John Brown: Terrorist, Hero or Terrorist Hero?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Mary Holiday, Miss Wanna Conic of whatever Holidays. It's the
time of the year where people celebrate things, and maybe
this year people feel a little bit less like celebrating
because it has been a dark one. In the year
before it was also pretty dark, and next year it
is not going to be less dark. But we have

(00:23):
another Behind the Bastard's Christmas Special, which uh is, you know,
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

(00:45):
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?

(01:06):
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

(01:29):
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

(01:52):
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.

(02:12):
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.

(02:32):
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.

(02:53):
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,

(03:14):
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

(03:34):
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

(03:58):
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

(04:20):
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

(04:42):
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

(05:06):
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

(05:26):
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

(05:49):
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

(06:11):
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

(06:32):
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

(06:53):
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,

(07:15):
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

(07:38):
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.

(08:00):
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.

(08:24):
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

(08:47):
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

(09:07):
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,

(09:29):
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

(09:52):
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

(10:12):
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

(10:33):
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

(10:53):
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

(11:14):
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

(11:34):
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

(11:57):
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

(12:20):
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

(12:41):
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

(13:02):
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

(13:25):
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.

(13:48):
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,

(14:09):
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.

(14:32):
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

(14:53):
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.

(15:16):
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

(15:38):
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

(16:00):
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

(16:21):
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

(16:43):
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

(17:03):
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

(17:23):
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.

(17:46):
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.

(18:08):
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

(18:30):
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.

(18:50):
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,

(19:12):
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

(19:33):
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

(19:54):
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.

(20:17):
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

(20:38):
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

(21:00):
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

(21:21):
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

(21:45):
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

(22:07):
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

(22:29):
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

(22:52):
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

(23:13):
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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
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(25:04):
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,

(25:25):
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

(25:48):
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

(26:10):
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,

(26:33):
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?

(26:58):
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

(27:20):
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,

(27:43):
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

(28:07):
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.

(28:28):
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,

(28:48):
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,

(29:08):
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,

(29:29):
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

(29:51):
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

(30:13):
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

(30:36):
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

(30:58):
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

(31:21):
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,

(31:41):
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

(32:04):
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

(32:26):
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

(32:47):
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.

(33:08):
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

(33:29):
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.

(33:51):
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

(34:13):
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,

(34:36):
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

(34:56):
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

(35:19):
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

(35:42):
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

(36:04):
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

(36:26):
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

(36:48):
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

(37:10):
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

(37:31):
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

(37:54):
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

(38:18):
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

(38:40):
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

(39:01):
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

(39:21):
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,

(39:45):
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

(40:07):
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

(40:30):
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,

(40:53):
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

(41:15):
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.

(41:38):
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.

(42:03):
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

(42:26):
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,

(42:46):
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

(43:08):
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

(43:29):
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,

(43:50):
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

(44:12):
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

(44:34):
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

(44:55):
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,

(45:17):
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

(45:37):
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

(45:58):
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

(46:19):
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,

(46:42):
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

(47:04):
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

(47:25):
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

(47:47):
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

(48:09):
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

(48:33):
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

(48:53):
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

(49:14):
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.

(49:39):
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,

(49:59):
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

(50:20):
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.

(50:40):
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

(51:02):
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

(51:26):
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,

(51:46):
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

(52:07):
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

(52:31):
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

(52:51):
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

(53:13):
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

(53:34):
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.

(53:55):
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

(54:16):
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

(54:39):
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

(55:01):
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,

(55:21):
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

(55:42):
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

(56:04):
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

(56:26):
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

(56:47):
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

(57:08):
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

(57:29):
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

(57:50):
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

(58:12):
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

(58:36):
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

(58:57):
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

(59:19):
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,

(59:43):
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,

(01:00:04):
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.

(01:00:25):
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.

(01:00:46):
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

(01:01:08):
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

(01:01:31):
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

(01:01:56):
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

(01:02:16):
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,

(01:02:38):
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

(01:02:58):
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

(01:03:18):
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,

(01:03:44):
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

(01:04:05):
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,

(01:04:28):
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

(01:04:48):
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

(01:05:13):
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

(01:05:33):
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

(01:05:53):
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

(01:06:15):
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,

(01:06:39):
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,

(01:07:00):
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

(01:07:20):
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,

(01:07:42):
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

(01:08:02):
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.

(01:08:22):
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,

(01:08:44):
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.

(01:09:07):
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

(01:09:30):
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

(01:09:54):
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

(01:10:16):
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.

(01:10:39):
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

(01:11:01):
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

(01:11:23):
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

(01:11:44):
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

(01:12:04):
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

(01:12:25):
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

(01:12:45):
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

(01:13:06):
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

(01:13:28):
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

(01:13:51):
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,

(01:14:11):
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,

(01:14:32):
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

(01:14:53):
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

(01:15:14):
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,

(01:15:36):
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

(01:15:59):
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

(01:16:22):
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,

(01:16:45):
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.

(01:17:06):
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

(01:17:29):
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

(01:17:50):
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

(01:18:11):
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,

(01:18:33):
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

(01:18:54):
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

(01:19:17):
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,

(01:19:39):
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

(01:19:59):
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

(01:20:21):
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

(01:20:43):
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

(01:21:07):
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.

(01:21:29):
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

(01:21:50):
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

(01:22:19):
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,

(01:22:43):
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

(01:23:04):
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

(01:23:25):
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

(01:23:46):
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

(01:24:07):
have fun, drink lots of eggnog. I will yeah h
h

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