John Brown was a self-righteous immoral, moralizing activist, a terrible zeitgeist of elitist reform who resorted to force instead of moral suasion to achieve freedom and assert the principles of the Declaration for all people.
Some of Brown's quotes expose the invidious arrogance of a man who gave himself permission to take the law into his own hands; by attempting to effect liberty for others by force, he undermined his cause, and the potential peace and prosperity of the land.
"Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice!"
Caution is the nature of our federal system, checks and balances which force voters and legislators to deliberate before they delegate. "Eternally tired. . " He presumed to be divinity in the flesh? Nonsense. Despite the innate evil of one man enslaving another, violence would never be an effective deterrent. In the 1960's, Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Baptist Christian League would use nonviolent means to effect moral change, upending the immoral segregation laws by forcing the powers which had enacted them to enforce them until protesters exhausted the state's resources. King and his colleagues were successful; John Brown helped to instigate a civil war, which wiped out 600,000 American troops. Confrontation in facing off against rogue police and white supremacists, but King and his colleagues were cautious in their approach, instructing every participant to abide by principles of non-violence, never attacking or slandering their detractors.
"I don’t think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion."
John Brown evinced an acceptable opinion; yet killing and raiding a federal arsenal was not the proper response or expression of this opinion. A nation of diverse political affiliations and calculations cannot long endure if every partisan zealot justifies using coercion, force, and violence to effect his limits ends. The United States is a nation of laws, and even unjust laws must be dealt with in a just manner
(though not necessarily a legal one)
"When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I want you to help hive them."
On the contrary, Brown was stung, caught, convicted, and executed. Many slaves did not rise up; many black activists refused to assist Brown, not even Frederick Douglass.
"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."
Force is a convenience for those who exercise it, but not for those who must endure it. Violence does not effect the lasting change of comity and understanding; human beings forced to endure policy, no matter how liberal and enlightened, will not suffer it for long. Freedom ain't' free, but it cannot be imposed, either. Besides, the shed blood of human beings will never assuage the guiltiness of mankind's inhumanity to man.
"I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."
Some scholars dress up this pronouncement as prophetic. Nonsense. His Messianic self-righteousness undid any attempts at peaceful agreements and conciliatory changes to the national system. Less heated political rhetoric combined with diligent non-violence would have transformed this nation from half-slave, half-free to fully liberated.
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