“I…am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can 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.”
- John Brown.
Yet our record bloodshed in the Civil War soon to come still wouldn’t be enough to completely remove it all. Sure slavery was abolished, but things were still horrible for so many reasons for the following 100 years, and somewhat still are today.
I blame Reconstruction ending too soon, honestly.
That’s what happens when you kill it’s driving force and replace him with a sympathizer.
Let’s not pretend that Lincoln being there would have magically resolved it all. Let’s also not pretend he’d have cared to implement it to the level anyone might think.
We mythologize him, but he was ultimately a politician making calculated decisions for his career. That’s why he wasted effort seeking more electoral votes by getting Nevada made into a state. That’s why he chose Johnson to ensure he’d have some favorability with the south.
He did the right thing because it was politically convenient.
It’s pretty much a light switch though. Lincoln put this program in place and Johnson turned it off as soon as he could. Lincoln may not have won the peace but he would have at least tried.
Lincoln wouldn’t have magically resolved everything, as Lincoln was still from the moderate wing of the Republican Party (even if he became more radical as the war wore on), but it’s hard to imagine a worse successor than Andrew Johnson, who wasn’t even part of the big tent antislavery party. Traitorous fuck, no better than the copperheads.
i blame reconstruction in the first place, it was co-opted by the people who made this shit an issue in the first place
It was only abolished for the unincarcerated.
Even then, it was only legally abolished, some plantations never had any Union soldiers come, so they never freed their slaves, just kept them in “sharecropping” agreements but they weren’t allowed to leave. Actual share cropping was also horrific and also sometimes had slavelike conditions.
Some of these fake “sharecropping” agreements stayed in place till the mid 1900s.
Here’s a very excellent video by Knowing Better on Neoslavery.
He stood there frozen for a few minutes, that’s how long the exposure time was before they discovered/invented materials that are more sensitive to light… and then of course, found ways to mass-produce them. Maybe he stood there five minutes?
Gotta wonder how his day was going before tidying up and being asked to stand there like a statue while staring straight at the box in front of him, and how it went after that. In that environment so familiar yet still utterly alien to our eyes. What did he have for dinner that evening. How were the restaurants and bars of the era?
It was a world of steam power but that predated electricity, except maybe for the telegraph, transmitting its’ mysteriously instantaneous messages in Morse code wherever the country-spanning wires were laid out, and no further. A world where horses were as abundant as cars are today. A world whose nighttime was lit by candlelight and oil-lamp.
Yes and he chose a particularly challenging pose to hold for a Daguerreotype! Many subjects back then preferred to sit in a very relaxed pose and they even used a small stand to hold the subject’s head still!
I love daguerrotypes, they’re such a vivid look into the past. Exposures outdoors in bright sunlight only took a few seconds, but as this one appears to be taken indoors he would have indeed needed to stand there for quite a while. That’s probably why his left hand is blurry (he’s holding the flag in his right hand - daguerrotypes were laterally mirrored).
Also, see the faint parallel lines all over the picture? Those are faint marks made by the photographer as he was polishing the plate just prior to sensitizing it and loading it into the camera.
Damn he only lived 1 year. Must have had super Jack disease.
#JohnBrownDidNothingWrong
He does not look like he fucks around.
Based on what I’ve heard about the guy, he does not.
I have seen too much spirit photography and thought the flag was supposed to be a ghost at first lmao.
Looking like Abe Lincoln without the beard.
What flag is that?
The portrait, taken in Washington’s Hartford, Connecticut, studio in 1846 or 1847, exudes an intensity consistent with the subject’s fanaticism. He appears very much as one might expect—angry and determined. In the image, Brown raises his right hand, as if taking an oath; in the other hand, he holds a banner thought to be the flag of the Subterranean Pass-Way, his militant alternative to the Underground Railroad.
An armed and fighting anti-slaver, gave his life for the cause.
Modern liberals: “Give up your guns!”
No. Hard no.
Here it come, bring it:
“LOL, you’ll die fighting you pathetic loser!”
Yeah. Might work out that way. Probably will if they come for me, much prefer dying with my boots on thank you very much. But I’m not laying down a coward, begging the cops to spare my life.
Think on this my gun grabbing friends; What if the local cops or feds thought they were walking into your home might be Ruby Ridge II Bugaloo? FFS, so many of us being armed is the only reason the fascists haven’t overrun us yet.
Apologies to my white, suburban brothers, did I break your concentration?
Uh, I mean, John Brown wasn’t exactly fighting his war with legal guns, so the modern context of liberals being in favor of gun control isn’t all that applicable. “Beecher’s Bibles” were illegally shipped into Bleeding Kansas, John Brown butchered a few slavers with a broadsword (very metal), and his most prominent action involved raiding a government armory in order to get guns.
Think on this my gun grabbing friends; What if the local cops or feds thought they were walking into your home might be Ruby Ridge II Bugaloo?
Not sure that defending a white nationalist twat is really the left take you want here.
Excellent point! But no, in the fight against fascism, I don’t particularly care where one gets their guns. As to legality, the bad guys are doing it, why not all of us?
As to legality, the bad guys are doing it, why not all of us?
I would only find that argument compelling in the context of advocating for the complete overthrow of the current government. Otherwise it just sounds an awful lot like LARPing of the same sort that… well, militia movement types who glorify Ruby Ridge engage in.
If you want the fight to be more even, guns are a fucking waste of time. You’d need armed drones dropping grenades like in Ukraine. Or IEDs like the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The cops already assume too many houses are armed up like ruby ridge and they go in no-knock warranting and shoot your dog while blinding and burning your toddler “just in case”.
The more guns proliferate the more on edge we all get, and cops aren’t the ones that are gonna be more respectful with more people armed. Quite the fucking opposite has been true so far.
The alternative is simply trusting the state will wield their violent powers fair and justly.
There are numerous steps one can take to provide oversight to the actions of a state that do not include a literal arms race between the civilian population and the state. I would go so far as to say that civilian firearm ownership is near-negligible in terms of threats that a state actor can face, and that glorification of civilian firearm ownership as a means of ‘preventing tyranny’ is exactly the kind of atomized and easily-struck-down approach to dissent that right-wing governments encourage.
Put it this way - if things get bad enough that you’re planning a shootout with state forces, the point where individual acquisition of an AR-15 would make the difference has long passed.
So the arms race just needs to continue!!
The private militia needs tanks! Missiles! Fighter jets!
…come to think of it, I guess Mexican drug cartels are pretty much the libertarian wet dream.
I guess Mexican drug cartels are pretty much the libertarian wet dream.
Ooo, that one’s good, I’ve never thought of that before. I bet “So you want a weak government like Mexico?” would short circuit many libertarian’s brains.
And how are those numerous steps enforced?
If you’re asking how oversight is enforced, then I freely invite you to examine the past century of behavior in democratic polities which involves varying levels of participation and opposition to the state in utilizing methods most effective at the given time to maximize the impact of participation by the general population and the generation of continued enthusiasm from said population. Violence is often involved - the idea of making the state ‘scared’ to ‘come to [an individual’s] door’ by civilian firearm ownership a la GOP-style no step on snek dick-waving rarely is.
If you want me to outline the totality of escalation from civic participation to civic disobedience to direct action, I’m gonna have to decline.
A general strike would be one example.
It’s hard to have an army without an economy, and it’s hard to effectively enslave a nation by forcing them to work at gunpoint.
