“Had he succeeded, the Civil War would have been started not by the secessionists but by the abolitionists, and the issue from the first shot would have been freedom, not union. The conflict might have been shorter and the outcome less bloody.”
I missed his birthday. Brown was born on May 9, 1800 and my blogging inactivity has caused me to miss that and other events. John is one of America’s greatest heroes. If not for John Brown, slavery might not have ended until the twentieth century. The south controlled congress and the courts, and was adamant that the “peculiar institution” continue and spread to newly settled territories. Northerners were tired of being controlled by the slave powers, but most weren’t willing to fight back. Brown was, and he hastened the start of the war and the end of slavery.Terry Bisson and Kevin Gray explain why Brown is so important.
