- Joined
- Aug 17, 2011
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- Birmingham, Alabama
The purpose of this thread is to discuss John Brown and genocide.
John Brown wasn't looking for genocide.
You're right. He was a nice fellow. Wish I had known him.
If you think he was trying to initiate genocide, why don't you post your evidence?
John Brown was a radical abolitionist who believed in the violent overthrow of the slavery system.
By early 1858, he had succeeded in enlisting a small “army” of insurrectionists whose mission was to foment rebellion among the slaves. In 1859, Brown and 21 of his followers attacked and occupied the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry. Their goal was to capture supplies and use them to arm a slave rebellion.
If you think he was trying to initiate genocide, why don't you post your evidence?
Edit to add: In a thread dedicated to John Brown, of course.
IMHO Brown was trying to instigate a servile rebellion?
John Brown - Facts & Summary
IMHO it is a short hop to genocide. Servile insurrections in history involved the killing of the race of the masters.
He was. He said so, and was not secretive about his aims. It is a matter of public record.
He never said a word about committing genocide. Stop making things up. If you think there's evidence, I suggest you post it on one of the John Brown threads.
Brown was looking to free slaves and have them hole up in the mountains where they could protect themselves, not attack and commit genocide.
Good point. By the way, do you have more about the law? I know there was the post office problem, trying to get abolitionists extradicted, the gag rule, that kind of thing. But tell me more about the national law.May I suggest that the Southern complaint about the abolitionists is a complaint about free speech. The Southern states suppressed abolitionists free speech to the point of lynching, imprisionment and exile. I believe that one of the compromises suggested by Southern politicians was to have a national law against the free speech of abolitionists.
John Brown was not an educated man; he wouldn't have used the word "genocide" because it was not in his limited vocabulary.
But he was a puritan par excellence, and the goals of his actions were, in fact, genocide.
This is a debating tactic known as legalistic quibbling.....
John Brown was not an educated man; he wouldn't have used the word "genocide" because it was not in his limited vocabulary.
But he was a puritan par excellence, and the goals of his actions were, in fact, genocide.
Are we differing on a little genocide say in an hypothetical attack on a plantation to free slaves or genocide from a general uprising.
Genocide has a specific meaning: killing a large number of people of a particular ethnic group or nationality.
Attacking a few plantations in order to free slaves is not genocide. A general slave uprising in order to free themselves is not genocide.
Again, this belongs in a thread devoted to John Brown, but he never talked about anything resembling genocide as a goal. Please stop making things up.
There you go again. Of course he didn't talk about it this way.
But he did state that he wanted his raid at Harper's Ferry to be the catalyst for a region wide slave uprising.
The historical precedents for this action was Nat Turner's uprising in the 1830s, and the Haitian genocide.
And to point out that the practical effects of this stated goal, a goal he was quite explicit about, is genocide is not making things up. Your assertion as such is invidious.
A slave uprising is not genocide. He never claimed he wanted another Haiti. All he wanted was for the enslaved people to be free. He was willing to attack plantations to make that happen, but he wasn't trying to bring about a genocide.
You're just making things up.
Not making anything up. But you are providing justification for murder.
The slave uprising in Haiti was indeed genocide.
The example of Haiti was in fact invoked by abolitionists of this era.
John Brown was unwilling to use the democratic process to amend the constitution in order to overturn the constitutional provisions sanctioning "service bound to labor."
And he spoke of murder as a righteous thing.
The slave uprising in Haiti was accompanied by widespread murders that might be called genocide.
Slaves rebelling and reclaiming their freedom is not genocide.
Non sequitur. It doesn't have anything to do with John Brown.
A lot of people in the mid-19th Century were unwilling to use the democratic process to amend the Constitution. There was a war fought because of it. Besides, that's a red herring that has nothing to do with claims of genocide.