Rev Left Radio - [BEST OF] John Brown: Man on Fire

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Dec 7, 2020 In this episode of Guerrilla History, Breht, Adnan, and Henry reflect on the life and legacy of John Brown - the fiery, uncompromising abolitionist who took up arms against slavery and shook the foundations of the United States. From Bleeding Kansas to the fateful raid on Harpers Ferry, Brown’s life was one of moral clarity and militant action. We explore his revolutionary ethics, his deep religious conviction, and his belief that slavery would only be ended through bloodshed. Revered by revolutionaries, reviled by reactionaries, John Brown remains one of the most polarizing and prophetic figures in American history. This episode is a tribute to a man who refused to wait for justice—and instead tried to bring it crashing down. Documentary audio clips from "John Brown's Holy War" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWS_Jrjh11s&feature=emb_logo ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood

On December 2nd, 1859, a tall, thin, 59, rode on a wooden box in an open wagon. The box was his coffin. He was going to his execution. He just handed his jailer a note. I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with blood. I had vainly flattered myself

that without very much bloodshed, it might be done. For most of his life, John Brown had been an obscure shepherd and tanner. Now, it was a national symbol. Brown goes from being a very minor figure in the abolitionist war against slavery to the emblematic figure of that, the defining figure in some ways. To abolitionists, John Brown was a hero. a saintly man who killed for his beliefs. But others saw him as the embodiment of evil,

a murderer and lunatic. John Brown was fighting for the American creed, putting into practice the words of Thomas Jefferson that the tree of liberty should be watered with the blood tyrants. Brown carved a canyon in public opinion that split North and South and no longer were there any ties Brown had taken his sword and sliced the connections. The South rejoiced in the execution.

But throughout the north, church bells told for him. Some 1800 years ago, Christ was crucified. This morning, Captain Brown, was hung. He is not old brown any longer. He is an angel of light. Henry David Thoreau. Hello everyone. So today we have a little surprise for you. We're doing our basically our first ever crossover, full crossover episode between Revolutionary Left Radio and our new project, Guerrilla History. And this was originally going to be an intelligence brief, one of the things we do on guerrilla history,

just between us three, just doing a short little mini episode covering some interesting elements of history. But then we decided since there's so much to talk about when it comes to John Brown that we could expand this to a full episode, throw some clips in there, and do a crossover episode. So if you're listening to this on Revolutionary Left Radio and you haven't heard about guerrilla history yet. This is the new project.

This episode is going to be a collaboration with that new project. And we urge anybody who likes this stuff to subscribe to guerrilla history on your favorite podcast app, rate us to increase our reach. And even if you have a few extra dollars laying around, subscribe to our Patreon for monthly bonus content, the links of all of that will be in the show notes so you can quickly and easily go to everything I just said there. But yeah, today we're going to be discussing John Brown. And we're going to assume a certain level of background, general knowledge on the part of our audience when it comes to John Brown, because mostly left-wing people are listening to us.

John Brown is an important historical figure for the left and just in general. And so we're not going to get bogged down in like the minutia and the dates of his life, but more doing a general overview of his life and then diving into reflecting on strategies, on morality, on what role religion and its motivation plays in political struggle. And just use this as a as a doorway to have those more reflective conversations, pull out lessons and apply what we can to our situation today, which is not wholly dissimilar to the situation that people in John Brown's time were facing. So with that little opening, Salvo, I'll hand it over to Henry to dive into the questions. Yeah, great. Thanks, Brett. So I just want to reiterate, if you're listening to this on RevLeft, make sure to check out the guerrilla history feed, subscribe, share.

that'll really help get this project up and off the ground and truly running at the level that we want it to be. So as Brett said, we're going to talk today about John Brown. Now, John Brown really is an individual that we all should have some understanding of, either through school or just through our independent study. John Brown's somebody who Harriet Tubman called the greatest white man to ever live. Malcolm X throughout his life always said that

If white men were trying to get into the organizations that he were running, he would refuse all of them. But if John Brown was still alive, he might make an exception. This is how highly thought of John Brown was both by his contemporaries, as well as people in the present day. And of course, John Brown is, this is the John Brown that's the famous abolitionist that we're talking of. So I guess let's get right into this, guys. And let's talk about how John Brown is being portrayed these days because it's a little bit harder to say from a historiographic context, how he was portrayed throughout the years because it has changed quite a bit. But I think let's start with how he's being portrayed today and kind of our just our thoughts on John Brown. Brett,

you want to start off with that? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think one thread that has always been present and it's been emphasized at different times to differing degrees is this idea that John Brown was insane, right? That he was a zealot, that he was blindly and dogmatically religious and his actions are unethical and they are a product of madness, not the product of very clear moral reasoning. And I think that it obviously has ideological significance. It obviously plays into the interests of maintainers of the status quo, etc. But I would obviously flip that. This was not an insane man. I would argue that this is one of the most sane men in an insane society. This is the years leading up to the Civil War. It's often said that John Brown and his comrades fired

the first shots of the Civil War, and I think that is actually a fair thing to say. And I also think that he is portrayed as a revolutionary because he was. And I think an interesting dichotomy to look at when it comes to the abolitionist movement is to look at him versus Abraham Lincoln. I think in Abraham Lincoln and him agreed that slavery needed to come to an end, right? But Abraham Lincoln is a much more liberal, reformist person. And his idea was that, yes, slavery is bad, but black people are not quite the equals of white, right? And he never went that far, either in his strategies or in his ideas. And whereas John Brown not only believed that slavery was a moral abomination on every level,

but also that black people were inherently the equals of white people. And he treated black people in his life as equals in a time when that was so rare that the black people who got that treatment from John Brown were often taken aback. There's one story that comes out in documentaries and his kids relate of when they're in this area and they're building up this cabin. I won't get into the details. But two black hikers come across John Brown's property and he invites them in for dinner. His kids are sitting around the table. he feeds them dinner says grace and he refers to them by their surname right mr and mrs so and so and the kids write about how there was just a sort of visceral recoil on the part of the black

folks because they had never been addressed that way by a white man and and i think that really speaks to the integrity and the genuine sincere belief that we are equals that john brown held throughout his life and his actions came out of that belief if you truly believe that human beings were your equals and that they were in bondage what steps we know what levels would you be willing to take it to john brown took it all the way now we can talk about the morality of that decision we can talk about the lack of strategy and i think we will get into that towards the end of the episode but to understand john brown as a deeply sincere man who truly believed in the equality and put his his ideas into practice i think is the way we should think about him and even when right

before he was hung right right before he was killed he was still speaking utterly eloquently and coherently about his motivations and about the evil of this land and that is not the prose that would fall out of the face of an insane man he was always sane and uh and i think that's how i like to think of him as as one of the sanest men in an insane society excellent adnan what are your thoughts on on john brown and how he's being portrayed in current day well i think he's He is such a lightning rod figure of controversy in American history, which is why he's so fascinating to deal with. It seems that every generation, even if he may not be a household named to people, and sometimes he's just a footnote in the narrative histories we learn in high school and so on,

nonetheless, every generation seems to go back to confront his legacy and wrestle with what kind of a person he was, what his life meant. Did it have any larger meaning in the great narrative of, you know, liberation struggles for social justice in this country and how to think about that? And I think about that. And I think Brett hit a lot of the kind of key myths about him and confronted them. One other element of it is I think particularly in post-9-11 American political culture, there were some qualms, as there were all through this period, because he was a revolutionary, the role of violence, right, actually using or engaging in violence. Was he a pacifist who just sort of went too far? Did he ever, did he intend, you know, to engage in violence struggle? How did

he justify it and understand it? And why is that so dangerous, you know, for people to contemplate? And so even people who would, as Brett mentioned, support the cause of anti-slavery and abolition in American history were made very uncomfortable by his tactics. And so that, you know, was always been controversial. But I think it's interesting that even in the post-9-11 period, you know, with the global war on terrorism, there was a way in which thinking about the legacy of John Brown was very uncomfortable to really. realize that, you know, American history has this deep violence. And why is it that John Brown in particular is held up as some controversial figure as the first terrorist and the debate even about whether he's a terrorist or not? And also some people who wanted to distinguish between his adoption of violent means of struggle for liberation of blacks from slavery. Well, how and why that's different from other, you know, people's use and appropriation of violent means and

struggle, right? So somehow to characterize this as different. But I think another aspect of thinking about John Brown is he's often characterized as a failure, you know, that he was a failure and we'll talk perhaps a little bit about his earlier life. But it's almost as if this person who turned towards radical politics and of really being willing to sacrifice himself and his family for a larger cause was somehow undermined by the fact that he wasn't successful in normal material sorts of terms as a failed business person. And somehow this is as if that he turned to out of freedom being having nothing left to lose so that he, you know, he turned to this struggle. But he was a mediocre person who was marginal to the abolitionist

movement. He wasn't one of the great intellectuals and orators whose writings we study William Lloyd Garrison, the, you know, Emerson's and the Thoreau's and Wendell Phillips and all that. He was some kind of disreputable, failed person who took things too far. That, I think, is also something that we should really question and confront in the context of this, because also it's used to, you know, characterize the Harper's Ferry raid as just a dramatic failure. And I think, you know, he was obviously mistaken about certain things. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But I think, you know, some of his final words on December 2nd, 1859, before his execution,

were really quite prophetic, which shows that he understood the dynamics of U.S. history. He said, I, John Brown, am now quite certain, underlined certain. that the crimes of this underlined guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done. So what he was trying to do was find a way to liberate black people from the evil, horrible institution of slavery in a way that could over. avoid the violent cataclysm that would otherwise be necessary by trying to bring allies black and white together to throw off this peculiar institution. So he's somebody who clearly had an understanding, and these are words are often seen as prophetically announcing that the civil

war would have to start. So those are just some initial thoughts about his portrayal. I would say that one of the reasons why it's relevant to be talking about this today, and Brett mentioned, I hope he will elaborate a little bit on how he sees these symmetries between John Brown's time and our time. But I think one reason is that popular culture has returned to this, and there's this new Showtime series, The Good Lord Bird, that has seven episodes that portrays John Brown's life through the eyes of a particular fictional character

drawn from and based on the Good Lord Bird novel by James McBride of a young African-American adolescent young man, boy who cross-dresses and is part of these events and is the narrator for this. And this has put on the table the latest reimagining and trying to understand John Brown and his legacy that is just continually relevant for this. for this country. Just one more thing to add, bouncing off what Adnan said, when it comes to the question of violence,

I just wanted to make this point really quick, is that the reason why it's so trenchant and it's so palpable, this debate over whether or not violence has ever justified is I think because there's a consensus in hindsight along the political spectrum, except for the very far right fringes, that slavery was bad, right?

And so in hindsight, we see that there's no actual nuances of the morality involved of whether or not the thing in question can be defended or not everybody accepts that it can't so given that we all accept that it can't what lengths are justifiable to go to to overturn an obvious uncontroversial um you know immorality an evil in the world and i think that just the the heightened palpability and sharpness of slavery allows is the perfect vehicle through which to have those conversations and when something is so obviously as evil as slavery the question of of whether or not violence

is justified, becomes even more refined, even more acute. And I think that's part of what makes John Brown an enduring figure and continues to be the genesis of these sorts of conversations. Excellent. I think that you've covered basically how he's portrayed very well. I want to basically transition us into this next point by discussing my thoughts briefly, but it'll transition into the next topic, which is the origins of John Brown, where he came up, this, how he got this deep-seated moral conviction and then transitioning further into his life. So as I was saying with YouTube before we hit record, I basically see his life as being two phases. The first phase being his formative years where he developed this deep moral conviction

and then his you could say later years where he took on more of an action-oriented approach utilizing his moral convictions. Those never changed. And I think that this is why I want to use this as a transition point because my thoughts are very much in line with what you were both saying, and particularly what Brett was saying, this was not an insane man. This is a man who had a deep-seated moral conviction all through his life. And I know that we tend to think of John Brown in his relations to African-Americans, particularly slaves, but John Brown had a deep moral conviction that all men were created equal. That was his conviction from very early on in his life.

And one of the stories that really strikes me as being indicative of the fact that he did have this deep-rooted conviction all through his life. And this wasn't just some, you know, psychosis that he was going through spur of the moment that caused some of the events that were going to talk about shortly. But this really was something that was rooted deeper within himself is that when he was 29 years old, He was living in Pennsylvania, and there was some white families in the area that wanted John Brown's help in driving off some Native Americans who were hunting in the area, and they always hunted in the area. John Brown responded to them by saying the following, quote, I will have nothing to do with so mean an act. I would sooner take my gun and help drive you out of the country. And John Brown had very good relations with Native Americans all through his life. And we all know about, of course, his relations with African Americans and slaves.

This is a man who had that conviction that all men are created equal. It was started very early on in his life. And it was a thread that was carried all throughout. And if you believe that the moral conviction that all men are created equal is indicative of psychosis, then maybe you might be able to say that John Brown was psychotic. But I think that most of you that are listening to this podcast are going to be of the mindset that all men and women, of course, but as the phrase goes, all men are created equal.

All men are equal. And if you don't find that to be psychotic, then you have to admit that John Brown was acting on moral conviction, not on psychosis. And that's my thoughts, and that's going to transition us into basically John Brown's life. So guys, I guess I'll pitch it over to you. Let's talk a little bit about John Brown's life, his upbringing, and then kind of that transition into his active role

in trying to foment the end of slavery in the United States as it was. I guess, Adnan, I'll pitch it to you first. Do you want to talk about John Brown's life, his origins, kind of what gave him this conviction that we've been talking about? Well, sure. I mean, I think the broad, obvious culture in which he was steeped was Northeastern Protestant evangelical Christianity, right? He came from a very religious family congregationalists who were abolitionist in orientation early on. So even his father was a known supporter of abolition of slavery.

It came out of this northeast environment of Christian thought and doctrine that really took the theological principle that you were just articulating that we think of as just a kind of a political principle, a moral principle of the equality of all humankind. they believed that this was a theological principle. So the sense that everybody, every human being, was created by God meant that fundamentally the essence of the human soul ennobled every person and individual and accorded them with a kind of dignity and equality

that was completely incompatible with enslavement, right? that this was a degradation of that divine spark of the soul in every human being for you to be deprived of liberty and degraded to a position where you could not act according to your own lights and make your own moral choices because you were controlled as property by others. And of course, they also observed how cruel and evil the institution was in its violence. Right? So very often we were talking about how controversial John Brown's use of violence struggle was what the abolitionists were so conscious and aware of was both the systemic and the individual violence that was necessary to sustain and maintain enslavement. So I think that's the environment that he came from in terms of the religious. culture that mattered to him. Now, for much of his life, we don't know about him being

as actively involved in struggle, though he would have been steeped in this culture. He had a large family. He was involved in many different business ventures, and like many people during that period, went further west to seek opportunities. He was involved in the tanning industry. He seemed to have been quite a skilled person, but, you know, the fortunes of capitalism on the frontier, you know, meant that at times, you know, with speculative, you know, not always, you know, are the people you work with as morally scrupulous and ethical, and also there are a lot of opportunities for advantage taking and also a lot of speculation in that economy. So there were boom and bust circumstances, and he was sometimes victims of these downturns and of the exigencies of business. And so

he wasn't always as successful as he hoped or wanted to be, but that was something of a common story. He wasn't really distinguished by that. And I would hesitate to really emphasize, as I said, in my opening remarks, that these were somehow motivations or that there's some compensatory element to his turn to a more active and radical politics. I think in the 40s, 1940s, when he himself also turned to a more active phase. It was a period where there was a lot of mobilizing. It wasn't just somebody like John Brown going off on his own. And perhaps we'll talk a little bit about the Fugitive Slave Act that really radicalized many people in 1850, but even the events leading up to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act really turned many people, both emancipated or escaped black slaves

and white abolitionist allies to a more active form of struggle during that period. So maybe we'll talk about that, but I don't know if maybe Brett has other thoughts or remarks upon the early John Brown. Yeah, I mean, I think that was a great summary. I definitely want to emphasize that the Calvinist background of the fact that his father was not only an abolitionist but was also a station master on the Underground Railroad, right? One of these white folks that would use their house to bring in, you know, black folks escaping the south, going up north, give them food, give them lodging, point them in the right

direction. This is something that John Brown himself eventually became as well. So both his father and him were active on the Underground Railroad, which is a fact that I actually didn't know before engaging for this episode. And if you want to learn more about this, I read the book by W.E.B. De Bois on John Brown, fascinating. Because you get DeBois's, you know, Marxism and critical lens geared towards John Brown's entire life. It's a beautiful, well-written. fascinating exploration but you know thinking about the tension and henry rightly pointed out these these two phases but i will complicate that a little bit by just suggesting that those tensions were always were always there right once it was like the tension between providing for his

family which was large he had many many children many of whom died right his first wife died this is a man who lived a life of multiple tragedies that you know if any of us experienced even one of them would be life-defining he experienced it over and over again, and this growing idea in him, not only this moral objection to slavery, but this increasing sense that he had a role to play, like an ordained role by God, that God's purpose for him became clear and clear over time. And I loved Adnan's point that we can't pathologize his financial ups and downs because that was just America at that time. What happened to John Brown happened to countless others, and none of them did what John Brown did. So to make that the

causal arrow and element of this whole thing, I think, is just another attempt to obfuscate and pejorativize him and his life, pathologize him, right? So I think we should reject that, and that was a great point. One of the things that happened in his childhood that was really important to him was this time when he went to spend some time, I forget the exact circumstances, but as a young boy to spend some time with this white slave master, who was a nice guy all in all, right but he had a a little slave boy and one of the incidents that that john brown talks about that haunted him for his whole life this is as a child was watching um that that man's slave just do some minor error right and then was beaten with an iron shovel uh brutally and john brown

is a little boy sitting there watching that and everything within him rebelled against the the injustice of that and that was a that was a lifelong imprint that he had and and towards the end of his life he also said the two main documents, right? The two things that he rooted himself in was the Declaration of Independence and the Bible. Jesus's story. And unlike so many Christians, he actually cared about how Jesus actually lived his life and the message that Jesus put across. And it's really important to emphasize the huge role that Christianity played in American

culture at this time where pro and anti-slavery arguments were almost by default funneled through Christian doctrine. and the arguments on each side were made always with appeals to the Bible and to God. And so he was in that environment as well, which I think is important. And understanding John Brown's life, as Henry alluded to, all men are created equal, right? This fundamental phrase that started off the American experiment but also gave rise to one of its core contradictions from the very beginning. How do you reconcile this? John Brown's life, especially the latter part of it when he took action, could be seen as,

that contradiction inherent in American life coming to fruition, you know, exploding beyond the bounds of contradiction towards some sense of resolution. And I think understanding John Brown as consciously seeing the Declaration of Independence and, you know, the New Testament, the Bible, as his two guiding lights, I think is incredibly fascinating and just gets at a core current in not only American culture and history, but American Christianity, right? These were funneled through that. And so I think that's an important thing to emphasize as well.

And there's more to say, but I'll leave it at that for now. I'll come back to some other stuff as we progress. Great. And I want to underscore the point that John Brown being in debt was not something that was unique to him. And as Adnan said, this was something that was basically fundamental on the frontier. There was two back-to-back economic crises. We tend not to think of economic crises that are very severe being stacked one after another. But, of course, there was the panic of 1837.

Two years later, there was another economic crisis that didn't hit the cities quite as hard, but it was much more harsh on the frontier side. So he went far, far into debt after the panic of 1837 and the subsequent crisis in 1839. And that was what caused him to be in debt for a large portion of his life. But that's kind of getting away from the point here. Adnan brought up a point that will transition us into the latter part of his life. And it was something that, of course, we were going to mention, which is the Fugitive Slave Act. So the Fugitive Slave Act, for those of you who maybe don't remember too much what it is, is it was a law that was passed by the federal government in the United States that said that if a slave had escaped from their plantation in a slave state and they had reached a free state, even though,

that that was a free state that they had got into, those free states, any individual that came across the escape slave had to basically turn in the slave to be sent back into slavery. And there was penalties for not turning in escape slaves or for aiding escape slaves, even though they were in a free state. And as Adnan said, this act of the federal government basically legitimizing slavery as a something that was acceptable federally you know individual states had the ability to not have slavery but the federal mandate was firmly in favor of slavery being a legitimate economic system of a legitimate social system and this really enraged john brown and at this point he was around 50 years old and it really was kind of the transition point between these

two phases of his life that we've talked about. Of course, as Brett said, there was certainly mixing of these two phases, but the Fugitive Slave Act really was kind of the kickoff point of this more radical action-oriented phase of his life. So Adnan, do you want to expound on that at all in the Fugitive Slave Act and how that radicalized John Brown? Well, what I wanted to say about that really is that we studied. John Brown because he's symbolic or exemplary of maybe a white, he was both stunningly unique in some aspects of his career and thought and commitment. But I also want to say that I think he comes out of, we would be surprised to realize that, you know, he does come out of an

environment that we don't always appreciate of how radicalizing the Fugitive Slave Act, for example, was it turned southern Pennsylvania, for example, into a zone of constant conflict, of simmering raids and counter raids of resistance to slave-catching gangs that would make incursions to try and kidnap people in Philadelphia and all across the southern part of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, coming over from Maryland, which continued to be a slave state, and there were periods of resistance where there were armed and violent confrontations that took place. For example, in Christiana, Pennsylvania, as recounted in a really excellent book that I would recommend to people called The Slaves Cause, A History of Abolition, by Manisha Sinha.

It's a very thorough and detailed and granular account of many different dimensions and aspects of the abolitionist history, transnationally, but also very granularly in this period. And what she talks about is a kind of revolutionary abolitionism that starts to emerge in the 1850s where some of these sensational violent responses to attempts to kidnap. former slaves who had managed to escape and led to, for example, a slave owner named Edward Gorsuch, that name might ring bells to people who was from Maryland, okay, who tried to retrieve four slaves in Christiana, Pennsylvania, with a party of people, and these slaves and white allies fought against them and ended up killing him. And it caused a huge controversy and sensation that polarized politicians who are pro-slave or not. And those who, you know, again, had to go through this problem of, you know, dealing with tactics,

even if they might have been against slavery and whether they could bear the pressure from pro-slave forces that wanted the return of these people. And so on. So there was simmering conflict. John Brown emerges out of that. He's one of these, you know, valiant fighters who form a league, the league. Gilead, League of Gileadites, which is a group that is involved with resisting, supporting fugitive slaves and resisting attempts to render them back, you know, for rendition back to slave states. So I think he fits into a pattern of people who became more willing to be

revolutionary in their approach to adopt more militant tactics in response to the violence of kidnapping by slave gang, re-enslavement gangs, and of the delegitimization of the federal government as a pro-slave government, even if it would claim to be neutral, it was upholding this principle of property as a legal regime that, for many, invalidated. The federal government, government as a moral just government. And it's interesting that when secession happened, there were a number of very radical abolitionists who actually welcomed secession because they said, at least this may free the government from having to cater to slave interests. And we could actually have a government that we can influence that we can feel as legitimate. So somebody

like Wendell Phillips, who gave a very famous speech even before John Brown's hanging when he was in trial, in custody and in trial, the lesson of the hour. And he said, what is the lesson of the hour? It's insurrection. And his audience was just like aghast, you know, a gasp. It was a sort of sensation for him to just utter these words that insurrection was legitimate. So it wasn't really only John Brown. It's just that he had the courage to actually strike that blow, that electrified and galvanized these anti-slavery forces even further out of the mix of radicalization that was taking place because of the Fugitive Slave Act. Yeah, incredibly well said, and I would just bounce off that and drill down on this point

that just like today with the abolitionist movement, with Black Lives Matter, there is a spectrum, right? They're the liberal reformists on the sort of right-wing edge of these movements, and there are the radicals on the far-left-wing edges. John Brown was certainly, if we could put that paradigm onto that abolitionist moment, he was on the far left of that argument. But a lot of the people who were sympathetic to Brown, you know, they had ideas like nonviolence. There were some moneyed, you know, moneyed liberal sort of coastal elites that were obviously against slavery,

but were not willing to go as far as John Brown did. Or if he did do those things, they would sort of turn away and pretend they didn't see the rougher edges of what Brown was doing. and related to the Fugitive Slave Act also was this period of time right before the Civil War where my state, Nebraska and Kansas were getting brought into the union as separate states at that time

Nebraska included the Dakotas as well as Nebraska and Kansas was where Kansas is and there was a debate right do we make these new states slave free or do we have slavery in these new states and the compromise was sort of well we'll let the people that live their vote and decide for themselves right

So this actually initiated a whole set of migrations, right, where freestaters, that they were called free staters from the north, including John Brown's sons, fled into Kansas to do homesteading, to be citizens of Kansas so they could vote against making it a slave state. And reactionaries, what we would call today fascists, right, from the south coming up from Missouri and whatnot into Kansas to say, no, actually, we're going to vote to keep slavery here. and this this gave rise to a whole bunch of conflicts but it it culminated in many ways in john brown's first act of not only violence but murder right i would say completely justified murder but what happened was john brown was 55 at this time his sons went down to kansas he was up i think still in in um pennsylvania ohio area is in those days 55 was very old and that trip was very arduous you know so at first he didn't want to go and you know john brown's sons and and their sort of comrades met and conflicted with these, these pro-slavery, what can only be

described as hardcore reactionary fascist groups, who took part in extrajudicial slaughtering, beatings, you know, just the same that we see with the reactionaries today was happening back then. And John Brown's sons wrote to John Brown, like, you know, more than anything, we're outgunned. You know, these pro-slavery fascists have all the weapons, and we need weapons more than we even need bread. And when that letter got to John Brown, John Brown said, even though I'm old as shit, who cares? He got all of his guns together, put together as much of weapons as he can in a wagon, made his way down to Kansas.

Found his sons and their little units in mud, very sick, malnourished, et cetera. But it culminated in, after John Brown went there, he helped build cabins and get all these people back to health and set up a little settlement, right? and then he decided one night he went out into the woods to pray and feel what his purpose was at this point and he came out of those woods and said it's time to act he told his men you know sharpen your weapons put a revolver in his in his waistband and what they did is they went to the cabins of the most vociferous fascist the most hardcore reactionaries pro-slavery threats to really their settlement in their lives I mean, these people were really willing to take it to killing John Brown's sons and their unit went there and would knock on their doors, pull them out in the middle of the night, and he killed about five of these hardcore pro-slavery reactionaries. This was controversial, an absolute scandal.

John Brown was pursued from that point out from different sort of law enforcement agencies, different reactionary formations. He never publicly admitted to having participated in what became known as the Pottawatum. massacre um but it really was this turning point where all these ideas and these debates about violence and and how far to take the abolitionist struggle culminated in this john brown raid of these you know hardcore reactionary cabins and um and yeah and that was before the raid on harper's ferry and all of that and it was something that i think marked this definite turn towards the use of revolutionary violence and the abolitionist cause let me just remind the listeners very quickly, in case we've forgotten since our U.S. history classes, because this is

almost never talked about outside of that context. But this period of time was essentially a civil war within the state of Kansas called the Bleeding Kansas conflict or war, whatever you would want to call it. But essentially, it was prelude to the American civil war between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. And as Brett said, in the aftermath of his actions in Kansas during the bleeding Kansas war conflict, again, you pick your word, he was pursued by law enforcement. But it's important to understand that law enforcement in Kansas was also intricately tied into the events as a whole.

So Brett mentioned the Potawatomi Massacre. This was preceded by the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas, by armed essentially a militia group led by the sheriff that was a pro-slavery militia group. They went in, they basically burned down all of the anti-slavery newspapers, took violent action, and basically sacked the entire town or city. And again, this is a lot of. enforcement official that's upholding this federal mandate of allowing slavery as long as the states are fine with that. And they're trying to ensure that the state is fine with it by

silencing any dissent against slavery. So many of those within the law enforcement line of work that had law enforcement capacity were already opposed to the kind of theoretical, ideological backing that John Brown was acting on, much less the actions he was taking. It's very possible that if he was just a vociferous supporter of anti-slavery causes, he still could have been pursued by some of these pro-slavery law enforcement officials. But once he actually took action against the pro-slavery forces, it was inevitable that he was going to be pursued from then on by not just law enforcement officials that were pro-slavery, but by pro-slavery militia members and the like.

So I think that that's important to underscore because I don't think that a lot of people remember that at this time period, this is 1855, Kansas essentially was in a state of civil war within the state. Adnan, I'll let you pick back up there. I just wanted to make sure that that was clear to the listeners. That's such important context, Henry, to incorporate both what you and Brett were talking about in terms of the situation in Kansas, which is, you know, of low-level constant violent struggle where in many cases the emerging, you know, state apparatus of government and law enforcement wasn't acting in a neutral sort of fashion. And so you have to put all of this into context when we're talking about the turn towards more radical measures and the willingness to use and confront violence with violence the way John Brown clearly was willing to do in certain contexts that this is after decades and decades of peaceful organizing, of petitioning, of using the traditional instruments of participatory. democracy, but that it was seen as impossible to achieve success because the federal government

was captive to pro-slavery forces, the system of government. And what was taking place in Kansas during this period also radicalized people back east hearing about the value in some sense of actually. confronting directly pro-slavery forces as a model, and that's where he began thinking about a wider prospect of liberation by creating, well, it's interesting, we should think about what the plan was that he had. I mean, the attack on Harper's Ferry, whether it was meant to provide arms for an outpost in the Blue Ridge Mountains of free armies that could be on the borders with slave states where fugitive slaves could join the army of their own liberation or whether

he was trying to kind of spark that through the attack on Harper's Ferry itself. You know, some of these details are a little unclear about exactly what, you know, he intended. But it's clear that he felt some more radical measure was going to be necessary. And I think he received support. He wasn't completely alone. A lot of the narrative is to sort of suggest that he was individually some kind of crazy extremist who then fomented the civil war or caused the civil war. which is sort of, for example, how in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, he was seen.

You know, this is a period post-reconstruction where, you know, Jim Crow, even people in the North were not willing to question Jim Crow at this, you know, very frequently. And they saw that this issue was dividing America. So this ridiculous film, the Santa Fe Trail, that has Ronald Reagan and Errol Flynn is a portrayal of John Brown's life that in some sense when the United States was on the eve of joining or at least thinking about joining World War II to fight Nazism, the issue of American racism is something that couldn't completely be ignored, but it was hard to figure out how can we submerge this divisive issue in order to bring, you know, people together to have

the unity to join, you know, in the war in World War II. And so this kind of film was a sort of propaganda to try and blame this agitator, this insane, you know, radical, extreme Christian who thought he was an instrument of God in his delusion, you know, is somebody who forced and created a conflict that didn't have to happen. So this is a period where people, you know, regret the civil war as some sort of tragic, tragic, you know, circumstance that divided, you know, brother against brother and tried to de-ideologize, you know, the conflict and say that it wasn't about, you know, the evils of slavery, you know, it was about other issues and it's unfortunate that it happened and so on and to find people that could be scapegoated and blamed for it. So I think that's just,

Interesting. We've lost this period of history where really many people in the North really just did not accept the institution of slavery, and it needed a kind of spark to actually galvanize action. I think something important to do right now. So we've mentioned tangentially the raid on Harper's Ferry, but we didn't actually really discuss what the raid was, what it was all about, kind of goals, and the aftermath of. of that. So I want to transition to that now. Brett, would you be willing to kind of lay down the historical context of this raid, kind of what the idea was behind the raid? And then we can just chat about what the aftermath of this raid was. Sure. Yeah, I mean, as Adnan said, it really is, you've got to think about it as this, this form of trying to really, at first, right, raid, raid an armory, a government armory, stock up on weapons, and then it's sort of unclear what was going to happen next but the idea was there would be like a sort of a retreat into the nearby

hills there would be a taking over of of territory and these actions would spark in john brown's hope and this is where we can talk about the strategic failures a what he would call a spontaneous army of slaves to rise up and join the fight and i think one of the crucial elements of why the the the raid on harper's ferry went so wrong is because that never materialized right it happened too quickly. You don't get information spread around a lot. People are more taken aback and confused and scared than they are to pick up guns and join the fight, right? The town itself turned on John Brown. They went up into the mountains as like John Brown and his unit. They took over the little area. They had control of the bridges. This is like a sort of watery area where

the bridges are really essential infrastructure in and out of the town. So town's people would go up and take pot shots at them while the government was getting their response together to come down and crack down on these fighters. And so it was a sort of chaotic event. The raid went well, right? And there's only one guard, I think, standing guard at the place. So he was easily taken over. One actually sort of tragic fact about this was a freed black man was a part of the very initial he was like watching this happen and there was an incoming train and he was running to tell the train of people about what was happening. John Brown's forces were like, stop, stop. If you don't halt, we're going to have to shoot. The guy kept running to basically blow up their spot and they had to

shoot him and kill him. And so the whole thing sort of went into chaos very quickly after that. And I think there is plenty of critiques to be made about the strategizing and the tactics. And it feeds into this idea of just blind dogmatism right it was not a very well super thought out plan and then so the the reactionaries can say see he was crazy um you know who would try to do this etc and so it really plays into to a lot of of that stuff as well but eventually um the little place they were hold up in was surrounded by by government forces i think a second marine battalion one of the interesting historical notes here is that robert e lee right before the civil war robert e lee was the general of the battalion or the leader of the battalion that had surrounded John Brown's

little hole in and spot on all of his all of his comrades and there was injuries you know I think multiple by the time they were holed up multiple members of the unit were injured inside with John Brown John Brown you know famously was was still sober minded he was not panicking he had this sort of singular focus to what he was doing that was that was almost you know transcendent and that played out the entire time. But yeah, eventually it was it was crushed. It was ended and they went in and they arrested John Brown. And John Brown, and this is sort of a historical alternative history, right?

What if instead of being captured and in prison, John Brown was killed right there? Because so much of his oratory, his rhetoric came out in that period after capture when it was a national, if not international story, John Brown had the spotlight on him. Journalists came to, you know, why he was, after he was caught, the governor came in a bunch of journalists in tow, and they were asking him questions, and John Brown lay wounded on the ground, but, you know, because he got beat brutally when they invaded. He got knocked out, knocked unconscious. So he was injured. He was laying on the floor, and he was just openly answering. He's like, you can ask me anything. And the journalists were asking them all these

questions, and he was just very concise and clear and sober-minded with his reasoning, why he did it, what his vision of the country was, etc. And that really launched him into national fame in a way that he hadn't had before. And so, you know, that period of time I think is really crucial between his capture and his ultimate hanging because he also got his day in court, right? And one of the things while he was in court is his lawyers wanted to do the insanity plea, which, you know, is a reasonable strategy if you're trying to get your, your guy off the hook. But John Brown rose up and rejected that. He's like, I don't even want to take that plea because I'm not insane. And And he gave some of his most clear and cogent, you know, arguments for why he had done what he'd done, proving that he was not an insane man.

Obviously, that jury came back within, what, 45 minutes saying that he was guilty. And the judge said that he was going to be executed by hanging. And we can get into that and its aftermath and the reflections on that. One other thing I want to point out before I handed over to Adnan, just tying these historical notes together, when John Brown was eventually hanged for his crimes. It wasn't open to the public. Only military people could be in attendance. And John Wilkes Booth, right? The assassin that went on to kill Abraham Lincoln. He was not in the military, but he stole a military outfit so that he could go to the hanging of John Brown. And he later wrote how he looked at John Brown with utter disgust, saw him as a complete traitor, and was

repulsed by everything John Brown stood for. And then, you know, just mere years later, he would be the one that puts a bullet in the head of Abraham Lincoln. So fascinating historical connections with Robert E. Lee and John Wilkes Booth and John Brown himself. But again, that's not a detailed history of the raid itself. That's just an overview. Adon, anything I missed, feel free to pick up and carry forward. I think you're absolutely right that the success that he had was really as an advocate when the world's attention was on him and the eloquence and the self-possession

and the clarity of his vision. And the stoic willingness to be, you know, to sacrifice himself rather than to try and find exoneration somehow or, you know, he spoke with great courage. And in those moments, it is, of course, very hard to see him as somebody suffering from, you know, insanity or delusion. I mean, it was very sober facing the fact that he was going to die, but he wanted to turn his life and his last moments of his life to some positive purpose. and seem to recognize in some sense that even if the military venture of trying to spark slave revolt and a war for their liberation, you know, failed in its immediate objectives that nonetheless the larger cause of seeing the end of slavery could be achieved through the lesson of the hour, right and and to use that moment to convince people that it was inevitable that a confrontation with

the evils of slavery would have to take place so I think that was more significant of course than the actual raid but I think the raid also did contribute something important which was that it, as some commentators even at the time, like Wendell Phillips, seem to perceive and understand, is that, you know, Wendell Phillips giving this, you know, speech in November, you know, before a month before John Brown was actually executed over a month, you know, said basically, that's the end of slavery in Virginia. It's over. And, you know, it might still exist on some level, but it's like a tree that has been uprooted. It stays green for a while, but it is dead. And, you know, they could realize that the overreaction, the panic and terror that John Brown's raid created in the South would see the end of slavery.

And what he said about it was that it wasn't just John Brown himself, but it was the moral conscience of everybody's John Brown. and they were frightened of the way in which his courageous action dramatized the moral necessity, you know, the absolute moral clarity of needing to confront slavery as a great evil. They couldn't avoid knowing that. And so I think, you know, the raid, even if militarily it wasn't a success in the way that he managed or, you know, intended, it clearly panicked the South and led to responses that certainly ushered in the era of the Civil War, the secession and civil war. On November 2nd, the jury, after deliberating for just 45 minutes, reached its verdict.

Guilty of murder. Guilty of treason. Guilty of inciting slave insurrection. Slowly, John Brown rose to address the court. Had I interfered on behalf of the rich, every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward. I see a book, here, the Bible, that teaches me to remember them that are in bonds. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I believe that to have interfered in behalf of his despised poor was not wrong, but right.

Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country. I say, let it be done. The judge calmly sentenced Brown to execution by hanging. From prison, he wrote hundreds of letters. The Charlestown jail cell became his pulpit. His words reprinted in scores of newspapers.

You know that Christ once armed Peter, so also in my case, I think he put a sword into my hand, and there continued it so long as he saw best. And then kindly took it from me. In Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau could not sleep. as he wrestled with the question of violence. I do not wish to kill or be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both of these things would be unavoidable. The revolutionary had changed the philosopher's mind.

I want us to discuss now using the aftermath of the Harper's Ferry raid to look at how inevitable the reaction was. And then let's also think about the moral nuances within the actions that were taken, just briefly. And then after that, we can talk about kind of take-home lessons, what we should learn from John Brown and his legacy, as well as perhaps what we can learn from the failures in terms of tactics moving forward. Yeah, in a lot of ways, you know, I think about like the Easter uprising in Ireland, right, as this event that was an attempt to rise up a failure but resulted in an inevitable advancing of the contradictions in society and it fed into further victories down the road, right? And that's very much what happened here. But there is some, I mean, I think it's worthwhile to explore these nuances because the nature of reaction is that the blowback is inevitable and it's

crazed, it's desperate, it's violent, it's cruel, and that's always been the case. But in these instances, from the Potawatomi massacre to the Harper's Ferry raid itself, the blowback not only was widespread, but it actually was concentrated on John Brown's sons themselves. So after the Potawatomi massacre, I think two of his sons who weren't even involved in the actual attacks on those pro-slave reactionaries, they were beaten bloody by these vigilani groups that that came out afterwards to get vengeance. And in the case of the raid itself, among many other people that were either injured or died, was one of John Brown's sons as well. And as John Brown's son lay dying, you know, and he was like curled up and sort of in this

panicky mode, you know, John Brown was like, you have to die like a man. John Brown went in there willing and ready to die. It was an act of conscious martyrdom. And we can ask ourselves, You know, given the inevitable blowback, given the fact that a lot of it came down on his sons and black folks that were in his party, you know, that were part of the raid, like a newbie danger field who joined John Brown's Harper Ferry raid because his wife and children were on the verge of getting sold. Like his wife was going to get sold to the south and they were scared they'd never see their father again, right? So he joined in John Brown's cause and was killed, shot in the head during the raid itself. And so to just understand the cause and effect of these radical actions, this was inevitable, right? If it wasn't John Brown in his unit dying, people were already dying. The violence had actually reached Congress where a famous case of an anti-slavery northern senator

beaten brutally over the head within an inch of his life with a pro-slavery senator and his cane. right so the tensions were boiling over and so you can't place all of this at the feet of john brown by any means he was swept up in historical processes that were well beyond his control as well but just thinking through you know how your actions will inevitably invite backlash what that backlash might look like and how best to defend against the inevitability of it are things i think we can we can carry forward seeing how this one instance played out and how so much of that backlash was brutal and immediate and killed many of the people that fought alongside John Brown that might not, you know, in the ultimate analysis, been as willing to die in that moment as

John Brown was. So there's no answers here, but they're interesting and they're worth thinking over if for nothing else, then that we don't want to fall into a simple black and white. This is all good. This is all bad. That's anti-dialectical. It's anti-critical thought. So wrestling with these nuances, I think, is perennally important because,

we face many of these same issues, although different on the surface, today. Yeah, I really have to agree with that point about the nuances, about the issues, more questions than really answers, you know, that this history poses for us in this time as well. You know, one of the criticisms was tactically, this was unwise, you know, wasn't perhaps a good plan. there were a lot of assumptions made, right, that all you had to do was strike a blow for freedom and that immediately slaves would come in droves. You know, he called it bees coming to the hive, bees swarming. And that didn't, you know, manifest. So some have suggested that not only tactically, but perhaps also he didn't necessarily understand the condition, you know, of enslaved black people,

like what they suffered under and the regime of fear and oppression and what that does. And, you know, that they had to have a rather practical sense for their own survival. That didn't mean that just because some white guy came and was calling them to action, that they would trust that this was the right time and the right service. circumstances to engage in this dangerous activity of revolting for their slavery. There had been other slave revolts that had taken place, you know, Dominic Vasey, Nat Turner, you know, all of these had been crushed really brutally. And so it was perhaps a big assumption for him to assume that he could provide the spark

that would lead to slaves rising up and contributing in a direct fashion, immediately to the end of slavery was maybe a misperception of how that institution of slavery and the culture of enslavement, you know, what it does to a society, to a culture, and to people who have to live in those oppressive circumstances. You know, of course, we know that the colonizers don't understand the subalterns always, right? That there is a different consciousness and perspective. So there's been some questions about, that and about whether he had a kind of white savior complex and but I think you know just the other point is is really that there were many of course people who fully endorsed his vision in

many ways so somebody like Frederick Douglass endorsed his vision even if not his tactics it seems that perhaps he backed out of or thought that this plan might have had real dangers to it but But, you know, people supported Black, the Harriet Tubman, obviously, was a strong supporter. Frederick Douglass believed in the need for confrontation with the system of slavery. So there's a variety of positions in it. I don't think what I would see is the real outcome or the real value is recognizing that John Brown had a vision of radical egalitarianism. he was committed to and that he actually in his life, in his thought, and in his actions, really lived a sense that others were equal and that this demanded something of him.

So he may have had white privilege. He was from a white settler, you know, in the privileged status in a white settler colonial society, but he was willing to strike blows against white supremacy, white privilege himself and use what he had. to galvanize, you know, a liberation for others whom he fully believed and practiced a sense of their value and worth and dignity as human beings as utterly equal to anyone else. That's, I think, important to underscore. So there might be issues about judgments and tactics and so on. But I think his commitments were clear, and those are certainly inspiring in his historical legacy.

So two final questions, and let's again keep them short. One thing that I think would be interesting before we just everybody think of one take home message to take from this story. That's one question. But before we talk about that, I'm just curious as to your thoughts, each of you, on John Brown's perhaps you could say influence on liberation theology later on based on his, theological convictions intersecting with his moral and political convictions. And of course, this is well before liberation theology as we know it would have been around. But I think that you definitely could draw a thread. You know, maybe it's not the driver of liberation theology, but you could definitely see a distinct thread from one to the other. And I'd just be curious if either of you or both of you would like to comment on that before we each give perhaps our one take-home lesson from this biography, essentially, of

John Brown that we just did. Yeah, I would love to touch on that because that was actually in my notes, and I wanted to get to that as well. Thinking of this as a proto form of liberation theology, where, you know, John Brown was so deeply motivated, almost exclusively, right, through the ideology of his Christianity, through his understanding of what God and Jesus stood for and what they believed in. He made that very clear all throughout before, during, and after these acts of resistance, of revolutionary violence, even in some cases. He said at one point in letters, he's like, Jesus at one point armed Peter,

and I think he did the same for me. He put a sword in my hand. He let me go about my business, and then when it was time, he kindly took that sword back from me, right? So he saw all of his acts as motivated by his religion, and he saw himself as an instrument of God. And that's a profound sort of, you know, breakthrough in American Christianity at least. And although it wasn't conceived as such at the time, because it was before a liberation theology, I think you can certainly draw a straight line from this to those later developments. And two more areas, I think we could do the same briefly. guerrilla warfare. I think, you know, guerrilla warfare, it obviously existed before this.

You could even think about guerrilla warfare as asymmetrical warfare in the context of the American Revolution itself, but certainly this was an instance of the advancement of those asymmetrical tactics in the American context happening under John Brown. And the last thing is, you know, Antifa. He wasn't anti-fascist. The Potawatomi Massacre is literally him going out and doing direct action against, for all intents and purposes, are fascist, our pure, explicit white supremacist, and he killed a few of them. That's anti-fascist action. So from liberation theology to guerrilla warfare to anti-fascism, I think we see those proto-elements in the John Brown story, and I think that, if nothing else, is fascinating.

I wouldn't add anything to what Brett just said. I would just suggest if people want to learn more about him and to really understand something like the mentality, if you want to try and imagine it, it's hard for us in a secular kind of understanding of politics to really see how these religious ideas could have really motivated John Brown. I would turn to a work of fiction. I think Russell Banks' cloud splitter is an unbelievable novel that really tries to imagine the consciousness and mentality of John Brown in that culture and it does a really great way of making it palpable and rooting it, you know, in the story of his life. So I would read Cloud Splitter, but I would just also

endorse that W.E.B. Du Bois's biography of Brown is a masterful sort of study of using history for liberation. And W.B. Du Bois considered it his favorite volume of all the things that he wrote. He really thought that what he was able to say about John Brown was somehow connected to the secret of how we could use this history to liberate ourselves. So I would just recommend that volume and say that in addition to the takeaway conclusions Brett had that there's much more thinking to be done on him, so many lessons to learn and to apply to our circumstances today. And so I would encourage people to look to those sources. And if you want to read one historical, modern biography, I would suggest David Reynolds's 2005 John Brown abolitionist as a really seriously researched

and balanced portrait and portrayal of him. I think again and again, we'll come back to the lessons of John Brown in this country. Yeah, in regards to my final thought, I just want to throw out there that something that John Brown really teaches us is that regardless of people's background, what's really important are people's convictions. So I know that the three of us are all on the left. I think that that's fairly clear to the audience. We all come to the left from different backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds.

John Brown came to his ideological viewpoint through theology. There's a lot of other people that were active at the time that came to a similar ideological viewpoint and wanted to take similar tactics. And again, we talked a little bit about the potential flaws within those tactics, but they came to the same ideological viewpoint and the same convictions coming from different backgrounds. And I think that one of the things that we have to understand for moving forward in various movements that were involved in different causes that we're championing is that what really matters is the conviction of the individuals. We have to try to build

coalitions of individuals, not coalitions for coalition's sake, but coalitions of people that have the same convictions morally, ideologically, and by building these coalitions, we give ourselves the best chances for survival and for success. One of the things that we saw with John Brown and the anti-slavery struggle is that coalitions of individuals coming together ultimately was what ended slavery, but it was a lack of building the coalition ahead of time that caused the failure at Harper's Ferry. As Brett said, there wasn't enough planning that went in ahead of time to ensure that there was going to be some broad mass support for once that act was carried out in order for the end goal to be realized. That coalition building had not yet taken place

for that specific event. But the coalition of people coming together to fight against slavery, whether it was through a theological conviction, a moral conviction, or just they thought that all men were created equal for their own personal beliefs, whatever reason. That coalition of people coming together and joining around that one conviction was ultimately what enabled the overthrow of the slave system within the United States. And that's my take home message from John Brown is that we can see from one aspect, these goals were realized by coalition building, the specific event that John Brown's most famous for is at least partially a failure of coalition building in terms of not taking the time to build the coalition ahead of time and really rushing into that. So of course we need to take action. We need to be bold in our strategies, but we do need to build coalitions with other people. Guys, any final thoughts before we wrap this

up? I mean, I would just echo everything that both of you have said. I think it was all well said. There's so much more to talk about. But obviously, leave that for another day. I hope this episode inspires people to not only think through these questions, but to re-examine the life story of John Brown, because not only do you learn so much about him, you learn so much about history, American history, American white supremacy, the forms of reaction and these cycles that we live in, because it was founded as a settler colonial white supremacist state, that we're constantly revisiting these questions of race. And the Black Lives Matter is the most, and the abolition against mass incarceration are

modern day examples that live directly in the legacy of the earlier abolitionists. And we have all those contradictions, all those different sides still in play, and we have to work through them. That's the nature of history. We, like John Brown, live in a time of heightening contradictions where so many of the threads and conflicts of American society are rupturing into the explicit. And so we're situated at a similar period of time. So pulling from these histories, learning these narratives, learning what motivated them, I think they're all tools in our toolbox as we look forward and, you know, try to carry forward the torch of abolitionism, of egalitarianism, of ending white supremacy, etc. So inspiration and knowledge are to be found in these historical episodes.

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