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Hearing Frederick Douglass: His Speech on John Brown
- ARandomerDude 6y agoHard to believe John Brown is viewed as a hero for justice these days. He killed several innocent civilians, the first of whom was a black man, and was subsequently executed for murder. Slavery was a great evil. So was John Brown's "solution."
- AbrahamParangi 6y agoJohn Brown has always been divisive. Growing up in MA, I was taught that John Brown was a man of principles and conviction. I understand that in other places he's considered more of a terrorist.
- oconnor663 6y agoI guess that's the problem with moral clarity. When everybody agrees who's in the right, they move on instead of arguing about it and escalating. If escalation is the goal, you need to be divisive more than you need to be right.
- jMyles 6y agoWhich abolitionist tactics do you think were likely to result in the best outcome per death / misery?
- iron0013 6y agoJohn Brown was recognized as a hero by his contemporaries.
- jorblumesea 6y agoDouglass directly confronts and addresses this, if you read the source.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- qntty 6y agoHe probably hastened the beginning of the Civil War and therefore saved many lives due to ending slavery earlier. It's hard to evaluate the morality of something that had such a large effect. How many slaves would have died if they had been enslaved just a few more years? (And how many of those died anyway because being free wasn't easy either? Hard to say...)
- wwarner 6y agoWe should compare the lives lost in this failed attack to the lives that were lost in the continuing practice of slavery. Yes it was illegal and disruptive, but the status quo, while legal and banal, resulted in the death of slaves at a much higher rate. And, of course compared to the civil war, the toll was miniscule.
- sudosysgen 6y agoHow do you suggest stopping slavery without violence? This seems to me like inane logic that does nothing but perpetuate oppression and violence in the long term. If no one was willing to use violence to stop slavery there would still be slavery to this day.
- lookupthere 6y agoHow is violence in pursuit of freedom okay when it is done by the anti-colonial founders but not by abolitionists? In my opinion, everyone from Nat Turner to John Brown was a hero. People need to realize slavery was like the Holocaust scaled up by orders of magnitude, and then just be consistent in when their attitudes on violence. If violence against slaveholders isn't justified, then American independence can't be justified either.
- labster 6y agoJohn Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave; his soul is marching on. It’s amazing how the song is still relevant today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body