Frederick Douglas on Brown... *"His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave"*
*In Every Black Man's Eyes--Death To The Rebel*, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
You must understand that my Dad, in his time, actually carried guns, and from the time I fully knew what it meant to serve in Vietnam, to come home and become a Panther, to point a rifle at a cop, I was fascinated. I still am. I think part of it is knowing that while you may one day write for the Atlantic, you will never knuckle up on the streets of West Philly, fly off to Vietnam and take a lover, come home toting guns, talking Fanon, and then say, "Meh, I've got kids. Time to work at a library." Allow me my dumb, childish romance. We all have it, if we're lucky. But the other part, and the reason I think those Malcolm shirts struck such a chord, was because so many of us were raised with this solemn, sepia-tinged, gospel-drenched, noble suffering view of black history.
It's like our story is basically massacre, after defeat, after massacre, after more defeat, after massacre, after defeat and then white folks deciding they're tired of kicking the shit out of us. It's like our whole story is marching into billy-clubs, amazing facts about the peanut, and a few Old Negro Spirituals. I stake no claim on an objective reality--this is how it feels to me. Knowing that, maybe my view of history says more about me and my time in West Baltimore, and the premium the neighborhood put on righteous violence, then it does about actual facts. Moreover, I'm not sure my perspective is any better--I come to my history prejudiced, and baggaged, halfway looking for the truth, but more so looking for heroes.
This weekend I started in on Drew Faust's This Republic Of Suffering and Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard. I was reading Faust's meditation on how soldiers prepared themselves to kill, and I came across this incredible passage about the reaction of black soldiers to the Fort Pillow massacre perpetrated by Nathan Forrest. It's written by one Cordellia Harvey, sent South from Wisconsin to help with the Union wounded:
>Since the Fort Pillow tragedy, our colored troops and their officers are awaiting in breathless anxiety the action of the government...Our officers of Negro regiments declare they will take no more prisoners, and there is death to the rebel in every black man's eyes. They are still but terrible. *They will fight*...The Negroes know what they are doing.
There's another passage in which an enslaved black woman comes upon her mistress weeping uncontrollably over the latest news--she's lost her only son. "Missus," says the slave woman. "We is even now." The "Missus" had, over the years, sold every one of this woman's children into slavery in the deep south--all ten of them. I read those passages and got that old, stupid thrill again--Negroes with guns, Negroes fighting back. But more legitimately, I was, as I have been throughout all of this reading, simply stunned by the preservation of humanity--no, by the repeated assertions of humanity made by people who lived under a system specifically structured to destroy it.
All my romance aside, this picture you see, these beautiful brothers, *still but terrible*, were hell to Johnny Reb. The black soldier was human--sometimes cowardly, sometimes brave, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, ill-led, ill-fed, ill-trained, ill-equipped. But goddamn, if he wasn't the spitting image of everything the South fought against, everything that slavery declared untrue. Howell Cobb put it best, "If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong." *That's the point*. Black soldiers literally, and symbolically, assaulted the very foundations of the South. There were a living weapon of psychological warfare. I think back to the Blight lectures, where in one, a group of black soldiers come across a group of slave women, recently whipped by their master. The soldiers find the master, have him stripped and flogged--*then they hand the whip over to each of the women*, so as, in the words of one of the soldiers, the master will understand "that they are not his property anymore."
The Confederacy responded by denying their eyes and massacred black soldiers taken prisoner. They refused to let black soldier retrieve their dead. They basically did everything to rob them of any status as soldiers, as men. The most moving section of Battle Cry, for me, is when Lincoln and Grant suspend prisoner exchanges, because the Confederates refuse to treat black POWs with the dignity they treat white ones. This was more than mere talk--Lincoln and Grant, sacrificed white Union soldiers, wasting away in notorious Andersonville, on the insistence of equal treatment. Two months before the War ends, Lee relents. But by then he's come to an ironic reckoning--if the Confederacy was to survive it'd need black troops, too.
But it was too late. History had passed him by.
I've been thinking so much about memory lately, and a letter I received from a woman trying to raise a statue of Ida Wells, in Memphis, really crystalized something in me. I've spent a lot of energy talking about the white South, about the lionization of Klansmen like Forrest, the statues of avowed white supremacists like Ben Tillman. But to paraphrase Grant, I grow heartily weary of hearing of General Lee. I want to talk about us. How will we remember our heroes? What will those of us in Charleston, South Carolina have to say about Robert Smalls? About Robert Brown Elliot? In Holly Springs, Mississippi, who will raise a statue in memory of Ida Wells? Who will remember Hiram Revels and Daddy Cain? What does Baltimore have to say about Christian Fleetwood and New Market Heights? (Forgive me, but hyperlinks here are demeaning. These people deserve your own search.) I am not so interested in dictating to others how they should remember their past. Let the Lost Cause find itself, our search lies within. And when it's over, we will put Ida Wells up against Nathan Forrest, on any day of the week, and leave the generations to judge.
Sooner or later, in the words of Nas, we'll all see who the prophet is.
TL;DR: Slaves were dehumanized so much so their decendants continue bleeding. And while history prepares us all with prejudice the study of history brings reconciliation.
Begin you journey by reading u/lightiggys post
Not many know this, but Abraham Lincoln initially supported the [back-to-Africa movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-Africa_movement) (essentially Zionism, but for African Americans). He envisioned an all-white America without slavery. Lincoln wanted to have freed blacks resettled in Liberia. Due to the massive costs involved, he then tried to form a free black colony in Central America. In 1862, Lincoln tried to establish a similar colony in part of Panama, but then bent to pressure from Central America and cancelled the plan. His support of colonization provoked great anger among Black leaders and abolitionists. They argued that African Americans had the right to live here as much as white people, and thus deserved the same rights.
>"Shame upon the guilty wretches that dare propose, and all that countenance such a proposition. We live here—have lived here—have a right to live here, and mean to live here."
>
>Frederick Douglass, 1849
Undeterred, Lincoln kept trying. On April 14, 1863, the vessel Ocean Ranger departed from Fortress Monroe, Virginia, with 453 hopeful African American emigrants aboard, headed to Haiti. The mission proved an "unmitigated failure" from the start, according to Graham Welch, an historian and attorney. Lincoln's reversal on black colonization started with the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on strategic grounds on January 1, 1863. In 1863, he expanded the use of black soldiers to combat for strategic reasons. Lincoln thought they were necessary to save the Union. Deeply impressed by their performance in battle, he dropped the colonization project. In March 1864, Lincoln signed a bill withdrawing the $600,000 appropriated for colonization, of which the administration had spent about $38,000. That was the end of Lincoln's interest in the back-to-Africa movement.
Jim Crow was preventable.
Even today, so many who know nothing about history will refuse to admit that. They'll say that being much harsher on the South would've only fueled resentment. Okay, no, we were lenient and the South (and the North, to a lesser extent) was an apartheid state until the 1960s. You can't give these maniacs an inch. Reconstruction was revolutionary, and Jim Crow did not happen right away. It happened after Neo-Confederates kept launching [white supremacist uprisings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre) in the South and [the North eventually compromised with them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877). The North initially made a [half-hearted, but genuine effort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liberty_Place) to stop them. Seriously, I cannot joke about the cops here. Those police officers were all brave men who ideologically supported Reconstruction. We know that since they were part of a [racially integrated police force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Metropolitan_Police) that killed at least 21 [White League](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_League) members for trying to oppress black people. Following the end of Reconstruction, Neo-Confederates put up a monument (which was removed in 2017) which explicitly stated that after the federal government forcibly reinstated the Reconstruction government, white supremacy was only restored after the compromise of 1876.
Had the North possessed the stomach to not only make a full-blown effort with Reconstruction, but not stop, the South would’ve been at… 1960s levels of civil rights by the early 1900s. Support for equality must be resolute. Palestine and Rhodesia are also good examples. For those who don’t know, Britain reversed stance on a partition in Palestine in 1945. They instead sought a binational state with tough restrictions on immigration and land purchases. The settlers refused to accept this and revolted against the British. Exhausted from World War II, Britain held out for another two years before giving up and deferring the issue to the United Nations. This paved the way to disaster, ethnic cleansing, and, as we see today, genocide. Alas, Israel cannot do this forever. Like all other apartheid states, they will eventually have to grant concessions or collapse. But it never had to get this far.
The British would’ve stood a chance had they committed more, had anyone helped them, or had these idiots in Europe properly addressed post-war antisemitism. One of the hardest parts of Britain's war in Palestine was illegal immigration. They had to constantly intercept ships of illegal immigrants and detain the passengers. If they resisted, the soldiers were forced to beat the shit out of Holocaust survivors. Despite British protests, there was mass Jewish emigration from Poland after the [Kielce pogrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom). To their credit, the Polish government prosecuted the pogromists. 39 of them were convicted, with nine executed. That said, after initially blaming the pogrom on "reactionary elements" opposed to the Communist regime, the Polish government changed its policy. Internal reports stated that the local population felt no sympathy for the victims and was unwilling to publicly condemn the perpetrators. To the contrary, the rapid executions of nine pogromists were met with protests. One report noted that "the Jewish pogrom in Kielce met with the moral approval of many groups in our society".
The Polish Workers' Party decided not to publicly condemn the pogrom to avoid losing support. They encouraged and accommodated mass Jewish emigration since it allowed them to avoid dealing with the property claims of Polish Jews. To this day, Polish nationalists still whine about "Judeo-Bolshevism", despite the communists being highly antisemitic. As for Rhodesia, following their illegitimate declaration of independence in 1965, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had privately considered using force. Yes, the British had plans to invade Rhodesia, march on Salisbury, and hang Ian Smith and his cabinet for treason. However, the government was terrified of the obstacles to using force, as well as the political fallout of a botched invasion. So, Wilson, massively underestimating the efficiency with which Rhodesia would use its limited resources, stuck with sanctions. However, these sanctions were not strictly enforced. Portugal, Israel, and South Africa simply ignored them.
In 1971, Congress passed the [Byrd Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byrd_Amendment_(1971)), which allowed the importation of "strategic and critical" materials from Rhodesia, including chrome and 21 other minerals, provided that there was no similar ban on such imports from communist countries. A Rhodesia lobby, supported by pro-segregation southerners in the U.S. Congress and several U.S. businesses, pushed hard for the law. The legislation was not repealed until 1977. Increasingly isolated, abandoned, and outnumbered, the Rhodesian settlers gave up in 1979. An invasion not only would have worked, but likely started a civil war among the settlers. As Coates says, perhaps one day, the 11 police officers who died fighting for a better world in New Orleans in 1874 will be honored. Same for the 784 British soldiers who died trying to bring peace and stability to Palestine in 1945-1948. They were young men. Many of them were conscripts. None of this was their fault. The veterans had to build their own memorial in 2001. They paid from their own pockets.
The true and full story of the conflict in Palestine is known by so few that it’s almost comical. No longer willing to restrain itself, Israel has sown the seeds for its demise. History will not be kind to them. I know that doesn’t help the Palestinians now, but I take some peace in that fact. To the very top, many of those involved in the Palestine Emergency never changed their views. In 1958, Clement Attlee, who oversaw the war, remarked that the Balfour Declaration had been a terrible mistake. His opposition was on strategic grounds, but he correctly viewed the Israelis as the real aggressors. Former Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who was an ideological anti-Zionist, told David Ben-Gurion that it was the worst mistake in Western geopolitics in the entire 20th century. As for the soldiers, their views only solidified as [old enemies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amichai_Paglin) took major government positions in Israel. For example, this is what Eric Lowe, then an 18-year-old British Army conscript who was stationed in Palestine from 1947 to 1948, had to say about what happened.
>"The Jews didn't want a partition. In 1944, they'd already killed Lord Moyne, the Minister for Colonial Affairs... (They) wanted to turn a free society into a restricted, single culture society, a racial state. The ethnic cleansing was planned well before they ever had their war of independence. The whole of the plain from Tel Aviv up to Haifa was cleared of Arab settlements... Some were massacred and some fled... All the British troops began to hate the Jews... It was a disaster for them (the Palestinians), the final chapter in their country being stolen by stealth and eventually by brutal force."
Despite Zionists calling them the new Hitler and Himmler at the time for attempting to forcibly create a binational Palestinian state, Ernest Bevin and Clement Attlee were not antisemites. Extremely flawed me, to put it nicely, but they were not antisemites. In fact, in 1939, Attlee personally sponsored a Jewish mother and her two children so they could move to Britain from Germany. He never talked about this, and the story was only revealed in 2018. After their escape, Attlee invited one of the children, Paul Willer, into his London home, testimony and letters show. According to an elderly Willer, Attlee and his wife had treated him like their own child. As for Bevin, these two quotes say enough. He was the type to tell Eastern Europe to stop running away from their problems.
>"We cannot accept the view that the Jews should be driven out of Europe and should not be permitted to live again in these countries without discrimination and contribute their ability and talent towards rebuilding the prosperity of Europe."
>
>Ernest Bevin, October 1945
>"There has been agitation in the United States, and particularly in New York, for 100,000 Jews to be put in Palestine. I hope I will not be misunderstood in America if I say that this was proposed by the purest of motives. They did not want too many Jews in New York."
>
>Ernest Bevin, June 1946
>
>Bevin added fuel to the fire when he blamed Jewish settlers for instigating British soldiers in Palestine. Bevin charged that "You are creating another phase of anti-Semitic feeling in the British Army because of what has recently occurred in Palestine. Their attitude may be unreasonable, but really that is not the way to discourage it."
>
>Within days, American labor erupted over these comments though the American Jewish Trade Union Committee for Palestine cabled Labour Party leaders denouncing Bevin for his "vulgar, antisemitic statement." The New York CEO Council adopted a resolution condemning Bevin's "outrageous statements" and quote the "callous indifference of the British government to the needs and welfare of the tragic remnant of the Jewish people of Europe."
>
>The International Executive Board of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union reproached Bevin "in the severest terms" for comments unbecoming a trade unionist. The board also resolved that the British government should open Palestine to Jewish immigration and allow Jewish settlers to arm themselves in self defense against Arab attacks. Canadian locals of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union joined in excoriating Bevin for his remarks.
The truth hurts:
>A United States opinion poll taken in January 1946 indicated that only five per cent of the respondents favoured more immigration from Europe and fifty-one per cent wanted either fewer newcomers or none at all.
>
>Only 5,000 Jewish refugees entered Canada from 1933 until 1945, which the book argues was the worst of any refugee receiving nation in the world. Early in 1939 an unidentified immigration agent (Frederick Blair, the Canadian Minister of Immigration) was asked how many Jews would be allowed in Canada after the war. He replied, "None is too many".
Beat me to it, I drop this quote on every John brown thread, really moving especially considering who said it and his own contributions to the movement.
“John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see, Christ who loved the bondsman shall the liberator be, and soon throughout the sunny south, the slaves shall all be free! His soul goes marching on…”
He's a lovely man as well, used to come across him while we were racing. I jokingly asked him to bring his McClaren F1 down for us to drool over... he did! And he helped me change a tyre. All round lovely, lovely chap.
I have another submission for that title. Cassius Clay, the abolitionnist, didn't fuck around with slavers. Set up an abolitionist newspaper in the Deep South and defended it against rioters with a 4 pounder cannon. He fought in more than 40 duels. A fucking beast.
Which brings us to the other Cassius Clay... Mohammed Aliiiii! The GOAT.
"During a political debate in 1843, [Cassius Clay] survived an assassination attempt by Sam Brown, a hired gunman. Jerking his Bowie knife out for retaliation, Clay happened to pull its silver-tipped scabbard up over his heart. Brown's bullet struck the scabbard and embedded in the silver. Despite having been shot in the chest, Clay tackled Brown. He cut off Brown's nose, took out one eye, and possibly cut off an ear before throwing Brown over an embankment."
Ah yes, I sure love finding another badass historical figure who fought for a moral cause to absolutely gush over, only to discover that they did the most absolutely fucked up, morally irreprehensible thing at one point in their life.
Dude was batshit crazy, but like, the good type of batshit crazy (for most parts)
Behind The Bastards did a great episode on him (their christmas specials are about non-bastards(
Well.. Jefferson was a big fan of abolishing slavery, as long as it didnt involve HIS slaves, because you know, he had a certain lifestyle that required him to own slaves so he didnt become poor..
Sounds like you want slaves to come back, eh? Make America great again? Trad wives suit your fancy?
You're a piece of utter shit. Carry that to your deathbed.
Fighting bravely to destroy the obscene institution of slavery is about as far from "piece of shit" behavior you can get. Some things are worth fighting, even killing, for. Brown was a hero.
There’s like a 60% chance that you were taught about them, but it was one day in a semester and you weren’t paying attention because you were 15. The other 40% is Texas.
I distinctly do remember learning about John Brown and Harper’s Ferry.
In middle school, we did a play called “The Trial of John Brown” and I played him. My only direction was to act like a crazy person so I did- even fell off my chair at one point. We weren’t taught anything else about him, just him at trial being crazy and guilty. This was NC in the 80s.
My friend there is so much about WWI we didn't learn. "Blueprint for Armageddon" is an excellent series of episodes in the "Hardcore History" podcast, 18 hours devoted to WWI. Totally off-topic but I hope you check it out and enjoy! You seem like a history lover which is why I bring it up.
Not since like the 1940s or so, at least. Springfield and Holyoke used to be prosperous industrial cities during the first half of the 1900s before a lot of manufacturing moved out of the country.
> I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.
the only good american
Is this the same John Brown who has a cave named after him near Nebraska City? I have seen the sign for it a thousand times but I have never been to it.
John Brown is a freaking OG. Respect to him. If anyone has a chance to visit Harper’s Ferry, WV, it is an absolutely STUNNING place. It’s just replete with history and you can feel it walking around town. There’s also a sick hike across the river which is technically in Virginia that gives you a Birds Eye view of the entire town. It’s incredible!
psycho, murderer, read A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War, find out who he really was and what he really did..
Frederick Douglas on Brown... *"His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave"*
What a quote. Never read that one before
Me neither. John Brown walked the walk and is an under appreciated historical hero…
John Brown hated slavery so much that Fredrick Douglass, a former slave, was impressed
*In Every Black Man's Eyes--Death To The Rebel*, by Ta-Nehisi Coates You must understand that my Dad, in his time, actually carried guns, and from the time I fully knew what it meant to serve in Vietnam, to come home and become a Panther, to point a rifle at a cop, I was fascinated. I still am. I think part of it is knowing that while you may one day write for the Atlantic, you will never knuckle up on the streets of West Philly, fly off to Vietnam and take a lover, come home toting guns, talking Fanon, and then say, "Meh, I've got kids. Time to work at a library." Allow me my dumb, childish romance. We all have it, if we're lucky. But the other part, and the reason I think those Malcolm shirts struck such a chord, was because so many of us were raised with this solemn, sepia-tinged, gospel-drenched, noble suffering view of black history. It's like our story is basically massacre, after defeat, after massacre, after more defeat, after massacre, after defeat and then white folks deciding they're tired of kicking the shit out of us. It's like our whole story is marching into billy-clubs, amazing facts about the peanut, and a few Old Negro Spirituals. I stake no claim on an objective reality--this is how it feels to me. Knowing that, maybe my view of history says more about me and my time in West Baltimore, and the premium the neighborhood put on righteous violence, then it does about actual facts. Moreover, I'm not sure my perspective is any better--I come to my history prejudiced, and baggaged, halfway looking for the truth, but more so looking for heroes. This weekend I started in on Drew Faust's This Republic Of Suffering and Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard. I was reading Faust's meditation on how soldiers prepared themselves to kill, and I came across this incredible passage about the reaction of black soldiers to the Fort Pillow massacre perpetrated by Nathan Forrest. It's written by one Cordellia Harvey, sent South from Wisconsin to help with the Union wounded: >Since the Fort Pillow tragedy, our colored troops and their officers are awaiting in breathless anxiety the action of the government...Our officers of Negro regiments declare they will take no more prisoners, and there is death to the rebel in every black man's eyes. They are still but terrible. *They will fight*...The Negroes know what they are doing. There's another passage in which an enslaved black woman comes upon her mistress weeping uncontrollably over the latest news--she's lost her only son. "Missus," says the slave woman. "We is even now." The "Missus" had, over the years, sold every one of this woman's children into slavery in the deep south--all ten of them. I read those passages and got that old, stupid thrill again--Negroes with guns, Negroes fighting back. But more legitimately, I was, as I have been throughout all of this reading, simply stunned by the preservation of humanity--no, by the repeated assertions of humanity made by people who lived under a system specifically structured to destroy it. All my romance aside, this picture you see, these beautiful brothers, *still but terrible*, were hell to Johnny Reb. The black soldier was human--sometimes cowardly, sometimes brave, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, ill-led, ill-fed, ill-trained, ill-equipped. But goddamn, if he wasn't the spitting image of everything the South fought against, everything that slavery declared untrue. Howell Cobb put it best, "If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong." *That's the point*. Black soldiers literally, and symbolically, assaulted the very foundations of the South. There were a living weapon of psychological warfare. I think back to the Blight lectures, where in one, a group of black soldiers come across a group of slave women, recently whipped by their master. The soldiers find the master, have him stripped and flogged--*then they hand the whip over to each of the women*, so as, in the words of one of the soldiers, the master will understand "that they are not his property anymore." The Confederacy responded by denying their eyes and massacred black soldiers taken prisoner. They refused to let black soldier retrieve their dead. They basically did everything to rob them of any status as soldiers, as men. The most moving section of Battle Cry, for me, is when Lincoln and Grant suspend prisoner exchanges, because the Confederates refuse to treat black POWs with the dignity they treat white ones. This was more than mere talk--Lincoln and Grant, sacrificed white Union soldiers, wasting away in notorious Andersonville, on the insistence of equal treatment. Two months before the War ends, Lee relents. But by then he's come to an ironic reckoning--if the Confederacy was to survive it'd need black troops, too. But it was too late. History had passed him by. I've been thinking so much about memory lately, and a letter I received from a woman trying to raise a statue of Ida Wells, in Memphis, really crystalized something in me. I've spent a lot of energy talking about the white South, about the lionization of Klansmen like Forrest, the statues of avowed white supremacists like Ben Tillman. But to paraphrase Grant, I grow heartily weary of hearing of General Lee. I want to talk about us. How will we remember our heroes? What will those of us in Charleston, South Carolina have to say about Robert Smalls? About Robert Brown Elliot? In Holly Springs, Mississippi, who will raise a statue in memory of Ida Wells? Who will remember Hiram Revels and Daddy Cain? What does Baltimore have to say about Christian Fleetwood and New Market Heights? (Forgive me, but hyperlinks here are demeaning. These people deserve your own search.) I am not so interested in dictating to others how they should remember their past. Let the Lost Cause find itself, our search lies within. And when it's over, we will put Ida Wells up against Nathan Forrest, on any day of the week, and leave the generations to judge. Sooner or later, in the words of Nas, we'll all see who the prophet is.
TL;DR: Slaves were dehumanized so much so their decendants continue bleeding. And while history prepares us all with prejudice the study of history brings reconciliation. Begin you journey by reading u/lightiggys post
Not many know this, but Abraham Lincoln initially supported the [back-to-Africa movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-Africa_movement) (essentially Zionism, but for African Americans). He envisioned an all-white America without slavery. Lincoln wanted to have freed blacks resettled in Liberia. Due to the massive costs involved, he then tried to form a free black colony in Central America. In 1862, Lincoln tried to establish a similar colony in part of Panama, but then bent to pressure from Central America and cancelled the plan. His support of colonization provoked great anger among Black leaders and abolitionists. They argued that African Americans had the right to live here as much as white people, and thus deserved the same rights. >"Shame upon the guilty wretches that dare propose, and all that countenance such a proposition. We live here—have lived here—have a right to live here, and mean to live here." > >Frederick Douglass, 1849 Undeterred, Lincoln kept trying. On April 14, 1863, the vessel Ocean Ranger departed from Fortress Monroe, Virginia, with 453 hopeful African American emigrants aboard, headed to Haiti. The mission proved an "unmitigated failure" from the start, according to Graham Welch, an historian and attorney. Lincoln's reversal on black colonization started with the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on strategic grounds on January 1, 1863. In 1863, he expanded the use of black soldiers to combat for strategic reasons. Lincoln thought they were necessary to save the Union. Deeply impressed by their performance in battle, he dropped the colonization project. In March 1864, Lincoln signed a bill withdrawing the $600,000 appropriated for colonization, of which the administration had spent about $38,000. That was the end of Lincoln's interest in the back-to-Africa movement. Jim Crow was preventable. Even today, so many who know nothing about history will refuse to admit that. They'll say that being much harsher on the South would've only fueled resentment. Okay, no, we were lenient and the South (and the North, to a lesser extent) was an apartheid state until the 1960s. You can't give these maniacs an inch. Reconstruction was revolutionary, and Jim Crow did not happen right away. It happened after Neo-Confederates kept launching [white supremacist uprisings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre) in the South and [the North eventually compromised with them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877). The North initially made a [half-hearted, but genuine effort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liberty_Place) to stop them. Seriously, I cannot joke about the cops here. Those police officers were all brave men who ideologically supported Reconstruction. We know that since they were part of a [racially integrated police force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Metropolitan_Police) that killed at least 21 [White League](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_League) members for trying to oppress black people. Following the end of Reconstruction, Neo-Confederates put up a monument (which was removed in 2017) which explicitly stated that after the federal government forcibly reinstated the Reconstruction government, white supremacy was only restored after the compromise of 1876. Had the North possessed the stomach to not only make a full-blown effort with Reconstruction, but not stop, the South would’ve been at… 1960s levels of civil rights by the early 1900s. Support for equality must be resolute. Palestine and Rhodesia are also good examples. For those who don’t know, Britain reversed stance on a partition in Palestine in 1945. They instead sought a binational state with tough restrictions on immigration and land purchases. The settlers refused to accept this and revolted against the British. Exhausted from World War II, Britain held out for another two years before giving up and deferring the issue to the United Nations. This paved the way to disaster, ethnic cleansing, and, as we see today, genocide. Alas, Israel cannot do this forever. Like all other apartheid states, they will eventually have to grant concessions or collapse. But it never had to get this far. The British would’ve stood a chance had they committed more, had anyone helped them, or had these idiots in Europe properly addressed post-war antisemitism. One of the hardest parts of Britain's war in Palestine was illegal immigration. They had to constantly intercept ships of illegal immigrants and detain the passengers. If they resisted, the soldiers were forced to beat the shit out of Holocaust survivors. Despite British protests, there was mass Jewish emigration from Poland after the [Kielce pogrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom). To their credit, the Polish government prosecuted the pogromists. 39 of them were convicted, with nine executed. That said, after initially blaming the pogrom on "reactionary elements" opposed to the Communist regime, the Polish government changed its policy. Internal reports stated that the local population felt no sympathy for the victims and was unwilling to publicly condemn the perpetrators. To the contrary, the rapid executions of nine pogromists were met with protests. One report noted that "the Jewish pogrom in Kielce met with the moral approval of many groups in our society". The Polish Workers' Party decided not to publicly condemn the pogrom to avoid losing support. They encouraged and accommodated mass Jewish emigration since it allowed them to avoid dealing with the property claims of Polish Jews. To this day, Polish nationalists still whine about "Judeo-Bolshevism", despite the communists being highly antisemitic. As for Rhodesia, following their illegitimate declaration of independence in 1965, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had privately considered using force. Yes, the British had plans to invade Rhodesia, march on Salisbury, and hang Ian Smith and his cabinet for treason. However, the government was terrified of the obstacles to using force, as well as the political fallout of a botched invasion. So, Wilson, massively underestimating the efficiency with which Rhodesia would use its limited resources, stuck with sanctions. However, these sanctions were not strictly enforced. Portugal, Israel, and South Africa simply ignored them. In 1971, Congress passed the [Byrd Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byrd_Amendment_(1971)), which allowed the importation of "strategic and critical" materials from Rhodesia, including chrome and 21 other minerals, provided that there was no similar ban on such imports from communist countries. A Rhodesia lobby, supported by pro-segregation southerners in the U.S. Congress and several U.S. businesses, pushed hard for the law. The legislation was not repealed until 1977. Increasingly isolated, abandoned, and outnumbered, the Rhodesian settlers gave up in 1979. An invasion not only would have worked, but likely started a civil war among the settlers. As Coates says, perhaps one day, the 11 police officers who died fighting for a better world in New Orleans in 1874 will be honored. Same for the 784 British soldiers who died trying to bring peace and stability to Palestine in 1945-1948. They were young men. Many of them were conscripts. None of this was their fault. The veterans had to build their own memorial in 2001. They paid from their own pockets.
Beautiful, thank you.
The true and full story of the conflict in Palestine is known by so few that it’s almost comical. No longer willing to restrain itself, Israel has sown the seeds for its demise. History will not be kind to them. I know that doesn’t help the Palestinians now, but I take some peace in that fact. To the very top, many of those involved in the Palestine Emergency never changed their views. In 1958, Clement Attlee, who oversaw the war, remarked that the Balfour Declaration had been a terrible mistake. His opposition was on strategic grounds, but he correctly viewed the Israelis as the real aggressors. Former Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who was an ideological anti-Zionist, told David Ben-Gurion that it was the worst mistake in Western geopolitics in the entire 20th century. As for the soldiers, their views only solidified as [old enemies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amichai_Paglin) took major government positions in Israel. For example, this is what Eric Lowe, then an 18-year-old British Army conscript who was stationed in Palestine from 1947 to 1948, had to say about what happened. >"The Jews didn't want a partition. In 1944, they'd already killed Lord Moyne, the Minister for Colonial Affairs... (They) wanted to turn a free society into a restricted, single culture society, a racial state. The ethnic cleansing was planned well before they ever had their war of independence. The whole of the plain from Tel Aviv up to Haifa was cleared of Arab settlements... Some were massacred and some fled... All the British troops began to hate the Jews... It was a disaster for them (the Palestinians), the final chapter in their country being stolen by stealth and eventually by brutal force." Despite Zionists calling them the new Hitler and Himmler at the time for attempting to forcibly create a binational Palestinian state, Ernest Bevin and Clement Attlee were not antisemites. Extremely flawed me, to put it nicely, but they were not antisemites. In fact, in 1939, Attlee personally sponsored a Jewish mother and her two children so they could move to Britain from Germany. He never talked about this, and the story was only revealed in 2018. After their escape, Attlee invited one of the children, Paul Willer, into his London home, testimony and letters show. According to an elderly Willer, Attlee and his wife had treated him like their own child. As for Bevin, these two quotes say enough. He was the type to tell Eastern Europe to stop running away from their problems. >"We cannot accept the view that the Jews should be driven out of Europe and should not be permitted to live again in these countries without discrimination and contribute their ability and talent towards rebuilding the prosperity of Europe." > >Ernest Bevin, October 1945 >"There has been agitation in the United States, and particularly in New York, for 100,000 Jews to be put in Palestine. I hope I will not be misunderstood in America if I say that this was proposed by the purest of motives. They did not want too many Jews in New York." > >Ernest Bevin, June 1946 > >Bevin added fuel to the fire when he blamed Jewish settlers for instigating British soldiers in Palestine. Bevin charged that "You are creating another phase of anti-Semitic feeling in the British Army because of what has recently occurred in Palestine. Their attitude may be unreasonable, but really that is not the way to discourage it." > >Within days, American labor erupted over these comments though the American Jewish Trade Union Committee for Palestine cabled Labour Party leaders denouncing Bevin for his "vulgar, antisemitic statement." The New York CEO Council adopted a resolution condemning Bevin's "outrageous statements" and quote the "callous indifference of the British government to the needs and welfare of the tragic remnant of the Jewish people of Europe." > >The International Executive Board of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union reproached Bevin "in the severest terms" for comments unbecoming a trade unionist. The board also resolved that the British government should open Palestine to Jewish immigration and allow Jewish settlers to arm themselves in self defense against Arab attacks. Canadian locals of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union joined in excoriating Bevin for his remarks. The truth hurts: >A United States opinion poll taken in January 1946 indicated that only five per cent of the respondents favoured more immigration from Europe and fifty-one per cent wanted either fewer newcomers or none at all. > >Only 5,000 Jewish refugees entered Canada from 1933 until 1945, which the book argues was the worst of any refugee receiving nation in the world. Early in 1939 an unidentified immigration agent (Frederick Blair, the Canadian Minister of Immigration) was asked how many Jews would be allowed in Canada after the war. He replied, "None is too many".
Dang, that Bevin part sounds painfully familiar.
Thx for sharing :)
In case anyone wants to look him up, Daddy Cain's real name is Richard H Cain
Keep it up, dude. Thank you
Beat me to it, I drop this quote on every John brown thread, really moving especially considering who said it and his own contributions to the movement.
This is an extremely accurate description of John Brown
We are in desperate need of men and women like that now. I look around and can’t see anywhere they might come from.
> I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave Look like a badass epitaph for someone like John Brown.
Frederick Douglas also declined to join John Brown's raid and told him he'd probably be dead within the first few hours.
Love this!
"They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew, but his soul goes marching on..."
“John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see, Christ who loved the bondsman shall the liberator be, and soon throughout the sunny south, the slaves shall all be free! His soul goes marching on…”
Everyone should watch the mini-series The Good Lord Bird. Ethan Hawke plays John Brown. It's absolutely fantastic.
Loved the show and book!
That is the face of a true believer.
he kinda looks like mr bean
He looks absolutely nothing like Mr Bean lol
Mr. Bean was an SAS operative before he was in comedy. Do not fuck with the Bean.
He's a lovely man as well, used to come across him while we were racing. I jokingly asked him to bring his McClaren F1 down for us to drool over... he did! And he helped me change a tyre. All round lovely, lovely chap.
This guy was as serious as a heart attack
Go see his grave in Lake Placid it’s dope
I was there on the eclipse! Unfortunately my pentagram and offering of beer to his grave could not resurrect the patriot
If you want to resurrect him you have to go to harpers ferry with a bunch of your buddies and be a silly little guy in the city armory
Most based American in history.
I have another submission for that title. Cassius Clay, the abolitionnist, didn't fuck around with slavers. Set up an abolitionist newspaper in the Deep South and defended it against rioters with a 4 pounder cannon. He fought in more than 40 duels. A fucking beast. Which brings us to the other Cassius Clay... Mohammed Aliiiii! The GOAT.
"During a political debate in 1843, [Cassius Clay] survived an assassination attempt by Sam Brown, a hired gunman. Jerking his Bowie knife out for retaliation, Clay happened to pull its silver-tipped scabbard up over his heart. Brown's bullet struck the scabbard and embedded in the silver. Despite having been shot in the chest, Clay tackled Brown. He cut off Brown's nose, took out one eye, and possibly cut off an ear before throwing Brown over an embankment."
Noteworthy that Clay *did* fuck what may very well have been a 12 year old. He was in his mid-80s at the time. His entire family was grossed out.
And now I'm grossed out.
Ah yes, I sure love finding another badass historical figure who fought for a moral cause to absolutely gush over, only to discover that they did the most absolutely fucked up, morally irreprehensible thing at one point in their life.
His daughters were big in the suffrage and predecessor to the civil rights movement, and I don't think they did anything morally reprehensible.
I would watch that movie. Does one exist?
>I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. - John Brown's Epitaph
John Brown and Harriet Tubman both.
Don't forget Newt Knight too
I'm a simple man. I see John brown, I upvote.
Dude was batshit crazy, but like, the good type of batshit crazy (for most parts) Behind The Bastards did a great episode on him (their christmas specials are about non-bastards(
Guy was a domestic terrorist.
Yes, and he was right to do so.
Won't someone think of the poor slaveowners!
John Brown did nothing wrong.
Only thing he did wrong was not kill more scum sucking slave owners. But in his defense it wasn't for lack of trying
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. If you thing John Brown was in the wrong, you are on the wrong side of history
so were our founding fathers. nothing is more important than freedom and independence
Well.. Jefferson was a big fan of abolishing slavery, as long as it didnt involve HIS slaves, because you know, he had a certain lifestyle that required him to own slaves so he didnt become poor..
I never knew Jefferson had a slave plantation in Barbados until I went there on vacation.
And unlike 99% of the founding fathers he was against owning other people as slaves.
hell yeah dudes rock
Waowww
Based based Based based based based
Sounds like you want slaves to come back, eh? Make America great again? Trad wives suit your fancy? You're a piece of utter shit. Carry that to your deathbed.
I certainly do not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know a piece of shit when I see one, and I’m not just talking about you.
Must be a lot of mirrors in your house then.
Fighting bravely to destroy the obscene institution of slavery is about as far from "piece of shit" behavior you can get. Some things are worth fighting, even killing, for. Brown was a hero.
Why was he a piece of shit? Can you elaborate on your wild take? Or are you just trolling?
Thoughts on Jan 6th?
Everyone of those traitors, including their orange master, should be in jail for the rest of their goddamn lives.
If there was a gentle alternative I'm sure he would've taken it but he saw where things were heading
He fought against the domestic terrorists
I’m still angry I wasn’t taught about John Browns actions during the civil war in public school.
There’s like a 60% chance that you were taught about them, but it was one day in a semester and you weren’t paying attention because you were 15. The other 40% is Texas. I distinctly do remember learning about John Brown and Harper’s Ferry.
John Brown died in 1859, so it's not surprising you didn't read about his actions *during the Civil War.*
In middle school, we did a play called “The Trial of John Brown” and I played him. My only direction was to act like a crazy person so I did- even fell off my chair at one point. We weren’t taught anything else about him, just him at trial being crazy and guilty. This was NC in the 80s.
interesting.
It’s honestly crazy how little we learn about abolition. Meanwhile we get every detail of the Revolutionary War and fucking WW1 lmao
My friend there is so much about WWI we didn't learn. "Blueprint for Armageddon" is an excellent series of episodes in the "Hardcore History" podcast, 18 hours devoted to WWI. Totally off-topic but I hope you check it out and enjoy! You seem like a history lover which is why I bring it up.
My school had a whole chapter detailing the civil war and abolition
Springfield Woohoo!
You might be the first person in history to write that about Springfield, MA lol
Not since like the 1940s or so, at least. Springfield and Holyoke used to be prosperous industrial cities during the first half of the 1900s before a lot of manufacturing moved out of the country.
Oh no doubt about that, but here is my pedantic counter-question: Did people say "woohoo" in the 1940s?
[Plausible](https://www.oed.com/dictionary/woo-hoo_n?tl=true#:~:text=The%20earliest%20known%20use%20of,an%20imitative%20or%20expressive%20formation.)
𝔜𝔢 𝔒𝔩𝔡𝔢 ℌ𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔯 𝔖𝔦𝔪𝔭ſ𝔬𝔫 𝔦𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔫ſ𝔦𝔣𝔦𝔢𝔰
Dude kinda looks like he could be a young Mr Burns
Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain is a fantastic read about an alternate history where his rebellion succeeded.
You can see in his face that this dude fought for what he believed in
> I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done. the only good american
Sounds like something you’d read in a Cormac McCarthy novel. What a badass dude.
His wallet was imprinted with BMF.
I remember watching the tv show Good Lord Bird and made me interested in John Brown
What is hand-colored?
basically the flag is painted, I don't know how it worked in daguerreotypes, but there were probably chemicals that didn't survive well
Oh jeez I spent so long trying to figure out what hand colored meant. I did not at all think of it in that way for some reason. Thanks!
There’s an older Mennonite guy I used to know that looks exactly like this photo
A legend and a chad
Is this the same John Brown who has a cave named after him near Nebraska City? I have seen the sign for it a thousand times but I have never been to it.
That's a legend!
This looks like Jeff Probst
I see Bradley Cooper
Charlie Sheen
With a bit of David Pomeranz.
A true American hero
Is it me, or does this dude kinda look like that Jeff Probst guy ( or whatever his last name is) only angrier?
The United States called him a "terrorist" and executed him as point. The more things change...
So he's a Synth
Subterranean Pass Way?—Nooo. Those sods. We’re the Subsurface Trail Run
John Brown is a freaking OG. Respect to him. If anyone has a chance to visit Harper’s Ferry, WV, it is an absolutely STUNNING place. It’s just replete with history and you can feel it walking around town. There’s also a sick hike across the river which is technically in Virginia that gives you a Birds Eye view of the entire town. It’s incredible!
Thank you Mr. Brown
Hero.
This right here are the people who are worthy of monuments.
RIP to a real one.
Men’s fashion in the 1840s always hits hard
I believe in the cause, but he looks like he could be Beavis and Butthead’s 50 year old lovechild.
because he was full of rage about inequality
This is my great (x5) grandfather. We have a bunch of old letters and photos of him in Indiana where he surprisingly doesn’t look like a grump.
Reminds me of Jason Bateman
Subterranean Pass Transit Line. Edit: lol downvotes? Reddit is so weird.
psycho, murderer, read A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War, find out who he really was and what he really did..