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Speaker 1: Build it Beautiful. Hey, I'm Chuck and I'm Josh and

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Speaker 1: we're the host of Stuff. You should know the podcast

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Speaker 1: that's right and if you're into understanding cool and unusual

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Speaker 1: and seemingly ordinary and even boring things that are made interesting,

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Speaker 1: you should check us out. Please and thank you. We're

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Speaker 1: on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, anywhere you get podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Steph. You missed in history class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Sean Brown's

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Speaker 1: raid on Harper's Ferry has come up two different times

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Speaker 1: in recent episodes of our podcast. The first time within

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Speaker 1: our two parter on Harriet Tubman, and then it came

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Speaker 1: up at again in our episode on Mary Anne Shad Carrie.

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Speaker 1: And then it came up two different times on a

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Speaker 1: completely different podcast which is politically reactive with w Comal

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Speaker 1: Bell and Harrikondabolo and on as I said, on two

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Speaker 1: different episodes plus We've had a ton of listener request

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Speaker 1: to talk about this one as well, so it seems

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Speaker 1: like it's time for the world to have an episode

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Speaker 1: on John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. There you go

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Speaker 1: for background. John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut, on

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Speaker 1: May nine of eighteen hundred. His family were strict Calvinists,

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Speaker 1: and John's father, Owen, was a white abolitionist who believed

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Speaker 1: fervently that holding people in bondage was a sin against God.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen o five, Owen moved the family to Hudson, Ohio,

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Speaker 1: where he became deeply involved in the town's efforts in

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Speaker 1: the Underground Railroad, including sheltering escaping slaves in the family's barn.

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Speaker 1: There are still a bunch of houses and Hudson that

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Speaker 1: are still existing that we're tied to the under ground railroad,

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Speaker 1: and when he read the descriptions of them, his name

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Speaker 1: comes up over and over and over again. In eighteen

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Speaker 1: twenty one, John Brown married Diantha Lusk, with whom he

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Speaker 1: would have seven children before both she and their seventh

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Speaker 1: child died in eighteen thirty two. Then in eighteen thirty three,

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Speaker 1: Brown remarried Mary Day, who at that point was sixteen,

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Speaker 1: and the two of them would have another thirteen children.

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Speaker 1: There are also several sources that say they adopted a

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Speaker 1: previously enslaved child and then raised that child as their

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Speaker 1: own as well. Brown approached parenthood in a way that

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Speaker 1: was both strict and austere, including some corporal punishment that

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Speaker 1: could be described as cruel. In eighteen thirty seven, at

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Speaker 1: the memorial service for anti slavery newspaper publisher Elijah Lovejoy,

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Speaker 1: who had been murdered by a pro slavery mob, Brown

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Speaker 1: made a public vow. He stood before the congregation and said, quote,

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Speaker 1: here before God, in the presence of these witness, is

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Speaker 1: I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery. This

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Speaker 1: devotion to ending slavery and his Calvinist upbringing would eventually

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Speaker 1: combine into a complete and utter certainty that he was

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Speaker 1: predestined to bring about slavery's end. It was a while

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Speaker 1: before he really put that belief into concrete action, though.

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Speaker 1: He and his family moved around a lot, and during

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Speaker 1: his life, Brown would live, among other places, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kansas, Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: and New York. He also moved from job to job,

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Speaker 1: doing everything from farming to land speculation to trading wool

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Speaker 1: to try to earn his money, and for the most part,

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Speaker 1: these efforts to make money were not particularly successful. In

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Speaker 1: in eighteen forty two he even wound up in federal

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Speaker 1: court as he went through a bankruptcy partially brought on

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Speaker 1: by the Panic of eighteen thirty seven. But as has

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Speaker 1: been the case with some of our other podcast subjects,

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Speaker 1: including Bronson Alcott and Harriet Tubman, he didn't let a

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Speaker 1: lack of money stop him from trying to put what

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Speaker 1: he did have towards causes that mattered to him. These efforts,

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Speaker 1: in many cases were ambitious. For example, Brown wanted to

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Speaker 1: expand the underground railroad into what he called the Subterranean Pathway,

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Speaker 1: and this would be an enormous effort that would take

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Speaker 1: advantage of the remote and difficult terrain of the Appalachian

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Speaker 1: Mountains to extend the underground railroads activities beyond the border

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Speaker 1: states and into the deep South. Under this plan, a

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Speaker 1: small group of operatives would raid plantations, liberate the people

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Speaker 1: enslave there, and then guide them into the mountains where

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Speaker 1: they could be secreted north. He hoped to free hundreds

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Speaker 1: of thousands of slaves in this way, but the subterranean

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Speaker 1: Passway wasn't just about freedom. As part of this plan,

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Speaker 1: some of these liberated people would become part of an

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Speaker 1: armed fighting force of free black people who would forcibly

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Speaker 1: end slavery in the South by raiding plantations and robbing

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Speaker 1: slave owners of their power and their workforce. Although a

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Speaker 1: lot of people remember the abolitionist movement in the United

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Speaker 1: States as being relatively nonviolent, Brown's focus on armed resistance

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Speaker 1: was not unique. So running parallel to the abolitionists who

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Speaker 1: did things like right right essays and deliver speeches and

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Speaker 1: work for legal reforms and help enslave people liberate themselves,

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Speaker 1: there were also radical abolitionists who thought that violence would

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Speaker 1: be required to bring slavery to an end. For example,

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Speaker 1: John Brown was one of the people who had helped

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Speaker 1: fund David Walker's Appeal, which was published in eighty nine.

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Speaker 1: Walker was a free black man from the South, and

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Speaker 1: his work Appeal was a radical anti slavery document that

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Speaker 1: called for enslaved people to rise up against their owners.

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Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, they want us for their slaves and

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Speaker 1: think nothing of murdering us. Therefore, if there is an

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Speaker 1: attempt made by us kill or be killed, and believe

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Speaker 1: this that it is no more harm for you to

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Speaker 1: kill a man who is trying to kill you than

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Speaker 1: it is for you to take a drink of water

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Speaker 1: when thirsty. Brown was also connected to Henry Highland Garnett,

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Speaker 1: who had been enslaved from birth before escaping with his

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Speaker 1: family at age nine. Garnett gave a speech at the

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Speaker 1: National Negro Convention in eighteen forty three that became known

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Speaker 1: as the Call to Rebellion. In this speech, he said, quote,

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Speaker 1: you cannot be more oppressed than you have been. You

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Speaker 1: cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have already. Rather die

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Speaker 1: freeman than live to be slaves. For Brown's part, his

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Speaker 1: belief that violence was required to bring an end to

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Speaker 1: slavery was tied directly to United States history. Rather than

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Speaker 1: putting pressure on Southern states to put a rapid ends

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Speaker 1: to slavery, the Northern States and the federal government had

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Speaker 1: a history of compromises and appeasing slave states in the

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Speaker 1: interest of keeping the South in the Union. One of

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Speaker 1: these was the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, after

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Speaker 1: which Brown helped found the League of Gileadites, which was

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Speaker 1: a radical organization dedicated to protecting escaped slaves from slave catchers,

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Speaker 1: again through violent means if necessary. Another act that was

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Speaker 1: meant to appease slave states led John Brown to shift

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Speaker 1: from violent rhetoric to actual violence. And this is where

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Speaker 1: some of the things we're talking about are going to

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Speaker 1: get a little bit gruesome. So just so you know,

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Speaker 1: we will get into that. After a brief sponsor break,

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Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty four, Congress passed the Kansas Nebraska Act.

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Speaker 1: So for a little bit of context, if you don't remember,

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Speaker 1: under the Missouri Compromise of eighteen twenty, Congress had maintained

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Speaker 1: a balance between slave states and free states by admitting

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Speaker 1: Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state,

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Speaker 1: and then also by drawing a line at parallel thirty

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Speaker 1: six degrees thirty minutes north. Uh uh, and that was

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Speaker 1: basically a border for slavery. Slavery would be outlawed when

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Speaker 1: new states north of that line entered the Union. However,

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Speaker 1: the Kansas Nebraska Act up ended that previous compromise, and

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Speaker 1: it instead allowed new states to decide whether to allow

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Speaker 1: slavery when they joined the Union by popular vote. Nebraska

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Speaker 1: is north of Kansas, and most people considered that territory

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Speaker 1: pretty well decided on being a free state when it

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Speaker 1: entered the Union. Kansas, however, was not nearly so certain,

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Speaker 1: and as a result, people both in favor of and

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Speaker 1: against slavery flooded to Kansas to try to sway the

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Speaker 1: vote one way or another. Kansas became a literal battleground,

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Speaker 1: and the result was a period of violent conflict that

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Speaker 1: came to be known as Bleeding Kansas. John Brown was

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Speaker 1: one of the people, specifically one of the anti slavery

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Speaker 1: people who went to Kansas to fight. He actually followed

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Speaker 1: in the wake of five of his sons who had

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Speaker 1: already moved there, and he arrived with a wagon full

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Speaker 1: of swords and rifles in eighteen fifty five. In December

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Speaker 1: of that year, he led a fighting force as he

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Speaker 1: and his neighbors went to defend the town of Lawrence,

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Speaker 1: which was a an anti slavery town, from a pro

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Speaker 1: slavery invasion. The following May, Brown's father died, and at

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Speaker 1: about the same time, abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner had been

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Speaker 1: caned on the Senate floor. There's an episode about that

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Speaker 1: incident in the archives. Brown was simultaneously grief stricken over

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Speaker 1: his father and outraged over Charles Sumner. And at about

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Speaker 1: the same time, pro slavery forces returned to Lawrence and

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Speaker 1: sacked it. And when he was urged to act with

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Speaker 1: caution and restraint, Brown said, quote caution, caution, Sir, I

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Speaker 1: am eternally tired of hearing the word caution. It is

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Speaker 1: nothing but the word of cowardice. On May eighteen fifty six,

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Speaker 1: Brown led a small party in dragging five pro slavery

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Speaker 1: men out of their cabins and hacking them to death

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Speaker 1: in retribution for the sacking of Lawrence. This would come

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Speaker 1: to be known as the Potawatomie massacre. John Brown's involvement

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Speaker 1: in these murders had multiple consequences. Two of his sons,

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Speaker 1: who had not participated but were distraught at what their

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Speaker 1: father had done, had psychological breakdowns. Another son, Frederick, who

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Speaker 1: had participated, was killed in the aftermath, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of the rest of the abolitionist community was actually horrified

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Speaker 1: by what he had done. But Brown was steadfast in

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Speaker 1: that action he had taken, and the murders were a

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Speaker 1: tipping point in Kansas as pro slavery forces sought retribution

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Speaker 1: and federal troops went from community to community on a

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Speaker 1: relentless search for Brown and his party. Brown, on the

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Speaker 1: other hand, evaded capture, which in his mind solidified his

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Speaker 1: idea that he could similarly evade capture in the Appalachian

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Speaker 1: Mountains as part of his subterranean passway strategy. He just

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Speaker 1: needed weapons and a few men, and he left Kansas

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Speaker 1: to find them. In January of eighteen fifty eight, he

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Speaker 1: started meeting with some of the most prominent black abolitionist leaders,

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Speaker 1: including Frederick Douglas and Harriet's hu Been. With Douglas, he

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Speaker 1: drafted a constitution for a provisional government of the Community

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Speaker 1: of Liberated Slaves that he was hoping to build, of

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Speaker 1: which he hoped that Frederick Douglas would be president. He

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Speaker 1: then went to Chatham, Ontario, which is home of Mary

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Speaker 1: Anne shad Carry, which is how that came up previously

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Speaker 1: to plan the raid that would launch this movement. His

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Speaker 1: target for the raid was Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Virginia was

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Speaker 1: a slave state and Harper's Ferry was in a strategic

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Speaker 1: position where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet. It was

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Speaker 1: also home to a federal arsenal that he planned to

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Speaker 1: use to arm his fighters, many of whom would be

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Speaker 1: liberated slaves, as well as an iron works, a munitions factory,

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Speaker 1: and other industries that would be useful for a growing rebellion.

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Speaker 1: This arounding counties were home to about eighteen thousand enslaved people,

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Speaker 1: as well as sympathetic white residents of the nearby Appalachian Mountains,

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Speaker 1: all of whom he hoped to bring into his cause. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the people he was supposed or that

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Speaker 1: he was hoping to draw from in terms of white support,

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Speaker 1: were from what is now West Virginia, which was much

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Speaker 1: more anti slavery than the other rest of Virginia, and

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Speaker 1: that is why West Virginia s seceeded from Virginia during

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Speaker 1: all of this. Having planned this raid out while he

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Speaker 1: was in Chatham, he started connecting with other abolitionists in

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Speaker 1: New York and Massachusetts to try to get the money

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Speaker 1: to carry out this plan. He ultimately got financial backing

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Speaker 1: from a group of wealthy abolitionists who came to be

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Speaker 1: known as the Secret Six. These were George L. Steam's,

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Speaker 1: Garrett Smith, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, Franklin Sandborn and

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Speaker 1: Samuel Gridley. How but then things got derailed. A little

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Speaker 1: mercenary Hugh Forbes threatened to expose the plan, which caused

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Speaker 1: Brown to return to Kansas to try to avoid suspicion.

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Speaker 1: He stayed for six months, and when he left, sort

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Speaker 1: of as a proof of concept, he liberated a Missouri

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Speaker 1: slave named Jim Daniels and his family, along with a

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Speaker 1: handful of people enslaved on nearby plantations, and he sheltered

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Speaker 1: them in Kansas for a month before a looting, capture

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Speaker 1: and slave catchers to guide them to Canada. With this

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Speaker 1: success under his belt, Brown got back to the task

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Speaker 1: of raiding Harper's Ferry. He rented a house across the

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Speaker 1: border in Maryland as a base of operations. He bought

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Speaker 1: rifles and pikes and basically started outfitting the slave army

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Speaker 1: that he believed would come to join him at Harper's

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Speaker 1: Ferry as soon as they learned what he was doing.

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Speaker 1: He also enlisted Harriet's heman to travel through the area's

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Speaker 1: plantations and spread the word and enlist the help of

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Speaker 1: the enslaved people in the surrounding counties. The actual raid

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Speaker 1: began on October sixteenth of eighteen fifty nine, and Brown

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Speaker 1: was fifty nine years old at the time. His force

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Speaker 1: was smaller than originally planned. It was twenty two people total,

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Speaker 1: three of them left behind at the rented house in

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Speaker 1: Maryland to receive liberated slaves. So Brown and nineteen men

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Speaker 1: made their way into Harper's Ferry by night, cut the

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Speaker 1: telegraph lines and took control of the railroad station and

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Speaker 1: the musket factory and rifle works, which were essentially unguarded.

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Speaker 1: Then they abducted some of the area's most notorious slave

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Speaker 1: owners and they took them to the engine house the

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Speaker 1: train station as hostages. There was only one fatality in

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Speaker 1: that original takeover, and that was a free black porter

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Speaker 1: who had been working at the train station with a

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Speaker 1: telegraph lines cut. The biggest source of news out of

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Speaker 1: Harper's Ferry overnight was a train that came through at

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Speaker 1: the station after Brown ticket over, which they actually allowed

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Speaker 1: to pass, even though it meant risking that the people

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Speaker 1: aboard would take to the authorities of what was happening,

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Speaker 1: which they did. Soon rumors started to spread that John

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Speaker 1: Brown had taken Harper's Ferry, first with fifty people, and

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Speaker 1: then with a hundred, and then with two hundred and

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Speaker 1: By morning, it was clear to people living there that

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Speaker 1: Brown had indeed taken over several strategic points, and the

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Speaker 1: town started to muster a resistance. At first, this resistance

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Speaker 1: was mostly in the form of militia and local farmers

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Speaker 1: and slave owners, but at the same time, the vast

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Speaker 1: wave of support Brown had expected just did not materialize.

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Speaker 1: There were several reasons for this. One was that so

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Speaker 1: much time had passed between the meeting in Chatham, Ontario

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Speaker 1: and the raid that a lot of the black population

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Speaker 1: that had been interested in helping had lost interest or

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Speaker 1: they had just lost touch with Brown and his allies.

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Speaker 1: Another was that Harriet Tubman couldn't be found when Brown

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Speaker 1: decided to go ahead with the raid. The historical record

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Speaker 1: is not entirely clear on why they couldn't locate her,

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Speaker 1: but she may have been ill. Yeah, she had already

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Speaker 1: done some preliminary uh searching slash work through the plantations

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Speaker 1: of the area to spread the word of what was coming.

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Speaker 1: But they had expected her to be on hand to

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Speaker 1: rally support further when the raid actually happened, and they

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Speaker 1: just couldn't find her. Even though there is evidence that

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Speaker 1: a few enslaved people from nearby did join the raid.

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Speaker 1: It was definitely not the ground swell of massive support

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Speaker 1: that Brown had been expecting. So soon he and his

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Speaker 1: raiders were surrounded and pinned in at both the train

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Speaker 1: station and the musket factory and rifle works. Two attempts

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Speaker 1: to send somebody to call for a ceasefire under a

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Speaker 1: white flag both failed. The second person sent was actually

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Speaker 1: Brown's son, Watson, who was shot and killed. Some of

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Speaker 1: Brown's men tried to flee their positions via the Shenandoah

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Speaker 1: and Potomac rivers, leading to their being shot, some of

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Speaker 1: them while still in the water. And meanwhile, Brown and

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Speaker 1: the men he was holed up within the engine house

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Speaker 1: of the train station drilled holes in the door that

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Speaker 1: they could shoot through, hoping to hit their attackers, and

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Speaker 1: they were mostly unsuccessful, although one shot did hit Harper's

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Speaker 1: Ferry Mayor Fontaine Beckham. With Beckham's death, any support that

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Speaker 1: Brown's raid might have had among Harper's Ferries residents just evaporated.

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Speaker 1: A mob stormed the hotel where William Thompson, which was

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Speaker 1: the first man that had been sent out for a ceasefire,

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Speaker 1: was being held. They shot him in the head and

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Speaker 1: threw him into the Potomac. Eventually, President James Buchanan dispatched

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Speaker 1: marines under the command of Robert E. Lee to restore order.

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Speaker 1: At that point, Harper's ferry streets were mombed with both

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Speaker 1: trained fighters and angry rabble trying to get it. Brown's

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Speaker 1: men in the engine house, all but four of whom

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Speaker 1: were by that point injured or dead. After arriving around midnight,

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Speaker 1: Lee sent j EV Stewart, who would go on to

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Speaker 1: become Lee's own cavalry commander on the Southern side in

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Speaker 1: the Civil War, to the engine house under a white

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Speaker 1: flag to negotiate. Stewart promised Brown protection from the mob

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Speaker 1: and a fair trial if he would let the hostages go.

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Speaker 1: Brown refused. He wanted himself and his surviving men to

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Speaker 1: be allowed to go back to Maryland with the hostages

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Speaker 1: as basically as a strategic point, and then they would

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Speaker 1: free the hostages once they were safely back in Maryland.

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Speaker 1: With negotiations at an impass, Lee sent men to batter

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Speaker 1: down the door. The morning of the eighteen, marines swarmed

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Speaker 1: the engine house, killing some of Brown's few remaining men

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Speaker 1: and taking others prisoner. Brown was hit with a sword

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Speaker 1: and only survived because the sword happened to hit a

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Speaker 1: buckle that he was wearing. In the end of the

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Speaker 1: original crew of nineteen men, ten had been killed or

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Speaker 1: mortally wounded, two of them being Brown's sons, and five

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Speaker 1: had been taken prisoner. There were also six civilian deaths,

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Speaker 1: the mayor, to townspeople, to enslaved people that belong to

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Speaker 1: the hostages, and the porter that had been killed at

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Speaker 1: the train station. Here's how the official report described it. Quote,

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Speaker 1: A fanatical man, stimulated to recklessness and desperation by the

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Speaker 1: constant teachings and intemperate appeals of wild and treasonable enthusiasts,

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Speaker 1: unrestrained by the Constitution and the laws of the land,

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Speaker 1: by the precepts of religion, by appeals of humanity or

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Speaker 1: of mercy, formed a conspiracy to make a sudden descent

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Speaker 1: upon the people of Harper's Ferry, to rob the arsenal,

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Speaker 1: plunder public property, and stir up servile insurrection. With that

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Speaker 1: brief recap from the official report, we will take a

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Speaker 1: brief word from a sponsor before we talk about the

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Speaker 1: raids aftermath. After their capture, Brown and his surviving men

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Speaker 1: were put on trial. The charges were murder, treason, and

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Speaker 1: conspiring with negroes to produce insurrection. That trial began on October,

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Speaker 1: just ten days after the raid. All of the men

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Speaker 1: were found guilty, and the penalty for all of the

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Speaker 1: charges was death. John Brown was hanged on December two

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Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty nine. Before his hanging, he handed a

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Speaker 1: guard a note that read, quote, I John Brown am

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Speaker 1: now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land

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Speaker 1: will never be purged away, but with blood. Among those

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Speaker 1: present were Roberty Lee Stonewall Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth.

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Speaker 1: Measured by whether it launched an armed slave resistance that

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Speaker 1: freed thousands of slaves and forcibly rested control of the

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Speaker 1: South from slave owners, as had been the original plan.

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Speaker 1: John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferria was a complete failure.

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Speaker 1: Measured by whether it launched an armed slave resistance that

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Speaker 1: freed thousands of slaves and forcibly rested control of the

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Speaker 1: South from slave owners, as had been the original plan.

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Speaker 1: John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry was a complete failure,

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Speaker 1: but measured by its ultimate effect on the progression of

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Speaker 1: slavery in the United States, it's a completely different story

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Speaker 1: the same way that those murders of five pro slavery

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Speaker 1: settlers in Kansas that we talked about earlier had sparked

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Speaker 1: a tide of violence there. The raid at Harper's Ferry

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Speaker 1: inflamed passions, tensions, and violence around slavery and the relationships

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Speaker 1: between slave and free states in many circles. In the North,

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Speaker 1: John Brown became a martyr, especially as he was eloquent

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Speaker 1: and steadfast in his denunciations of slavery while on trial,

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Speaker 1: and people doubled down on their efforts to abolish the institution.

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Speaker 1: But in the South, people were terrified. The idea of

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Speaker 1: a slave insurrection was already a source of fear in

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Speaker 1: a lot of the South, and in some places, white

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Speaker 1: slave owners and the rest of the white population were

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Speaker 1: vastly outnumbered by enslaved people, so the idea that these

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Speaker 1: people might unite and violently overthrow their owners was petrifying.

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Speaker 1: The South tried to downplay Brown's raid as unimportant in

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Speaker 1: an effort to dismiss it, while simultaneously being completely horrified

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Speaker 1: at what it could spell for the future. On a

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Speaker 1: more practical level, many parts of the South renewed their

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Speaker 1: call from militia membership and military drills of those militia,

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Speaker 1: so that when the Civil War did begin, those militias

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Speaker 1: that had been created under the idea of fighting up

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Speaker 1: potential John Brown inspired rebellion if it was necessary, were

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Speaker 1: already there and trained and ready to go to war.

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Speaker 1: It was also one of many events that happened in

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Speaker 1: the late eighteen fifties that stoked political passions over the

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Speaker 1: issue of slavery. The Democrats split over the issue of

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Speaker 1: slavery in the eighteen sixty election, with pro and anti

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Speaker 1: slavery factions each putting forth candidates for presidency and neither

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Speaker 1: securing a necessary two thirds majority At the party convention,

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Speaker 1: after a series of efforts to unite the party, the

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Speaker 1: Democratic Party nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas, while the Southern

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Speaker 1: Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge, and both Douglas and Breckinridge

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Speaker 1: presented themselves as the official party candidates. Meanwhile, an entire

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Speaker 1: other party, the Constitutional Union Party, nominated former Senator John

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Speaker 1: Bell of Tennessee, to be their candidate for president, and

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Speaker 1: in the end it was Abraham Lincoln, the Republican nominee,

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Speaker 1: who won this four way election with only a hundred

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Speaker 1: and eighty electoral votes and just shy of the popular vote.

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Speaker 1: As a consequence of Lincoln's election, eleven Southern states seceded

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Speaker 1: from the Union, which directly led to the Civil War.

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Speaker 1: Fifty years after the raid, Frederick Douglas would say that

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Speaker 1: John Brown quote began the war that ended American slavery

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Speaker 1: and made this a free republic. There are a lot

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Speaker 1: of historians who basically think without this lightning point of

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Speaker 1: Harper's ferry, there would not have been that four way

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Speaker 1: split in the election that ultimately led Lincoln to be elected,

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Speaker 1: not with a whole majority of the popular vote. And

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Speaker 1: for decades, even a century after the raid, historical accounts

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Speaker 1: painted Brown as mentally unstable, with descriptions being full of

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Speaker 1: words like delusional and madman. But really Brown was methodical

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Speaker 1: and well researched in this whole idea. He had studied

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Speaker 1: other uprisings, including net Turner's rebellion in the Haitian Revolution,

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Speaker 1: and he had also studied guerilla resistance to military forces

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Speaker 1: in both Europe and the United States, including in the

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Speaker 1: colonial era. Today, some historical depictions of him have shifted

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Speaker 1: a little bit to be uh more, including of language

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Speaker 1: like fiercely devoted rather than unhinged and insane, even when

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Speaker 1: he was alive at first, as news of the raid

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Speaker 1: was spreading, even in the North where it's sort of

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Speaker 1: reinvigorated abolition as a cause. Um, at first, there were

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Speaker 1: people who were like that Ban is not in his

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Speaker 1: right mind. Mind and sentiment shifted about him as he

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Speaker 1: continually made these like steadfast and very eloquent denunciations of

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Speaker 1: slavery during his trial. UM. So the idea that everybody

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Speaker 1: thought that he was like mentally unwell even at the

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Speaker 1: time was not totally accurate. Um. Harriet Tubman in particular

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Speaker 1: described him as being the only white person that she

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Speaker 1: ever met who actually thought that slavery was a life

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Speaker 1: or death issue that really needed to be treated that way. Um.

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Speaker 1: And even like even in the more recent past, uh,

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Speaker 1: you see divisions and how people talk about John Brown

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Speaker 1: and like whether his ideas were good and whether he

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Speaker 1: uh was was making sense in a methodical way or

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Speaker 1: whether he was sort of flying off in this delusional fervor. Um.

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Speaker 1: Like the Malcolm X talked about if you if you

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Speaker 1: meet a white person who says that they are in

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Speaker 1: favor of black power, find out what they think about

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Speaker 1: John Brown. I think that's one of the things that

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Speaker 1: sort of led to the in the Politically Reactive podcast

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Speaker 1: that we talked about early earlier in the top of

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Speaker 1: the show, UM was that they were talking about John

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Speaker 1: Brown white people and this idea of people who are

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Speaker 1: that fervently devoted and that ready to put their own

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Speaker 1: lives on the line no matter what to end slavery.

430
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:41,040
Speaker 1: So he's a complicated person. Yeah, I feel like we

431
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 1: I feel like we barely scratched the surface of his

432
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 1: complicated nous. Uh. And what people thought about him then

433
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:50,680
Speaker 1: and now. Uh, some less complicated listener man would be

434
00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:54,400
Speaker 1: stupendous if he got it so much less complicated. It's

435
00:26:54,400 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: about Margarine, uh. Nicholas wrote and said, rate stuff you

436
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: missed in history pod on butter and Margarine. I was

437
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: struck by your discussion of margarine sold with coloring consumers

438
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:09,920
Speaker 1: would add at home. One explanation not mentioned in the pod.

439
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,399
Speaker 1: Consumers wanted to appear to be able to afford butter,

440
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 1: so coloring at home was attractive. This is similar to

441
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:20,439
Speaker 1: stories of people refilling Coca Cola bottles with pepsi when

442
00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: serving guests because Coke was the more expensive, higher class product.

443
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: I would be interested in a pot about the history

444
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:31,320
Speaker 1: of people disguising cheap products as expensive project products, not

445
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: for profit, like the butter fraud, but for social comparison

446
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:38,399
Speaker 1: purposes to impress the neighbors. Perhaps the epitome of this

447
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:41,399
Speaker 1: was fifty claim in his bankruptcy proceedings that the piles

448
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 1: of hundred dollar bills and his social media posts were

449
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:47,440
Speaker 1: rented money to appear to be living a certain lifestyle.

450
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: Thanks for your work, Nick, Thank you Nick. We got

451
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 1: a handful of notes along these lines about how um

452
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:56,879
Speaker 1: like they had family members who would refill the butter

453
00:27:56,960 --> 00:28:00,479
Speaker 1: container with colored margarine and be like, WI tell your

454
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: grandma to make it look like they had been able

455
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:07,399
Speaker 1: to shell out the money for butter. I had not

456
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: heard about this um, this fifty cent story, and I

457
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 1: went to look into it, and I didn't find um

458
00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 1: the idea that he had rented hundred dollar bills. But

459
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:18,439
Speaker 1: I did find a lot, like a lot of claims

460
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 1: at his bankruptcy court where he was like, no, I

461
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:23,160
Speaker 1: just rented all those luxury cars and all this jewelry

462
00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 1: is also rented, Like I've been renting all of this

463
00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:28,360
Speaker 1: stuff I don't actually own any of it as part

464
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: of his defense in those proceedings. So um, thank you

465
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: to Nick for that email, and thank you for the

466
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:36,919
Speaker 1: folks who have written to us. Some of you have

467
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 1: some of you with your own family stories about your

468
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:41,960
Speaker 1: own family members, members who were like, I'm just gonna

469
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 1: shape this margarine into the shape of a stick of butter,

470
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:49,040
Speaker 1: put it on the table when we have people over

471
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: for company. If you would like to write to us,

472
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: we're a history podcast at how stuffworks dot com. We're

473
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash missed in

474
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 1: History and on Twitter at missed in History. Our tumbler

475
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:02,960
Speaker 1: at miss is missed in History dot tumbler dot com.

476
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: We're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss

477
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 1: in History. We have an Instagram at missed in History. Also,

478
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 1: you can come to our parent company's website, which is

479
00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and learn about almost anything

480
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: your heart desires. And you can also come to our website,

481
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: which is missing history dot com to find show notes

482
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: of all of our episodes and archive of all of

483
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 1: our episodes. The show notes are for the episode Holly

484
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: and I have worked on. You can do all that

485
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more at how stuff works dot

486
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: com or missed in history dot com For more on

487
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff

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00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: works dot com