Masculinity is all about Direct, Forward-Moving Energy —
We Do Not Turn Back.
"Now, what did he do?
It was in the spring of 1856, John Brown and his men are travelling along a roadway and they get word of the beating of Charles Sumner on the floor of The Senate.
I think it was first told to them that Sumner was all-but-dead, this, to him, great abolitionist senator.
And Brown, it appears, went into a frenzy and vowed revenge, and a couple of days later he and four of his sons, or three of his sons, went and did visitations at three houses along Pottawatomie Creek in eastern Kansas, known to be an area settled by slaveholders or pro-slavery people, and they dragged several men from their houses, in front of their wives, and hacked them to death — five men to be exact — hacked them to death with these huge broadswords, and deposited their bodies on the front steps of their cabins.
To John Brown, he had kind of tried to even the score because just a few — a couple of weeks before that pro-slavery forces had sacked, attacked and burned the anti-slavery capital of Kansas — Lawrence, Kansas — burned a hotel and killed six people.
It was in the spring of 1856, John Brown and his men are travelling along a roadway and they get word of the beating of Charles Sumner on the floor of The Senate.
I think it was first told to them that Sumner was all-but-dead, this, to him, great abolitionist senator.
And Brown, it appears, went into a frenzy and vowed revenge, and a couple of days later he and four of his sons, or three of his sons, went and did visitations at three houses along Pottawatomie Creek in eastern Kansas, known to be an area settled by slaveholders or pro-slavery people, and they dragged several men from their houses, in front of their wives, and hacked them to death — five men to be exact — hacked them to death with these huge broadswords, and deposited their bodies on the front steps of their cabins.
To John Brown, he had kind of tried to even the score because just a few — a couple of weeks before that pro-slavery forces had sacked, attacked and burned the anti-slavery capital of Kansas — Lawrence, Kansas — burned a hotel and killed six people.
Brown, by killing five, said he hadn’t quite evened
it up.
"I have, may it please the court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted -- the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.
I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case)--had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends--either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class--and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to
"remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them."
I endeavored to act up to that instruction.
I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons.
I believe that to have interfered as I have done--as I have always freely admitted I have done--in behalf of His despised poor was not wrong, but right.
Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments-- I submit; so let it be done!
Let me say one word further.
I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial.
Considering all the circumstances it has been more generous than I expected.
But I feel no consciousness of guilt.
I have stated that from the first what was my intention and what was not.
I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection.
I never encouraged any man to do so,
but always discouraged any idea of that kind.
Let me say also a word in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me.
I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join me.
But the contrary is True.
I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness.
There is not one of them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense.
A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with till the day they came to me;
and that was for the purpose I have stated.
Now I have done. "
Probably what sustained him — and we know a good deal about this — was his religion, his faith, his theology if you want. He was a kind of orthodox nineteenth century Calvinist. He believed in such things as innate depravity, providential design, predestination, on some level, and the total human dependence on a sovereign and arbitrary God, and an arbitrary God that sometimes chose certain individual human beings in history to act for Him.
He believed in an Old Testament kind of justice, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
He punished his children and his employees with Mosaic vengeance.
He had a puritanical obsession with the wickedness of other people.
He could be domineering, vane, obstinate, as one friend once put it, "impervious to a joke."
Probably not a lot of fun to just have lunch with.
He gave orders, remembered Brown’s younger brother, quote, “like a king against whom there is no rising up.”
He was a thorough going non-conformist.
He probably never joined any formal anti-slavery organization, although he went to lots of their meetings.
He never joined a political party.
We’re not even sure if he ever voted.
He was a practitioner of what would become known in these years — certainly by the 1850s — of a kind of higher law doctrine about slavery, an allegiance to God’s will and God’s law above man’s law.
To John Brown, put simply, slavery represented an unjustifiable state of war, by one portion of the people against another; and in a state of war you do what’s necessary to defend yourselves.
He believed slavery was an evil so entrenched
— and he was dead serious about this —
so entrenched in America that it required revolutionary ideology and revolutionary means to eradicate it.
It had led him — as it has often in history led most proponents of revolutionary violence — that the means can, therefore, justify the end.
As God had willed so often in his Old Testament that the wicked must die, so too had he willed that slaveholders and their defenders at least deserved the same fate.
John Brown came to believe that
violence in a righteous cause was like a rite of purification.
"I have, may it please the court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted -- the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.
I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case)--had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends--either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class--and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to
"remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them."
I endeavored to act up to that instruction.
I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons.
I believe that to have interfered as I have done--as I have always freely admitted I have done--in behalf of His despised poor was not wrong, but right.
Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments-- I submit; so let it be done!
Let me say one word further.
I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial.
Considering all the circumstances it has been more generous than I expected.
But I feel no consciousness of guilt.
I have stated that from the first what was my intention and what was not.
I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection.
I never encouraged any man to do so,
but always discouraged any idea of that kind.
Let me say also a word in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me.
I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join me.
But the contrary is True.
I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness.
There is not one of them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense.
A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with till the day they came to me;
and that was for the purpose I have stated.
Now I have done. "
Probably what sustained him — and we know a good deal about this — was his religion, his faith, his theology if you want. He was a kind of orthodox nineteenth century Calvinist. He believed in such things as innate depravity, providential design, predestination, on some level, and the total human dependence on a sovereign and arbitrary God, and an arbitrary God that sometimes chose certain individual human beings in history to act for Him.
He believed in an Old Testament kind of justice, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
He punished his children and his employees with Mosaic vengeance.
He had a puritanical obsession with the wickedness of other people.
He could be domineering, vane, obstinate, as one friend once put it, "impervious to a joke."
Probably not a lot of fun to just have lunch with.
He gave orders, remembered Brown’s younger brother, quote, “like a king against whom there is no rising up.”
He was a thorough going non-conformist.
He probably never joined any formal anti-slavery organization, although he went to lots of their meetings.
He never joined a political party.
We’re not even sure if he ever voted.
He was a practitioner of what would become known in these years — certainly by the 1850s — of a kind of higher law doctrine about slavery, an allegiance to God’s will and God’s law above man’s law.
To John Brown, put simply, slavery represented an unjustifiable state of war, by one portion of the people against another; and in a state of war you do what’s necessary to defend yourselves.
He believed slavery was an evil so entrenched
— and he was dead serious about this —
so entrenched in America that it required revolutionary ideology and revolutionary means to eradicate it.
It had led him — as it has often in history led most proponents of revolutionary violence — that the means can, therefore, justify the end.
As God had willed so often in his Old Testament that the wicked must die, so too had he willed that slaveholders and their defenders at least deserved the same fate.
John Brown came to believe that
violence in a righteous cause was like a rite of purification.
