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Speaker 1: Mary Holiday, Miss Wanna Conic of whatever Holidays. It's the

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Speaker 1: time of the year where people celebrate things, and maybe

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Speaker 1: this year people feel a little bit less like celebrating

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Speaker 1: because it has been a dark one. In the year

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Speaker 1: before it was also pretty dark, and next year it

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Speaker 1: is not going to be less dark. But we have

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Speaker 1: another Behind the Bastard's Christmas Special, which uh is, you know,

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Speaker 1: a bit of a tradition here. Well is now the

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Speaker 1: second time we've done it, so now it's officially a

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Speaker 1: tradition where we break with our tradition of telling stories

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Speaker 1: about the worst people in all of history and instead

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Speaker 1: highlight a hero. Last year I told everybody the story

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Speaker 1: of Raoul Wallenberg, a man who risked his life and

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Speaker 1: spent the entirety of his considerable privilege saving lives from

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Speaker 1: the Nazis. And this year we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: another hero of mine, John eff and Brown. And today

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Speaker 1: my guest is my producer, so be Airhorn air an

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Speaker 1: air Horn, Sophie. Are you how's your how's your holiday going?

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Speaker 1: It's holiday? You know? Yeah? You you? You do you

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Speaker 1: enjoy this time of year? Are you big Christmas her? No? No,

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Speaker 1: I mean I don't dislike this time here, But I'm

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Speaker 1: not like, yeah, what's your what's your favorite holiday? Easter?

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Speaker 1: Well that's the wrong answer, but they don't. Just give

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Speaker 1: me the funniest look. But it is actually true. The

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Speaker 1: Easter is our favorite holiday, such a ship holiday, other

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Speaker 1: than the Cadburry cream eggs, which are objectively great, like candies,

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Speaker 1: the best for Easter. It is the best for Easter.

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Speaker 1: And that's a serious injustice because the pies are best

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Speaker 1: for Christmas. Um so, Sophie, so fee so fee so

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Speaker 1: fee um. Here we are. What do you know about

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Speaker 1: John Brown? For the second podcast? I know nothing. You

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Speaker 1: know nothing, You don't know any of the name, doesn't

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Speaker 1: ring any bells to you. Let's just let's just know really, okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: uh yeah, he's probably somebody people heard about in high school.

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Speaker 1: For like a paragraph or two. He's usually like right

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Speaker 1: before the Civil War starts, you get a couple of paragraphs,

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Speaker 1: are like one of those little insert boxes about John

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Speaker 1: Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry. Um, and he's

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Speaker 1: a He's an interesting guy because, like Wallenberg, he gave

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Speaker 1: his life fighting against the greatest evil of his age. Um.

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Speaker 1: But Waldenberg was kind of like almost a saint like

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Speaker 1: in terms of his personal character and conduct. Um. And

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Speaker 1: John Brown was a terrorist, It doesn't mean he was

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Speaker 1: wrong in a well, he grew up in the like

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Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds when life was terrible, so like he

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Speaker 1: probably looked that way by the time he was fucking twenty.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, he he looks rough. The only pictures you

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Speaker 1: that exist of him, his skin looks like tanned leather.

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Speaker 1: Um Like, he looks like he's been getting punched in

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Speaker 1: the face by sandpaper for a living for fifty seven years. Um. Yes,

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Speaker 1: he's hard life so well. I was researching this episode,

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Speaker 1: I came across an article by the Smithsonian magazine. It

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Speaker 1: includes a quote from Dennis Fry, the National Park Services

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Speaker 1: chief historian for Harper's Ferry, where John Brown conducted his

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Speaker 1: famous raid to try to liberate the slaves of the

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Speaker 1: American South. Uh And Fry said this about John Americans

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Speaker 1: do not deliberate about John Brown. They feel him. He

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Speaker 1: is still a life today in the American soul. He

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Speaker 1: represents something for each of us, but none of us

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Speaker 1: is in agreement about what he means. And that's really

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Speaker 1: interesting to me. Because John Brown's legacy has been cited

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Speaker 1: by bombers of abortion clinics, and most recently by William

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Speaker 1: Van Spronson, who assaulted an ice facility in Tacoma, Washington

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Speaker 1: and died attempting to destroy their buses to stop him

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Speaker 1: from being able to deport people. Um So, John Brown

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Speaker 1: is the kind of guy who speaks to a lot

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Speaker 1: of people. Was gonna said, range of audience? Yeah, literally

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Speaker 1: the whitest range possible if you're looking at folks who

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Speaker 1: were influenced by this guy. Um So, this is a

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Speaker 1: more complicated story, I think morally than the story of Wallenberg.

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Speaker 1: But I do think John Brown was still a hero.

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Speaker 1: Um So, Well, we'll see how you feel at the

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Speaker 1: end of this tale. John Brown was born on May

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Speaker 1: nine hundred to Owen Brown and Ruth Mills in the

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Speaker 1: town of Torrington, Connecticut. Well, there you go. He might

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Speaker 1: be the descendant of John Brown. Yeah. Uh. John was

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Speaker 1: the fourth of eight children between his father and his

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Speaker 1: father's first wife. John's namesake was Captain John Brown, a

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Speaker 1: farmer and revolutionary war hero who had briefly fought against

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Speaker 1: the British and seventeen seventy six before dying of dysentery

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Speaker 1: in New York barn. The I guess that qualifies you's

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Speaker 1: a hero. When Captain Brown died, he left behind a

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Speaker 1: pregnant widow and ten children, including Owen Brown, who wrote

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Speaker 1: that after his father's death, we lost our crops and

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Speaker 1: then our cattle, and so became poor. Uh So John

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Speaker 1: Brown does not come from money unlike Wallenberg. Um, he's

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Speaker 1: he's he's he's from a family that's been poor since

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Speaker 1: his dad was little. Um. Now, the Browns were strict Calvinists,

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Speaker 1: and in brief Calvinism, Yeah, do you know what Calvinism is? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: how would you describe Calvinism, Sophie. It's like it's like

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Speaker 1: super strict Christianity our phrasing. It's like it's intense. It's

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Speaker 1: like they like really really believed in like the Lord. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And they're like the kind of a lot in a

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Speaker 1: lot of ways, the predecessors of a lot of today's evangelicals. Um.

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Speaker 1: Because they believe that you can't do good things to

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Speaker 1: save your soul from from hell. Um, like it's totally

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Speaker 1: God's choice. Um. And so a lot of them believe

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Speaker 1: that like where you go end up after death is

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Speaker 1: like predicted or is like decided before your birth. Um,

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Speaker 1: so they were. They were pretty hardcore fundamentalists. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not great. It's not my my particular choice of religion,

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Speaker 1: but it was a pretty common one at that point

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Speaker 1: in time, and in the plate part of America where

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Speaker 1: Brown grew up. It's like, hey, it wasn't a great time.

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Speaker 1: But also you're going to hell. But also, yeah, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't matter what you do. Yeah, that's very depressing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: when you read religious tracts from people back then, the

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Speaker 1: kind of God they worship seems more like a terrorist

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Speaker 1: to me. But um, and not the good kind of terrorists,

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Speaker 1: which we're talking about today, not this kind of a terrorist. Like. Yeah, Now,

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Speaker 1: some of what we know about John's early life comes

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Speaker 1: from a note he wrote a twelve year old who

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Speaker 1: was the son of one of the men who financed

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Speaker 1: his crusade against slavery. So he like wrote this summary

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Speaker 1: of his life for the kid of one of the

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Speaker 1: people who was backing this guerrilla war that he fighting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's my starch of choice. Yeah, I write notes to

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Speaker 1: a lot of twelve year olds just waging a grill

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Speaker 1: a war. It does it sounds creepier than it was? Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't really creepy, but it does sound creepy when

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Speaker 1: you sum it up that way. Um. And in that note,

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Speaker 1: here's how Brown described his childhood. Uh and he wrote

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Speaker 1: this in the third person because he's a weirdo. I

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Speaker 1: cannot tell you of anything in the first four years

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Speaker 1: of John's life worth mentioning, save that at an early age,

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Speaker 1: he was tempted by three large brass pins belonging to

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Speaker 1: a girl who lived in the family and stole them.

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Speaker 1: In this he was detected by his mother and, after

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Speaker 1: having a full day to think of the wrong, received

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Speaker 1: from her a thorough whipping. So this is what John

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Speaker 1: Brown thinks it's important to tell a little kid about

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Speaker 1: his childhood. He's like, hey, kid, back in my day pins, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well that guy he punishment is important to him. He's like, listen, listen,

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Speaker 1: you think you had it bad? Whipping all, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: say whipping. Oh I bet that kid get whipped too.

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Speaker 1: I think they were whipping kids all throughout the eight hundreds.

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Speaker 1: But is it wasn't like that normal? Yeah? Yeah, for sure, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the the abuse like obviously, like we can say that

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Speaker 1: what happened to John Brown as a kid was abuse

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Speaker 1: um by our standards, but at the time it was

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Speaker 1: pretty much just how kids grew up. You know, you

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Speaker 1: give them some whippings. They were harder times, Robert. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And it was also a time in which the most

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Speaker 1: common reaction to gut wrenching poverty was to pack up

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Speaker 1: everything you owned and just move vaguely west. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: in Brown's case, this took his family to Ohio, which

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Speaker 1: at that point was called very funny. It sounds like

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Speaker 1: half my relatives or like, you know what what I did? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it sounds like my parents. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: it's it's kind of the defining emotion of this country.

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Speaker 1: Not happy here. What if I had Westmore and you're like,

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Speaker 1: all right, I'm I'm now I'm in San Diego. What

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Speaker 1: do I do? It's like I guess the sea. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you're miserable in San Diego, you just gotta walk

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Speaker 1: into the ocean. Yeah, don't walk into the ad. Don't

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Speaker 1: do that unless you're like walking. But like you're still

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Speaker 1: you can still yet, we don't, we don't, we don't

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Speaker 1: contron drowning um continue. Yeah. So Brown's family moved to

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Speaker 1: Ohio when he was a wee lad which at that

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Speaker 1: point was not called Ohio. It was called the Western

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Speaker 1: Reserve by Connecticuttians. I don't know what you call people

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Speaker 1: from Connecticut, and I refused to learn. Um so Owen, Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: the well they should have lived in a state that

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Speaker 1: should have gone with a better name. Yeah, the fucking uh.

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Speaker 1: Iowa's right there, Rhode Island. All find names now. Owen

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Speaker 1: Brown considered this move west to be an active religious

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Speaker 1: devotion as well as practicality, part of a glorious attempt

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Speaker 1: to extend the benefits of Christendom further into what he

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Speaker 1: saw as an untamed continent. John Brown, however, loved the

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Speaker 1: wild nature of the west in Reserve. He wrote with

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Speaker 1: excitement that it was a quote wilderness filled with wild

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Speaker 1: beasts and indians now. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Brown

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Speaker 1: and his family were on friendly terms with the natives.

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Speaker 1: One of John's friends was a Native American boy who

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Speaker 1: gave him a yellow marble as a gift. John was

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Speaker 1: heartbroken when he lost it, according to the book Midnight

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Speaker 1: Rising by Tony Horwitz. Quote. He also displayed an unusual

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Speaker 1: tolerance towards the native inhabitants of Ohio. Some persons seemed

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Speaker 1: disposed to quarrel with the Indians, But I never was,

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Speaker 1: he wrote, Nor did he proselytize or damn natives as heathens,

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Speaker 1: as Puritans of old would have done. Instead, he traded

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Speaker 1: meal for fish and game. He also built a log

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Speaker 1: shelter to protect local Indians from an Indian tribe. Young

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Speaker 1: John used to hang about Indians as much as he could,

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Speaker 1: the beginnings of a lifelong sympathy for natives that stood

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Speaker 1: in start contrast at the prevailing hostility of white Americans.

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Speaker 1: So we're seeing a guy here who's capable of at

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Speaker 1: least transcending from an early age, capable of transcending the

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Speaker 1: biases of his time to an extent right, that loves

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Speaker 1: to mention sources of young boys. Well, he was a

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Speaker 1: young boy. He was like he was like five, six

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Speaker 1: years old. Yeah, he was a little kid. He was

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Speaker 1: not a young man. At this point. You're like that

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Speaker 1: it was a yellow marble. Yeah, it was a yellow marble.

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Speaker 1: That's the best color of marble, I assume. Obviously I

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Speaker 1: don't know much about marble. Yell is my favorite call it.

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Speaker 1: That's why I'm saying, And I'm a narcissist. So continue weird, Sophie. Now.

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Speaker 1: During this period, John Brown started will become a lifelong

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Speaker 1: practice of living in difficult conditions and surviving off of

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Speaker 1: his wits. He spent basically his whole childhood camping and

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Speaker 1: hunting for meat. His father dressed him in the hides

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Speaker 1: of animals that his family had killed, and John grew

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Speaker 1: up living off of animals but also holding great affection

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Speaker 1: for them. As a young boy, he found a baby

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Speaker 1: bobtail squirrel which he raised and hand tamed. When his

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Speaker 1: beloved pet died, he mourned it for years. Very sensitive boy. Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's he's He's got some sweetness to him Nowaday j.

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Speaker 1: John's mother died in childbirth. His father remarried almost immediately,

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Speaker 1: and John considered his stepmother a very esteemable woman, but

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Speaker 1: he never got over the loss of his mom, and

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Speaker 1: he would mourn her of the rest of his life.

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Speaker 1: In total, John's father, Owen, married three women, the last

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Speaker 1: time when he was in his sixties, and he had

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Speaker 1: sixteen children totally with him, which is a number that

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Speaker 1: John would best. Yeah, the Browns make a lot of people,

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Speaker 1: I mean, damn John. Yeah. Now, as a boy, John

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Speaker 1: is what you would call spirited. You would have to

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Speaker 1: be to be one of sixteen. You gotta stick out, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you gotta stick out. Yeah. And he seems to have. Um.

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Speaker 1: He lied to his parents a lot, and he was

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Speaker 1: punished for it regularly. He played very hard and was

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Speaker 1: notable for like playing in a kind of a violent manner.

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Speaker 1: He probably hurt a lot of his friends. Um. He

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Speaker 1: seems to have been one of those people who was

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Speaker 1: just unreasonably full of energy from a very young age. Um,

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Speaker 1: And that he was that way his entire life. He

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Speaker 1: always had way too much fucking energy. Like reading about

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Speaker 1: John Brown's life is fucking exhausting. Um. So John wrote

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Speaker 1: that he was quote ambitious to perform the full labor

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Speaker 1: of a man when he was already a young child,

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Speaker 1: and he started working full time at age twelve when

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Speaker 1: he drove his father's heard of cattle one hundred miles

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Speaker 1: on his own. So he's just immediately doing like more

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Speaker 1: work than most grant women today. How many cattle are

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Speaker 1: in a herd? Um, I don't know, but it's probably

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Speaker 1: a few, doesn't at least? Is that like a thing

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Speaker 1: that people are going to be like? How do you

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Speaker 1: know that well, no, there's no set number for a herd.

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Speaker 1: It's just a group of cows. Um. So by the

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Speaker 1: time this kid is I hate cows. Why they're just

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Speaker 1: stupid fat horses. That's what I think. The average hard

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Speaker 1: size in the US is just over two hundred I think,

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Speaker 1: but that's now the Canadian dairy herds average. That's probably

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Speaker 1: closer to so interesting they would have expected, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't think you would have that. That would have been

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Speaker 1: a pretty large herd back then. But I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Farms with more than a hundred cows makeup just oh no,

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Speaker 1: less than that, less than less than a percent of

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Speaker 1: the total jerry farm population. This is so interesting. Sorry,

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Speaker 1: I continue far marcro up on head about a hundred

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Speaker 1: hundred head of cattle. But you don't like cows, Well

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Speaker 1: that's part of why I don't like cows. I lived

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Speaker 1: close to him for years what they mean, so you know,

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Speaker 1: in all fairness to the cows, I was worse to

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Speaker 1: the cows than the cows were to me because I

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Speaker 1: was a little boy and it was fun to hurt

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Speaker 1: them with a broomstick. And uh, all right, Harry Potter, alright,

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Speaker 1: Harry Potter, Well know you just you just hit him

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Speaker 1: in the ass and they run around. I would love

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Speaker 1: to see Anderson with like a herd of cow. Oh,

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Speaker 1: they let dogs love it. I mean she has herding instincts.

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Speaker 1: I mean she's a little of the ground, but she

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Speaker 1: is technically a cattle dog. Yeah, Anderson, do you hear this? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she would love that now. Uh So, by the time

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Speaker 1: John Brown is like a teenager, and by that I

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Speaker 1: mean like thirteen or fourteen, he's probably done more hard

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Speaker 1: physical labor than like most of the grown men in

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Speaker 1: the US today have done in their whole lives. Um

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Speaker 1: and most stories you'll read about John will emphasize that

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Speaker 1: he was almost supernaturally tough and had an endless tolerance

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Speaker 1: for hard work in physical pain. This was matched with

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Speaker 1: a fanatic, religious sort of distaste for comfort. He would

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Speaker 1: later write with pride that he had never attempted to dance,

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Speaker 1: never learned any card games, and nursday profound dislike for Vein.

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Speaker 1: In frintless conversations, He's like, I never learned a dance.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, he foot loosed himself real hard, dude.

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Speaker 1: Oh man, that's hard to hear. Bacon, he did need

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Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon. One Kevin Bacon could have really and that

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Speaker 1: makes me think if you had, if you had Kevin

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Speaker 1: Bacon and John Brown starring side by side in the

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Speaker 1: first Tremors would have been a fun movie. So sad, yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean yeah, his his religions a bummer um. So

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Speaker 1: John later would write that his eternal war with slavery

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Speaker 1: also started when he was twelve, when he came upon

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Speaker 1: a young black slave boy being beaten with shovels for

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Speaker 1: some minor crime. He wrote in his letter to that

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Speaker 1: little kid. This brought John to reflect on the wretched,

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Speaker 1: hopeless condition of fatherless and motherless slave children. Now, I'm

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Speaker 1: sure he saw stuff like that, and it may not

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Speaker 1: have happened when he was twelve. He was writing a

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Speaker 1: letter to a twelve year old. Maybe he giitted a bit,

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Speaker 1: but it does seem accurate to say, basically, why is

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Speaker 1: he writing a letter to a twelve year old? Do

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Speaker 1: we know? Yeah? Yeah, one of his like as a

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Speaker 1: as an older man, will get to this. He's funding

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Speaker 1: like a guerrilla insurgency to try to free the slaves

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Speaker 1: of the South, and he gets a bunch of rich

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Speaker 1: backers and while he's like dining with one of them,

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Speaker 1: this kid asks about his life and asks him to

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Speaker 1: write a letter. Oh, so it's a Hallmark movie, but

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Speaker 1: kind of. I mean it's more like, Uh, this guy

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Speaker 1: is illegally funding a terrorist and the guy's kid wants

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Speaker 1: to know more about the John Brown's life. So John

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Speaker 1: Brown writes in a note, so we can buy more guns.

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Speaker 1: Got it. So it's a lifetime movie. Yeah, lifetime movie. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So Brown studied to be a pastor but wound up

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Speaker 1: not choosing that life, and it's likely that he would

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Speaker 1: have been bored to tears by the work, but he

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Speaker 1: remained a devoted Calvinist his entire life, following in his

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Speaker 1: father's footsteps. Yeah, and he was like he was still

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Speaker 1: like really woke as a Calvinist. Like when his church, uh,

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Speaker 1: he learned that black people weren't allowed to sit at

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Speaker 1: the front of the church, they had to sit in

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Speaker 1: the back. He made a big point in the middle

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Speaker 1: of service of getting up with his family, marching to

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Speaker 1: the back, uh, walking up to one of the black

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Speaker 1: families and offering them his seat at the front of

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Speaker 1: the church, and then sitting in the back with his family. Um. So,

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Speaker 1: like he's committed from the jump to to racial equality,

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Speaker 1: not just to abolition, but to like total racial equality,

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Speaker 1: which fucking nobody is at this period. Like most abolitionists

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Speaker 1: are still pretty fucking racist, but not John Brown. Um. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: At twenty, following his dad's advice, John Brown married Diane

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Speaker 1: Lusk Lusk Dianne Lusk. Yeah. Weird name, Yeah, Diane d

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Speaker 1: I A N T h E. Dianne Lusk. We name.

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Speaker 1: I don't hate it though, No, it's it's a nice name.

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Speaker 1: He describes her in his letters as remarkably plain but

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Speaker 1: industrious and economical. So it's like she wasn't a bad bitch,

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Speaker 1: but she's ugly. But I'm like she this is this

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Speaker 1: is trash and does not pass the Bechdel tests. Continue. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well you're asking for too much if you want someone

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Speaker 1: to be racially and gender woke. Eighteen thirty Yeah, definitely

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Speaker 1: can of both. No where. Yeah. Their first child was

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Speaker 1: born a year after they married. Jane Jr. Knows Owen. Um,

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Speaker 1: come on, no, no, no, I'm I'm getting that name wrong.

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00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:54,439
Speaker 1: I write it down somewhere later. Um. Yeah. John and

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00:18:54,480 --> 00:18:56,760
Speaker 1: his father Owen do not sound like there would have

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Speaker 1: been fun people to hang out with, but they were

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Speaker 1: on the right side of the debate. He has an Owen,

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Speaker 1: He has a John Brown Jr. Oh, he has a Salmon.

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Speaker 1: His son's name Sam Holy. He had some weird names.

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Speaker 1: Wait he also he's a fun ten of children too. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he has twenty and more than half of them survived

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Speaker 1: to adulthood. Some of them die fighting with him. Yeah. Ellen,

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Speaker 1: my mom's name is Ellen high Mom. She listens to

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Speaker 1: our show and there you go. So John and his

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00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:30,680
Speaker 1: dad were on the right side of the slavery debate

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Speaker 1: from the beginning. Owen had been a fierce abolitionist in

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Speaker 1: an era when that really wasn't the thing. He was

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Speaker 1: also a pacifist, and for a time John Brown was

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Speaker 1: a pacifist too, So they fought slavery without fighting the

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Speaker 1: people who kept slaves, largely by helping escaped slaves with

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Speaker 1: shelter and food on their way across the underground railroad.

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Speaker 1: So well, John is a kid. He and his family

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Speaker 1: are like helping to hide escaped slaves as they make

356
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Speaker 1: their way up to Canada. So this is like a

357
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Speaker 1: part of his life from like the teenage years on. Um.

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Speaker 1: When John was twenty one, he moved his young Emily

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Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania and bought two hundred acres of land. He

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Speaker 1: built a house and a tannery on it. Now, the

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Speaker 1: tannery had a hidden room which Brown used to hide

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Speaker 1: escape slaves from the South. From the mid eighteen twenties

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Speaker 1: to eighteen thirty five, the Brown family hosted an estimated

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Speaker 1: escaped slaves, playing a critical role in their journey to freedom.

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Speaker 1: So he's a committed abolitionist and like putting his money

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Speaker 1: where his mouth is his entire life. Now, while he

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Speaker 1: was helping to work the underground railroad, John was also

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Speaker 1: helping to found a new settlement in rural Pennsylvania. He's

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00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:31,359
Speaker 1: built a school, and he built a church, and he

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Speaker 1: was the area's first postmaster. One of his neighbors described

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Speaker 1: him as an inspired paternal ruler, controlling and providing for

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Speaker 1: the circle of which he was the head. Have a question, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: how is he funding all this? I mean, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: take that much money. Like he works, and he like

375
00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:48,680
Speaker 1: you could buy two hundred acres was like a few

376
00:20:48,720 --> 00:20:51,359
Speaker 1: bucks back then. Like, because they're trying to most of

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Speaker 1: this area after the whole genocide of the Native Americans thing,

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00:20:54,359 --> 00:20:57,920
Speaker 1: there's an unspeakable amount of empty territory that the government

379
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Speaker 1: wants people farming. So there's all these deals where you

380
00:21:00,560 --> 00:21:02,800
Speaker 1: can get most of the land for free or basically

381
00:21:02,840 --> 00:21:04,840
Speaker 1: for free, you can get alone or there's no interest

382
00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:07,520
Speaker 1: because they're they're just trying to get people farming and

383
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Speaker 1: using it um to make sure it was realistic and

384
00:21:11,359 --> 00:21:15,000
Speaker 1: it wasn't like an episode of Friends. No no, no Um. Now,

385
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Speaker 1: as you might imagine, there were a lot of people

386
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Speaker 1: who didn't get along with John Brown. His wife's brother

387
00:21:19,880 --> 00:21:21,800
Speaker 1: was only able to visit the family on Sundays, and

388
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Speaker 1: so John hated him because visiting on Sunday was a

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Speaker 1: sin against God. Uh. John was so strict about keeping

390
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Speaker 1: the Sabbath that his church banned all worldly conversation on

391
00:21:30,840 --> 00:21:33,480
Speaker 1: that day, so you couldn't talk about anything but religion

392
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Speaker 1: on on Sunday. Making cheese and hanging out with your

393
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Speaker 1: friends was also forbidden on Sunday. Work Yeah, it's it's

394
00:21:41,480 --> 00:21:45,880
Speaker 1: a lay mass religion um. Workers on John's tannery were

395
00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:48,600
Speaker 1: required to attend his church and hold daily worship sessions

396
00:21:48,600 --> 00:21:51,679
Speaker 1: with their families. One of John's apprentices described him as

397
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Speaker 1: friendly as long as the conversation did not turn towards

398
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:58,800
Speaker 1: anything he considered profane. Or vulgar. Brown's younger brother described

399
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Speaker 1: him as a king against whom there is no rising up.

400
00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:07,520
Speaker 1: So that one word, a king against whom there is

401
00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:10,359
Speaker 1: no rising up. So it's basically like my way or

402
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:14,440
Speaker 1: the highway. Yeah, he is absolutely convinced that he's right. Um.

403
00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:18,200
Speaker 1: And he will not like he's personable unless you disagree

404
00:22:18,240 --> 00:22:20,800
Speaker 1: with him. And he is not not open to being

405
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:24,760
Speaker 1: disagreed with about the things he believes. Yeah, he's that

406
00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:29,480
Speaker 1: kind of guy. Um So again, a religious fundamentalist, kind

407
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:33,520
Speaker 1: of a dick about it um, but also like a

408
00:22:33,600 --> 00:22:38,040
Speaker 1: really dedicated family man, dedicated to his community. Uh and

409
00:22:38,119 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 1: an anti slavery crusader um So yeah. Uh he's an

410
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:47,359
Speaker 1: interesting fella. Uh. And when we come back from ADS, uh,

411
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Speaker 1: we will talk about how he raised his kids. I

412
00:22:52,520 --> 00:22:57,440
Speaker 1: love ADS, to Sophie. I love ADS products a good service.

413
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Speaker 1: I don't have a fun. It's it's usually more fun

414
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:02,680
Speaker 1: when like I say something horrible about like a bunch

415
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:04,520
Speaker 1: of kids getting murdered, and then I say, you know what,

416
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 1: won't murder all your kids? Should we try to try?

417
00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:13,639
Speaker 1: We try a transition. I mean I am about to

418
00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:15,919
Speaker 1: talk about how what he did to his children by

419
00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:19,880
Speaker 1: the standards of the modern era was abuse. Um now

420
00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:23,080
Speaker 1: I'm sad that one of them after my mom. Child

421
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:26,160
Speaker 1: abuse by the standards of our modern era. What isn't

422
00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:30,160
Speaker 1: child abuse is the products that support this show. Wow,

423
00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 1: brave hum. I'm Robert Evans, host behind the Bastards, And

424
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425
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426
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427
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428
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429
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430
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431
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433
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434
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435
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440
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441
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442
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443
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450
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Speaker 1: check out for twenty dollars off Simple Contacts. We're back.

454
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 1: We're back. So we were just talking about John Brown,

455
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 1: the father. Um. Now, obviously, like everybody was an abuse

456
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,639
Speaker 1: parent by modern standards in this period of time, but

457
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:18,720
Speaker 1: even by the standards of the mid in early eighteen hundreds,

458
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 1: John Brown was considered a very strict parent. Uh. And

459
00:25:22,040 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote again from the book midnight rising. His firstborn,

460
00:25:25,800 --> 00:25:28,080
Speaker 1: John Jr. Was required to keep a ledger listing his

461
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:31,680
Speaker 1: sins and detailing the punishment due each unfaithfulness at work

462
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:35,720
Speaker 1: earned three lashes. Disobeying mother brought eight. The second born, Jason,

463
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:38,159
Speaker 1: had a vivid dream about petting a baby raccoon that

464
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 1: was as kind as a kitten, and described the encounter

465
00:25:41,040 --> 00:25:43,119
Speaker 1: as if it had really happened. He was three or

466
00:25:43,160 --> 00:25:45,119
Speaker 1: four at the time, and his father thrashed him for

467
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 1: telling a wicked lie. Five year old Ruth muddled her

468
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:50,439
Speaker 1: shoes while gathering pussy willows and then fibbed about how

469
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 1: she'd gotten wet. Her father switched me with the willow

470
00:25:53,320 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: that had caused my sin, she recalled, Yeah, subdiction. Yeah,

471
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:05,479
Speaker 1: it's fucking rough man. Also, like Jason's kid a vivid

472
00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 1: dream about petting a baby raccoon, maybe like, no, don't

473
00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:16,000
Speaker 1: try that. Yeah, well, yeah, Jason. Jason feels like a

474
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 1: really weird name for that era. Oh yeah, No, there's

475
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:21,040
Speaker 1: a lot of Jason's that's like a Bible name, right,

476
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:25,960
Speaker 1: Like like a guy that hangs out at like a

477
00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: hip coffee shop and says he's working on his screenplay. Yeah,

478
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:33,879
Speaker 1: that's Jason, but he goes by Jay. You're right, you're right,

479
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right. Okay, my apologies. Jason continued having

480
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:42,159
Speaker 1: vivid dreams about petting baby raccoons, So you agree he

481
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: should have been beaten for that. That's good to know.

482
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:48,520
Speaker 1: Sophie is pro abusing children who dream about raccoons. I

483
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: mean he's want to talk. I mean, yep, it's settled.

484
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:57,400
Speaker 1: It's settled to talk. Wasn't his best friend a squirrel?

485
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but that was a real squirrel, not a

486
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:05,240
Speaker 1: dream raccoon. I mean that we know of. I mean,

487
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:09,199
Speaker 1: nobody's friends with a squirrel. Nobody I've been friends with

488
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: a squirrel. Yes, I was. At my last place in

489
00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: l A. We hand tamed a squirrel, even pet it briefly.

490
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:19,960
Speaker 1: We have a sworn enemy named that's a squirrel named

491
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:22,920
Speaker 1: Edward that we deal with every morning at my apartment complex.

492
00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:27,399
Speaker 1: Named him. I don't I never named our friends squirrel,

493
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,439
Speaker 1: but I loved her, and I hope she's okay. I

494
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:34,639
Speaker 1: hope Edward gives away. Continue. Brown apprehended two men he

495
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:36,800
Speaker 1: had countered on the road who were stealing apples, and

496
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: smashed a neighbor's whiskey jug after taking just a few

497
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: SIPs and deciding the liquor had dangerous powers. Despite his severity,

498
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: Brown was beloved by his children, who also recalled his

499
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 1: many acts of tenderness. He sang hymns to them at bedtime,

500
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,959
Speaker 1: recited maxims from Aesop and Benjamin Franklin, and cared for

501
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: his little folks when they were ill, and was gentle

502
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: with animals. He warmed frozen lambs in the family washed

503
00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:59,679
Speaker 1: up as long as they're real animals. Like, what, this

504
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 1: is very weird. He's a he's a weird guy. He's

505
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:07,439
Speaker 1: a complicated person. Um in like clearly is capable of

506
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:10,159
Speaker 1: being a giant dick as a parent to his kids

507
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: and is also capable of being a really loving father. Um,

508
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:16,880
Speaker 1: he's he's a strange guy. He's a flawed man. But

509
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,680
Speaker 1: and he's a child of a brutal time. You know. Uh,

510
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:25,120
Speaker 1: people wound up rougher back then. Um, which is an excuse,

511
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:28,120
Speaker 1: bad ship, But it was a tough time to come up. Um.

512
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,119
Speaker 1: You try working from age twelve and losing your mom, Like,

513
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be a softie. Um So. Diane, John's

514
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 1: wife died in childbirth Yeah, all the Browns have wives

515
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 1: that die in childbirth, which again not super uncommon the

516
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:48,520
Speaker 1: number of kids they're having. Yeah. John took this very hard, obviously,

517
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:50,360
Speaker 1: and he and his five children moved in with another

518
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:52,959
Speaker 1: family briefly while they dealt with their grief. When they

519
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:56,239
Speaker 1: returned home, John hired a housekeeper sometimes. Her sixteen year

520
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 1: old sister Mary came along to help. John Brown proposed

521
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: to marry by letters several months after meeting her, and

522
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: they got married in July. He is thirty one. Nope, sorry,

523
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 1: he is thirty three. Not common back then, but still

524
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 1: not that uncommon, but still creepy. Yeah. A year after

525
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 1: his wife's death, Uh, he marries a woman half his age.

526
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: Uh and four years older than his oldest child. Um,

527
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: sounds like he sounds very Hollywood at this point. Well,

528
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: I think it's more like Honestly, I think with him,

529
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,280
Speaker 1: like it's not even like a lust thing. It's a

530
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 1: I want to have a lot more kids, and so

531
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:39,160
Speaker 1: the younger she is, the tougher she'll be, like, the

532
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 1: better her odds of surviving. Um. And yeah that she

533
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: they would stay married the rest of John's life, and

534
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:51,120
Speaker 1: she bore him thirteen children. Yeah. Uh. And it was

535
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:55,520
Speaker 1: not an easy marriage for her. John Brown was all

536
00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 1: the time and had to do with his grumpy, hating

537
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 1: of imagination ass. I think actually she would have loved

538
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 1: to have dealt with his grumpy ass more because he

539
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: was fucking gone most of the time, which we're about

540
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: to talk about. Yeah. Um. But for the early years

541
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: of their marriage, the biggest problem, well, he came back

542
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: long enough to get her knock her up again. So um.

543
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: For the first years of their marriage, John was constantly

544
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 1: on the edge of bankruptcy. He spent money as quickly

545
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 1: as he made it, and often a lot quicker than

546
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 1: he could make it. The story of his um like life,

547
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 1: uh farming having kids like businesses like start. Yeah, he

548
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 1: would start businesses and they'd fail. Um. So like he

549
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 1: had a bunch of failed businesses. He was terrible and

550
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 1: everything to do with money. Um. He was a good

551
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: worker and like had a great work ethic, but was

552
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: just awful at making money or like spending his money wisely.

553
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: And while John struggled to get ahead economically, the United

554
00:30:55,840 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: States lurched closer and closer to violence over the issue

555
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 1: of slavery. In the year of Birth eighteen hundred, nearly

556
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:03,720
Speaker 1: one fifth of the five million people in the US

557
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 1: were enslaved. Ever since the invention of the cotton gin

558
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety three, the South had grown increasingly wealthy

559
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 1: and influential in American politics. By the eighteen fifties, all

560
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:15,800
Speaker 1: twelve of the United states is richest counties were in

561
00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 1: the South. On its own, the South was the fourth

562
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 1: largest economy on Earth. For some perspective, the South and

563
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds was wealthier than California is today. So

564
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 1: all of the money's in the South, and they have

565
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 1: most of the political influence. Yeah, this is like, yeah,

566
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties and stuff, they just get richer and richard. Yeah.

567
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:38,760
Speaker 1: The whole Industrial Revolution worldwide was driven in large part

568
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 1: by the production of cotton by slaves in the American South,

569
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: like even down to like the countries that had banned slavery,

570
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: like England, Um, like cotton was critical for like the

571
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: building of boats and ships, and like a lot of

572
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 1: different like factory equipment, and it was all made possible

573
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:56,200
Speaker 1: by enslaved black people. So like the whole Industrial Revolution

574
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:59,200
Speaker 1: is undergirded by black slavery, even in the countries that

575
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 1: didn't have slave was legal at that point um, which

576
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,680
Speaker 1: is important to note. Yeah. Now, the sheer mass of

577
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:07,960
Speaker 1: money in the South uh and thus behind slavery, made

578
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: it impossible for most people in the eighteen thirties to

579
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 1: imagine an end to the institution. In eighteen thirty one,

580
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:18,160
Speaker 1: as John Brown entered his thirties, the abolition movement was growing,

581
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:21,280
Speaker 1: but still firmly fringe in the context of national politics.

582
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 1: This started to change that August, when an enslaved preacher

583
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 1: named Nat Turner gathered up a small band of his

584
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:30,959
Speaker 1: fellow slaves and launched an insurrection. Armed with hatchets, knives,

585
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 1: and muskets, they executed roughly sixty white Virginians and gathered

586
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: a small number of slaves to their banner. Like John Brown,

587
00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 1: Nat Turner had also been born in eighteen hundred. Also,

588
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: like John, he came to view himself as something of

589
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: a prophet and believed that he had been chosen by

590
00:32:44,840 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: God to bring about the end of slavery. Turner's band

591
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 1: did not just kill slaveholders. They executed women, school children,

592
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:54,760
Speaker 1: and even a baby in a cradle. Um. So Nat

593
00:32:54,760 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: Turner's raid is a complicated thing to talk about morally, Okay, okay,

594
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:04,280
Speaker 1: what no, no, yeah, these they are they are just

595
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: killing They're killing all of the white people they come across. Um.

596
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 1: And in terms of like sort of parsing that out

597
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 1: in a moral context, I found an interesting CBS article

598
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: UM that interviewed Bruce Turner, who was a great great

599
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: great grandchild of Nat Turner, and Rick Francis, who's a

600
00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 1: descendant of one of the slaveholding families that Turner massacred.

601
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from that now. Both Turner and Francis

602
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: are avid students of history who have researched their own

603
00:33:29,840 --> 00:33:32,200
Speaker 1: families as well as the historical record of the rebellion.

604
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: Anderson Cooper put the question to them both. Is Nat

605
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:37,840
Speaker 1: Turner a hero? Yes, he is, says Bruce Turner, because

606
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 1: he saw an opportunity to try to correct something that

607
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: was an extremely bad evil. He believes Nat Turner was

608
00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: a freedom fighter who started a movement that helped in

609
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: the institution of slavery. Prior to the insurrection, slave owners

610
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 1: actually believe that the slaves were happy in their condition.

611
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:54,840
Speaker 1: He says, Nat Turner's changed that Rick Francis is no

612
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 1: defender of the horrible institution practiced by his forbears, but

613
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: he does not see Nat Turner as a heroic figure.

614
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: France's questions whether a desire to end slavery is what

615
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: motivated Turner to kill. He also points out that Nat

616
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 1: Turner and his followers killed many women and children. There

617
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: were a means to an end, says Bruce Turner. Women

618
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 1: were slave owners, children were slave owners. And the baby

619
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: and the brad Old question mark. Yeah, I mean I

620
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:17,839
Speaker 1: think what Nat Turner would say, if you could bring

621
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 1: him back and pose that question him, is that baby

622
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:22,760
Speaker 1: would have grown up to be a slave owner. Almost

623
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 1: none of the children of slave owning families grew up

624
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:29,960
Speaker 1: to repudiate those beliefs. It was very uncommon um. And

625
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:32,759
Speaker 1: Turner's argument, I think would have been something along the

626
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:35,920
Speaker 1: lines of, they were all part of this institution, um,

627
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 1: and they didn't spare our children, so why should we

628
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: spare theirs? You know? And uh, it's just like on

629
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 1: a sixty minutes thing or something with Anderson Cooper. Yeah,

630
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:47,720
Speaker 1: I think so. I just found it in an article,

631
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 1: but I think it was part of Anderson Cooper's show. Yeah,

632
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,959
Speaker 1: shout out Anderson Cooper, the father of my dog. Yeah,

633
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:56,759
Speaker 1: it's a complicated story the tale and Nat turn how

634
00:34:56,800 --> 00:35:00,040
Speaker 1: you how you feel about how justified it was a

635
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 1: matter of your own personal morality. I feel like you

636
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:07,359
Speaker 1: can't really judge it. Likely I would argue that you

637
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 1: can't judge. I don't think you can judge the actions

638
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:12,879
Speaker 1: of an enslaved person taking action against the people who

639
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:16,399
Speaker 1: kept him in bondage. Um, no matter how terrible, uh

640
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 1: they seem based on the morality you get to have

641
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:23,879
Speaker 1: in a much less fucked up era. Um. But I'm

642
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:26,800
Speaker 1: not gonna I'm gonna slam my opinions on Nat Turner

643
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:28,959
Speaker 1: on the audience. We have a lot of John Brown

644
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:32,480
Speaker 1: to get through. So NAT's uprising did not work out. Um.

645
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:34,840
Speaker 1: While he eventually gathered about forty slaves, they failed to

646
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:37,000
Speaker 1: make it to the town of Jerusalem and its armory,

647
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:38,880
Speaker 1: which is where they were headed to try to get guns.

648
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:42,840
Speaker 1: White militiamen succeeded in scattering turners men and executing or

649
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 1: killing most of them. Turner's insurrection inspired a vicious white

650
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:50,239
Speaker 1: reprisal um, and gangs of armed whites murdered hundreds upon

651
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: hundreds of black people and impaled their severed heads on

652
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:56,560
Speaker 1: road signs as a warning. To others. Turner's body was decapitated,

653
00:35:56,680 --> 00:35:59,359
Speaker 1: quartered and skinned. His skull and brain were sent off

654
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 1: to be studied because people were like, why would a

655
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 1: slave not want to be a slave. The fat from

656
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:07,239
Speaker 1: Turner's body was rendered into wagon wheel grease, and his

657
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:09,400
Speaker 1: skin was tanned and sent off to the families of

658
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: the people killed in his raid as a souvenir. U.

659
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: This is a fucking brutal time. Like you really got

660
00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:20,239
Speaker 1: to remember that whenever you try to think through these

661
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:23,520
Speaker 1: people's actions and decisions and morality. Is like it was

662
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: fucking rough, and like how do we like did somebody

663
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:30,480
Speaker 1: write all this down? Like this is they weren't They

664
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: weren't ashamed of it, And like if you're the fucking

665
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:36,480
Speaker 1: if you're the white oppressors, who want who are who

666
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 1: are doing? Who are massacring these people and chopping up

667
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:42,480
Speaker 1: Nate's body, Like you want all of the black people

668
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 1: who might come across the story to know what happens

669
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:48,279
Speaker 1: when they stand up, Like that's part of how you

670
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: oppress people. Yea, this would have been a great time

671
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:55,520
Speaker 1: for an ad transition. I would have been like, you

672
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,799
Speaker 1: know what doesn't oppress people? The products? But you're early bro,

673
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:01,479
Speaker 1: We're early. I know, I just it would have been good.

674
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 1: So um. Prior to Nat Turner's uprising, most abolitionists supported

675
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 1: a slow, piecemeal emancipation of enslaved blacks and sought to

676
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:13,239
Speaker 1: basically ship them to Africa or the Caribbean. The nation

677
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: of Liberia was born from this basic idea. And this

678
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:17,799
Speaker 1: is like what Abraham Lincoln and others like him kind

679
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:20,680
Speaker 1: of would have advocated in the period um prior to

680
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:22,879
Speaker 1: NAT Turner. This is about the best you could hope

681
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 1: for from woke white people, that they'd be like, slavery

682
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 1: is wrong, but we don't want them here. Um Now.

683
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 1: After Nat Turner, abolitionists were increasingly likely to urge an

684
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: immediate into the institution of slavery, and the figurehead of

685
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:37,719
Speaker 1: this new wing of the abolitionist movement was a guy

686
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 1: named William Lloyd Garrison, who was the editor for a

687
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 1: newspaper called The Liberator in Boston. Um Now. The Liberator

688
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: started publication eight months before Turner's revolt, and Garrison's prose

689
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:50,839
Speaker 1: could have knew an utterly uncompromising tone that fitted well

690
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 1: with the era ignited by Nat Turner. Garrison had nothing

691
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:56,439
Speaker 1: but contempt for the interests of his day and their

692
00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: advocacy of gradual reform. He wrote, tell a man who

693
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: his houses on fire to give a moderate alarm. I

694
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 1: will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not

695
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 1: retreat a single inch, and I will be heard. So

696
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 1: after Turner, some stronger voices start to speak up in

697
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 1: favor of abolitionism. Yeah, and not like, oh, we'll do

698
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 1: it piece by piece and like will slowly. They're like, no,

699
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:23,800
Speaker 1: this ship has to end. It's fucked. Not like, Okay,

700
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 1: we'll transfer you to another department, none of that bullshit. Yeah,

701
00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 1: fuck this ship. Garrison is a fuck this ship kind

702
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 1: of guy, but he is a pacifist. He's also a pacifist.

703
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 1: Should I not say that? No, no, no, no no.

704
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: I don't agree with everything Garrison thought about how to

705
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:42,799
Speaker 1: end slavery, But you can't fault him on a moral level.

706
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 1: He just didn't believe in violence. Um, and it turns

707
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: out violence was the only way to end slavery. But um,

708
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 1: you can't fault him for not wanting the nation to

709
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 1: be convulsed by a bloody war. Um. Yeah. So for

710
00:38:56,520 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: a time, John Brown approached his abolitionism through the lens

711
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: of passive bism too. But in the years after Nat

712
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:04,839
Speaker 1: Turner's rebellion, the debate over slavery turned more violent. Pro

713
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:07,680
Speaker 1: slavery Southerner saw what had happened in Virginia with Nat

714
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: Turner as the culmination of their worst nightmares. The sheer

715
00:39:11,080 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: number of slaves, who in some areas outnumbered whites, terrified them.

716
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:17,840
Speaker 1: They believed that any talk of abolitionism deserved an immediate

717
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 1: and violent response. In eighteen thirty seven, a pro slavery

718
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: mob murdered Elijah Lovejoy, the abolitionist editor of what was

719
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:28,760
Speaker 1: effectively an anti slavery zine. They tossed his printing press

720
00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:32,360
Speaker 1: into the Mississippi. Love Joy had feudally armed himself in

721
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:35,919
Speaker 1: self defense, which William Lloyd Garrison disapproved of, but which

722
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:38,759
Speaker 1: John Brown seems to have taken as something of an inspiration.

723
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: At a meeting of Brown's church convened to protest love

724
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 1: Joy's murder, John Brown swore a declaration here before God,

725
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:48,120
Speaker 1: in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I

726
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 1: consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery. So he

727
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,600
Speaker 1: takes love Joy's murder as a rallying call, and he

728
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:58,960
Speaker 1: buys a gun shortly after this point, so he's so

729
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 1: far no weapon up to this point. He was like

730
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 1: he was he was on like his dad had been

731
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:07,840
Speaker 1: a pacifist. His dad was a pacifist. Um he was

732
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: a pacifist. He didn't like he had been a child

733
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 1: during the War of eighteen twelve, and he had a

734
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 1: really negative idea of soldiers because he'd seen what they

735
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:17,280
Speaker 1: did in the areas where they like bivoact and stuff.

736
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:20,640
Speaker 1: So he was very anti violence. This starts to change

737
00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: after love Joy's murder. He starts to think, maybe violence

738
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:27,120
Speaker 1: is the only way we're going to get rid of slavery. Now.

739
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: Brown did not follow this declaration by joining any of

740
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,480
Speaker 1: the abolitionist groups in his area. Instead, he decided to

741
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 1: turn his large family into what amounted to an abolitionist

742
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 1: insurgent cell um. John surviving children later that recall the

743
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 1: night he sat down with his wife and his three

744
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:45,719
Speaker 1: oldest sons. Quote, he asked us, who of us were

745
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: willing to make common cause with him and doing all

746
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:49,800
Speaker 1: in our power to break the laws of the wicked

747
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:53,840
Speaker 1: and pluck the spoil out of his teeth? Are you married? John, Jason,

748
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 1: and Owen John's wife and children all prayed with him

749
00:40:56,760 --> 00:40:59,800
Speaker 1: and swore an oath to fight for slavery's defeat. Of

750
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:01,440
Speaker 1: of the years, John would bring the rest of his

751
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: enormous brood into this anti slavery pact, boys and girls included.

752
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: His relationship with his sons is fascinating to me, and

753
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,960
Speaker 1: I think this paragraph from Midnight Rising makes it clear why. Quote.

754
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 1: None of Brown's sons adopted their father's orthodox faith, and

755
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:18,839
Speaker 1: several openly challenged it, an apostasy that vexed him tremendously.

756
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:22,760
Speaker 1: But all seven of his unregenerate boys who survived childhood

757
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 1: would take up arms against slavery. They held firmly to

758
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:28,440
Speaker 1: the idea that father was right. Samon recalled where he

759
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 1: had led. We were glad to follow, and every one

760
00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 1: of us had the courage of his convictions. Brown's brothers,

761
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 1: in laws and other kind would also lend support to

762
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:38,319
Speaker 1: his anti slavery crusade. There was a Brown family conspiracy.

763
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:42,879
Speaker 1: His eldest son said to break the power of slavery's kids. Yeah,

764
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 1: none of his kids follow him and his religion. They're like,

765
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: you're kind of nuts on this. But like the old

766
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 1: dudes write about slavery. That ship. They're like, they're like, listen,

767
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: you know, I can't funk with you on that, but

768
00:41:55,360 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 1: I'll get behind you on that. So they're like the

769
00:41:57,560 --> 00:42:03,879
Speaker 1: slavery ship. I mean, I mean like they're kind of right. Yeah.

770
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:05,680
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like you get a feeling from

771
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 1: John in doing this with his family that he kind

772
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 1: of recognizes once he commits himself to this cause that like,

773
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:14,080
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wind up breaking the law, I'm gonna wind

774
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: up being a terrorist, I'm gonna commit a shipload of crimes.

775
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:20,239
Speaker 1: And so I can't trust joining a group full of

776
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:22,000
Speaker 1: people that I don't know, Like, it's got to just

777
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:26,120
Speaker 1: be me and my family, um, Like otherwise somebody's going

778
00:42:26,160 --> 00:42:30,200
Speaker 1: to wrap me out. He's got nepotism. Yeah yeah, I mean,

779
00:42:30,200 --> 00:42:32,759
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's nepotism for terrorism. Maybe it's

780
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:35,239
Speaker 1: just the smart way to do it. Um. But he

781
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 1: does commit to using his family in this way. It's

782
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 1: somebody you know and not you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

783
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: It's like, well, we won't make more comparisons to drug dealing,

784
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: but it's like what you do when you deal drugs. Now,

785
00:42:49,160 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 1: for the first years of this crusade to end slavery.

786
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:54,960
Speaker 1: The Brown family efforts were mostly limited to helping hide slaves,

787
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:57,080
Speaker 1: and for most people this would have been more than enough,

788
00:42:57,120 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 1: and in my opinion, anyone who helped to operate the

789
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: underground rail out in that time, even in a minor capacity,

790
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: did something heroic. But just that was not enough for

791
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:08,440
Speaker 1: John Brown. He was clearly frustrated for years by his

792
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 1: inability to strike any sort of direct blow against slavery.

793
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:15,480
Speaker 1: This was exacerbated by his constant and repeated failures at business.

794
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:18,240
Speaker 1: He wound up at the edge of bankruptcy several times

795
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:20,239
Speaker 1: and moved his family all around the New West in

796
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: search of better prospects. Brown tried fur trading, cattle driving, surveying,

797
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:27,360
Speaker 1: and even breeding race horses. By eighteen forty, he was

798
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: so broke that he could not even afford postage for

799
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 1: his letters, and he declared bankruptcy. Yeah now, his attempts

800
00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 1: to find new work led him away from his family

801
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:38,000
Speaker 1: for months at a time, and the letters he was

802
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:40,000
Speaker 1: able to send home to his wife showed a distinct

803
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:43,480
Speaker 1: depression had gripped him. He signed unworthily yours above his

804
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 1: name and referred to his wife as the sharer of

805
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:50,879
Speaker 1: my poverty, Trials, discredit and sore afflictions. In ninety one,

806
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: the year after he declared bankruptcy, John's family was torn

807
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,799
Speaker 1: apart by a horrific bout of dysentery, which killed four

808
00:43:56,840 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: of his children, including his nine year old daughter Sarah

809
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:02,880
Speaker 1: and his six year old son Charles. So this is

810
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 1: a rough fucking life this guy is like now. From

811
00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 1: most of the early eighteen forties, John spent his time

812
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:12,320
Speaker 1: trying desperately to pull his family out of the financial

813
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 1: hole he dug them into. It wasn't until eighteen forty

814
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 1: seven that he had meaningful contact with members of the

815
00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 1: abolition movement. That year, he moved to the town of Springfield, Massachusetts,

816
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:24,480
Speaker 1: where he convinced a moneyed investor to fund a wool

817
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 1: trading business. Brown was bad at the job, as he

818
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 1: was bad at everything to do with money, and it

819
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:31,879
Speaker 1: failed miserably, But his time at Springfield brought him into

820
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,879
Speaker 1: contact with a huge number of freed blacks. While he

821
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 1: was there, he met Frederick Douglas, an escaped slave and

822
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 1: renowned speaker and writer. The two had dinner and Brown's

823
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:44,280
Speaker 1: exceedingly humble home, and during that dinner John walked Frederick

824
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:46,560
Speaker 1: through the plans that he had spent years cooking up.

825
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:49,799
Speaker 1: He unrolled a map of the Allegheny Mountains, which run

826
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania and into the southeast. He pointed out that

827
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:55,839
Speaker 1: these mountains were filled with caves and natural fortresses. They

828
00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:58,799
Speaker 1: were John thought the perfect place for an insurgent army

829
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:01,480
Speaker 1: to hide. He hold Douglass he believed the mountains had

830
00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:03,960
Speaker 1: been put there by God for the emancipation of the

831
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: Negro race. Over his dinner table, John Brown outlined an

832
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:10,200
Speaker 1: ambitious plan to use the Alleghanies as a base for

833
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 1: a guerrilla army that would raid plantations, free their slaves,

834
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:17,120
Speaker 1: and send them north to swell the ranks of his army. Now,

835
00:45:17,160 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: Douglas thought this plan was stirring, but probably outside the

836
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:22,240
Speaker 1: realm of possibility. So he thought it was a good idea,

837
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 1: but he didn't think it was gonna work. Um, But

838
00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:27,880
Speaker 1: he still found himself deeply taken an inadmiration of John Brown.

839
00:45:28,200 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 1: He described him as built for times of trouble and

840
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:34,440
Speaker 1: fitted to grapple with the flintiest hardships. While in Springfield,

841
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:37,399
Speaker 1: Brown gained a reputation for being the exceedingly rare sort

842
00:45:37,400 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: of white man who not only agitated for abolition, but

843
00:45:40,239 --> 00:45:43,360
Speaker 1: actually treated black people as his equals in his personal life.

844
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 1: John Stouffer, a Harvard historian who studies the history of

845
00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: race in America, says he stood apart from every other

846
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:52,360
Speaker 1: white in the historical record for his ability to burst

847
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:55,239
Speaker 1: free from the power of racism. Blacks were among his

848
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 1: closest friends, and in some respects he felt more comfortable

849
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 1: around blacks than he did around whites. So he's he's

850
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:05,919
Speaker 1: he's you'd call him awoke, dude. Um, he was famous. Yeah,

851
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: he was kind of infamous among his fellow white people

852
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 1: for dining with black families regularly and addressing the adults

853
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:13,120
Speaker 1: as mr. And mrs. And it's a sign of how

854
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 1: racist America was at that time. Like he calls the Mr.

855
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 1: My god. Like that's what we're dealing with in the

856
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:28,399
Speaker 1: broader culture at this point. Um. Frederick Douglas. Yeah, Yeah,

857
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 1: you don't wind up super proud of American history when

858
00:46:31,120 --> 00:46:34,879
Speaker 1: you really get into the weeds of race. Um, kind

859
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: of hard to oh, my god, but not John Brown,

860
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:42,600
Speaker 1: So that's good. Uh. Frederick Douglas himself said that Brown,

861
00:46:42,760 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: though a white gentleman, is in sympathy a black man,

862
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:47,920
Speaker 1: and as deeply interested in our cause as though his

863
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.

864
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 1: So you'd call him a good ally as the point

865
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,760
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make. Yeah. In eighteen forty eight, Garrett

866
00:46:56,760 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: Smith a wealthy abolitionist and another good ally, but he

867
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:01,960
Speaker 1: huge chunk of land in northern New York and gave

868
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:04,719
Speaker 1: it away to a large group of freed slaves. He

869
00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:06,480
Speaker 1: asked Brown to move there in order to help the

870
00:47:06,520 --> 00:47:08,919
Speaker 1: new community get on its feet. John agreed, in part

871
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 1: because he thought that the colony in the Adirondacks might

872
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: be able to act as a subterranean passway that would

873
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:18,319
Speaker 1: effectively expand the underground railroad's capacity by several orders of magnitude.

874
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 1: He also thought it might act as the start of

875
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: a chain of fortresses for the army of abolitionists and

876
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:25,680
Speaker 1: free blacks he planned to build to raid the plantations

877
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 1: of the South. Now, John Brown's plans here are not

878
00:47:29,239 --> 00:47:31,319
Speaker 1: as impossible as they sound. He knew that even with

879
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:33,600
Speaker 1: a large guerilla army, he could not hope to free

880
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:36,520
Speaker 1: all four million enslaved Blacks, but he could cause a

881
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 1: panic and collapse the economies and slaveholding states as a

882
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:43,320
Speaker 1: result of that panic. But unfortunately, John Brown's economic realities

883
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:45,319
Speaker 1: forced him to push this plan on hold. While he

884
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:47,400
Speaker 1: traveled to Europe to sell a huge pile of wool

885
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,399
Speaker 1: for his failing business, He left his long suffering wife

886
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 1: and children alone and the relatively primitive conditions of their

887
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:56,200
Speaker 1: New York farm. Now, we have no evidence that John

888
00:47:56,200 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: Brown was physically abusive to his wife, and in fact,

889
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:00,799
Speaker 1: from the evidence we have, it seems very unlikely that

890
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:02,920
Speaker 1: he was. But it would be fair to say that

891
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:05,959
Speaker 1: there's was not a healthy relationship. And I'm gonna quote

892
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:09,799
Speaker 1: again from Midnight Rising. Her frequently absent husband acknowledged the

893
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:12,600
Speaker 1: hardship she endured in an unusually tender letter in eighteen

894
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 1: forty seven. Note in his follies the very considerable difference

895
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 1: in our age and the fact that I sometimes tied

896
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 1: you severely. The toll was evident to Richard Dana when

897
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 1: he visited the Browns at Irandack home. He described Mary,

898
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: then just thirty five, as rather an invalid. So he's

899
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 1: it's a he's he's a horrible husband. Um. Now, in

900
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:36,320
Speaker 1: his defense, it's a hard time to raise a family,

901
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:40,560
Speaker 1: but he's not he's not good at being around. Um.

902
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:45,560
Speaker 1: Sometimes I chied you severely. Was that the quote? Yeah, Yeah,

903
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: he probably probably yells at her or something. Yeah, he

904
00:48:50,520 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 1: scolds everybody. He's a scold. Ye. I don't know. I

905
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:56,240
Speaker 1: think he was probably kind of the quiet sort of scolder,

906
00:48:57,040 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: but I I don't know about that. Um. That just

907
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:01,239
Speaker 1: the only I get from him, that he was the

908
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:03,680
Speaker 1: kind of like quietly furious at you, and that was

909
00:49:03,719 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: the worst thing. But I don't know. Now. Brown's tour

910
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,319
Speaker 1: of Europe ended, as per usual, in economic disaster. He

911
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 1: and his family were left even poorer than before. Brown

912
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 1: returned to the farm in New York and for a

913
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 1: time worked at helping free Black's so bad at making money.

914
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:21,480
Speaker 1: He's just terrible at it. Why, I don't know. I mean,

915
00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:23,680
Speaker 1: it was probably was hard. It was hard. It's hard

916
00:49:23,719 --> 00:49:25,919
Speaker 1: to make money, so you can't do anything. He can't.

917
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:28,719
Speaker 1: Like he's the dude that tries like every career and

918
00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: it's like it's just not for me. Yeah, he's he's

919
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 1: just bad at it. He's bad at the business aspect.

920
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:36,719
Speaker 1: He's a good worker, but he keeps trying to run businesses.

921
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:41,640
Speaker 1: He's a great worker. Everyone says that, but he's just

922
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:46,640
Speaker 1: shipped at, like the capitalism part of it. Um, like

923
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:49,400
Speaker 1: selling things. He's bad at and he keeps trying to

924
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:50,880
Speaker 1: do it. Do you want to know what you're not

925
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 1: bad at? Oh? Ship selling things? Oh, Sophie nice, that

926
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:59,399
Speaker 1: was a good one. Nailed it, nailed the ad transition. Yes,

927
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 1: so do something John Brown couldn't do and buy products

928
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 1: over the internet. We're back so um. Outside of New York,

929
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 1: where John Brown labored to help build a colony for

930
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 1: freed blacks, the ideological war over slavery had reached a

931
00:50:23,480 --> 00:50:26,839
Speaker 1: fever pitch in eighteen fifty with the implementation of the

932
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 1: Fugitive Slave Law. Now, this law was a craven act

933
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 1: of political compromise by American moderates to the demands of

934
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:36,840
Speaker 1: the slaveholding states. It brutally punished anyone caught aiding a

935
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:40,040
Speaker 1: slave and mandated that all citizens helped capture escaped slaves.

936
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty four, another act of Congress pushed northern

937
00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:47,840
Speaker 1: abolitionists even further from the Smithsonian Magazine quote. Under pressure

938
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:49,839
Speaker 1: from the South and its democratic allies in the North,

939
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:52,800
Speaker 1: Congress opened the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to slavery

940
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:56,800
Speaker 1: under a concept called popular sovereignty. The more northerly Nebraska

941
00:50:56,880 --> 00:50:59,760
Speaker 1: was in little danger of becoming a slave state. Kansas, however,

942
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:02,880
Speaker 1: was up for grabs. Pro slavery advocates the meanest and

943
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:05,320
Speaker 1: most desperate of men, armed to the teeth with revolvers,

944
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:07,839
Speaker 1: bowie knives, rifle and cannon, while they are not only

945
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:11,680
Speaker 1: thoroughly organized but under pay from slaveholders. John Brown Jr.

946
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: Wrote to his father, poured into Kansas from Missouri, anti

947
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 1: slavery settlers begged for guns and reinforcements among the thousands

948
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: of abolitionists who left their farms, workshops, or schools to

949
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 1: respond to the call, where John Brown and five of

950
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: his sons. Brown himself arrived in Kansas in October eighteen

951
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: fifty five, driving a wagon loaded with rifles he had

952
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:31,799
Speaker 1: picked up in Ohio and Illinois. Determined, he said, to

953
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:36,279
Speaker 1: help defeat Satan and his legions. So this is the

954
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:39,080
Speaker 1: first time John's gonna have a chance to confront slavery

955
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:43,080
Speaker 1: violently and defeat Satan and his legions. Yeah, he sure

956
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:46,799
Speaker 1: does now. Bleeding Kansas, as the conflict came to be known,

957
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:48,960
Speaker 1: proved to be one of the bloodiest pre Civil War

958
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:51,680
Speaker 1: chapters in America's battle over slavery. It's something like two

959
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: hundred people were killed, but possibly hundreds more. It was

960
00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:57,359
Speaker 1: also the event that launched John Brown on the path

961
00:51:57,440 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 1: that would guarantee him several paragraphs in American history textbooks

962
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 1: for years to come. Shortly after Brown arrived in Kansas,

963
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 1: the pro slavery population of the state elected a legislature

964
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:10,839
Speaker 1: via a shameless electoral fraud. This body voted into law

965
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 1: extreme pro slavery regulations, which, among other things, punish the

966
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:17,840
Speaker 1: expression of anti slavery views with two years of hard labor.

967
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 1: One pro slavery editor at the time made the goals

968
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:23,960
Speaker 1: of the slave holding Kansan's clear quote, we will continue

969
00:52:24,000 --> 00:52:26,800
Speaker 1: to tar and feather, drown, lynch, and hang every white

970
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:31,040
Speaker 1: livered abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil. So these

971
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:34,239
Speaker 1: people are like, we want to extend slavery here, We're

972
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:36,399
Speaker 1: willing to fight for what we believe in, and we'll

973
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:40,480
Speaker 1: kill all you weak like shitty abolitionist free state or

974
00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:43,359
Speaker 1: like assholes like we don't give a funk, will murder you.

975
00:52:43,840 --> 00:52:46,880
Speaker 1: And the government kind of just lets this happen because

976
00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:48,840
Speaker 1: it doesn't want to piss off the South, which is

977
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:51,440
Speaker 1: the most powerful voting block in the United States at

978
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:57,239
Speaker 1: the moment, because America, Yeah, kind of modern American. This

979
00:52:57,280 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 1: is America. Yeah. Now. Brown's first armed action in Kansas

980
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 1: occurred in defensive a group of abolitionist Kansons who held

981
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,680
Speaker 1: their own congress in opposition to the pro slavery cans

982
00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:10,760
Speaker 1: in Congress. Brown's militia showed up with guns, revolvers, swords, powder,

983
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:13,440
Speaker 1: and caps to defend the vote against pro slavery raiders

984
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 1: from Missouri who had shut down other similar events. No

985
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 1: enemy appeared, but in May eighteen fifty six, pro slavery

986
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 1: militiaman sacked the city of Lawrence, Kansas, a known abolitionist hotbed.

987
00:53:24,719 --> 00:53:27,879
Speaker 1: They burned and looted and murdered their political opponents. At

988
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:30,920
Speaker 1: the same time, news reached Kansas that Charles Sumner, the

989
00:53:30,960 --> 00:53:33,960
Speaker 1: most prominent abolitionist in the Senate, had been beaten newly

990
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:35,919
Speaker 1: to death on the floor of Congress by a South

991
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 1: Carolina congressman armed with a cane. John Brown found himself

992
00:53:39,719 --> 00:53:42,640
Speaker 1: in yeah yeah, it's a fucked up chapter of his

993
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:45,640
Speaker 1: like like beating him with a cane in front of people,

994
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:48,719
Speaker 1: and nobody's doing anything. Yeah, I mean eventually they pulled

995
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:50,880
Speaker 1: him apart, but it was like three years before Sumner

996
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: could retake his seat. He was so badly injured, horrible. Yeah.

997
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 1: So John Brown was piste off at this. He was

998
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:00,160
Speaker 1: furious about the massacre and Lawrence. He was furious abut

999
00:54:00,160 --> 00:54:01,880
Speaker 1: what had happened to Sumner, And he was pissed more

1000
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:05,239
Speaker 1: than anything that no abolitionists, none of the moderates, were

1001
00:54:05,239 --> 00:54:08,560
Speaker 1: doing a goddamn thing about these fucking pro slavery assholes

1002
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:10,200
Speaker 1: and all the violence that they were just allowed to

1003
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:13,919
Speaker 1: do for some reason. Um. He was pissed. Um. So,

1004
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 1: over the course of several weeks, Brown formed his sons

1005
00:54:16,520 --> 00:54:19,719
Speaker 1: and a group of local volunteers into an anti slavery militia.

1006
00:54:20,040 --> 00:54:22,279
Speaker 1: His goal was not merely to defend abolitionists from the

1007
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 1: violence of pro slavery mobs. He wanted to take the

1008
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:27,880
Speaker 1: fight to them. When one of his neighbors urged caution,

1009
00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:32,080
Speaker 1: Brown replied, caution, caution, Sir, I am eternally tired of

1010
00:54:32,120 --> 00:54:34,640
Speaker 1: hearing the word caution. It is nothing but the word

1011
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:39,640
Speaker 1: of cowardice. On John Brown and a select group of

1012
00:54:39,680 --> 00:54:42,080
Speaker 1: his men, including several of his sons went on a

1013
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 1: raid across a series of farms and Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas.

1014
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:48,880
Speaker 1: They dragged five pro slavery advocates out of their homes

1015
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:51,080
Speaker 1: and the dead of night and hacked them to death

1016
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:55,360
Speaker 1: with swords. Now, these are generally described as broad swords,

1017
00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:56,920
Speaker 1: but I've seen pictures of them and they seem to

1018
00:54:56,920 --> 00:55:01,600
Speaker 1: have been closer to Roman Gladius's um. And what does

1019
00:55:01,640 --> 00:55:04,600
Speaker 1: that mean. It's like a short sword. It's a broad

1020
00:55:04,640 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 1: bladed short sword. Welcome listeners, because nobody knew what that man.

1021
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:16,600
Speaker 1: And now, uh, you get different attitudes on this based

1022
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 1: on like who you hear it from, because this is

1023
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:21,719
Speaker 1: a very brutal. He drags these people out of their house,

1024
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:28,240
Speaker 1: they're unarmed, and he murders them, um with fucking swords. Swords. Yeah,

1025
00:55:28,360 --> 00:55:30,920
Speaker 1: so depending on who you read, you'll come to different

1026
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 1: attitudes about what exactly this sort of this counts as um.

1027
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:39,400
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Magazine says this, by almost any definition, the Potawatomi

1028
00:55:39,480 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 1: killings were a terrorist act intended to sow fear in

1029
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:45,839
Speaker 1: slavery's defenders. Brown viewed slavery is a state of war

1030
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:48,800
Speaker 1: against blacks, a system of torture, rape, oppression, and murder,

1031
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:50,840
Speaker 1: and saw himself as a soldier in the army of

1032
00:55:50,880 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 1: the Lord against slavery. Says one scholar, Kansas was Brown's

1033
00:55:54,640 --> 00:55:57,799
Speaker 1: trial by fire, his initiation into violence, his preparation for

1034
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:01,560
Speaker 1: real war. So now every historian agrees with calling the

1035
00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:04,080
Speaker 1: Potawatomy massacre an act of terrorism and a piece to

1036
00:56:04,080 --> 00:56:06,960
Speaker 1: the National Archives. A guy named Paul finkeled Men makes

1037
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:10,320
Speaker 1: this argument. Kansas, Bleeding Kansas, as it is known, was

1038
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 1: in the midst of a civil war. Between eighteen fifty

1039
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:14,879
Speaker 1: five and eighteen sixty, about two men would be killed

1040
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 1: in Kansas. Not all were politically motivated, and historians disagree

1041
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:20,520
Speaker 1: on what constitutes a political killing, But even the most

1042
00:56:20,560 --> 00:56:23,320
Speaker 1: conservative scholar of this violence finds fifty six killings that

1043
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:26,040
Speaker 1: were tied to slavery in politics. I think this number

1044
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:27,759
Speaker 1: is low, and that most of the two hundred deaths

1045
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:31,080
Speaker 1: were actually politically motivated and tied to slavery and Bleeding Kansas.

1046
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:33,840
Speaker 1: But the actual number of political killings is less important

1047
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 1: than the understanding that in Kansas there was a violent

1048
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:39,280
Speaker 1: civil war being fought over slavery. Men on both sides

1049
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 1: were killed. Brown's actions are most famous because they were

1050
00:56:42,080 --> 00:56:45,040
Speaker 1: five killings, and he strategically used swords rather than guns,

1051
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:47,400
Speaker 1: which would have alerted neighbors. This is the nature of

1052
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:49,840
Speaker 1: guerrilla warfare. It is brutal and bloody, but it is

1053
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:54,320
Speaker 1: not terrorism. Oh so he used the sword because they're quiet, Yeah, exactly.

1054
00:56:54,520 --> 00:56:57,160
Speaker 1: And guns were a lot of ship back then. They're

1055
00:56:57,160 --> 00:57:01,120
Speaker 1: not quiet today. Um no, but I'm just loud. Yeah,

1056
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 1: So you know, I I tend to be on the

1057
00:57:04,040 --> 00:57:07,920
Speaker 1: side of like it was terrorism, I think it probably

1058
00:57:08,000 --> 00:57:11,960
Speaker 1: qualifies a that, but terrorism isn't necessarily invalid. Um, It's

1059
00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:14,360
Speaker 1: an act, like in a guerrilla war. It's a tactic.

1060
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:17,920
Speaker 1: And at that point John and his men were outnumbered, um,

1061
00:57:18,040 --> 00:57:20,200
Speaker 1: and they wanted to strike a blow, and they wanted

1062
00:57:20,240 --> 00:57:21,720
Speaker 1: to scare the ship out of these people who had

1063
00:57:21,760 --> 00:57:24,000
Speaker 1: been acting with impunity. And I think they did it.

1064
00:57:24,320 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 1: But again, different people, different opinions. So the Potawatomy masker

1065
00:57:29,680 --> 00:57:32,000
Speaker 1: escalated the conflict in Kansas to a new level. Pro

1066
00:57:32,080 --> 00:57:35,320
Speaker 1: Slavery forces staged what affected to a full scale invasion

1067
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:38,560
Speaker 1: of the territory. There were battles, towns were sacked, and yeah,

1068
00:57:38,600 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 1: a lot of people were killed. John Brown Gainey reputation

1069
00:57:41,600 --> 00:57:43,840
Speaker 1: during the fighting as a leader of cunning and skill

1070
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:47,680
Speaker 1: and earned the appellation Captain Brown. For months, he fought

1071
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:50,600
Speaker 1: a grinding, insurgent campaign that made him a household name

1072
00:57:50,640 --> 00:57:52,720
Speaker 1: in much of the North. There were stories of like

1073
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:54,920
Speaker 1: he led this like spirited defense of this town that

1074
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:57,960
Speaker 1: you know, they eventually lost, but they inflicted a lot

1075
00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:01,000
Speaker 1: of casualties on the enemy and made it really bloody

1076
00:58:01,040 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 1: for them. He successfully like out maneuvered this big force

1077
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:06,680
Speaker 1: of pro slavery guys and took like they surrendered to him,

1078
00:58:06,680 --> 00:58:09,120
Speaker 1: and he took a bowie knife from the guy in charge.

1079
00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:12,280
Speaker 1: So he's like and there's stories about this, Like journalists

1080
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 1: meet him when he's out in the field and like

1081
00:58:14,040 --> 00:58:17,480
Speaker 1: right about him and his band of guerilla warriors and stuff,

1082
00:58:17,480 --> 00:58:20,520
Speaker 1: and he becomes very famous in the North. Um, and

1083
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:23,200
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's again it's a brutal guerilla war.

1084
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:25,360
Speaker 1: One of his sons during this point is captured and

1085
00:58:25,400 --> 00:58:28,680
Speaker 1: executed by pro slavery forces. Um. Two of his sons

1086
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:32,120
Speaker 1: are wounded. So it's like it's rough, but he walks

1087
00:58:32,120 --> 00:58:36,200
Speaker 1: out of bleeding Kansas a national hero. Really. Now, when

1088
00:58:36,240 --> 00:58:38,960
Speaker 1: the violence in Kansas subsided, John Brown decided to use

1089
00:58:39,000 --> 00:58:41,640
Speaker 1: his newfound fame to draw up support and funding to

1090
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:43,920
Speaker 1: open up a new front in the war against slavery.

1091
00:58:44,280 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 1: He wrote his son Jason a letter saying I have

1092
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:49,160
Speaker 1: only a short time to live, only one death to die,

1093
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 1: and I will die fighting for this cause. Brown, now

1094
00:58:52,680 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 1: a wanted man, traveled the Northern States dressed in the

1095
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:57,880
Speaker 1: gear of a guerilla fighter, drumming up funds and support

1096
00:58:57,920 --> 00:59:00,200
Speaker 1: for his war on slavery. He showed off the bowie

1097
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:02,520
Speaker 1: knife he'd taken from a pro slavery militia leader and

1098
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:04,840
Speaker 1: played up the daring dew involved in his flight from

1099
00:59:04,880 --> 00:59:09,120
Speaker 1: the law from the book Midnight Rising quote brandishing the

1100
00:59:09,160 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 1: captured bowie knife strapped just above his boot or loading

1101
00:59:11,480 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 1: a revolver as he warned a federal marshals on his trail.

1102
00:59:14,280 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: Brown also introduced a frision to the genteel parlors of

1103
00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:19,440
Speaker 1: New England. I should hate to spoil these carpets, he

1104
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:22,080
Speaker 1: told one Boston hostess. But you know I cannot be

1105
00:59:22,160 --> 00:59:26,840
Speaker 1: taken alive. So he plays up this reputation great like

1106
00:59:27,240 --> 00:59:31,000
Speaker 1: action hero quotes. Yeah, he really does. He's absolutely an

1107
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:36,600
Speaker 1: action cool guy quotes, He's absolutely an action hero and Yeah,

1108
00:59:36,600 --> 00:59:43,720
Speaker 1: he's he's a pretty he's pretty hardcore. He's a badass, problematic,

1109
00:59:43,720 --> 00:59:46,760
Speaker 1: but badass. Now. John spent much of the next two

1110
00:59:46,800 --> 00:59:49,560
Speaker 1: years yeah, buying arms and raising funds to buy more arms,

1111
00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: as well as working mostly unsuccessfully, to convince other white

1112
00:59:52,760 --> 00:59:55,440
Speaker 1: abolitionists and freed blacks to sign up to fight in

1113
00:59:55,480 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 1: the army he was raising. Gradually, he built up a

1114
00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:00,840
Speaker 1: network of six wealthy backer all of whom were to

1115
01:00:00,960 --> 01:00:04,320
Speaker 1: differing degrees committed to the cause of ending slavery. These men,

1116
01:00:04,440 --> 01:00:07,080
Speaker 1: known to history is the Secret Six, made it possible

1117
01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:10,040
Speaker 1: for Brown to secure several hundred sharps, rifles, a significant

1118
01:00:10,120 --> 01:00:13,840
Speaker 1: number of revolvers, and eventually five hundred pikes. Now, a

1119
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:15,920
Speaker 1: pike is basically a dagger at the end of a

1120
01:00:15,920 --> 01:00:18,800
Speaker 1: long spear, and Brown plan to use these pikes to

1121
01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:22,200
Speaker 1: arm freed slaves. Um He couldn't give them rifles right

1122
01:00:22,240 --> 01:00:25,240
Speaker 1: off the bat, because rifles at the time were really complicated.

1123
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: If you have if you don't know how to use one.

1124
01:00:27,200 --> 01:00:29,560
Speaker 1: It took a lot of training to be functional with him,

1125
01:00:29,600 --> 01:00:31,520
Speaker 1: and he wanted to be able to arm people immediately.

1126
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:35,440
Speaker 1: So they had like long like long like sticks with

1127
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:38,920
Speaker 1: like a like a dagger at the end. Yeah, it's

1128
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 1: less like a point like a spearhead, and more like

1129
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:46,160
Speaker 1: a literal knife. It's yeah. They called them Kansas toothpicks.

1130
01:00:46,160 --> 01:00:50,840
Speaker 1: It was pretty cool. Uh. You know, the booie knives

1131
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:54,760
Speaker 1: are basically machetes. They had a lot of bowie knives. Um,

1132
01:00:54,840 --> 01:00:58,440
Speaker 1: but yeah, uh. And so Brown thought number one, like

1133
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:00,360
Speaker 1: the pikes were important so we could have something to

1134
01:01:00,480 --> 01:01:03,200
Speaker 1: arm freed slaves with immediately, you know, when he wouldn't

1135
01:01:03,200 --> 01:01:05,400
Speaker 1: have time to train them right away. But he also

1136
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:08,840
Speaker 1: felt that immediately arming freed slaves was a critical step

1137
01:01:08,840 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: in their emancipation, stating, give a slave a pike and

1138
01:01:12,040 --> 01:01:14,120
Speaker 1: you make him a man. Deprive him of the means

1139
01:01:14,120 --> 01:01:17,000
Speaker 1: of resistance, and you keep him down. So we thought

1140
01:01:17,000 --> 01:01:19,320
Speaker 1: this was very important on like a level of like

1141
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:23,400
Speaker 1: building morale in this army he was seeking to make now. Obviously,

1142
01:01:23,560 --> 01:01:25,520
Speaker 1: fleeing from the law and raising funds to form a

1143
01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:28,240
Speaker 1: guerilla army did not leave much time for Brown to

1144
01:01:28,280 --> 01:01:31,280
Speaker 1: see his wife and family. He begged his wealthy supporters

1145
01:01:31,280 --> 01:01:33,760
Speaker 1: to donate money to help them make ends meet. He wrote,

1146
01:01:33,760 --> 01:01:36,240
Speaker 1: one donor, I have no other income for their support,

1147
01:01:36,400 --> 01:01:38,400
Speaker 1: and my wife, being a good economist and a real

1148
01:01:38,440 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 1: old fashioned businesswoman. She has gone through the two past

1149
01:01:40,720 --> 01:01:44,440
Speaker 1: winters in our open, cold house, unfinished outside and not plastered.

1150
01:01:45,040 --> 01:01:50,280
Speaker 1: So it's miserable for Mary. Sucks. Yeah, Mary's life is

1151
01:01:50,320 --> 01:01:56,200
Speaker 1: fucking trash. She's She did not complain often, but she

1152
01:01:56,360 --> 01:01:59,440
Speaker 1: was clearly miserable as a result of her husband's chosen vocation.

1153
01:01:59,760 --> 01:02:02,000
Speaker 1: In letters to her, Brown admitted that his work had

1154
01:02:02,080 --> 01:02:05,920
Speaker 1: left her in a kind of widowed state, like I'm

1155
01:02:05,960 --> 01:02:09,760
Speaker 1: already basically dead. Yeah, yeah, she is a bandit. Yeah.

1156
01:02:09,880 --> 01:02:12,560
Speaker 1: And for the remaining years of his life, yeah, it

1157
01:02:12,640 --> 01:02:14,200
Speaker 1: was rare for him to spend more than a couple

1158
01:02:14,200 --> 01:02:16,920
Speaker 1: of days at a time with his family. Uh. In

1159
01:02:16,960 --> 01:02:19,360
Speaker 1: March of eighteen fifty seven, Mary sent John a letter

1160
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 1: in informing him that their sons had committed themselves to

1161
01:02:22,080 --> 01:02:27,280
Speaker 1: learn and practice war no more so. She's like, yeah,

1162
01:02:27,320 --> 01:02:31,920
Speaker 1: they're done with this ship. Um, they're like she she's

1163
01:02:31,920 --> 01:02:34,720
Speaker 1: stepping in. And then I'm sure John was like, yeah,

1164
01:02:34,760 --> 01:02:38,240
Speaker 1: you're right, that's fine. No, he didn't do that, did he, well,

1165
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:40,320
Speaker 1: kind of, I mean he replied that it was not

1166
01:02:40,360 --> 01:02:43,880
Speaker 1: at my solicitation that they engaged in it at the first. So, uh,

1167
01:02:43,920 --> 01:02:47,680
Speaker 1: he says like it wasn't my decision that they did it, um,

1168
01:02:47,920 --> 01:02:50,600
Speaker 1: And they don't all come to fight with him after this,

1169
01:02:51,200 --> 01:02:53,280
Speaker 1: And he also seems to have like felt bad after

1170
01:02:53,320 --> 01:02:55,480
Speaker 1: that letter. Several days later, he sent his two year

1171
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:58,360
Speaker 1: old daughter Ellen a Bible uh and inscribed in it

1172
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:01,000
Speaker 1: in remembrance of her father, who's care and attention she

1173
01:03:01,080 --> 01:03:05,600
Speaker 1: was deprived in her infancy. Really really really really sad.

1174
01:03:06,400 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 1: Yeah it's sad. It's sad. My mom's name is Ellen,

1175
01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:13,400
Speaker 1: So I feel that harder. Yeah, well, you know, it's

1176
01:03:13,480 --> 01:03:17,960
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. Uh, like what do you

1177
01:03:18,720 --> 01:03:22,280
Speaker 1: what do you like if this was like if he

1178
01:03:22,520 --> 01:03:24,440
Speaker 1: if he was abandoning his family like this to make

1179
01:03:24,480 --> 01:03:27,440
Speaker 1: it in Hollywood, I'd be like, dick, move bro. But

1180
01:03:27,560 --> 01:03:30,600
Speaker 1: like it is slavery, Like it's the worst thing this

1181
01:03:30,720 --> 01:03:34,480
Speaker 1: country did, well, tied for worst with the genocide. Like

1182
01:03:35,360 --> 01:03:38,400
Speaker 1: kind of worth abandoning your family over I hate to

1183
01:03:38,400 --> 01:03:43,840
Speaker 1: say it, like it is slavery. Yeah, yeah, like shit,

1184
01:03:44,120 --> 01:03:51,360
Speaker 1: you know, um it it sucks for Ellen, it sucks

1185
01:03:51,360 --> 01:03:54,840
Speaker 1: for Mary. Um. Six of John Brown's sons had fought

1186
01:03:54,880 --> 01:03:57,000
Speaker 1: in Kansas, as I said, one was killed, two wounded,

1187
01:03:57,040 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 1: and the others were pretty traumatized. By the experience, but

1188
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:02,480
Speaker 1: not all of them had in fact committed to study

1189
01:04:02,520 --> 01:04:05,680
Speaker 1: war no more. Owen Brown traveled with his father in

1190
01:04:05,720 --> 01:04:08,000
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty eight as he sought final support for his

1191
01:04:08,040 --> 01:04:11,360
Speaker 1: impending invasion of the South. Now, by this point, Brown's

1192
01:04:11,360 --> 01:04:14,000
Speaker 1: plan for an insurgent war on the South had evolved.

1193
01:04:14,240 --> 01:04:16,480
Speaker 1: Rather than taking time to establish a guerilla army and

1194
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:19,200
Speaker 1: a string of forts, he decided to assault the town

1195
01:04:19,200 --> 01:04:22,120
Speaker 1: of Harper's Ferry, which contained the largest armory in the

1196
01:04:22,160 --> 01:04:24,840
Speaker 1: country probably had more guns than any other place in America.

1197
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:28,520
Speaker 1: Now Brown believed that Harper's Ferry was at a fencible position,

1198
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:30,480
Speaker 1: and that he'd be able to use its hundred thousand

1199
01:04:30,480 --> 01:04:32,880
Speaker 1: firearms to train and equip the army of slaves he

1200
01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:35,240
Speaker 1: was sure would flock there once word of his efforts

1201
01:04:35,240 --> 01:04:39,200
Speaker 1: got out. In April eighteen fifty eight, John Brown met

1202
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:41,960
Speaker 1: Harriet Tubman, who at that point had made eight secret

1203
01:04:42,000 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 1: trips to Maryland and led dozens of slaves to freedom.

1204
01:04:44,880 --> 01:04:48,240
Speaker 1: Brown was deeply impressed by Tubman. And this is like

1205
01:04:48,680 --> 01:04:50,880
Speaker 1: a problematic wokeness. I don't know what you call this.

1206
01:04:51,200 --> 01:04:53,240
Speaker 1: He referred to her as a man in all of

1207
01:04:53,280 --> 01:04:55,440
Speaker 1: his writings and talking of her, and he did it

1208
01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:57,880
Speaker 1: because he respected her so much. He said that she

1209
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:00,800
Speaker 1: was naturally the most man that he had ever met. Um,

1210
01:05:00,880 --> 01:05:03,080
Speaker 1: So he's he's saying the set of respect, but it's

1211
01:05:03,160 --> 01:05:07,520
Speaker 1: kind of problematic. It's like dreds woke compliment, but a

1212
01:05:07,600 --> 01:05:12,960
Speaker 1: two nineteen like dude. Yeah. He also referred to her

1213
01:05:13,000 --> 01:05:16,400
Speaker 1: as General Tubman, which is a less problematic appellation of respect.

1214
01:05:16,880 --> 01:05:19,400
Speaker 1: And you know, for her part, Harriet Tubman was equally

1215
01:05:19,400 --> 01:05:23,120
Speaker 1: taken with John Brown. Kate Larson, one of Tubman's biographers,

1216
01:05:23,120 --> 01:05:25,880
Speaker 1: says Tubman thought Brown was the greatest white man who

1217
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:29,560
Speaker 1: ever lived. So he is very popular, um for his

1218
01:05:29,600 --> 01:05:33,080
Speaker 1: dedication with the like sort of leading figures of like

1219
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:35,960
Speaker 1: black liberation in this period of Yeah, I would say

1220
01:05:36,440 --> 01:05:38,960
Speaker 1: he got co He got co signed by Frederick Douglas

1221
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:42,960
Speaker 1: and Harriet Tubman. Yeah, yeah, pretty solid. Those those are

1222
01:05:43,000 --> 01:05:46,560
Speaker 1: some pretty solid co signs. Yeah. Yeah, good, like if

1223
01:05:46,560 --> 01:05:50,840
Speaker 1: he'd written a book, good names to have on the jacket. Yeah. Now,

1224
01:05:51,000 --> 01:05:53,880
Speaker 1: John Brown solicited both Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman for

1225
01:05:53,920 --> 01:05:56,160
Speaker 1: help with his planned attack on the South. Tubman was

1226
01:05:56,240 --> 01:05:58,280
Speaker 1: unable to help due to illness and may have also

1227
01:05:58,320 --> 01:06:00,680
Speaker 1: been unwilling to help because she was worried if it failed,

1228
01:06:00,720 --> 01:06:04,520
Speaker 1: it would expose the underground railroad, and Frederick refused because

1229
01:06:04,520 --> 01:06:07,960
Speaker 1: he rightly viewed the attempt at suicidal lunacy. He warned

1230
01:06:08,040 --> 01:06:10,920
Speaker 1: Brown that he was going into a perfect steel trap

1231
01:06:10,960 --> 01:06:13,560
Speaker 1: and that he would not get out alive. So Douglas

1232
01:06:13,600 --> 01:06:15,760
Speaker 1: clearly respects what Brown is doing, but as like, I'm

1233
01:06:15,760 --> 01:06:18,320
Speaker 1: just not willing to kill myself for this, I think,

1234
01:06:18,600 --> 01:06:20,160
Speaker 1: you know I And he was doing a lot of

1235
01:06:20,160 --> 01:06:24,280
Speaker 1: stuff outside of that made the right call. Um. In

1236
01:06:24,280 --> 01:06:26,880
Speaker 1: May of eighteen fifty eight, John Brown and thirty five

1237
01:06:26,920 --> 01:06:32,200
Speaker 1: of his followers convened in Chatham, Canada. It's not hard

1238
01:06:32,240 --> 01:06:34,760
Speaker 1: to get to Canada. You're up in the in New England.

1239
01:06:34,800 --> 01:06:39,760
Speaker 1: It's right there. He's all over the place. He's like, yeah,

1240
01:06:39,760 --> 01:06:42,080
Speaker 1: he travels around. I mean it just seems like, yeah,

1241
01:06:42,120 --> 01:06:44,760
Speaker 1: he's moving around a lot. I mean it just it's

1242
01:06:44,840 --> 01:06:48,600
Speaker 1: hard enough to travel. Well, yeah, but like you're in

1243
01:06:48,680 --> 01:06:51,120
Speaker 1: if you're in Illinois, like getting up to Canada, it's

1244
01:06:51,160 --> 01:06:55,080
Speaker 1: like going to fucking uh Sacramento from Los Angeles. Like

1245
01:06:55,080 --> 01:07:00,800
Speaker 1: it's not really a big deal. Um, it's like right there. Well,

1246
01:07:00,840 --> 01:07:03,120
Speaker 1: I don't like Sacramento. Either, I'd rather be in Canada,

1247
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:06,680
Speaker 1: but for sure, I'm just making a point. So in

1248
01:07:06,720 --> 01:07:08,800
Speaker 1: May of eighteen fifty eight, John Brown and thirty five

1249
01:07:08,840 --> 01:07:11,080
Speaker 1: of his followers convened in Chatham, Canada to host a

1250
01:07:11,120 --> 01:07:15,080
Speaker 1: constitutional convention in order to create a new American government.

1251
01:07:15,680 --> 01:07:17,960
Speaker 1: Um see. By this point, the failures of the existing

1252
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:20,920
Speaker 1: government to do anything about slavery in a recent Supreme

1253
01:07:20,920 --> 01:07:22,920
Speaker 1: Court ruling that black people had no claim to the

1254
01:07:23,000 --> 01:07:26,040
Speaker 1: rights guaranteed by the Constitution had convinced John that a

1255
01:07:26,080 --> 01:07:29,560
Speaker 1: whole new government needed to be established just basically decides

1256
01:07:29,920 --> 01:07:35,360
Speaker 1: our constitution is too like stained by the evil of

1257
01:07:35,400 --> 01:07:38,480
Speaker 1: slavery to continue, and what we part of what we

1258
01:07:38,520 --> 01:07:41,640
Speaker 1: need to do is like build a new country basically,

1259
01:07:42,000 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 1: and the foundation of new country needs to be black liberation. Yeah,

1260
01:07:46,160 --> 01:07:50,800
Speaker 1: I mean so, I mean, yeah, there's some weird stuff

1261
01:07:50,840 --> 01:07:53,280
Speaker 1: to his plans to He's not a perfect man. I'm

1262
01:07:53,320 --> 01:07:55,680
Speaker 1: sure I'm going to read a quote he even though

1263
01:07:55,680 --> 01:07:58,480
Speaker 1: he's co signed, but he's flawed. Yeah, he's he's flawed.

1264
01:07:58,560 --> 01:08:02,040
Speaker 1: He's flawed, and I think quote from Midnight Rising by

1265
01:08:02,040 --> 01:08:04,600
Speaker 1: Tony Horwitz makes it clear kind of both what was

1266
01:08:04,680 --> 01:08:06,400
Speaker 1: neat about what he was doing there and what was

1267
01:08:06,440 --> 01:08:10,320
Speaker 1: a little problematic. John Brown cited this infamous ruling in

1268
01:08:10,360 --> 01:08:13,040
Speaker 1: his Constitution's preamble, which explained why a new government was

1269
01:08:13,080 --> 01:08:16,240
Speaker 1: needed to protect our persons, property, lives, and liberties. But

1270
01:08:16,280 --> 01:08:18,519
Speaker 1: the forty eight articles that followed were less concerned with

1271
01:08:18,600 --> 01:08:21,840
Speaker 1: rights than with the command structure of Brown's highly militarized state.

1272
01:08:22,080 --> 01:08:24,280
Speaker 1: The role of its weak president in Congress was mainly

1273
01:08:24,320 --> 01:08:26,840
Speaker 1: to advise a powerful commander in chief who could tap

1274
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:29,360
Speaker 1: the treasury as needed for money and valuables captured by

1275
01:08:29,400 --> 01:08:35,240
Speaker 1: honorable warfare. Article I think was directed towards another preoccupation

1276
01:08:35,240 --> 01:08:39,600
Speaker 1: of Brown's it for evade filthy conversation, in decent behavior, intoxication,

1277
01:08:39,760 --> 01:08:44,000
Speaker 1: and unlawful intercourse. The Constitution was read aloud at Chatham, debated,

1278
01:08:44,040 --> 01:08:46,680
Speaker 1: and signed the same day. Every man was anxious to

1279
01:08:46,720 --> 01:08:48,479
Speaker 1: have his name at the head, wrote one of Brown's

1280
01:08:48,520 --> 01:08:51,960
Speaker 1: Iowa Party, but the delegate showed distinctly less enthusiasm. Two

1281
01:08:52,000 --> 01:08:54,920
Speaker 1: days later, when they reconvened to elect officials, the black

1282
01:08:54,960 --> 01:08:57,439
Speaker 1: men nominated for the presidency declined to stand, and the

1283
01:08:57,479 --> 01:09:00,120
Speaker 1: post was left vacant, along with many others. Only two

1284
01:09:00,160 --> 01:09:03,160
Speaker 1: congressmen were appointed, and the cabinet was filled by Iowa recruits.

1285
01:09:03,400 --> 01:09:07,200
Speaker 1: Brown unsurprisingly was elected by acclamation as commander in chief.

1286
01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:10,720
Speaker 1: So you're right, there's like it's like okay, and some

1287
01:09:10,760 --> 01:09:14,920
Speaker 1: problematic stuff in there, like filthy conversation. Uh what did

1288
01:09:14,960 --> 01:09:20,960
Speaker 1: you say, unlawful intercourse? Yeah, intoxication. I wouldn't have done well.

1289
01:09:21,120 --> 01:09:25,639
Speaker 1: He's the police a little bit, would There are people

1290
01:09:25,640 --> 01:09:30,320
Speaker 1: who will compare John Yeah, there's people who will compare

1291
01:09:30,479 --> 01:09:33,680
Speaker 1: John Brown to Osama bin Laden. And it's not a

1292
01:09:33,760 --> 01:09:36,679
Speaker 1: hundred percent Obviously what he was fighting for was better,

1293
01:09:36,720 --> 01:09:38,599
Speaker 1: but you're not a hundred percent off. He was a

1294
01:09:38,680 --> 01:09:43,960
Speaker 1: long bearded, uncompromising religious fundamentalist who was willing to kill

1295
01:09:44,040 --> 01:09:46,280
Speaker 1: for his belief. Now, Brown grew up poor, and again

1296
01:09:46,439 --> 01:09:49,760
Speaker 1: what he was fighting about was fundamentally more moral than

1297
01:09:49,920 --> 01:09:53,840
Speaker 1: what would you know. And also Brown didn't attack civilians

1298
01:09:54,400 --> 01:09:56,760
Speaker 1: like he he understood they were going to die, but

1299
01:09:56,960 --> 01:09:58,599
Speaker 1: that he didn't make him his target. But like, there

1300
01:09:58,640 --> 01:10:02,000
Speaker 1: are some parallels. He is a religious fundamentalist and not

1301
01:10:02,120 --> 01:10:06,120
Speaker 1: in a fun way. Police. He's the fun police. You

1302
01:10:06,160 --> 01:10:09,160
Speaker 1: can't say Fox, you can't fuck and you there's no

1303
01:10:09,280 --> 01:10:13,200
Speaker 1: there's no drinking. Yeah, there's no John Brown, you know,

1304
01:10:13,560 --> 01:10:16,000
Speaker 1: and it's it's a marker of how fucked the times

1305
01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:19,719
Speaker 1: are that John Brown is still the best guy, still

1306
01:10:19,720 --> 01:10:25,559
Speaker 1: the locust white man in the country, the police in

1307
01:10:25,720 --> 01:10:28,800
Speaker 1: more ways than one, and not a great time. I

1308
01:10:28,880 --> 01:10:31,360
Speaker 1: just want to side note to listeners, if you look

1309
01:10:31,439 --> 01:10:34,840
Speaker 1: up young John Brown looks a lot like Igor from

1310
01:10:34,880 --> 01:10:39,080
Speaker 1: young Frankenstein. He absolutely looks like Igor from young Frankenstein.

1311
01:10:39,400 --> 01:10:45,080
Speaker 1: Um to an extent. That's bizarre, bizarre. Yeah. Continue. In

1312
01:10:45,080 --> 01:10:47,720
Speaker 1: December of eighteen fifty eight, as Brown's plans for an

1313
01:10:47,720 --> 01:10:50,200
Speaker 1: invasion of the South matured, he was suddenly presented with

1314
01:10:50,240 --> 01:10:53,960
Speaker 1: another opportunity to strike a blow against slavery. A Missouri

1315
01:10:54,080 --> 01:10:56,639
Speaker 1: slave named Jim Daniels found him in Kansas and told

1316
01:10:56,680 --> 01:10:58,680
Speaker 1: him that he and several other slaves were about to

1317
01:10:58,680 --> 01:11:01,639
Speaker 1: be sold and needed Brown's help. John gathered a force

1318
01:11:01,680 --> 01:11:04,280
Speaker 1: of eighteen insurgents and set out for Mazoura, where they

1319
01:11:04,280 --> 01:11:06,720
Speaker 1: carried out a highly illegal raid on a farmhouse and

1320
01:11:06,800 --> 01:11:10,120
Speaker 1: freed five slaves at gunpoint. They proceeded next to another

1321
01:11:10,160 --> 01:11:12,680
Speaker 1: farm and freed five more slaves. A small group of

1322
01:11:12,720 --> 01:11:15,840
Speaker 1: Brown's raiders also broke into another home, freeing a single

1323
01:11:15,880 --> 01:11:20,679
Speaker 1: slave and shooting her owner dead. The raiders stole oxen horses, food, clothing,

1324
01:11:20,720 --> 01:11:23,519
Speaker 1: and also captured two white hostages before they crossed back

1325
01:11:23,560 --> 01:11:27,040
Speaker 1: into Kansas. This sparked rage across the South, and the

1326
01:11:27,040 --> 01:11:30,160
Speaker 1: governor of Massoura, as well as President Buchanan, offered rewards

1327
01:11:30,160 --> 01:11:34,000
Speaker 1: for Brown's capture. Many moderate abolitionists were also unhappy with Brown.

1328
01:11:34,200 --> 01:11:36,880
Speaker 1: They felt that invading a southern state, stealing property, and

1329
01:11:36,960 --> 01:11:39,760
Speaker 1: killing a slave owner was a step too far. In

1330
01:11:39,760 --> 01:11:42,400
Speaker 1: a letter to the New York Tribune, Brown mocked these people,

1331
01:11:42,439 --> 01:11:44,439
Speaker 1: pointing out that the previous May, a force of pro

1332
01:11:44,560 --> 01:11:48,080
Speaker 1: slavery militiamen had killed five anti slavery settlers in Kansas.

1333
01:11:48,360 --> 01:11:50,639
Speaker 1: There'd been no outcry, he noted, but when he freed

1334
01:11:50,640 --> 01:11:53,599
Speaker 1: eleven human beings, the government and many people where he wrote,

1335
01:11:53,800 --> 01:11:57,479
Speaker 1: filled with holy horror, which is a solid point. Yeah.

1336
01:11:57,840 --> 01:12:02,280
Speaker 1: So Brown was confronted on road by eighty pro slavery militiaman.

1337
01:12:02,400 --> 01:12:04,559
Speaker 1: He had only twenty two men in his band, but

1338
01:12:04,600 --> 01:12:07,240
Speaker 1: they charged the pro slavery forces and caused them to

1339
01:12:07,320 --> 01:12:11,280
Speaker 1: flee in panic. Brown captured several horses and took more prisoners.

1340
01:12:11,640 --> 01:12:14,559
Speaker 1: By February of eighteen fifty nine, Brown had escaped Kansas

1341
01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:17,040
Speaker 1: fleeing the law. All the while, he succeeded in leading

1342
01:12:17,040 --> 01:12:19,960
Speaker 1: his group across Iowa and onto a box car headed

1343
01:12:20,000 --> 01:12:23,000
Speaker 1: for Chicago. The freed slaves made it from there to Detroit,

1344
01:12:23,000 --> 01:12:25,479
Speaker 1: where they were taken by ferry to Canada. One of

1345
01:12:25,479 --> 01:12:27,920
Speaker 1: the freed women gave birth along the way. She named

1346
01:12:27,920 --> 01:12:32,639
Speaker 1: her child John Brown. That's a fucking dope story, right,

1347
01:12:33,000 --> 01:12:39,680
Speaker 1: very very cool. Shoutout Detroit, um. Yeah. Now. The notoriety

1348
01:12:39,680 --> 01:12:43,160
Speaker 1: of Brown's raid energized his backers, the Secret Six, several

1349
01:12:43,200 --> 01:12:45,519
Speaker 1: of whom had started to wane in their enthusiasm for

1350
01:12:45,600 --> 01:12:48,559
Speaker 1: his cause. More money started to pour in, and Brown

1351
01:12:48,640 --> 01:12:51,120
Speaker 1: spent the rest of eighteen fifty eight gradually moving a

1352
01:12:51,160 --> 01:12:53,639
Speaker 1: small force of men in a large stockpile of arms

1353
01:12:53,640 --> 01:12:56,120
Speaker 1: and ammo onto a small farm that he had rented

1354
01:12:56,120 --> 01:12:58,880
Speaker 1: in the outskirts of Harper's Ferry. The whole story of

1355
01:12:58,880 --> 01:13:01,320
Speaker 1: how they did this is rather fascinating. In Midnight Rising

1356
01:13:01,360 --> 01:13:04,240
Speaker 1: breaks it down in granular detail. I really recommend that

1357
01:13:06,680 --> 01:13:08,960
Speaker 1: it is cool, um, But the focus of our story

1358
01:13:09,000 --> 01:13:11,519
Speaker 1: today is the man John Brown, and not the details

1359
01:13:11,560 --> 01:13:14,920
Speaker 1: of the attack on Harper's Ferry. The plan failed, Brown

1360
01:13:14,960 --> 01:13:17,640
Speaker 1: and his men succeeded in taking possession of the armory,

1361
01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:20,440
Speaker 1: but they held it for less than two days. Ironically,

1362
01:13:20,479 --> 01:13:22,760
Speaker 1: the first fatality of the raid was a freed black

1363
01:13:22,800 --> 01:13:24,640
Speaker 1: man who was shot in the dark on accident. It

1364
01:13:24,720 --> 01:13:28,559
Speaker 1: just was a big tragedy. John's sons, Oliver and Watson

1365
01:13:28,600 --> 01:13:30,960
Speaker 1: were killed during the fighting. Uh And in fact, of

1366
01:13:30,960 --> 01:13:33,240
Speaker 1: the nineteen men who went with Brown to Harper's ferry,

1367
01:13:33,280 --> 01:13:37,040
Speaker 1: ten were killed or fatally wounded. Four townspeople were also killed,

1368
01:13:37,040 --> 01:13:39,919
Speaker 1: and more than a dozen militiamen in US Marines were wounded.

1369
01:13:40,200 --> 01:13:43,479
Speaker 1: It's the Marines who finally bring him down. Not the

1370
01:13:43,479 --> 01:13:47,960
Speaker 1: proudest moment in the Marine Corps history. Um yeah, Now.

1371
01:13:48,439 --> 01:13:50,920
Speaker 1: John Brown was badly injured, but taken alive, and he

1372
01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:54,280
Speaker 1: survived long enough to stand trial. He was obviously guilty

1373
01:13:54,320 --> 01:13:56,240
Speaker 1: by the laws of the time, and the trial was

1374
01:13:56,320 --> 01:13:59,120
Speaker 1: mostly significant because it provided John with a chance to

1375
01:13:59,120 --> 01:14:02,400
Speaker 1: speak to the nation and justify his actions. The speech

1376
01:14:02,439 --> 01:14:05,400
Speaker 1: he gave before being sentenced was considered by Ralph Waldo

1377
01:14:05,479 --> 01:14:07,640
Speaker 1: Emerson to have been one of the greatest speeches in

1378
01:14:07,640 --> 01:14:11,200
Speaker 1: American history. You would like to read it? Oh yeah,

1379
01:14:11,280 --> 01:14:15,000
Speaker 1: oh yeah? Selection from it now had I inferred in

1380
01:14:15,040 --> 01:14:17,120
Speaker 1: the manner which I admit and which I admit has

1381
01:14:17,160 --> 01:14:20,120
Speaker 1: been fairly proved for I admire the truthfulness and candor

1382
01:14:20,160 --> 01:14:22,400
Speaker 1: of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified

1383
01:14:22,400 --> 01:14:24,960
Speaker 1: in this case. Had I so interfered in behalf of

1384
01:14:24,960 --> 01:14:28,479
Speaker 1: the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so called great,

1385
01:14:28,680 --> 01:14:32,360
Speaker 1: or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife,

1386
01:14:32,439 --> 01:14:35,000
Speaker 1: or children, or any of that class, and suffered and

1387
01:14:35,040 --> 01:14:38,160
Speaker 1: sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have

1388
01:14:38,200 --> 01:14:40,360
Speaker 1: been all right, and every man in this court would

1389
01:14:40,360 --> 01:14:43,160
Speaker 1: have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

1390
01:14:43,520 --> 01:14:46,000
Speaker 1: The court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the

1391
01:14:46,040 --> 01:14:48,360
Speaker 1: law of God. I see a book kissed here, which

1392
01:14:48,360 --> 01:14:50,280
Speaker 1: I supposed to be the Bible, or at least the

1393
01:14:50,280 --> 01:14:53,400
Speaker 1: New Testament, that teaches me that all things whatsoever that

1394
01:14:53,439 --> 01:14:55,320
Speaker 1: I would that men should do to me, I should

1395
01:14:55,360 --> 01:14:57,920
Speaker 1: do even so to them. It teaches me further to

1396
01:14:58,000 --> 01:15:01,160
Speaker 1: remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.

1397
01:15:01,200 --> 01:15:04,439
Speaker 1: I endeavored to act upon that instruction. I say, I

1398
01:15:04,479 --> 01:15:06,920
Speaker 1: am yet too young to understand that God is any

1399
01:15:06,960 --> 01:15:10,160
Speaker 1: respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as

1400
01:15:10,200 --> 01:15:12,320
Speaker 1: I have done, and as I have always freely admitted

1401
01:15:12,360 --> 01:15:14,760
Speaker 1: I have done in behalf of his despised poor was

1402
01:15:14,800 --> 01:15:18,440
Speaker 1: not wrong. But right now, if it is deemed necessary

1403
01:15:18,479 --> 01:15:20,640
Speaker 1: that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of

1404
01:15:20,640 --> 01:15:23,280
Speaker 1: the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with

1405
01:15:23,320 --> 01:15:25,559
Speaker 1: the blood of my children and the blood of millions

1406
01:15:25,560 --> 01:15:28,759
Speaker 1: in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked,

1407
01:15:29,000 --> 01:15:33,160
Speaker 1: cruel and unjust enactments, I submit. So let it be done.

1408
01:15:33,640 --> 01:15:36,559
Speaker 1: I mean, fuck yeah, Lifetime, there's your movie right there, baby,

1409
01:15:36,600 --> 01:15:39,880
Speaker 1: Come on, what the fun is good speech? That is

1410
01:15:39,920 --> 01:15:42,720
Speaker 1: a good fucking speech. Yeah, And I like what he

1411
01:15:42,760 --> 01:15:44,600
Speaker 1: points out that, like, hey, if I had done what

1412
01:15:44,680 --> 01:15:47,720
Speaker 1: I'd done for these poor black slaves like two of

1413
01:15:47,960 --> 01:15:50,000
Speaker 1: like the children of any rich person in this country,

1414
01:15:50,040 --> 01:15:52,240
Speaker 1: I'd be held up as a hero like you just

1415
01:15:52,280 --> 01:15:54,759
Speaker 1: don't give a funk about these people, are consider them human?

1416
01:15:55,040 --> 01:15:58,080
Speaker 1: Like fuck you. It's a good speech. Yeah, I mean

1417
01:15:59,360 --> 01:16:04,680
Speaker 1: talk about hashtag no filter man. Yeah. John Brown was

1418
01:16:04,720 --> 01:16:08,479
Speaker 1: executed by hanging on December second, eighteen fifty nine. His

1419
01:16:08,560 --> 01:16:12,120
Speaker 1: last words up. His last words, written on a scrap

1420
01:16:12,160 --> 01:16:15,400
Speaker 1: of paper and handed to a jailer, were, I John

1421
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:17,880
Speaker 1: Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this

1422
01:16:17,960 --> 01:16:21,360
Speaker 1: guilty land can never be purged away. But with blood

1423
01:16:22,240 --> 01:16:24,759
Speaker 1: he would prove to be very right. The US Civil

1424
01:16:24,760 --> 01:16:26,760
Speaker 1: War would start a little more than a year later.

1425
01:16:27,240 --> 01:16:29,479
Speaker 1: John Brown's raid was seen by many at the time

1426
01:16:29,560 --> 01:16:32,400
Speaker 1: and by many historians today as one of the primary

1427
01:16:32,479 --> 01:16:36,519
Speaker 1: sparks of that war. From the Smithsonian magazine quote. Had

1428
01:16:36,600 --> 01:16:38,800
Speaker 1: John Brown's Raid not occurred, it is very possible that

1429
01:16:38,840 --> 01:16:41,040
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixty election would have been a regular two

1430
01:16:41,120 --> 01:16:45,000
Speaker 1: party contest between anti slavery Republicans and pro slavery Democrats,

1431
01:16:45,160 --> 01:16:48,200
Speaker 1: says City University of New York historian David Reynolds, author

1432
01:16:48,200 --> 01:16:51,479
Speaker 1: of John Brown Abolitionist. The Democrats would have probably won,

1433
01:16:51,520 --> 01:16:54,280
Speaker 1: since Lincoln received just fort of the popular vote, around

1434
01:16:54,280 --> 01:16:56,640
Speaker 1: one million votes less than his three opponents. Well, the

1435
01:16:56,680 --> 01:16:59,960
Speaker 1: Democrats split over slavery Republican candidates such as William Sewar,

1436
01:17:00,120 --> 01:17:03,280
Speaker 1: we're tarnished by their association with abolitionists. Lincoln at the

1437
01:17:03,320 --> 01:17:06,120
Speaker 1: time was regarded as one of his party's more conservative options.

1438
01:17:06,439 --> 01:17:09,080
Speaker 1: John Brown was in effect a hammer that shattered Lincoln's

1439
01:17:09,080 --> 01:17:12,479
Speaker 1: opponents into fragments, says Reynolds. Because Brown helped to disrupt

1440
01:17:12,479 --> 01:17:14,960
Speaker 1: the party system, Lincoln was carried to victory, which in

1441
01:17:14,960 --> 01:17:17,559
Speaker 1: turn let eleven States to secede from the Union. This

1442
01:17:17,640 --> 01:17:23,160
Speaker 1: in turn led to the Civil War. Yeah, so that's

1443
01:17:23,280 --> 01:17:29,920
Speaker 1: John Brown. So do we think that his religion kind

1444
01:17:29,960 --> 01:17:34,599
Speaker 1: of influence his no Fox given attitude? Because he essentially like,

1445
01:17:34,680 --> 01:17:37,880
Speaker 1: no matter what he did on earth as a as

1446
01:17:37,880 --> 01:17:41,519
Speaker 1: a living being, his fate was decided at birth. So

1447
01:17:41,680 --> 01:17:44,200
Speaker 1: do you think that maybe his like no fox given

1448
01:17:44,240 --> 01:17:48,000
Speaker 1: attitude towards like I'm gonna do risk at all? But

1449
01:17:48,120 --> 01:17:50,160
Speaker 1: also like, like, do you think that had it some

1450
01:17:50,200 --> 01:17:53,080
Speaker 1: sort of influence on his ethos and ideology as a human?

1451
01:17:54,080 --> 01:17:57,360
Speaker 1: I don't think he actually believed that aspect of Calvinism

1452
01:17:57,479 --> 01:18:01,800
Speaker 1: very strongly. I I get the feeling for him, Um,

1453
01:18:01,840 --> 01:18:04,240
Speaker 1: he doesn't act like a guy who thinks everyone around

1454
01:18:04,320 --> 01:18:07,439
Speaker 1: him is going to hell um, But I don't know,

1455
01:18:07,520 --> 01:18:09,719
Speaker 1: you know, I may be wrong on that. What I'll say,

1456
01:18:09,720 --> 01:18:11,720
Speaker 1: I think, more than anything, the reason he acts the

1457
01:18:11,760 --> 01:18:16,160
Speaker 1: way he does is that he is absolutely convinced about

1458
01:18:16,200 --> 01:18:20,040
Speaker 1: everything that he believes that he is a right um

1459
01:18:20,080 --> 01:18:22,280
Speaker 1: and that made him probably pretty insufferable to be around.

1460
01:18:22,280 --> 01:18:25,880
Speaker 1: It made him a horrible, un bastard, horrible husband, yes,

1461
01:18:26,479 --> 01:18:32,600
Speaker 1: not great father, probably a very strange friend. But great abolitionist,

1462
01:18:33,360 --> 01:18:36,920
Speaker 1: but but a great abolitionist, and the man the only

1463
01:18:37,000 --> 01:18:39,360
Speaker 1: white man who was willing to do the thing that

1464
01:18:39,439 --> 01:18:42,559
Speaker 1: was so clearly necessary at that point in time, like

1465
01:18:42,880 --> 01:18:44,800
Speaker 1: somebody needed to go into the South and just start

1466
01:18:44,840 --> 01:18:47,360
Speaker 1: fucking shooting people over this stuff. Like that's what needed

1467
01:18:47,360 --> 01:18:49,760
Speaker 1: to happen. I mean, it's fucked up, like we don't

1468
01:18:49,760 --> 01:18:51,400
Speaker 1: want things to have to go that way, but that's

1469
01:18:51,400 --> 01:18:54,599
Speaker 1: what had to happen. Like he was the locust white

1470
01:18:54,600 --> 01:18:59,719
Speaker 1: man of the eighteen hundreds, which is mhm, a compliment

1471
01:18:59,720 --> 01:19:05,520
Speaker 1: in an insult. Yeah, it's an insult to everyone else. Yeah, Um,

1472
01:19:05,560 --> 01:19:10,559
Speaker 1: but yeah, he's a remarkable person. Um. And uh, you

1473
01:19:10,600 --> 01:19:13,839
Speaker 1: can see why people is varied as like abortion clinic

1474
01:19:13,880 --> 01:19:17,599
Speaker 1: bombers and William Spronson, who was you know, outraged about

1475
01:19:17,840 --> 01:19:21,320
Speaker 1: the deportations by Ice in the child concentration camps. Why

1476
01:19:21,360 --> 01:19:24,360
Speaker 1: people like both of those people can see something in

1477
01:19:24,479 --> 01:19:29,559
Speaker 1: him inspirational. Um. Yeah, And I I go back and

1478
01:19:29,600 --> 01:19:35,240
Speaker 1: forth myself as to like what would John Brown be today? Um,

1479
01:19:35,280 --> 01:19:38,760
Speaker 1: Because like obviously, if he'd been like a hardcore fundamentalist,

1480
01:19:39,080 --> 01:19:42,160
Speaker 1: you know, religious person, you might assume he would be

1481
01:19:42,240 --> 01:19:44,639
Speaker 1: one way. But I also kind of get the feeling

1482
01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:46,320
Speaker 1: of John that if he'd grown up in a different era,

1483
01:19:46,439 --> 01:19:49,400
Speaker 1: he might have been a fundamentalist of something else, like

1484
01:19:49,479 --> 01:19:51,439
Speaker 1: this is the kind of guy. It kind of depended

1485
01:19:51,479 --> 01:19:54,320
Speaker 1: on how he was raised. But whatever he was, like,

1486
01:19:54,800 --> 01:19:57,000
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, I think he I think more

1487
01:19:57,040 --> 01:19:59,680
Speaker 1: than anything, because there were a lot of Calvinists who

1488
01:19:59,680 --> 01:20:01,880
Speaker 1: were ave owning assholes, Like there were a lot of

1489
01:20:01,880 --> 01:20:06,160
Speaker 1: like like religious people, like like Bible believing Christians in

1490
01:20:06,160 --> 01:20:09,559
Speaker 1: this period who used it as a justification for their slavery.

1491
01:20:09,640 --> 01:20:13,080
Speaker 1: So I think that while he was a fundamentalist religious man,

1492
01:20:13,600 --> 01:20:16,280
Speaker 1: the core of what John Brown was was a respecter

1493
01:20:16,560 --> 01:20:21,760
Speaker 1: of human dignity and freedom. Um, and his outrage at

1494
01:20:21,760 --> 01:20:25,280
Speaker 1: what was being done to blacks in America. Um, I

1495
01:20:25,320 --> 01:20:28,520
Speaker 1: think he would be. I think the core of his personality,

1496
01:20:28,680 --> 01:20:31,320
Speaker 1: were he alive in a modern age, would be outrage

1497
01:20:31,560 --> 01:20:35,320
Speaker 1: at injustice rather than any particular religious ideology. I do

1498
01:20:35,439 --> 01:20:38,040
Speaker 1: feel that about him. Yeah, I mean that's I'm not

1499
01:20:38,080 --> 01:20:40,360
Speaker 1: sure what he would have picked. Sorry, I mean I

1500
01:20:40,400 --> 01:20:43,800
Speaker 1: feel like, after hearing this entire thing, I feel like

1501
01:20:43,840 --> 01:20:52,160
Speaker 1: that is kind of a very accurate yeah interpretation of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1502
01:20:52,240 --> 01:20:57,360
Speaker 1: I mean very definitely heroic definitely flawed, definitely did what

1503
01:20:57,400 --> 01:21:00,120
Speaker 1: was necessary and definitely was the only one to really

1504
01:21:00,240 --> 01:21:06,439
Speaker 1: do it in the way he did. Yep. And as

1505
01:21:07,040 --> 01:21:09,680
Speaker 1: even you know, you can be flawed, but if you're

1506
01:21:09,720 --> 01:21:11,880
Speaker 1: the only one doing the thing that needs to be done,

1507
01:21:12,000 --> 01:21:15,519
Speaker 1: that's all that really matters in the end. Yeah, yep,

1508
01:21:16,320 --> 01:21:20,120
Speaker 1: So that's John Brown, John and Brown if he would

1509
01:21:20,160 --> 01:21:25,680
Speaker 1: be really pissed at me using funk so much in

1510
01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:29,719
Speaker 1: this episode celebrating him, but oh yeah, he's the fun Police.

1511
01:21:29,760 --> 01:21:32,840
Speaker 1: I forgot he's the fun Police. But he's also dead now,

1512
01:21:32,880 --> 01:21:34,559
Speaker 1: so fuck it, Like he's not going to get angry

1513
01:21:34,600 --> 01:21:37,720
Speaker 1: at me. Yeah, we didn't. And you know, we don't

1514
01:21:37,720 --> 01:21:39,920
Speaker 1: know where he ended up because we don't know where

1515
01:21:39,920 --> 01:21:44,120
Speaker 1: he ended up. Yeah, fuck fucking John Brown. Fu Fu

1516
01:21:44,280 --> 01:21:48,120
Speaker 1: fu fucking John Brown. I like it, Sophie. You got

1517
01:21:48,120 --> 01:21:50,760
Speaker 1: any plug doubles to plug? I really like this one

1518
01:21:50,800 --> 01:21:54,160
Speaker 1: show called Behind the Bastards, And I really like this

1519
01:21:54,200 --> 01:21:58,080
Speaker 1: other show called Worst Yere Ever. And if you haven't

1520
01:21:58,120 --> 01:22:02,000
Speaker 1: listened to it could happen here yet what are you doing? Yeah,

1521
01:22:02,080 --> 01:22:03,960
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know that listeners of this show

1522
01:22:03,960 --> 01:22:06,080
Speaker 1: would like Behind the Bastards are Worst Year Ever? But

1523
01:22:06,120 --> 01:22:10,280
Speaker 1: I guess they might. Yeah, I mean I guess I

1524
01:22:10,320 --> 01:22:19,920
Speaker 1: have Instagram, Sophie Underscore, underscore, sunshine, lots of underscores. So

1525
01:22:19,960 --> 01:22:22,160
Speaker 1: if you have sunshine with underscores in between the words

1526
01:22:23,720 --> 01:22:26,439
Speaker 1: I post pictures of Anderson, that's where you can find

1527
01:22:26,439 --> 01:22:29,720
Speaker 1: pictures of Anderson and and you getting that listeners is

1528
01:22:29,760 --> 01:22:34,040
Speaker 1: my Christmas present to all of you. Yeah. I don't

1529
01:22:34,040 --> 01:22:36,360
Speaker 1: have Twitter because Robert has Twitter, and Robert does on

1530
01:22:36,439 --> 01:22:41,400
Speaker 1: Instagram because I have Instagram. That's just how that works. Cool. Well,

1531
01:22:43,080 --> 01:22:46,400
Speaker 1: I love Twitter. I don't, but you can find me there.

1532
01:22:46,760 --> 01:22:53,360
Speaker 1: Uh okay, yeah, um you can find me not on Instagram. Um,

1533
01:22:53,400 --> 01:22:55,639
Speaker 1: but you can find this podcast on Instagram or Twitter

1534
01:22:55,680 --> 01:23:04,320
Speaker 1: at Bastard's pod. Um, you can find you can find

1535
01:23:04,360 --> 01:23:06,240
Speaker 1: the answer to the question of what you need to

1536
01:23:06,240 --> 01:23:08,920
Speaker 1: do in our trying times if you look into the

1537
01:23:09,000 --> 01:23:12,800
Speaker 1: stories of men like Raoul Wallenberg and John Brown. And

1538
01:23:12,840 --> 01:23:16,400
Speaker 1: that's all I'm gonna say on the matter. Um, So

1539
01:23:17,200 --> 01:23:20,760
Speaker 1: go hug a cat, celebrate whatever holidays you do or

1540
01:23:20,800 --> 01:23:23,360
Speaker 1: don't celebrate, or just celebrate the fact that most things

1541
01:23:23,400 --> 01:23:25,040
Speaker 1: are going to close down for a couple of days

1542
01:23:25,040 --> 01:23:27,120
Speaker 1: and we all have a chance to chill. Um. And

1543
01:23:27,160 --> 01:23:29,799
Speaker 1: then come back in the next year, ready to kick ass,

1544
01:23:29,880 --> 01:23:36,360
Speaker 1: take names, and seize Harper's ferry. And um don't have

1545
01:23:36,479 --> 01:23:42,200
Speaker 1: dreams about petting a raccoon. Yes, I have many dreams

1546
01:23:42,200 --> 01:23:44,559
Speaker 1: about don't. Actually do not, do not. John Brown will

1547
01:23:44,600 --> 01:23:46,280
Speaker 1: come back from the dead and kick your ass if

1548
01:23:46,320 --> 01:23:52,200
Speaker 1: you have be a friend of squirrel, the friend of squirrel.

1549
01:23:52,320 --> 01:23:55,320
Speaker 1: Don't dream about raccoons except this squirrel that torture is

1550
01:23:55,360 --> 01:23:59,040
Speaker 1: my dog an asshole. Yeah. I think John Brown would

1551
01:23:59,040 --> 01:24:02,240
Speaker 1: have hated that squirrel too. Yeah, that's that guy. Anyways,

1552
01:24:02,320 --> 01:24:07,439
Speaker 1: happy whatever, end of year. Uh yeah, yeah, go go

1553
01:24:07,560 --> 01:24:13,640
Speaker 1: have fun, drink lots of eggnog. I will yeah h

1554
01:24:15,640 --> 01:24:15,680
Speaker 1: h