and not you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's like, well, we won't make more comparisons to drug dealing,

but it's like what you do when you deal drugs. Now, for the first years of this crusade to end slavery. The Brown family efforts were mostly limited to helping hide slaves, and for most people this would have been more than enough, and in my opinion, anyone who helped to operate the underground rail out in that time, even in a minor capacity, did something heroic. But just that was not enough for

John Brown. He was clearly frustrated for years by his inability to strike any sort of direct blow against slavery. This was exacerbated by his constant and repeated failures at business. He wound up at the edge of bankruptcy several times and moved his family all around the New West in search of better prospects. Brown tried fur trading, cattle driving, surveying, and even breeding race horses. By eighteen forty, he was so broke that he could not even afford postage for

his letters, and he declared bankruptcy. Yeah now, his attempts to find new work led him away from his family for months at a time, and the letters he was able to send home to his wife showed a distinct depression had gripped him. He signed unworthily yours above his name and referred to his wife as the sharer of

my poverty, Trials, discredit and sore afflictions. In ninety one, the year after he declared bankruptcy, John's family was torn apart by a horrific bout of dysentery, which killed four of his children, including his nine year old daughter Sarah and his six year old son Charles. So this is a rough fucking life this guy is like now. From most of the early eighteen forties, John spent his time trying desperately to pull his family out of the financial

hole he dug them into. It wasn't until eighteen forty seven that he had meaningful contact with members of the abolition movement. That year, he moved to the town of Springfield, Massachusetts, where he convinced a moneyed investor to fund a wool trading business. Brown was bad at the job, as he was bad at everything to do with money, and it failed miserably, But his time at Springfield brought him into

contact with a huge number of freed blacks. While he was there, he met Frederick Douglas, an escaped slave and renowned speaker and writer. The two had dinner and Brown's exceedingly humble home, and during that dinner John walked Frederick through the plans that he had spent years cooking up. He unrolled a map of the Allegheny Mountains, which run from Pennsylvania and into the southeast. He pointed out that

these mountains were filled with caves and natural fortresses. They were John thought the perfect place for an insurgent army to hide. He hold Douglass he believed the mountains had been put there by God for the emancipation of the Negro race. Over his dinner table, John Brown outlined an ambitious plan to use the Alleghanies as a base for a guerrilla army that would raid plantations, free their slaves,

and send them north to swell the ranks of his army. Now, Douglas thought this plan was stirring, but probably outside the realm of possibility. So he thought it was a good idea, but he didn't think it was gonna work. Um, But he still found himself deeply taken an inadmiration of John Brown. He described him as built for times of trouble and

fitted to grapple with the flintiest hardships. While in Springfield, Brown gained a reputation for being the exceedingly rare sort of white man who not only agitated for abolition, but actually treated black people as his equals in his personal life. John Stouffer, a Harvard historian who studies the history of race in America, says he stood apart from every other white in the historical record for his ability to burst

free from the power of racism. Blacks were among his closest friends, and in some respects he felt more comfortable around blacks than he did around whites. So he's he's he's you'd call him awoke, dude. Um, he was famous. Yeah, he was kind of infamous among his fellow white people for dining with black families regularly and addressing the adults as mr. And mrs. And it's a sign of how racist America was at that time. Like he calls the Mr. My god. Like that's what we're dealing with in the

broader culture at this point. Um. Frederick Douglas. Yeah, Yeah, you don't wind up super proud of American history when you really get into the weeds of race. Um, kind of hard to oh, my god, but not John Brown, So that's good. Uh. Frederick Douglas himself said that Brown, though a white gentleman, 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. So you'd call him a good ally as the point

I'm trying to make. Yeah. In eighteen forty eight, Garrett Smith a wealthy abolitionist and another good ally, but he huge chunk of land in northern New York and gave it away to a large group of freed slaves. He asked Brown to move there in order to help the

new community get on its feet. John agreed, in part because he thought that the colony in the Adirondacks might be able to act as a subterranean passway that would effectively expand the underground railroad's capacity by several orders of magnitude. He also thought it might act as the start of a chain of fortresses for the army of abolitionists and free blacks he planned to build to raid the plantations of the South. Now, John Brown's plans here are not

as impossible as they sound. He knew that even with a large guerilla army, he could not hope to free all four million enslaved Blacks, but he could cause a panic and collapse the economies and slaveholding states as a result of that panic. But unfortunately, John Brown's economic realities

forced him to push this plan on hold. While he traveled to Europe to sell a huge pile of wool for his failing business, He left his long suffering wife and children alone and the relatively primitive conditions of their New York farm. Now, we have no evidence that John Brown was physically abusive to his wife, and in fact, from the evidence we have, it seems very unlikely that he was. But it would be fair to say that there's was not a healthy relationship. And I'm gonna quote

again from Midnight Rising. Her frequently absent husband acknowledged the hardship she endured in an unusually tender letter in eighteen forty seven. Note in his follies the very considerable difference in our age and the fact that I sometimes tied you severely. The toll was evident to Richard Dana when he visited the Browns at Irandack home. He described Mary, then just thirty five, as rather an invalid. So he's

it's a he's he's a horrible husband. Um. Now, in his defense, it's a hard time to raise a family, but he's not he's not good at being around. Um. Sometimes I chied you severely. Was that the quote? Yeah, Yeah, he probably probably yells at her or something. Yeah, he scolds everybody. He's a scold. Ye. I don't know. I think he was probably kind of the quiet sort of scolder,

but I I don't know about that. Um. That just the only I get from him, that he was the kind of like quietly furious at you, and that was the worst thing. But I don't know. Now. Brown's tour of Europe ended, as per usual, in economic disaster. He and his family were left even poorer than before. Brown returned to the farm in New York and for a time worked at helping free Black's so bad at making money. He's just terrible at it. Why, I don't know. I mean,

it was probably was hard. It was hard. It's hard to make money, so you can't do anything. He can't. Like he's the dude that tries like every career and it's like it's just not for me. Yeah, he's he's just bad at it. He's bad at the business aspect. He's a good worker, but he keeps trying to run businesses. He's a great worker. Everyone says that, but he's just shipped at, like the capitalism part of it. Um, like selling things. He's bad at and he keeps trying to

do it. Do you want to know what you're not bad at? Oh? Ship selling things? Oh, Sophie nice, that was a good one. Nailed it, nailed the ad transition. Yes, so do something John Brown couldn't do and buy products over the internet. We're back so um. Outside of New York, where John Brown labored to help build a colony for freed blacks, the ideological war over slavery had reached a fever pitch in eighteen fifty with the implementation of the

Fugitive Slave Law. Now, this law was a craven act of political compromise by American moderates to the demands of the slaveholding states. It brutally punished anyone caught aiding a slave and mandated that all citizens helped capture escaped slaves. In eighteen fifty four, another act of Congress pushed northern

abolitionists even further from the Smithsonian Magazine quote. Under pressure from the South and its democratic allies in the North, Congress opened the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to slavery under a concept called popular sovereignty. The more northerly Nebraska was in little danger of becoming a slave state. Kansas, however,

was up for grabs. Pro slavery advocates the meanest and most desperate of men, armed to the teeth with revolvers, bowie knives, rifle and cannon, while they are not only thoroughly organized but under pay from slaveholders. John Brown Jr. Wrote to his father, poured into Kansas from Missouri, anti slavery settlers begged for guns and reinforcements among the thousands of abolitionists who left their farms, workshops, or schools to respond to the call, where John Brown and five of

his sons. Brown himself arrived in Kansas in October eighteen fifty five, driving a wagon loaded with rifles he had picked up in Ohio and Illinois. Determined, he said, to help defeat Satan and his legions. So this is the first time John's gonna have a chance to confront slavery violently and defeat Satan and his legions. Yeah, he sure does now. Bleeding Kansas, as the conflict came to be known, proved to be one of the bloodiest pre Civil War

chapters in America's battle over slavery. It's something like two hundred people were killed, but possibly hundreds more. It was also the event that launched John Brown on the path that would guarantee him several paragraphs in American history textbooks for years to come. Shortly after Brown arrived in Kansas, the pro slavery population of the state elected a legislature

via a shameless electoral fraud. This body voted into law extreme pro slavery regulations, which, among other things, punish the expression of anti slavery views with two years of hard labor. One pro slavery editor at the time made the goals of the slave holding Kansan's clear quote, we will continue to tar and feather, drown, lynch, and hang every white

livered abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil. So these people are like, we want to extend slavery here, We're willing to fight for what we believe in, and we'll kill all you weak like shitty abolitionist free state or like assholes like we don't give a funk, will murder you. And the government kind of just lets this happen because it doesn't want to piss off the South, which is the most powerful voting block in the United States at

the moment, because America, Yeah, kind of modern American. This is America. Yeah. Now. Brown's first armed action in Kansas occurred in defensive a group of abolitionist Kansons who held their own congress in opposition to the pro slavery cans in Congress. Brown's militia showed up with guns, revolvers, swords, powder, and caps to defend the vote against pro slavery raiders

from Missouri who had shut down other similar events. No enemy appeared, but in May eighteen fifty six, pro slavery militiaman sacked the city of Lawrence, Kansas, a known abolitionist hotbed. They burned and looted and murdered their political opponents. At the same time, news reached Kansas that Charles Sumner, the most prominent abolitionist in the Senate, had been beaten newly to death on the floor of Congress by a South

Carolina congressman armed with a cane. John Brown found himself in yeah yeah, it's a fucked up chapter of his like like beating him with a cane in front of people, and nobody's doing anything. Yeah, I mean eventually they pulled him apart, but it was like three years before Sumner could retake his seat. He was so badly injured, horrible. Yeah. So John Brown was piste off at this. He was

furious about the massacre and Lawrence. He was furious abut what had happened to Sumner, And he was pissed more than anything that no abolitionists, none of the moderates, were doing a goddamn thing about these fucking pro slavery assholes and all the violence that they were just allowed to do for some reason. Um. He was pissed. Um. So, over the course of several weeks, Brown formed his sons and a group of local volunteers into an anti slavery militia.

His goal was not merely to defend abolitionists from the violence of pro slavery mobs. He wanted to take the fight to them. When one of his neighbors urged caution, Brown replied, caution, caution, Sir, I am eternally tired of hearing the word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice. On John Brown and a select group of his men, including several of his sons went on a raid across a series of farms and Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas.

They dragged five pro slavery advocates out of their homes and the dead of night and hacked them to death with swords. Now, these are generally described as broad swords, but I've seen pictures of them and they seem to have been closer to Roman Gladius's um. And what does that mean. It's like a short sword. It's a broad bladed short sword. Welcome listeners, because nobody knew what that man. And now, uh, you get different attitudes on this based on like who you hear it from, because this is

a very brutal. He drags these people out of their house, they're unarmed, and he murders them, um with fucking swords. Swords. Yeah, so depending on who you read, you'll come to different attitudes about what exactly this sort of this counts as um. Smithsonian Magazine says this, by almost any definition, the Potawatomi killings were a terrorist act intended to sow fear in

slavery's defenders. Brown viewed slavery is a state of war against blacks, a system of torture, rape, oppression, and murder, and saw himself as a soldier in the army of the Lord against slavery. Says one scholar, Kansas was Brown's trial by fire, his initiation into violence, his preparation for real war. So now every historian agrees with calling the Potawatomy massacre an act of terrorism and a piece to the National Archives. A guy named Paul finkeled Men makes

this argument. Kansas, Bleeding Kansas, as it is known, was in the midst of a civil war. Between eighteen fifty five and eighteen sixty, about two men would be killed in Kansas. Not all were politically motivated, and historians disagree on what constitutes a political killing, But even the most conservative scholar of this violence finds fifty six killings that

were tied to slavery in politics. I think this number is low, and that most of the two hundred deaths were actually politically motivated and tied to slavery and Bleeding Kansas. But the actual number of political killings is less important than the understanding that in Kansas there was a violent civil war being fought over slavery. Men on both sides were killed. Brown's actions are most famous because they were five killings, and he strategically used swords rather than guns,

which would have alerted neighbors. This is the nature of guerrilla warfare. It is brutal and bloody, but it is not terrorism. Oh so he used the sword because they're quiet, Yeah, exactly. And guns were a lot of ship back then. They're not quiet today. Um no, but I'm just loud. Yeah, So you know, I I tend to be on the side of like it was terrorism, I think it probably qualifies a that, but terrorism isn't necessarily invalid. Um, It's an act, like in a guerrilla war. It's a tactic.

And at that point John and his men were outnumbered, um, and they wanted to strike a blow, and they wanted to scare the ship out of these people who had been acting with impunity. And I think they did it. But again, different people, different opinions. So the Potawatomy masker escalated the conflict in Kansas to a new level. Pro Slavery forces staged what affected to a full scale invasion of the territory. There were battles, towns were sacked, and yeah,

a lot of people were killed. John Brown Gainey reputation during the fighting as a leader of cunning and skill and earned the appellation Captain Brown. For months, he fought a grinding, insurgent campaign that made him a household name in much of the North. There were stories of like he led this like spirited defense of this town that you know, they eventually lost, but they inflicted a lot of casualties on the enemy and made it really bloody

for them. He successfully like out maneuvered this big force of pro slavery guys and took like they surrendered to him, and he took a bowie knife from the guy in charge. So he's like and there's stories about this, Like journalists meet him when he's out in the field and like right about him and his band of guerilla warriors and stuff, and he becomes very famous in the North. Um, and it's you know, it's again it's a brutal guerilla war. One of his sons during this point is captured and

executed by pro slavery forces. Um. Two of his sons are wounded. So it's like it's rough, but he walks out of bleeding Kansas a national hero. Really. Now, when the violence in Kansas subsided, John Brown decided to use his newfound fame to draw up support and funding to open up a new front in the war against slavery. He wrote his son Jason a letter saying I have only a short time to live, only one death to die,

and I will die fighting for this cause. Brown, now a wanted man, traveled the Northern States dressed in the gear of a guerilla fighter, drumming up funds and support for his war on slavery. He showed off the bowie knife he'd taken from a pro slavery militia leader and played up the daring dew involved in his flight from the law from the book Midnight Rising quote brandishing the captured bowie knife strapped just above his boot or loading a revolver as he warned a federal marshals on his trail.

Brown also introduced a frision to the genteel parlors of New England. I should hate to spoil these carpets, he told one Boston hostess. But you know I cannot be taken alive. So he plays up this reputation great like action hero quotes. Yeah, he really does. He's absolutely an action cool guy quotes, He's absolutely an action hero and Yeah, he's he's a pretty he's pretty hardcore. He's a badass, problematic,

but badass. Now. John spent much of the next two years yeah, buying arms and raising funds to buy more arms, as well as working mostly unsuccessfully, to convince other white abolitionists and freed blacks to sign up to fight in the army he was raising. Gradually, he built up a network of six wealthy backer all of whom were to

differing degrees committed to the cause of ending slavery. These men, known to history is the Secret Six, made it possible for Brown to secure several hundred sharps, rifles, a significant number of revolvers, and eventually five hundred pikes. Now, a pike is basically a dagger at the end of a long spear, and Brown plan to use these pikes to arm freed slaves. Um He couldn't give them rifles right off the bat, because rifles at the time were really complicated.

If you have if you don't know how to use one. It took a lot of training to be functional with him, and he wanted to be able to arm people immediately. So they had like long like long like sticks with like a like a dagger at the end. Yeah, it's less like a point like a spearhead, and more like a literal knife. It's yeah. They called them Kansas toothpicks. It was pretty cool. Uh. You know, the booie knives are basically machetes. They had a lot of bowie knives. Um,

but yeah, uh. And so Brown thought number one, like the pikes were important so we could have something to arm freed slaves with immediately, you know, when he wouldn't have time to train them right away. But he also felt that immediately arming freed slaves was a critical step in their emancipation, stating, give a slave a pike and you make him a man. Deprive him of the means of resistance, and you keep him down. So we thought this was very important on like a level of like

building morale in this army he was seeking to make now. Obviously, fleeing from the law and raising funds to form a guerilla army did not leave much time for Brown to see his wife and family. He begged his wealthy supporters to donate money to help them make ends meet. He wrote, one donor, I have no other income for their support, and my wife, being a good economist and a real

old fashioned businesswoman. She has gone through the two past winters in our open, cold house, unfinished outside and not plastered. So it's miserable for Mary. Sucks. Yeah, Mary's life is fucking trash. She's She did not complain often, but she was clearly miserable as a result of her husband's chosen vocation. In letters to her, Brown admitted that his work had left her in a kind of widowed state, like I'm already basically dead. Yeah, yeah, she is a bandit. Yeah.

And for the remaining years of his life, yeah, it was rare for him to spend more than a couple of days at a time with his family. Uh. In March of eighteen fifty seven, Mary sent John a letter in informing him that their sons had committed themselves to learn and practice war no more so. She's like, yeah, they're done with this ship. Um, they're like she she's stepping in. And then I'm sure John was like, yeah,

you're right, that's fine. No, he didn't do that, did he, well, kind of, I mean he replied that it was not at my solicitation that they engaged in it at the first. So, uh, he says like it wasn't my decision that they did it, um, And they don't all come to fight with him after this, And he also seems to have like felt bad after that letter. Several days later, he sent his two year old daughter Ellen a Bible uh and inscribed in it in remembrance of her father, who's care and attention she

was deprived in her infancy. Really really really really sad. Yeah it's sad. It's sad. My mom's name is Ellen, So I feel that harder. Yeah, well, you know, it's it's one of those things. Uh, like what do you what do you like if this was like if he if he was abandoning his family like this to make it in Hollywood, I'd be like, dick, move bro. But like it is slavery, Like it's the worst thing this

country did, well, tied for worst with the genocide. Like kind of worth abandoning your family over I hate to say it, like it is slavery. Yeah, yeah, like shit, you know, um it it sucks for Ellen, it sucks for Mary. Um. Six of John Brown's sons had fought in Kansas, as I said, one was killed, two wounded, and the others were pretty traumatized. By the experience, but not all of them had in fact committed to study

war no more. Owen Brown traveled with his father in eighteen fifty eight as he sought final support for his impending invasion of the South. Now, by this point, Brown's plan for an insurgent war on the South had evolved. Rather than taking time to establish a guerilla army and a string of forts, he decided to assault the town of Harper's Ferry, which contained the largest armory in the country probably had more guns than any other place in America.

Now Brown believed that Harper's Ferry was at a fencible position, and that he'd be able to use its hundred thousand firearms to train and equip the army of slaves he was sure would flock there once word of his efforts got out. In April eighteen fifty eight, John Brown met Harriet Tubman, who at that point had made eight secret trips to Maryland and led dozens of slaves to freedom. Brown was deeply impressed by Tubman. And this is like a problematic wokeness. I don't know what you call this.

He referred to her as a man in all of his writings and talking of her, and he did it because he respected her so much. He said that she was naturally the most man that he had ever met. Um, So he's he's saying the set of respect, but it's kind of problematic. It's like dreds woke compliment, but a two nineteen like dude. Yeah. He also referred to her as General Tubman, which is a less problematic appellation of respect. And you know, for her part, Harriet Tubman was equally

taken with John Brown. Kate Larson, one of Tubman's biographers, says Tubman thought Brown was the greatest white man who ever lived. So he is very popular, um for his dedication with the like sort of leading figures of like black liberation in this period of Yeah, I would say he got co He got co signed by Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman. Yeah, yeah, pretty solid. Those those are some pretty solid co signs. Yeah. Yeah, good, like if

he'd written a book, good names to have on the jacket. Yeah. Now, John Brown solicited both Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman for help with his planned attack on the South. Tubman was unable to help due to illness and may have also been unwilling to help because she was worried if it failed, it would expose the underground railroad, and Frederick refused because he rightly viewed the attempt at suicidal lunacy. He warned Brown that he was going into a perfect steel trap

and that he would not get out alive. So Douglas clearly respects what Brown is doing, but as like, I'm just not willing to kill myself for this, I think, you know I And he was doing a lot of stuff outside of that made the right call. Um. In May of eighteen fifty eight, John Brown and thirty five of his followers convened in Chatham, Canada. It's not hard to get to Canada. You're up in the in New England. It's right there. He's all over the place. He's like, yeah,

he travels around. I mean it just seems like, yeah, he's moving around a lot. I mean it just it's hard enough to travel. Well, yeah, but like you're in if you're in Illinois, like getting up to Canada, it's like going to fucking uh Sacramento from Los Angeles. Like it's not really a big deal. Um, it's like right there. Well, I don't like Sacramento. Either, I'd rather be in Canada,

but for sure, I'm just making a point. So in May of eighteen fifty eight, John Brown and thirty five of his followers convened in Chatham, Canada to host a constitutional convention in order to create a new American government.

Um see. By this point, the failures of the existing government to do anything about slavery in a recent Supreme Court ruling that black people had no claim to the rights guaranteed by the Constitution had convinced John that a whole new government needed to be established just basically decides our constitution is too like stained by the evil of slavery to continue, and what we part of what we need to do is like build a new country basically,

and the foundation of new country needs to be black liberation. Yeah, I mean so, I mean, yeah, there's some weird stuff to his plans to He's not a perfect man. I'm sure I'm going to read a quote he even though he's co signed, but he's flawed. Yeah, he's he's flawed. He's flawed, and I think quote from Midnight Rising by Tony Horwitz makes it clear kind of both what was neat about what he was doing there and what was

a little problematic. John Brown cited this infamous ruling in his Constitution's preamble, which explained why a new government was needed to protect our persons, property, lives, and liberties. But the forty eight articles that followed were less concerned with rights than with the command structure of Brown's highly militarized state.

The role of its weak president in Congress was mainly to advise a powerful commander in chief who could tap the treasury as needed for money and valuables captured by honorable warfare. Article I think was directed towards another preoccupation of Brown's it for evade filthy conversation, in decent behavior, intoxication, and unlawful intercourse. The Constitution was read aloud at Chatham, debated, and signed the same day. Every man was anxious to have his name at the head, wrote one of Brown's

Iowa Party, but the delegate showed distinctly less enthusiasm. Two days later, when they reconvened to elect officials, the black men nominated for the presidency declined to stand, and the post was left vacant, along with many others. Only two congressmen were appointed, and the cabinet was filled by Iowa recruits. Brown unsurprisingly was elected by acclamation as commander in chief. So you're right, there's like it's like okay, and some

problematic stuff in there, like filthy conversation. Uh what did you say, unlawful intercourse? Yeah, intoxication. I wouldn't have done well. He's the police a little bit, would There are people who will compare John Yeah, there's people who will compare John Brown to Osama bin Laden. And it's not a hundred percent Obviously what he was fighting for was better, but you're not a hundred percent off. He was a long bearded, uncompromising religious fundamentalist who was willing to kill

for his belief. Now, Brown grew up poor, and again what he was fighting about was fundamentally more moral than what would you know. And also Brown didn't attack civilians like he he understood they were going to die, but that he didn't make him his target. But like, there are some parallels. He is a religious fundamentalist and not in a fun way. Police. He's the fun police. You can't say Fox, you can't fuck and you there's no

there's no drinking. Yeah, there's no John Brown, you know, and it's it's a marker of how fucked the times are that John Brown is still the best guy, still the locust white man in the country, the police in more ways than one, and not a great time. I just want to side note to listeners, if you look up young John Brown looks a lot like Igor from young Frankenstein. He absolutely looks like Igor from young Frankenstein.

Um to an extent. That's bizarre, bizarre. Yeah. Continue. In December of eighteen fifty eight, as Brown's plans for an invasion of the South matured, he was suddenly presented with another opportunity to strike a blow against slavery. A Missouri slave named Jim Daniels found him in Kansas and told him that he and several other slaves were about to

be sold and needed Brown's help. John gathered a force of eighteen insurgents and set out for Mazoura, where they carried out a highly illegal raid on a farmhouse and freed five slaves at gunpoint. They proceeded next to another farm and freed five more slaves. A small group of Brown's raiders also broke into another home, freeing a single slave and shooting her owner dead. The raiders stole oxen horses, food, clothing, and also captured two white hostages before they crossed back

into Kansas. This sparked rage across the South, and the governor of Massoura, as well as President Buchanan, offered rewards for Brown's capture. Many moderate abolitionists were also unhappy with Brown. They felt that invading a southern state, stealing property, and killing a slave owner was a step too far. In a letter to the New York Tribune, Brown mocked these people, pointing out that the previous May, a force of pro slavery militiamen had killed five anti slavery settlers in Kansas.

There'd been no outcry, he noted, but when he freed eleven human beings, the government and many people where he wrote, filled with holy horror, which is a solid point. Yeah. So Brown was confronted on road by eighty pro slavery militiaman. He had only twenty two men in his band, but they charged the pro slavery forces and caused them to flee in panic. Brown captured several horses and took more prisoners. By February of eighteen fifty nine, Brown had escaped Kansas

fleeing the law. All the while, he succeeded in leading his group across Iowa and onto a box car headed for Chicago. The freed slaves made it from there to Detroit, where they were taken by ferry to Canada. One of the freed women gave birth along the way. She named her child John Brown. That's a fucking dope story, right,

very very cool. Shoutout Detroit, um. Yeah. Now. The notoriety of Brown's raid energized his backers, the Secret Six, several of whom had started to wane in their enthusiasm for his cause. More money started to pour in, and Brown spent the rest of eighteen fifty eight gradually moving a small force of men in a large stockpile of arms and ammo onto a small farm that he had rented in the outskirts of Harper's Ferry. The whole story of how they did this is rather fascinating. In Midnight Rising

breaks it down in granular detail. I really recommend that it is cool, um, But the focus of our story today is the man John Brown, and not the details of the attack on Harper's Ferry. The plan failed, Brown and his men succeeded in taking possession of the armory, but they held it for less than two days. Ironically, the first fatality of the raid was a freed black man who was shot in the dark on accident. It just was a big tragedy. John's sons, Oliver and Watson

were killed during the fighting. Uh And in fact, of the nineteen men who went with Brown to Harper's ferry, ten were killed or fatally wounded. Four townspeople were also killed, and more than a dozen militiamen in US Marines were wounded. It's the Marines who finally bring him down. Not the proudest moment in the Marine Corps history. Um yeah, Now. John Brown was badly injured, but taken alive, and he

survived long enough to stand trial. He was obviously guilty by the laws of the time, and the trial was mostly significant because it provided John with a chance to speak to the nation and justify his actions. The speech he gave before being sentenced was considered by Ralph Waldo Emerson to have been one of the greatest speeches in American history. You would like to read it? Oh yeah,

oh yeah? Selection from it now had I inferred in the manner which I admit and which I admit has been fairly proved for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified

in this case. Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right, and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. The court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the

law of God. I see a book kissed here, which I supposed to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, that teaches me that all things whatsoever that 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 upon that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any

respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, and as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of his despised poor was not wrong. But right now, if it is 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 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.

I mean, fuck yeah, Lifetime, there's your movie right there, baby, Come on, what the fun is good speech? That is a good fucking speech. Yeah, And I like what he points out that, like, hey, if I had done what I'd done for these poor black slaves like two of like the children of any rich person in this country, I'd be held up as a hero like you just don't give a funk about these people, are consider them human? Like fuck you. It's a good speech. Yeah, I mean

talk about hashtag no filter man. Yeah. John Brown was executed by hanging on December second, eighteen fifty nine. His last words up. His last words, written on a scrap of paper and handed to a jailer, were, I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away. But with blood he would prove to be very right. The US Civil War would start a little more than a year later.

John Brown's raid was seen by many at the time and by many historians today as one of the primary sparks of that war. From the Smithsonian magazine quote. Had John Brown's Raid not occurred, it is very possible that the eighteen sixty election would have been a regular two party contest between anti slavery Republicans and pro slavery Democrats, says City University of New York historian David Reynolds, author

of John Brown Abolitionist. The Democrats would have probably won, since Lincoln received just fort of the popular vote, around one million votes less than his three opponents. Well, the Democrats split over slavery Republican candidates such as William Sewar, we're tarnished by their association with abolitionists. Lincoln at the time was regarded as one of his party's more conservative options. John Brown was in effect a hammer that shattered Lincoln's

opponents into fragments, says Reynolds. Because Brown helped to disrupt the party system, Lincoln was carried to victory, which in turn let eleven States to secede from the Union. This in turn led to the Civil War. Yeah, so that's John Brown. So do we think that his religion kind of influence his no Fox given attitude? Because he essentially like, no matter what he did on earth as a as a living being, his fate was decided at birth. So do you think that maybe his like no fox given

attitude towards like I'm gonna do risk at all? But also like, like, do you think that had it some sort of influence on his ethos and ideology as a human? I don't think he actually believed that aspect of Calvinism very strongly. I I get the feeling for him, Um, he doesn't act like a guy who thinks everyone around him is going to hell um, But I don't know,

you know, I may be wrong on that. What I'll say, I think, more than anything, the reason he acts the way he does is that he is absolutely convinced about everything that he believes that he is a right um and that made him probably pretty insufferable to be around. It made him a horrible, un bastard, horrible husband, yes,

not great father, probably a very strange friend. But great abolitionist, but but a great abolitionist, and the man the only white man who was willing to do the thing that was so clearly necessary at that point in time, like somebody needed to go into the South and just start fucking shooting people over this stuff. Like that's what needed to happen. I mean, it's fucked up, like we don't want things to have to go that way, but that's

what had to happen. Like he was the locust white man of the eighteen hundreds, which is mhm, a compliment in an insult. Yeah, it's an insult to everyone else. Yeah, Um, but yeah, he's a remarkable person. Um. And uh, you can see why people is varied as like abortion clinic bombers and William Spronson, who was you know, outraged about the deportations by Ice in the child concentration camps. Why people like both of those people can see something in

him inspirational. Um. Yeah, And I I go back and forth myself as to like what would John Brown be today? Um, Because like obviously, if he'd been like a hardcore fundamentalist, you know, religious person, you might assume he would be one way. But I also kind of get the feeling of John that if he'd grown up in a different era, he might have been a fundamentalist of something else, like this is the kind of guy. It kind of depended on how he was raised. But whatever he was, like,

I don't know. Um, I think he I think more than anything, because there were a lot of Calvinists who were ave owning assholes, Like there were a lot of like like religious people, like like Bible believing Christians in this period who used it as a justification for their slavery. So I think that while he was a fundamentalist religious man, the core of what John Brown was was a respecter of human dignity and freedom. Um, and his outrage at what was being done to blacks in America. Um, I

think he would be. I think the core of his personality, were he alive in a modern age, would be outrage at injustice rather than any particular religious ideology. I do feel that about him. Yeah, I mean that's I'm not sure what he would have picked. Sorry, I mean I feel like, after hearing this entire thing, I feel like

that is kind of a very accurate yeah interpretation of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean very definitely heroic definitely flawed, definitely did what was necessary and definitely was the only one to really do it in the way he did. Yep. And as even you know, you can be flawed, but if you're the only one doing the thing that needs to be done,

that's all that really matters in the end. Yeah, yep, So that's John Brown, John and Brown if he would be really pissed at me using funk so much in this episode celebrating him, but oh yeah, he's the fun Police. I forgot he's the fun Police. But he's also dead now, so fuck it, Like he's not going to get angry at me. Yeah, we didn't. And you know, we don't know where he ended up because we don't know where he ended up. Yeah, fuck fucking John Brown. Fu Fu

fu fucking John Brown. I like it, Sophie. You got any plug doubles to plug? I really like this one show called Behind the Bastards, And I really like this other show called Worst Yere Ever. And if you haven't listened to it could happen here yet what are you doing? Yeah, I don't. I don't know that listeners of this show would like Behind the Bastards are Worst Year Ever? But I guess they might. Yeah, I mean I guess I

have Instagram, Sophie Underscore, underscore, sunshine, lots of underscores. So if you have sunshine with underscores in between the words I post pictures of Anderson, that's where you can find pictures of Anderson and and you getting that listeners is my Christmas present to all of you. Yeah. I don't have Twitter because Robert has Twitter, and Robert does on Instagram because I have Instagram. That's just how that works. Cool. Well, I love Twitter. I don't, but you can find me there.

Uh okay, yeah, um you can find me not on Instagram. Um, but you can find this podcast on Instagram or Twitter at Bastard's pod. Um, you can find you can find the answer to the question of what you need to do in our trying times if you look into the stories of men like Raoul Wallenberg and John Brown. And

that's all I'm gonna say on the matter. Um, So go hug a cat, celebrate whatever holidays you do or don't celebrate, or just celebrate the fact that most things are going to close down for a couple of days and we all have a chance to chill. Um. And then come back in the next year, ready to kick ass, take names, and seize Harper's ferry. And um don't have dreams about petting a raccoon. Yes, I have many dreams

about don't. Actually do not, do not. John Brown will come back from the dead and kick your ass if you have be a friend of squirrel, the friend of squirrel. Don't dream about raccoons except this squirrel that torture is my dog an asshole. Yeah. I think John Brown would have hated that squirrel too. Yeah, that's that guy. Anyways, happy whatever, end of year. Uh yeah, yeah, go go have fun, drink lots of eggnog. I will yeah h h