John Brown: Hero or Terrorist

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

While the idea that a slave is a person is undisputable the idea that slavery and thus should be banned is immoral is a moral viewpoint. The same goes for views on abortion

For what it’s worth, my position is that, given a particular moral judgment, a particular course of action is necessary.

For example, suppose tomorrow I am presented with persuasive evidence that cars are sentient beings on a level with humans who wish to sit in driveways and meditate on the nature of cement; that movement is agonizing for them; that oil companies know this and devised a nefarious torture called gasoline that, when poured into a car, so badly hurts it that it’s willing to move around to avoid further gasoline torture.

If I were convinced of that, I’d be morally obligated to stop driving; what’s more, someone exposed to this evidence as I was who continued driving would be terribly evil. Someone who rescued cars from such a fate by killing people who continued operating them (slavedrivers, we’ll call them) wouldn’t be such a bad person.

Of course, I have no such evidence. Absent such evidence, if I started killing drivers now, I’d be a terrible person.

The scenario is ridiculous, of course–even more ridiculous than the scenario under which anti-abortion murderers operate. And it’s that absurdity that separates anti-abortion murderers from anti-slavery murderers.

“But how can you know that your moral judgment is the right one?” I hear you ask. Answer: I can’t. But it’s the one I have, and I have to balance that uncertainty against the effects of doing nothing. Sometimes the balance comes out in favor of doing nothing. Other times it doesn’t.

Chattel slavery is wayyyyy on the far end of the extreme, stopping just short of the Holocaust. It’s pretty easy to know that freeing people from chattel slavery is a good thing, even if violence against slavers is required in the process.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

For what it’s worth, my position is that, given a particular moral judgment, a particular course of action is necessary.
The scenario is ridiculous, of course–even more ridiculous than the scenario under which anti-abortion murderers operate. And it’s that absurdity that separates anti-abortion murderers from anti-slavery murderers.

“But how can you know that your moral judgment is the right one?” I hear you ask. Answer: I can’t. But it’s the one I have, and I have to balance that uncertainty against the effects of doing nothing. Sometimes the balance comes out in favor of doing nothing. Other times it doesn’t.

Chattel slavery is wayyyyy on the far end of the extreme, stopping just short of the Holocaust. It’s pretty easy to know that freeing people from chattel slavery is a good thing, even if violence against slavers is required in the process.

Pro-life terrorists have plenty of things they consider evidence to justify their killings such as that fetuses do have beating hearts, development of organs, etc. And if murder is worse than slavery (as you seem to agree with) than Scott Roeder has justification for his killing of Dr. George Tiller.

[Der_Trihs]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

While the idea that a slave is a person is undisputable the idea that slavery and thus should be banned is immoral is a moral viewpoint. The same goes for views on abortion.

The fact that opposition to slavery is rational and fact based while opposition to abortion is based on fantasies and illogic puts the two in separate categories.

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

For Beria’s sake, have you even talked to a pro-lifer or read a pro-lifer article/opinion piece whatnot?

I’ve repeatedly accused them of being liars; what they say is irrelevant to me. It is what they do that matters, and everything they do is centered on hurting women and shows zero concern for the “babies” they supposedly care oh-so-much about.

“Beria’s sake”? Again with the Christian libel that equates atheists with Communists and claims them all to be monsters.

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

Pro-life terrorists have plenty of things they consider evidence to justify their killings such as that fetuses do have beating hearts, development of organs, etc.

So do lizards. That’s an excuse, not a valid reason. Of course, they have no valid reasons.

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

@Little_Nemo

How many people died in the British Civil War that ended slavery? Or when France or Spain or Portugal or the Netherlands abolished slavery? Or Mexico or Brazil or Cuba or Argentina?

Most countries managed to abolish slavery without the massive casualties we had.

Well Texas speaks of Mexico’s interactions with American Southerners. When Texas did gain independence, one of the first things they did was strip freed blacks of their rights. Further Southern immigrants to what would become Texas, spat upon the laws of land they moved into by ignoring and trying to find loop holes Mexican laws regarding slavery. They weren’t slaves you see but indentured servants for life or “they owed money” they “needed to work off” at rates that were impossible to pay back the claimed amount.

How do you peaceably remove slavery from this kind of two faced dishonorable lying garbage?

How could southerners of the time not be monsters?

No all the blood of the war is on the hands of every confederate traitor who put on gray uniform and tried to murder his countrymen so rich white men could continue to brutalize, beat, maul, militate, and rape black people.

What loathsome garbage.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

Pro-life terrorists have plenty of things they consider evidence to justify their killings such as that fetuses do have beating hearts, development of organs, etc. And if murder is worse than slavery (as you seem to agree with) than Scott Roeder has justification for his killing of Dr. George Tiller.

You missed my point: their evidence is shit. That was the entire reason for my example about sentient cars.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Der_Trihs

The fact that opposition to slavery is rational and fact based while opposition to abortion is based on fantasies and illogic puts the two in separate categories.

That’s just your opinion.

I’ve repeatedly accused them of being liars; what they say is irrelevant to me. It is what they do that matters, and everything they do is centered on hurting women and shows zero concern for the “babies” they supposedly care oh-so-much about.

Evidence? Do they go around kidnapping and torturing women with electric shockers? Do they stab them to death?

“Beria’s sake”? Again with the Christian libel that equates atheists with Communists and claims them all to be monsters.

Its just an oath I came up with and does not have anything to do with calling all atheists Commies.

So do lizards. That’s an excuse, not a valid reason. Of course, they have no valid reasons.

Except while lizards will never be full grown humans fetuses will be.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

Except while lizards will never be full grown humans fetuses will be.

This is a lousy argument, but unless you’re really interested in taking a thread about John Brown that’s already involved Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s father’s middle name’s origins and turning it into a debate about abortion, may I suggest you fork this into a new thread?

[Sampiro]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

This is a lousy argument, but unless you’re really interested in taking a thread about John Brown that’s already involved Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s father’s middle name’s origins and turning it into a debate about abortion, may I suggest you fork this into a new thread?

Point of fact, no mention is made of Barrett’s name’s origins. He is mentioned in a list of slaveowners that is used to demonstrated the wide diversity of practitioners in response to posters, including LHoD, who in their zeal to be seen as the most enlightened antebellum minds of the 21st century see all slaveholders as monolithic and deserving of death in spite of the fact that this would not help the situation at all. Abortion is not being debated but analogies are being made between it and slavery as it is one of the few issues that so inflames the passions of some Americans that they have been willing to kill to see its abolition- it’s a completely valid analogous device.

Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither could it’s history or even a small section of its history be successfully synopsized in a tweet. Your resentment at others using examples and your confusion by analogies and seeming anger over being told this is more complicated than “Good versus Evil” simplicity indicate, if only to me, that you have read very little about the issue of slavery and abolitionism in particular or even 19th century United States society and politics in general to add anything of consequence to a debate on the matter. Instead you bring hostility and no facts or cites. Two things I find interesting on threads about this era

1- The zealotry plus ignorance" was one of the biggest complaints against abolitionists at the time (and not just by southerners [not even just by Americans for that matter]- Abraham Lincoln commented upon it even).
2- When the south is vilified in these threads the southern Dopers who participate (many of them being smarter than I am have stopped participating in them) and who may be all over the map in terms of geography and political opinions very often lock shields in indignation at the simplification and presentism being used, an interesting example in a virtual microcosm of what happened in 1861.

As for killing slaveowners making things better, if there was any place in the transAtlantic slave trade where more white slaveowners were killed or forced to flee than St. Domingue I’ve never read of it. It could be argued as well that the revolt was completely justifiable morally and ethically- the conditions on Caribbean plantations were worse by far than on most U.S. plantations. However, how paradisiacal would you consider the results? Haiti has the lowest standard of living in the western hemisphere. Among the reasons are the sudden emancipation of illiterates, the animosity of militarized powers to an illiterate ethnically different mob with a violent background, and a withdrawal of capital from the area. Which of these do you think would NOT have been an issue in a large scale American slave uprising?

[Sampiro]

@Slithy_Tove

Kind of a hijack, but here’s a list of actors who’ve played John Brown. I’d agree that Raymond Massey’s was the definative Brown, but Johnny Cash? Wasn’t Merle Haggard available?

Cash was basically a cameo on screen for about a minute in a miniseries whose goal seemed to be to make The Tudors look stellar by comparison. That said, he did have some major charisma working for him, but his Arkansas accent was at such major odds with a New York farmer of New England Yankee ancestry it was hard to divorce it.

I’ve seen bits and pieces of Massey’s performance but unfortunately the quality of the video was terrible, but yeah- he gave it his all. (Massey is amazingly forgotten for an actor who could go from melodrama to morality tale to epic to comedy to horror with equal aplomb.)

Sterling Hayden was a mesmerizing Brown in Blue & Gray. He has the charisma, he had the ‘fire in his eyes’ and was completely believable as a man who could snuggle a baby on the way to the gallows or hack a man in two with a sword, and they even added the red bedroom slippers he wore to his trial as a non-sequitur.

Today I’d cast Mel Gibson if I could. He has the charisma, the acting chops, he’s the right age, you can believe him as the father of 20, and Og knows he can bring the crazy. Perhaps if they ever make Cloudsplitter into a novel he’ll have his comeback.

[Sampiro]

@Slithy_Tove

Kind of a hijack, but here’s a list of actors who’ve played John Brown. I’d agree that Raymond Massey’s was the definative Brown, but Johnny Cash? Wasn’t Merle Haggard available?

ETA: According to wiki, Cloudsplitter is being adapted into a movie, but no word on who’s cast as Brown. There’s no imdb entry yet either.

[Spoke]

@Sampiro

1- The zealotry plus ignorance" was one of the biggest complaints against abolitionists at the time (and not just by southerners [not even just by Americans for that matter]- Abraham Lincoln commented upon it even).
2- When the south is vilified in these threads the southern Dopers who participate (many of them being smarter than I am have stopped participating in them) and who may be all over the map in terms of geography and political opinions very often lock shields in indignation at the simplification and presentism being used, an interesting example in a virtual microcosm of what happened in 1861.

Astute observation, that. I’ve noticed the parallels, too.

But you’ll never convince a zealot that their zealotry is part of the problem.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Spoke

Astute observation, that. I’ve noticed the parallels, too.

But you’ll never convince a zealot that their zealotry is part of the problem.

Well, that’s true, but it’s not like zealots are averse about throwing the name “zealot” at other people.

The bit you quoted shows a problem that I’ve often seen among defenders of the antebellum establishment: they equate white Southerners with Southerners, and then they exclude white Southerners who disagree with their viewpoint.

I’ve never heard a black southerner (well, with one exception–google HK Edgerton) talk about how slavers are being unfairly judged by a modern-day mentality. Why do you think that would be?

I have seen absurd historical reports about how worried the inhabitants of, say, Charleston were when they saw Union ships approaching–completely ignoring the numbers of slaves who, far from worried, took the opportunity to escape to Union lines.

White southerners aren’t all southerners, and they weren’t back then, either, and at the very least y’all oughtta give black southerners’ opinions 3/5 the value of white southerners, don’t you think?

And when I talk about the history of the south, my opinion is formed from my own native North Carolina self, from parents born in North Carolina, back a few hundred years. I’ve been to a family reunion on the site of a plantation that was in the family back to the eighteenth century. I am certainly no part of the rank closing that Sampiro likes to imagine, in a case like this.

I will heartily condemn people who talk about how awful the South is: those folks are ignorant. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m talking about how awful people were who enslaved other people using terror, torture, mutilation, and the like.

And my knowledge about the South, since Samprio has decided to take such absurd umbrage at my mild criticism of his posting style and turn it into a series of ad hominems, comes from admittedly undergraduate sources, including classes taught by native North Carolinians. These professors also are no part of any apologism for slavers; on the contrary, they cited primary sources in teaching about the ubiquitous barbarism of chattel slavery, in an effort to dispel precisely the sort of simplistic, mythic view of the antebellum South that others here offer.

There. Sampiro, I understand you suffer from some sort of Crohn’s disease of the mind, so if you can’t stop the deluge, then by all means go for it. If you’ll go back to debating the subject instead of trying to find novel and snooty ways to call me ignorant, I’m happy to going back to discussing the subject as well (although I’ll still pagedown past irrelevancies, without shame). If you want to call me ignorant in ancient Greek next, however, enjoy yourself.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Sampiro

posters, including LHoD, who in their zeal to be seen as the most enlightened antebellum minds of the 21st century see all slaveholders as monolithic and deserving of death

Gotta answer this: just today I taught some of my students that in a discussion, they need to talk less, listen more. Post 158 shows that’s not what I’m saying. And your idea about my motives is utter rubbish, so you might want to shut the fuck up about that.

Post less, read more.

Your resentment at others using examples and your confusion by analogies and seeming anger over being told this is more complicated than “Good versus Evil” simplicity indicate

It’s not as simple as “Good versus Evil,” as a reading of my posts would show. I have no trouble with analogies, as my use of several shows, although I am aware that argument by analogy is a fairly weak form of argument. And my mild criticism of your posting style had nothing to do with the use of examples; rather, you’ve turned it into that in your head for motives I won’t dare to guess at out loud.

Post less. Read more.

[davidw]

@Sampiro

I mention that Harriet Tubman considered John Brown a misguided lunatic in a thread about perceptions of John Brown and it’s considered ‘irrelevant trivia’ by somebody who from the safety of the 21st century knows better than she does.

It’s not irrelevant trivia, it’s utter nonsense. Tubman supported Brown’s raid, helped him in the planning of it, recommend July 4 as the date to attack Harper’s Ferry, raised funds to help him and recruited in Canada for him. She opened a home for the elderly and needy after the Civil War that she named after Brown.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@davidw

It’s not irrelevant trivia, it’s utter nonsense. Tubman supported Brown’s raid, helped him in the planning of it, recommend July 4 as the date to attack Harper’s Ferry, raised funds to help him and recruited in Canada for him. She opened a home for the elderly and needy after the Civil War that she named after Brown.

And not only that, but I didn’t even criticize him for mentioning Harriet Tubman. I criticized him for bringing up her medical diagnosis. If Sampiro posted less and read more, he would have caught that rather important distinction.

I maintain that this diagnosis served less to illustrate the point than to illustrate Sampiro’s wealth of knowledge. It’s perfectly legitimate to discuss what his contemporaries in the abolitionist movement thought of him. Their medical conditions do not pertain.

[Sampiro]

@davidw

It’s not irrelevant trivia, it’s utter nonsense. Tubman supported Brown’s raid, helped him in the planning of it, recommend July 4 as the date to attack Harper’s Ferry, raised funds to help him and recruited in Canada for him. She opened a home for the elderly and needy after the Civil War that she named after Brown.

Brown supported her financially ($15 per month) during their association, not the other way around. As for her recruiting, Brown had21 men- 12 of whom were with him in Kansas, only 1 of whom was Canadian and that one had met him through George Gill, only one of whom was an escaped slave (Shields Green) and he had met Brown through Frederick Douglass. The other blacks in his outfit were of free birth or manumitted (one, L.S. Leary - and this is unapologetically trivia- was married to the grandmother of Langston Hughes) and none of his followers were picked by Harriet Tubman. How exactly was she recruiting for him?

Brown did expect Tubman and two of her brothers (John and William Stewart) to join him. They didn’t show up at the rendeszvous point. She said later that she knew he was going to be killed, and the fact she revered him as a martyr later doesn’t mean she didn’t think he was a loon then. This is a woman who knew Maryland, (what’s now) West Virginia and northern Virginia and, unlike Brown, knew the slaves there- there’s no way in hell she wouldn’t have known it was doomed to failure.

[Sampiro]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

And not only that, but I didn’t even criticize him for mentioning Harriet Tubman. I criticized him for bringing up her medical diagnosis. If Sampiro posted less and read more, he would have caught that rather important distinction.

I maintain that this diagnosis served less to illustrate the point than to illustrate Sampiro’s wealth of knowledge. It’s perfectly legitimate to discuss what his contemporaries in the abolitionist movement thought of him. Their medical conditions do not pertain.

I mentioned her medical diagnosis because it was the direct result of abuse she received in slavery. Admittedly the fact I’m narcoleptic as well makes it more of interest to me than it might be to most, but it’s relevant and interesting in a mentioning of her and attitudes on slavery at the time.

You haven’t mentioned a fact or given a cite yet to my knowledge to support the benefits of killing slaveowners. So here’s a factual question: how would it have benefitted a U.S. slave to kill his owner when that does not release him from slavery? Give examples.

[Sampiro]

As for illustrating my knowledge, I’ve been here a decade and have over 20,000 posts- I don’t think anybody is still in process of drawing an opinion of me. As for reading comprehension, I find this rich from a person who quotes Shakespeare not knowing anything about the context of the quote and who says I went into explanation of the Barrett family surname, which I didn’t (I said, in a footnote, it wasn’t a typo that I typed Barrett twice in his name- otherwise it would look like it was a typo and would possibly have caused nitpicking; I can tell you why, but I’m guessing you’re not that interested).

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Sampiro

You haven’t mentioned a fact or given a cite yet to my knowledge to support the benefits of killing slaveowners. So here’s a factual question: how would it have benefitted a slave to kill his owner when that does not release him from slavery?

Nitpick: that’s a conditional question, and a poisoned well one at that.

So, first: there was the small matter of Haiti, where killing the slavers in a mass slave revolt resulted in some level of freedom for the ex-slaves. It was not an unreasonable belief that a similar revolt might happen in the US–or if it was unreasonable, it was an irrationality held by slaves and slavers alike. Saying that killing the owner doesn’t release him from slavery is a false premise. (If you want to argue that Haiti didn’t turn out awesome, I won’t dispute that; however, it’s reasonable to believe that in a country with stronger democratic ideals, things might turn out better).

But maybe you need an example closer to home: take the Castner-Hanway-Treason-Trial. It’s almost exactly what we’re talking about here:
-A slave owner tries to recapture escaped slaves.
-The local free black community gathers and drives off the slaver’s goons.
-The slaver gets pissy and says he won’t leave without his slaves.
-The local free black community kills the slaver.
-The escaped slaves escape again.

What do you think? Did the folks who killed the slaver rather than let him recapture the slaves act unethically, or was that justifiable homicide?

[Sampiro]

So here’s a related debate:

Brown’s raid failed and caused the death by battle or by hanging of twenty men (Brown, 15 of his followers, and 4 guards at the arsenal). Not a single slave was freed as a result of his raid.

Col. Robert E. Lee was at the time serving as executor of his father-in-law’s estate. In his will his father-in-law asked that his 160 slaves be manumitted within 7 years. Lee, who was not even by the standards of his own day a racial liberal and who in fact was hated by the slaves who worked under him (he owned none of his own by this time) spent seven years making the extremely complicated and debt-embarassed estate solvent enough to do that even though it cost Lee’s children well over $100,000 (several million in today’s money), the result being that by 1862 all slaves had, per the terms of the will, been manumitted, many of them before Harper’s Ferry and most before the outbreak of the Civil War.

The debate: given that approximately 100 Custis family slaves had been freed by March 1861, at that time who had done more to ameliorate the evils of slavery and why?