WEBVTT - John Brown: Terrorist, Hero or Terrorist Hero? 0:00:01.520 --> 0:00:07.280 Mary Holiday, Miss Wanna Conic of whatever Holidays. It's the 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:12.000 time of the year where people celebrate things, and maybe 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.760 this year people feel a little bit less like celebrating 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:16.560 because it has been a dark one. In the year 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:19.599 before it was also pretty dark, and next year it 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:23.799 is not going to be less dark. But we have 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:28.560 another Behind the Bastard's Christmas Special, which uh is, you know, 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:30.720 a bit of a tradition here. Well is now the 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:33.000 second time we've done it, so now it's officially a 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:36.440 tradition where we break with our tradition of telling stories 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:38.720 about the worst people in all of history and instead 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:43.320 highlight a hero. Last year I told everybody the story 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:45.640 of Raoul Wallenberg, a man who risked his life and 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:48.879 spent the entirety of his considerable privilege saving lives from 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:51.320 the Nazis. And this year we're going to talk about 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:55.800 another hero of mine, John eff and Brown. And today 0:00:56.000 --> 0:01:00.120 my guest is my producer, so be Airhorn air an 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:06.119 air Horn, Sophie. Are you how's your how's your holiday going? 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.360 It's holiday? You know? Yeah? You you? You do you 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:15.679 enjoy this time of year? Are you big Christmas her? No? No, 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:18.160 I mean I don't dislike this time here, But I'm 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:23.800 not like, yeah, what's your what's your favorite holiday? Easter? 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:29.119 Well that's the wrong answer, but they don't. Just give 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:31.600 me the funniest look. But it is actually true. The 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.880 Easter is our favorite holiday, such a ship holiday, other 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:38.399 than the Cadburry cream eggs, which are objectively great, like candies, 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.880 the best for Easter. It is the best for Easter. 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:45.040 And that's a serious injustice because the pies are best 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:52.520 for Christmas. Um so, Sophie, so fee so fee so 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:57.600 fee um. Here we are. What do you know about 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:02.520 John Brown? For the second podcast? I know nothing. You 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:04.120 know nothing, You don't know any of the name, doesn't 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:08.519 ring any bells to you. Let's just let's just know really, okay, Well, 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:12.760 uh yeah, he's probably somebody people heard about in high school. 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.799 For like a paragraph or two. He's usually like right 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:18.200 before the Civil War starts, you get a couple of paragraphs, 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:20.400 are like one of those little insert boxes about John 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.600 Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry. Um, and he's 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.440 a He's an interesting guy because, like Wallenberg, he gave 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:32.799 his life fighting against the greatest evil of his age. Um. 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:36.040 But Waldenberg was kind of like almost a saint like 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:40.240 in terms of his personal character and conduct. Um. And 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.600 John Brown was a terrorist, It doesn't mean he was 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:48.000 wrong in a well, he grew up in the like 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.799 early eighteen hundreds when life was terrible, so like he 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:53.880 probably looked that way by the time he was fucking twenty. 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.960 But yeah, he he looks rough. The only pictures you 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:00.840 that exist of him, his skin looks like tanned leather. 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:03.760 Um Like, he looks like he's been getting punched in 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:08.960 the face by sandpaper for a living for fifty seven years. Um. Yes, 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:14.120 he's hard life so well. I was researching this episode, 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:16.720 I came across an article by the Smithsonian magazine. It 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:19.720 includes a quote from Dennis Fry, the National Park Services 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:23.080 chief historian for Harper's Ferry, where John Brown conducted his 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:26.360 famous raid to try to liberate the slaves of the 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:31.000 American South. Uh And Fry said this about John Americans 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:34.360 do not deliberate about John Brown. They feel him. He 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:36.320 is still a life today in the American soul. He 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:38.320 represents something for each of us, but none of us 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:41.240 is in agreement about what he means. And that's really 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.120 interesting to me. Because John Brown's legacy has been cited 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.320 by bombers of abortion clinics, and most recently by William 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:51.680 Van Spronson, who assaulted an ice facility in Tacoma, Washington 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:54.440 and died attempting to destroy their buses to stop him 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:58.240 from being able to deport people. Um So, John Brown 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:00.000 is the kind of guy who speaks to a lot 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.280 of people. Was gonna said, range of audience? Yeah, literally 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:07.000 the whitest range possible if you're looking at folks who 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:10.720 were influenced by this guy. Um So, this is a 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.320 more complicated story, I think morally than the story of Wallenberg. 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:17.240 But I do think John Brown was still a hero. 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.600 Um So, Well, we'll see how you feel at the 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.920 end of this tale. John Brown was born on May 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:27.400 nine hundred to Owen Brown and Ruth Mills in the 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:32.720 town of Torrington, Connecticut. Well, there you go. He might 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.440 be the descendant of John Brown. Yeah. Uh. John was 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:39.000 the fourth of eight children between his father and his 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.880 father's first wife. John's namesake was Captain John Brown, a 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.200 farmer and revolutionary war hero who had briefly fought against 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.360 the British and seventeen seventy six before dying of dysentery 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:53.440 in New York barn. The I guess that qualifies you's 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.760 a hero. When Captain Brown died, he left behind a 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:00.360 pregnant widow and ten children, including Owen Brown, who wrote 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:02.760 that after his father's death, we lost our crops and 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.200 then our cattle, and so became poor. Uh So John 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.760 Brown does not come from money unlike Wallenberg. Um, he's 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:13.080 he's he's he's from a family that's been poor since 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:16.960 his dad was little. Um. Now, the Browns were strict Calvinists, 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:21.320 and in brief Calvinism, Yeah, do you know what Calvinism is? Yeah, 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.479 how would you describe Calvinism, Sophie. It's like it's like 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:35.080 super strict Christianity our phrasing. It's like it's intense. It's 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:41.560 like they like really really believed in like the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:42.920 And they're like the kind of a lot in a 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.520 lot of ways, the predecessors of a lot of today's evangelicals. Um. 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.479 Because they believe that you can't do good things to 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.799 save your soul from from hell. Um, like it's totally 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:55.799 God's choice. Um. And so a lot of them believe 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:58.160 that like where you go end up after death is 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:01.960 like predicted or is like decided before your birth. Um, 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:06.240 so they were. They were pretty hardcore fundamentalists. Um. Yeah, 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.400 it's not great. It's not my my particular choice of religion, 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.240 but it was a pretty common one at that point 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:12.960 in time, and in the plate part of America where 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:16.400 Brown grew up. It's like, hey, it wasn't a great time. 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:21.200 But also you're going to hell. But also, yeah, it 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:25.960 doesn't matter what you do. Yeah, that's very depressing. Yeah, 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:29.560 when you read religious tracts from people back then, the 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.520 kind of God they worship seems more like a terrorist 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.920 to me. But um, and not the good kind of terrorists, 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:42.320 which we're talking about today, not this kind of a terrorist. Like. Yeah, Now, 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:44.520 some of what we know about John's early life comes 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:46.600 from a note he wrote a twelve year old who 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:48.599 was the son of one of the men who financed 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.680 his crusade against slavery. So he like wrote this summary 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:53.200 of his life for the kid of one of the 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:58.040 people who was backing this guerrilla war that he fighting. Yeah, 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.360 that's my starch of choice. Yeah, I write notes to 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:05.000 a lot of twelve year olds just waging a grill 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:09.800 a war. It does it sounds creepier than it was? Um, yeah, 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:12.320 it wasn't really creepy, but it does sound creepy when 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.280 you sum it up that way. Um. And in that note, 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:18.400 here's how Brown described his childhood. Uh and he wrote 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:20.520 this in the third person because he's a weirdo. I 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:22.640 cannot tell you of anything in the first four years 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.280 of John's life worth mentioning, save that at an early age, 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:27.920 he was tempted by three large brass pins belonging to 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.280 a girl who lived in the family and stole them. 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:32.360 In this he was detected by his mother and, after 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:34.480 having a full day to think of the wrong, received 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:38.800 from her a thorough whipping. So this is what John 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:40.960 Brown thinks it's important to tell a little kid about 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:48.040 his childhood. He's like, hey, kid, back in my day pins, Yeah, 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:53.920 well that guy he punishment is important to him. He's like, listen, listen, 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:56.920 you think you had it bad? Whipping all, I'm gonna 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:00.200 say whipping. Oh I bet that kid get whipped too. 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.320 I think they were whipping kids all throughout the eight hundreds. 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:09.640 But is it wasn't like that normal? Yeah? Yeah, for sure, right, yeah, 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:12.320 the the abuse like obviously, like we can say that 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:14.520 what happened to John Brown as a kid was abuse 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.600 um by our standards, but at the time it was 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:19.920 pretty much just how kids grew up. You know, you 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:24.600 give them some whippings. They were harder times, Robert. Yeah. 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:26.720 And it was also a time in which the most 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.320 common reaction to gut wrenching poverty was to pack up 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.880 everything you owned and just move vaguely west. Uh. And 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.160 in Brown's case, this took his family to Ohio, which 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.440 at that point was called very funny. It sounds like 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.880 half my relatives or like, you know what what I did? Yeah, 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:47.040 I mean, yeah, it sounds like my parents. Yeah, it's 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.120 it's it's kind of the defining emotion of this country. 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:53.920 Not happy here. What if I had Westmore and you're like, 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:57.560 all right, I'm I'm now I'm in San Diego. What 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.199 do I do? It's like I guess the sea. Yeah, 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:03.720 if you're miserable in San Diego, you just gotta walk 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.320 into the ocean. Yeah, don't walk into the ad. Don't 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:09.680 do that unless you're like walking. But like you're still 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.520 you can still yet, we don't, we don't, we don't 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:16.400 contron drowning um continue. Yeah. So Brown's family moved to 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:18.560 Ohio when he was a wee lad which at that 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:20.880 point was not called Ohio. It was called the Western 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.960 Reserve by Connecticuttians. I don't know what you call people 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:28.920 from Connecticut, and I refused to learn. Um so Owen, Yeah, no, 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:33.520 the well they should have lived in a state that 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:40.079 should have gone with a better name. Yeah, the fucking uh. 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:46.280 Iowa's right there, Rhode Island. All find names now. Owen 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:49.000 Brown considered this move west to be an active religious 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.000 devotion as well as practicality, part of a glorious attempt 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:54.800 to extend the benefits of Christendom further into what he 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:58.600 saw as an untamed continent. John Brown, however, loved the 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:01.400 wild nature of the west in Reserve. He wrote with 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:04.240 excitement that it was a quote wilderness filled with wild 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:08.040 beasts and indians now. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Brown 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:10.360 and his family were on friendly terms with the natives. 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:12.480 One of John's friends was a Native American boy who 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:14.880 gave him a yellow marble as a gift. John was 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:17.800 heartbroken when he lost it, according to the book Midnight 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:21.520 Rising by Tony Horwitz. Quote. He also displayed an unusual 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:25.120 tolerance towards the native inhabitants of Ohio. Some persons seemed 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.560 disposed to quarrel with the Indians, But I never was, 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.880 he wrote, Nor did he proselytize or damn natives as heathens, 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.559 as Puritans of old would have done. Instead, he traded 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:35.600 meal for fish and game. He also built a log 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.839 shelter to protect local Indians from an Indian tribe. Young 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.360 John used to hang about Indians as much as he could, 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.240 the beginnings of a lifelong sympathy for natives that stood 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.360 in start contrast at the prevailing hostility of white Americans. 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.880 So we're seeing a guy here who's capable of at 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.560 least transcending from an early age, capable of transcending the 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.800 biases of his time to an extent right, that loves 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.720 to mention sources of young boys. Well, he was a 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:04.000 young boy. He was like he was like five, six 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:05.599 years old. Yeah, he was a little kid. He was 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.000 not a young man. At this point. You're like that 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:11.000 it was a yellow marble. Yeah, it was a yellow marble. 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:13.959 That's the best color of marble, I assume. Obviously I 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:15.800 don't know much about marble. Yell is my favorite call it. 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:20.839 That's why I'm saying, And I'm a narcissist. So continue weird, Sophie. Now. 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:23.600 During this period, John Brown started will become a lifelong 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:26.280 practice of living in difficult conditions and surviving off of 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:29.320 his wits. He spent basically his whole childhood camping and 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.280 hunting for meat. His father dressed him in the hides 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:34.559 of animals that his family had killed, and John grew 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.120 up living off of animals but also holding great affection 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.240 for them. As a young boy, he found a baby 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.080 bobtail squirrel which he raised and hand tamed. When his 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:47.440 beloved pet died, he mourned it for years. Very sensitive boy. Yeah, Yeah, 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:50.560 he's he's He's got some sweetness to him Nowaday j. 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.199 John's mother died in childbirth. His father remarried almost immediately, 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.560 and John considered his stepmother a very esteemable woman, but 0:11:57.640 --> 0:11:59.280 he never got over the loss of his mom, and 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:00.959 he would mourn her of the rest of his life. 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.800 In total, John's father, Owen, married three women, the last 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:06.920 time when he was in his sixties, and he had 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:10.000 sixteen children totally with him, which is a number that 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:14.319 John would best. Yeah, the Browns make a lot of people, 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:20.480 I mean, damn John. Yeah. Now, as a boy, John 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.360 is what you would call spirited. You would have to 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:25.840 be to be one of sixteen. You gotta stick out, yeah, 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:29.240 you gotta stick out. Yeah. And he seems to have. Um. 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:30.960 He lied to his parents a lot, and he was 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:33.960 punished for it regularly. He played very hard and was 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:37.280 notable for like playing in a kind of a violent manner. 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.960 He probably hurt a lot of his friends. Um. He 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:41.800 seems to have been one of those people who was 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:45.920 just unreasonably full of energy from a very young age. Um, 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:47.880 And that he was that way his entire life. He 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.200 always had way too much fucking energy. Like reading about 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:54.600 John Brown's life is fucking exhausting. Um. So John wrote 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:57.120 that he was quote ambitious to perform the full labor 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.440 of a man when he was already a young child, 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:02.199 and he started working full time at age twelve when 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.040 he drove his father's heard of cattle one hundred miles 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:09.000 on his own. So he's just immediately doing like more 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.720 work than most grant women today. How many cattle are 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:14.520 in a herd? Um, I don't know, but it's probably 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:16.640 a few, doesn't at least? Is that like a thing 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:18.160 that people are going to be like? How do you 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.000 know that well, no, there's no set number for a herd. 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:25.680 It's just a group of cows. Um. So by the 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:29.600 time this kid is I hate cows. Why they're just 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:33.439 stupid fat horses. That's what I think. The average hard 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.080 size in the US is just over two hundred I think, 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:40.440 but that's now the Canadian dairy herds average. That's probably 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:43.880 closer to so interesting they would have expected, yeah, I 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:45.320 don't think you would have that. That would have been 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.119 a pretty large herd back then. But I don't know. 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:52.680 Farms with more than a hundred cows makeup just oh no, 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:55.360 less than that, less than less than a percent of 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.000 the total jerry farm population. This is so interesting. Sorry, 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.000 I continue far marcro up on head about a hundred 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:03.880 hundred head of cattle. But you don't like cows, Well 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:05.600 that's part of why I don't like cows. I lived 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:08.720 close to him for years what they mean, so you know, 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.600 in all fairness to the cows, I was worse to 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:13.840 the cows than the cows were to me because I 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:15.960 was a little boy and it was fun to hurt 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:20.760 them with a broomstick. And uh, all right, Harry Potter, alright, 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.320 Harry Potter, Well know you just you just hit him 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:26.120 in the ass and they run around. I would love 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:28.840 to see Anderson with like a herd of cow. Oh, 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.240 they let dogs love it. I mean she has herding instincts. 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:33.480 I mean she's a little of the ground, but she 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:39.560 is technically a cattle dog. Yeah, Anderson, do you hear this? Yeah, 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:43.120 she would love that now. Uh So, by the time 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:45.680 John Brown is like a teenager, and by that I 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:48.360 mean like thirteen or fourteen, he's probably done more hard 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:50.880 physical labor than like most of the grown men in 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:53.800 the US today have done in their whole lives. Um 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.440 and most stories you'll read about John will emphasize that 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:59.840 he was almost supernaturally tough and had an endless tolerance 0:14:59.880 --> 0:15:02.920 for hard work in physical pain. This was matched with 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.320 a fanatic, religious sort of distaste for comfort. He would 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.560 later write with pride that he had never attempted to dance, 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.400 never learned any card games, and nursday profound dislike for Vein. 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.400 In frintless conversations, He's like, I never learned a dance. 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:23.440 Oh my god, he foot loosed himself real hard, dude. 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:29.520 Oh man, that's hard to hear. Bacon, he did need 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.720 Kevin Bacon. One Kevin Bacon could have really and that 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:36.160 makes me think if you had, if you had Kevin 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:38.800 Bacon and John Brown starring side by side in the 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:46.320 first Tremors would have been a fun movie. So sad, yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:50.880 I mean yeah, his his religions a bummer um. So 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:54.280 John later would write that his eternal war with slavery 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:57.000 also started when he was twelve, when he came upon 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.920 a young black slave boy being beaten with shovels for 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.000 some minor crime. He wrote in his letter to that 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:05.640 little kid. This brought John to reflect on the wretched, 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:10.880 hopeless condition of fatherless and motherless slave children. Now, I'm 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:12.480 sure he saw stuff like that, and it may not 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:13.880 have happened when he was twelve. He was writing a 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:16.560 letter to a twelve year old. Maybe he giitted a bit, 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:19.240 but it does seem accurate to say, basically, why is 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.200 he writing a letter to a twelve year old? Do 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:23.880 we know? Yeah? Yeah, one of his like as a 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:26.000 as an older man, will get to this. He's funding 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:28.760 like a guerrilla insurgency to try to free the slaves 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:30.360 of the South, and he gets a bunch of rich 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:32.560 backers and while he's like dining with one of them, 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:34.760 this kid asks about his life and asks him to 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:37.200 write a letter. Oh, so it's a Hallmark movie, but 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.080 kind of. I mean it's more like, Uh, this guy 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.280 is illegally funding a terrorist and the guy's kid wants 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:45.920 to know more about the John Brown's life. So John 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:47.720 Brown writes in a note, so we can buy more guns. 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:51.560 Got it. So it's a lifetime movie. Yeah, lifetime movie. Yeah. 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:56.200 So Brown studied to be a pastor but wound up 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:58.640 not choosing that life, and it's likely that he would 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:00.520 have been bored to tears by the work, but he 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.520 remained a devoted Calvinist his entire life, following in his 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:07.080 father's footsteps. Yeah, and he was like he was still 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:10.399 like really woke as a Calvinist. Like when his church, uh, 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:12.959 he learned that black people weren't allowed to sit at 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:14.320 the front of the church, they had to sit in 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:16.560 the back. He made a big point in the middle 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:19.159 of service of getting up with his family, marching to 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:21.600 the back, uh, walking up to one of the black 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:23.840 families and offering them his seat at the front of 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:27.560 the church, and then sitting in the back with his family. Um. So, 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:32.200 like he's committed from the jump to to racial equality, 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:36.119 not just to abolition, but to like total racial equality, 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:40.520 which fucking nobody is at this period. Like most abolitionists 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:46.000 are still pretty fucking racist, but not John Brown. Um. Yeah. 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.320 At twenty, following his dad's advice, John Brown married Diane 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:55.840 Lusk Lusk Dianne Lusk. Yeah. Weird name, Yeah, Diane d 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:00.520 I A N T h E. Dianne Lusk. We name. 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.440 I don't hate it though, No, it's it's a nice name. 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.080 He describes her in his letters as remarkably plain but 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:16.399 industrious and economical. So it's like she wasn't a bad bitch, 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:23.560 but she's ugly. But I'm like she this is this 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:27.399 is trash and does not pass the Bechdel tests. Continue. Yeah, 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.359 well you're asking for too much if you want someone 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:35.960 to be racially and gender woke. Eighteen thirty Yeah, definitely 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.359 can of both. No where. Yeah. Their first child was 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:46.960 born a year after they married. Jane Jr. Knows Owen. Um, 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:50.400 come on, no, no, no, I'm I'm getting that name wrong. 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:54.439 I write it down somewhere later. Um. Yeah. John and 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:56.760 his father Owen do not sound like there would have 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:58.440 been fun people to hang out with, but they were 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.000 on the right side of the debate. He has an Owen, 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:04.720 He has a John Brown Jr. Oh, he has a Salmon. 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:09.000 His son's name Sam Holy. He had some weird names. 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:12.840 Wait he also he's a fun ten of children too. Yeah, 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.680 he has twenty and more than half of them survived 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:21.560 to adulthood. Some of them die fighting with him. Yeah. Ellen, 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:23.720 my mom's name is Ellen high Mom. She listens to 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:28.479 our show and there you go. So John and his 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:30.680 dad were on the right side of the slavery debate 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:33.840 from the beginning. Owen had been a fierce abolitionist in 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:36.320 an era when that really wasn't the thing. He was 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:38.560 also a pacifist, and for a time John Brown was 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:41.520 a pacifist too, So they fought slavery without fighting the 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:44.679 people who kept slaves, largely by helping escaped slaves with 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:47.480 shelter and food on their way across the underground railroad. 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:49.879 So well, John is a kid. He and his family 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.680 are like helping to hide escaped slaves as they make 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:54.240 their way up to Canada. So this is like a 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:58.080 part of his life from like the teenage years on. Um. 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.160 When John was twenty one, he moved his young Emily 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:02.800 to Pennsylvania and bought two hundred acres of land. He 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.040 built a house and a tannery on it. Now, the 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:07.440 tannery had a hidden room which Brown used to hide 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:10.199 escape slaves from the South. From the mid eighteen twenties 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:14.120 to eighteen thirty five, the Brown family hosted an estimated 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:17.760 escaped slaves, playing a critical role in their journey to freedom. 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:21.520 So he's a committed abolitionist and like putting his money 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:23.800 where his mouth is his entire life. Now, while he 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.080 was helping to work the underground railroad, John was also 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.280 helping to found a new settlement in rural Pennsylvania. He's 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:31.359 built a school, and he built a church, and he 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.520 was the area's first postmaster. One of his neighbors described 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:38.000 him as an inspired paternal ruler, controlling and providing for 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.560 the circle of which he was the head. Have a question, Yeah, 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:43.879 how is he funding all this? I mean, it doesn't 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.480 take that much money. Like he works, and he like 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:48.680 you could buy two hundred acres was like a few 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:51.359 bucks back then. Like, because they're trying to most of 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.120 this area after the whole genocide of the Native Americans thing, 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.920 there's an unspeakable amount of empty territory that the government 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:00.520 wants people farming. So there's all these deals where you 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:02.800 can get most of the land for free or basically 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:04.840 for free, you can get alone or there's no interest 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:07.520 because they're they're just trying to get people farming and 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.359 using it um to make sure it was realistic and 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:15.000 it wasn't like an episode of Friends. No no, no Um. Now, 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:16.800 as you might imagine, there were a lot of people 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:19.760 who didn't get along with John Brown. His wife's brother 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:21.800 was only able to visit the family on Sundays, and 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.680 so John hated him because visiting on Sunday was a 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.680 sin against God. Uh. John was so strict about keeping 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.800 the Sabbath that his church banned all worldly conversation on 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:33.480 that day, so you couldn't talk about anything but religion 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:37.080 on on Sunday. Making cheese and hanging out with your 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:41.480 friends was also forbidden on Sunday. Work Yeah, it's it's 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:45.880 a lay mass religion um. Workers on John's tannery were 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:48.600 required to attend his church and hold daily worship sessions 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:51.679 with their families. One of John's apprentices described him as 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:54.280 friendly as long as the conversation did not turn towards 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:58.800 anything he considered profane. Or vulgar. Brown's younger brother described 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:01.920 him as a king against whom there is no rising up. 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:07.520 So that one word, a king against whom there is 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:10.359