John Brown: A Terrorist who Deserved Hanging

This is the 150th anniversary of the hanging of John Brown. When he attacked Harper’s Ferry with a handful of followers, the butcher of Kansas helped sow the seeds of the Civil War. Few things would have made Brown happier than the thought of hundreds of thousands of people dying for his own Scorched Earth method of moral salvation.

The New York Times op-ed page has a piece today touting Brown as an American hero. It seeks to vindicate him:

He was held in high esteem by many great men of his day. Ralph Waldo Emerson compared him to Jesus, declaring that Brown would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.” Henry David Thoreau placed Brown above the freedom fighters of the American Revolution.

The fact that Emerson and Thoreau turned into cheerleaders for John Brown was among the worst failings for each of them. Both Emerson and Thoreau started out denouncing politics as a snare and a fraud. And both fell for Brown and his vision of progress via slaughtering innocent people.

Brown’s attempt to create a bloody uprising in Virginia helped close the final door to compromise between the North and the South. His name should be as odious today as those of other people whose violence sparked mass killing.
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Update 12/03: There have been some excellent revisionist histories in the last 20 years on how the Civil War could have been averted and how slavery would have been phased out without a national bloodbath. While some of the deep South states saw slavery as their essence, upper South states like Virginia were not so mindlessly attached to the odious institution.
Those who believe that a war was necessary to end slavery often fail to realize that much of the dire plight of freed slaves was the result of northern armies relying on Scorched Earth tactics in the final year of the war. When almost everything has been destroyed, it is difficult for anyone (except Carpetbaggers) to survive.
[Comments also welcome at my blog here]

9 thoughts on “John Brown: A Terrorist who Deserved Hanging”

  1. John Brown's body is a moldering in the grave. Bovard you have it right. At one time I thought he was a hero myself. He was just another crazed butcher.

    1. He was not just another crazed butcher. The fact he was pronounced sane and as clear headed as any man is why he was hanged shortly after the trial. He insisted he was sane, and everyone who talked to him agreed.Anyone who has read anything about the era knows there was not going to be any kind of Big Compromise on the slavery issue. They couldn't even compromise on the compromises they spent months working on. And when it came to north vs south, border states like Virginia would side with the South no matter how important slavery was to them. Mighty big talk to say 'as slavery was gradually phased out' spoken by a non-slave 150 years after the fact. How long would you have that phase out last? Without force, you might still be apologizing for the South. No revisionist history I've read has convinced me slavery ever would have ended without war. Maybe you had to live in the times to understand that. Of course we could have evaded the Civil War – Buchanan would have been your idea of the perfect president. Most people rank him in the bottom 3 or 4.
      What total crap.

  2. I disagree. Self-defense, when there is no other option, is not terrorism. You believe that there were other options, he apparently did not. You might also consider Nat Turner a terrorist who deserved hanging and distribution of his body parts as souvenirs to those present. While John Brown's actions may fit a literal definition of terrorism (although that definition is being stretched all the time ie Ft. Hood incident) so too could the actions of virtually every compliant complicit citizen of the United States during that same time period for their role in the institution of slavery, which in so many areas (like South Carolina) depended on terror to preserve white domination over large Black populations. There is too long a list of American terrorists to condemn for anyone to ever get down far enough on that list to celebrate the death of John Brown.

    1. Launching a rebellion to slaughter thousands of people is not self-defense. Nothing that was done to Black slaves warranted what John Brown proposed to do. And as for lists of terrorists, the one who aims to kill you is the most important one to you.

      1. What would warrant it? I can't think of anything worse than what was done to Africans enslaved in the U.S.

    2. Excuse me! You mean to say that poor white dirt farmers who barely could feed themselves warranted being killed over an institution, and slaves, they themselves could never afford? You'd have to be nuts to fight, defend, or even die for such an "institution" that you, with the pleasant comforts of distance and time, rail about. Clearly you have been indoctrinated, like myself formerly, into the historical "religion" preached in pubelick skrools. To say otherwise is considered sacrilege.

      1. By that same token you would have to be nuts to have voted for W. and his mega tax cuts for the rich unless you were yourself rich but instead he got more than a few votes from people who someday hope to be rich. Same thing back then, I can pretty much guarantee that 99% of those people too poor to be slave owners hoped that someday that would change. The rest were abolitionists.

        1. I agree with you that you'd have to be nuts to vote for W… but, then again, I didn't. And neither did I vote for the other side of this twisted fraudulent coin thats passed off as government because they will and have done or supported the same. Robbery is robbery and murder is murder and "voting" in these circuses, with their liars and enabling boot licking slaves, called elections is a fools game. Read up on Lysander Spooner, the ardent and wonderful abolitionist I deeply respect, on this very subject. We have the luxury, for now, of commenting and observing from a distance. There may soon come a time when we don't and I wouldn't want wish upon anyone the sort of hell on earth that others have experienced… even upon you no matter what our differences may be.

  3. Slavery, Jim Crow, KKK: American domestic terrorism.
    CIA in Central/South America and Iran, Invasion of Phillipines, Bhopal chemical massacre: American International Terrorism.
    And just what compromise should there have been to the morally reprehensible practice of slavery?

    1. Funny how Lincoln, typical corporate lawyer that he was, saw no problem in representing a man to get back his slave before becoming president. While president his emancipation proclamation etc. etc. and any "laws" were only directed to the southern states and not the north. Hmmmmm. Odd? If the North was so hell bent on "freeing" the slaves then why didn't the do so during the course of the war? Hmmmm. Other nations did away with slavery without the need for so much bloodshed… on the order of millions today. Funny how I thought this was Anti-war.com but its filled with some of the most blood thirsty bastards around. Wolves in sheep's clothing indeed!

  4. Let's not bullshit ourselves, the founders of this country could easily be defined as terrorists. Ask King George if you don't believe me.

  6. How about the compromise of buying up the slaves and setting them free? Their owners would be compensated under the old system, thereby making way for the new way of doing things. Therefore no group would harbor ill feelings at the end of the process.

    1. Why should non-slaveowners have paid slaveowners?

      The amount of compensation would be an enormous theft from non-slaveholders.

      Furthermore, what about compensation from the slaveowners to the slaves, who were robbed of the value of the labor (not to mention their liberty)?

      Slave owners weren't entitled to any compensation. They were entitled to a choice: free your slaves or be destroyed.

  7. Not a chance in hell of that actually happening. After the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court established 7-2 that blacks were not citizens, the South had no reason to make compromises like this. War was the only way of ending slavery.

    Also, Brown's uprising was intended as largely defensive. The idea was that blacks could run to his army in the mountains, which would be big and well-armed enough to fend off slavers. He did not intend or engage in the indiscriminate murder of plantation owners, which would have been arguably justified anyway.

    1. Yes. The Dred Scott decision combined with enforcement of the fugitive slave law in the North and "popular sovereignty" in the territories essentially legalized slavery in the entire United States. Lincoln was correct in his "house divided" speech. Most Northerners and Westerners were genuinely fearful of slavery's expansion to their own states, so many applauded Brown's direct action and most voted for Lincoln.

      An attack on a military installation or soldiers may legitimately be called treason, but it is not terrorism. Terrorism is a deliberate attack on defenseless civilians to achieve your political objective. The London Blitz, Dresden fire-bombings and the dropping of A-bombs on Japan were acts of terrorism. An attack on an arsenal or shooting military personnel on an army base are treason when committed by a citizen of the country being attacked, but they are not terrorism.

  8. I intend to sign the petition requesting that John Brown be pardoned. He was on the right side of history, and the violence that resulted as a consequence of his actions falls squarely on the side of the people who insisted upon seizing Africans and possessing them in this country as slaves. The notion of compensating them for such an atrocity is absurd, and would never have been accepted, anyway. it is also important to note that slaveholders were among the most imperialist class in the country at the time, seeking to expand into Cuba and Central America in order to preserve the "peculiar institution".

  10. Makes me laugh when Yankees assume a smug tone over slavery. The Yankees were the slavetraders; Providence and Newport Rhode Island ,and Salem, Mass. were among the largest slaving ports. Slavery built the entire New World, not just our part of it. To single out Southerners as uniquely evil and guilty is ridiculous, though it makes latter-day Puritans feel good about themselves. Slavery was a great sin that should have been and could have been (and was) abolished peacefully everywhere but the U.S. and Haiti. Idiots like John Brown and their opposite numbers in the South made this impossible by their reckless, criminal acts.

      1. John Brown was merely the last, most radical example of the Yankee idiocy that caused Southerners to dig in and resist any change. Brown's hanging was one the great acts of genuine justice in U.S. history.

  11. BS. The only compromise the South was interested in was one where slavery would continue to exist. That would not have been a compromise–it would have been the surrender of those who believe that slavery is fundamentally evil.

    1. And if it existed for five, ten, fifteen years and then peacefully was abolished you'd have a problem with that? I guess 600K dead is your answer to anything. Long live the Maine!

  12. the problem with libertarianism is present right here in Bravard's little essay. Nowhere does he decry slavery. I assume he figures its the right of free individuals. Oh yeah, what about the individuals enslaved?

      1. I brought this up on Scott Horton's "Stress Blog" over a year ago. The EXACT same sentiment.

        The chased me into the windmill with pitchforks and torches.

    3. What about them? All in all, their lot in life wasn't nearly as horrible as people nowadays like to think it was. Did it ever occur to you that one reason Blacks have historically been so enamored of the welfare state is that they remember what it was like to have their basic needs in life provided for them. They certainly didn't starve or freeze to death under slavery, and they received, on the whole, excellent medical care.

      1. Valerianus,

        Would u like to volunteer yourself or your children to be slaves? Mind u they will be well taken care of.

  13. That only makes sense if you also outlaw slavery in the process. Otherwise, the slaveowners will just buy (or, more likely, kidnap) new slaves. Let's also not forget that the slave codes in force before the Civil War were reincarnated afterward in the new penal codes that reinstated de facto "slavery by another name" (see book of that title by Douglas A. Blackmon).

  15. Nonsense. As usual, Emerson and Thoreau were correct. John Brown is an American hero and his actions should not be conflated with Lincoln's War. One was trying to end slavery, the other was trying to increase the strength and scope of the US Federal Government. Additionally, while Emerson et al. were praising John Brown, Lincoln disparaged him. That alone is proof of John Brown's heroism.

  16. According to notes and diaries written by British adventerer, Mungo Park, 2/3rds of the black population in Sub-Sahara Africa during the late 1700s lived as slaves to the other 1/3rd of the population. As a result, when New England slave traders (who constituted 99% of American slave traders) sailed to Africa they found the slave pens full of slaves who had been brought there and sold by their own countrymen. And what did the African cheiftians get in exchange for their slaves? They primarily got New England made rum, long rifles from Pennysylvania, and cotton fabric produced in the sweat shops of New York City. Yankee slave traders and other Northern merchants reaped immense profits from the slave trade, while the South got none of the profits and ended up losing the slaves they had paid top dollor to obtain. Does any of this justify slavery? Not in the least, but it does help point out the ignorance, hypocricy, and perfidity that most Yankees possess.

    1. First, I think you mean hypocrisy and perfidy not hypocricy and perfidity. Second, your accusation of ignorance, hypocrisy, and perfidy (though I have no idea why perfidy applies) is only valid if you accept the doctrine of collective responsibility, and that all Yankees are/were in league and complicit with New England slave traders.

        1. So, if John Brown had killed a few of them too, then he'd be alright? I guess what you're saying then is, that he didn't do enough. Maybe if he hadn't been hanged, he'd have gotten around to it!

      2. And you believe all Southerners are/were in league and complicit with slave holders? I guess then they deserved to die even if they had nothing to do with the practice. Sucked to be them.

    2. Yes, africans had slaves also. What in the world does this have to do with anything in the article?

      South got none of the profits, eh? They just got free labor for up to 200 years, the source for all those lovely antebellum mansions in SC, VA, AL, and MS.

    4. Sold by their own countrymen? Africa has never been one country.And who cares what tribal chieftans got and don't act like every slave trader was from New England. Many northerners were involved in slavery. So what, so what? You should have stopped your after Not in the least. Pushing the blame all on Africans and Northerners and then accusing us of ignorance and hypocrisy on top of it is a bit much even for a Southern apoloigist.

  17. I guarantee 100% that the writer of this article is white.
    No need to even check

    As far as terrorism, would you call the slave owner who beats or executes a slave in front of the other slaves to keep them in line a terrorist? Or do you use the more traditional american version of terrorism, which is that terrorism is any attack of brown on white

    1. Ron,
      It depends on what crime(s) the slave had done to warrant punishment or execution. I can assure you that a slave owner who had paid large sums for a slave would not execute him or administer excessive punishment unless there was good reason for doing so. To do otherwise would violate the laws of economics, and most slave and plantation owners were astute business men and women. In case you failed to notice, various laws relating to punishment for crimes, including capital punishment are still in force, although the State now administers the punishment rather than the slave owner, who,accomplished the same goal at no cost to the taxpayer. So what is your position on the administration of justice? Are you now going to condemn the State for administering punishment to criminals who deserve it,? Or had you rather remain a critic of an institution you know very little about.

      1. At first I thought your post had to be a joke, I mean, you made the point that slavery is desirable because it saves taxpayers money, and like, how can that be read as anything but laughable??? But, then I realized you were using satire to make an excellent point: The authority of the State is just as illegitimate as the authority of a slave owner. Well played, sir.

        I would just add that the administration of punishment and the administration of justice are not the same thing. For instance, when a slave failed in the attempt to affirm his or her personal liberty, by escape or uprising, he or she would be severely punished. Was the slave owner administering justice? Only if you believe that slavery is just. However, slavery is most certainly unjust.

        Therefore, when a slave owner unjustly punished a slave for trying to be free, he was merely administering punishment. On the other hand, when John Brown raided Harpers Ferry, he was heroically administering justice.

      3. No; actually there is a huge difference between establishing rules of society that apply to everyone and enslaving people because of their ethnicity.

  18. Pingback: December 3, 2009 « Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

  19. I guess when Jefferson Davis – a pro-slavery traitor who presided over a nation that wished to continue an institution of legal ownership, rape and torture of fellow Americans – can have a highway right outside our capital named after him, I can’t get too upset about pardoning a man, no matter how fanatical, who fought to end that institution.

    1. Hankset Do you know who the heck Jefferson Davis was? No!
      To say that he would have liked to constitute an institution of slavery is one thing.
      But to say that he would rape and torture an American citizen is another, you vile abomination.

  20. Can't disagree more with the author, I personally don't favor violent resistance, as it hurts innocent bystanders. However, we're talking about a time when millions of human beings were being held as property in this nation. The events occuring in Kansas prior to Virginia show that pro-slavery forces were on a rampage and were not in the mood towards peacefully passing from the pages of history any time soon.

    If one believed in slavery being a great evil (as who wouldn't these days), then armed resistance would be the logical and appropriate answer when all peaceful means had been shown not to work. And Brown's resistance was the epitome of libertarian thinking: he didn't use state means, just his own and other volunteers blood and treasure! A hero indeed, as Thoreau said, though a flawed one.

  21. I'm californian, not a southerner; but Jackson and Lee were great soldiers and honorable men.

    The civil war wasn't fought over slavery or extension of slavery. It was fought because southern states decided to voluntarily leave the union (secede) and Lincoln did not let them. It was Lincoln's choice and Lincoln's war.

    1. Nice causal reduction. Why don't you read a book? Any book – but a good start is Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought by David Hackett Fischer. Jackson and Lee were neither good nor honorable. They specialized in murdering your compatriots. It they'd had their way your California would be a slave state today … but you'd prefer that by the sound of it.

      1. I have actually read a couple.

        Lee and Jackson were soldiers, Mr. Consoli, sworn to follow civilian orders, the way good soldiers should, and they were among the best. They had no say on whether or not California (which had been a free state as of '49) should be either slave or free.

  22. The Cayman Islands abolished slavery with a church service and a picnic afterwards. The assumption that a war was needed to abolish it in the US is a sign of the internalized addiction to war of so many Americans.

  23. Did the Caymans have mobs of pro-slavery militia walking around the countryside and lynching abilitionists (a la Kansa 1856)?

    1. Bill made the point it wasn't necessary… regardless of what happened in Kansas. You obviously think hundreds of thousands need to die in order to move some agenda forward. Lets have a secessionist revolution today seeing as we're literally treated like slaves before the federal government. I'll side with you and say, "Lets do it".

  24. For those who insist upon citing "Yankee" hypocrisy to justify the peculiar instituion, it is important to understand that slavery in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries was an INTERNATIONAL enterprise, one in which Africans, Europeans and white American settlers, both North and South, all profited to varying degrees. Indeed, there are many economists who believe that the outsized profits from slavery financed industrial capitalism in the US and the UK. None of which, of course, exonerates the enthusiastic embrace of slavery by southerners, with all its attendant brutalties, such as the taking of women into concubinage by slave owners (like Jefferson), selling women based upon their purported breeding attributes, breaking up families by separating husbands, wives and children, and otherwise working them to exhaustion while subjecting them to the most sadistic forms of violence. As for John Brown, he was an inspirational figure, flaws and all.

      1. curious that the violence of John Brown, nearly inconsequential compared to the violence of the slave trade and the treatment of slaves by southerners over the years, is more appalling to you and others that condemn him so strongly

        wonder why that is?

  26. I would guess all of those posters who support Brown, also support pardons for the nuts who kill abortion doctors. Brown was a murderer plain and simple. He got off easy with a quick hanging.

    2. Only if those posters equate slave owners with abortion doctors.

      Since we're playing this game, I've got one, too: Would a man deserve to hang if he discovered, within his community, a brutal child sex-slave operation and he went in guns blazing to set the children free because the authorities refused to do anything about it? Would that make him a murderer, plain and simple?

        1. Are you telling me what my standards are? Because, I haven't said a word about how I feel about abortion or abortion doctors.

          Anyway, you've only reiterated your first post. I responded. Instead of a response to my post, you've simply repeated yourself. Should I repeat my self now or would you like to give me something fresh to work with?

          Here, try this one: Do you think that kidnappers, rapists, and murderers should go unpunished?

          No?

          Neither did John Brown.

  27. Mr. Bovard,

    Regarding your update, certainly the war could have been avoided and slavery phased out without mass bloodshed. And, you are correct about Scorched Earth creating dire conditions in the South. Reconstruction made those bad conditions worse.

    The best possible outcome, in terms of liberty and peace, would have been to have the South peacefully exercise their liberty to secede and then phase out slavery on their own, as they undoubtedly would have.

    That said, I don't see what the Civil War, Scorched Earth, or Reconstruction has to do with John Brown. Unless one claims that, but for Harpers Ferry, the South would not have seceded, I don't see how John Brown can be held to blame for Lincoln denying Southerners the right to dissolve the political bands which had connected them and to establish a new government that drew it's power from their consent.

    John Brown bravely fought against a gross injustice, period, the end. He ought to be eternally applauded for his commitment to human liberty. The fact that Lincoln later committed another gross injustice is irrelevant.

  28. Disgusting southerner. As usual – lying about the Civil War. My favorite quote from Shane is the villain, played by Jack Palance, when confronted by a southerner: "I'm saying that Stonewall Jackson was trash himself. Him and Lee and all the rest of them rebs. You, too."

    To lie about the origins of the Civil War is to lie about the United States of America and what kind of country it really is. For your information ass-wipe the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery. It was fought over the EXTENSION of slavery to the territories.

    Happy to help.

    1. Well, now that you have your totalitarian surveillance state, Mr. Descendant of Italian Immigrant Trash, you can have a try at correcting what kind of country we have.

    2. Consoli is only partially correct. The root cause of the Civil War was the attempt by various individuals and groups to extend slavery. But it wasn't just extension to the territories. The Dred Scott decision coupled with enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law made it effectively impossible to outlaw slavery anywhere in the U.S. As a result of anger thus engendered in the free state population, the North and West with their superior Electoral College votes were finally able to overcome their disadvantage in the Senate by electing Lincoln.

      It is often said that the cause of the Civil War was tariffs, or states' rights, or Lincoln's refusal to allow the South to secede, anything but slavery. Such is the power of denial. But these were not the root cause, only justification. The Civil War positively would not have occurred without a house divided and BOTH halves trying to gain advantage over the other. Even if he had wanted to let the South go, Lincoln would have had to insist that it pay for its share of the national debt, but the South was not willing to negotiate, instead attacking Federal installations and garrisons such as Sumter. It was also the South that first invaded Kentucky, forcing that state to choose sides and invite Federal troops in to protect it.

  29. Bovard is the same guy who said
    "Israeli aggression…Palestinian aggression…they're both equally to blame. What they need is market principle. That'll smooth everything over."

    …or words to that effect.

    What a dolt.

  30. American Negro slavery is a good example of a historical event being judged in the light of present day standards and morals rather than by the standards and morals that were in place during the time of its existence. All self righteous haters of the South would do well to remember that human slavery has existed for as long as the human race has existed. And that virtually every race has paricipated in slavery and some continue to participate in it. History shows that on the continent of Africa a far greater number of black slaves have been held (and still being held) in slavery by members of their own race than by any other race in any other country at any other time .

    1. I have always laughed at the historical-moral-relativism defense of slavery. "Like, the slave owners couldn't help themselves, they weren't as intelligent and enlightened as we are today." Here's the problem, many people in antebellum America, including prominent Southerners (Thomas Jefferson and George Mason to name a couple), did know that slavery was wrong. So, by all means, judge slave owners by the standards and morals of their own day instead. By those standards, they're still disgusting.

      Or, how about this? Let's say that slavery was, in fact, not wrong by the standards and morals of antebellum America. Agreed? Fine, then John Brown, being truly enlightened and possessing moral standards of human liberty and dignity, which were beyond his time, was amazingly able to see that slavery is repulsive. Nice, that elevates him even higher above the troglodytes that he killed.

      protip: appeals to tradition fail.

    2. Abolitionists knew it was morally wrong back then. Abolitionists know it is morally wrong right now.

      Slavery is not a justifed institution at anytime or anyplace against anyone!

  31. John Brown was fighting against an immoral, unjust and extremely inhumane institution – slavery. While the more pacifist abolitionists such as Garrison used methods that were morally just, Brown is also to be commended for standing up for what is right.

    He was not Lincoln. He was not the North. He was not the South. He was not a general. War is hell and the health of the State – and the Civil War was no different but blame the people who caused the damage or actually increased the controls of government . Don't blame someone you define as a "terrorist" who was only trying to free all those in chains!

    If you want to hang someone – hang the slaveowners, hang the politicans, hang the generals – but leave the abolitionists alone. They were on the right side of history – the fought against great personal odds, threats and hatred to point out the wrongs – they were on the side of freedom and liberty for ALL!

    1. So when are you and johnny yuma going on your murderous rampage across black Africa to eradicate the evil of slavery from the only region of the world where it is still widely practiced today? The possibilities are unlimited and you already have the perfect role model in your hero John Brown. Just think of the instant fame and eternal adoration that would be heaped upon you by the zealots and fanatics who think like you do.

      2. havent u heard of all white slavery going on in the midwest especially among trailer trash whites and bikers?

      3. Why limit it to the Dark Continent? Eastern Europe and SE Asia are both hotbeds of sexual slavery. I guess they are gonna be busy little fellows.

  32. I fervently disagree with Mr. Bovine. John Brown was a hero of the first order. He may have had five thug-terrorist-assistants killed in Kansas but for the most part he was amazingly kind to the pro-slavery filth that he dealt with. At Harpers Ferry he was too kind and if he is to be criticized, it is for being too kind. That's why he got stuck in HF. If he had been a bit more militaristic, he would have gotten away from the pro-slavery forces and into the mountains and turned the south upside down.

  33. I'm amazed that so many people still think that the Civil (sic) War was fought over slavery and that Lincoln was such a great hero.. Products of our vaunted public education system, I guess. The Confederate States fought for the right of secession (Perfectly legal. After all, entry into the union was voluntary.) The Unionist aggression was for the purpose of retaining control of the agrarian South. The Emancipation Proclamation was nothing but a late-in-the-war Lincolnian propaganda gimmick which had no force of law because the Confederacy was not part of the Union at that time, and moreover did not apply to the Northern slave states. Just a load of Lincolnesque double-talk. And BTW, I'm not from the South. .

  34. I’m already a slave, and so are you. Lincoln’s war to preserve the glorious Union has turned us all into debt slaves and wage slaves to the money changers on Wall Street. That’s what the war was all about.

    3. minemule,

      not that kind of slave. why not offer your wife, daughters, sisters, mother to be sex slaves for the crips and bloods? thats what u white barbarians used to do to black back in the day.

  35. For those who would like to know the truth concerning the War of Northern Aggression, I would suggest reading the following two books: The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo and When in the Course of Human Events by Charles Adams. Once exposed to the REAL truth, you will never look at "Father Abrahams" war the same way ever again – I guarantee it.

  36. "The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves." – H.L. Mencken

  37. I guess that James Bovard think that George Washington & co. should have been hanged (or perhaps "hanged, drawn and quartered" as the punishment for high treason was) too. After all, the American revolutionaries started a bloody war that killed a lot more people than John Brown ever did. Of course, you can say that the revolutionaries were fighting a just war against oppression. Well, so did John Brown. In fact, the conditions for upper-class whites in colonial North America was a piece of cake compared to that of the slaves in Virginia and elsewhere in 1859. So they had much less reason to rebel.

    And it is especially strange when people supporting the 1861 Confederate rebellion in (which was one side of a very bloody war) are condemning a much smaller, less bloody and at least just as just rebellion two years earlier.

    And what if the USA turns into a tyranny, and Ron Paul leads the libertarian rebellion. Should he be hanged too?

  38. Pingback: BOVARD » John Brown: One Terrorist Who Deserved Hanging

  39. So, you believe in compromising with slavers? Nuff said. You just disqualified yourself from being taken seriously about what anybody “deserves.”

    The North should have occupied the South for 50 years and executed all the terrorists who resisted Reconstruction. Instead, they compromised, giving us Jim Crow and the KKK.

  40. As an enlightened Southerner who loves liberty and hates both slavery and tyranny – especially the kind of slavery and tyranny that our present day federal government has forcibly imposed on all Americans – all I have to say is this: SLAVERY NEVER, BUT SECESSION FOREVER!

  41. Does anyone here realize that prior to the Civil War (or, War Between the States, take your pick), the average Southern slave had a higher standard of living than white factory workers in the North? You'll find those facts in contemporary census data.

    The average field slave worked about four hours a day. They would be assigned a work product that they could usually finish in that time. Afterwards, they might be given a rifle to go hunt up some small game. Northern Army officers complained bitterly about the accuracy of black Southern snipers fighting for the Confederate Army.

    This is not a rationalization of slavery but simply an attempt to instill some reality into some of the observations here. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a propagandist ignorant of that which she opposed so vociferously. What mass slaughter is complete without her ilk?

    Other interesting notes: Thomas Jefferson complained just as bitterly as black sniper-plagued Northern armies about the slaves who escaped to British lines to gain the freedom offered by the British. The total number of escapees was estimated at about 40,000. It would be very interesting to know what became of them. After the British capitulation most of them were transported to England.

    2. So I guess you see Thomas Jefferson as a terrorist rebel like John Brown? What's the difference?

      It has even sometimes been suggested that one of the motivations for American independence was fear that the British would ban slavery in the colonies.

      The slaves freed by the loyalists mostly settled in Canada I think.

    3. "Northern Army officers complained bitterly about the accuracy of black Southern snipers fighting for the Confederate Army"

      Give a citation of such a complaint. And it might also be interesting if you could explain why, since (you claim) they had black "snipers" already, the CSA had such a bitterly fought debate in 1865 over whether they should allow blacks to be officially enlisted in the CSA army.

  42. This guy’s article reminds me of Jefferson Davis after the Appomattox surrender: bitter and futile as far as undermining the legacy of John Brown is concerned, but then neither Bovard nor Davis were slaves.

  43. i think it would be a swell idea if some of the people here who are trying to whitewash slavery to submit themselves and their families to the same conditions as african slaves endured in the past for a period lets say of 6months. Some of the treatment will include gangrape of ones female relatives, branding, lashes and other forms of corporal punishment. Any takers?

    1. You betchum, Red Rider! Give me 50 lashes, sir, but only if you play "Tied to the Whipin' Post" by those 'Bama born Allman Brothers !!!

        1. Since I'm a transplanted Californicator born in Ohio, I got over the collapse about 2 hours after the towers fell. The only thing I cry for now is from being in the Guvernator's grossly unconstitutional and illegal chokehold whose "special election" put us in debt to the tune of 50 million taxpayer dollars, which he could personally pay for out his pocket change from cigar expenses and Hummer fuel. OUCH !!!

          1. well sounds like ur pretty fuckkkked mate lol! but blame it on your inbred racist cousins who keep voting for arseholes like him

  44. In the words of that infamous American philosopher, Commander Cody: "One man's meat is another man's poison. " It is time to consider how tainted history has become due to a lack of knowledge from the dumbing down of the US educational system. John Brown was no hero, but will be pardoned because of people who lack common sense. Those states who still fly the Stars and Bars are commiting treason. They should either be hanged or join the rest of the world in the 21st, not 19th, century. Ah, but what do I know anyway. I'm just one of them thar' damned Yankees !!!

  45. This is for xiis,
    You are obviously a very ignorant person, but there is a remedy for ignorance and the remedy is known as education, followed by an accumulation of knowledge acquired by reading. Since you appear to be interested in the subject of black slavery (as I am) the best way to acquire knowledge of the subject is to read books that address slavery in specific detail or discuss it in conjunction with other related subjects.
    If you would like to know more about the origins and history of the black slave trade as it existed in the 1700 and 1800s a good place to start would be to read the accounts and descriptions left by the first white explorers to travel into the interior of Africa in the mid 1700s and early 1800s.
    The first explorer was Mungo Park who left an account of his travels in the form of a diary that was later converted into a book entitled "Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa". Another good book is the accounts left by Dr. Livingston, an English scientist and explorer who spent many years in Africa and who died in Africa.

    1. btw most of the literature if u can call it even it that, is self-serving racist imperialist garbage intended to justify the atrocities of european atlantic slave trade and later on direct colonial rule. so please try again mate

    2. Livingston didnt explored didly mate. Newsflash there were already people living there u idiot. Or I guess to your warped racist mind Africans are not human huh?

  46. This is for xiix (a continuation)
    Then there are many books on black slavery as it existed in the South; " Amercian Negro Slavery", "The Peculiar Institution", "Adventures of an African Slaver" & "Life and Labor in the Old South". These are only four such books but there are many more that are all availaiable through Amazon.com as well as other book sellers.
    With the ease information and knowledge that can now be aquired via the internet etc. there is simply no excuse for anyone remaining ignorant on any subject they wish to discuss. I do not see any point in individuals making statements and offering opinions that are based on nothing more than gross ignorance and heresay. If you have no disire or intention of becoming educated on a subject do yourself and everyone else a favor and stay out of the discussion.

    1. obviously ur an ignorant mule as your name implies. who else would attempt to justify slavery in 2009. u r plain old racist. period. if u think it was such a good thing. how would u like it if your white daughter were kept as slaves by black street gangs? because that is the present day equivalence of what u are advocating.

    2. btw you still havent answered my question. are u willing to offer yourself or your family to be slaves? since its such a "peculiar institution"

  47. mr. mule,

    if ur interested in venturing out of the trailer. i would recommend eric williams "capitalism and slavery" for a start. otherwise continue u your racist wet dreams mate. cheers.

  49. See what I mean by ignoranance? It’s plain for all the world to see that some folks like xiis were born in ignorance and intend to remain in that state. And sadly to say,there’s nothing anyone can do about it.. Maybe that’s why black Africa has always been and continues to be (by far) the most miserable, disease ridden, genocide racked continent on earth.

    1. mr. mule,

      why are u avoiding the question? if slavery was such a benign "institution" then are u ready and willing to submit yourself and family to it? it is a pretty straight forward question my friend. waiting for your answer. cheers!

  50. as for black africa`s current miseries i recommend u read walter rodney`s "how europe underdeveloped africa" . i am pretty sure even the local public library near your trailer park might have a copy.

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