John Brown (poll)

[Stony]

Only 3? You must not come around often.

I come around enough to know that this poll is past being irrevalent.

 

[Allie]

They should have given him time to recuperate from his wounds, then given him a fair trial. If the trial proved that he had committed a capital crime, then they should have hanged him. But there was no fair trial, just an organized lynch mob that convinced Northerners that Brown was telling the truth when he said he had no intention of inciting a rebellion.

The sort of trial you're recommending wasn't the norm in the north at this time either. Probably they should have used unusual caution when dealing with Brown because the eyes of the world were on them, but a summary hearing and quick justice for murder was the way it was usually done at the time, not the exception.

 

[brass napoleon]

The sort of trial you're recommending wasn't the norm in the north at this time either. Probably they should have used unusual caution when dealing with Brown because the eyes of the world were on them, but a summary hearing and quick justice for murder was the way it was usually done at the time, not the exception.

I'm sorry, but this is incorrect, as noted by Dr. Potter:

The trial lasted one week, after which he was sentenced to be hanged one month from the date of sentence. This haste was shocking by any standards and appalling by modern standards of infinite prolongation
​

Compare this to the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue case, which occurred in Ohio the year before. The alleged crime, in which about 40 men were indicted for rescuing a fugitive slave from the custody of a United States marshal, occurred on September 13, 1858. It took the Grand Jury until December 7 to issue the indictments. The trials were scheduled to begin on March 8, 1859, but were delayed until April 5, with the defendants to be tried one at a time. All defendants were healthy when they were put on trial. The first trial lasted 10 days and ended in a conviction. The second trial began 3 days after the first trial ended, and lasted 15 days, ending also with a conviction. This was followed by several weeks of appeals to the Ohio Supreme Court, after which the remaining cases were finally dropped on July 6, 1859, NINE MONTHS after the alleged crime took place. And these were non-capital crimes.

 

[Elennsar]

Do we have an example of capital crimes just to check if those were indeed handled more hastily?

I'm not a legal expert, I'm just insatiably curious.

 

[brass napoleon]

Do we have an example of capital crimes just to check if those were indeed handled more hastily?

I'm not a legal expert, I'm just insatiably curious.

A capital case would be expected to be conducted more deliberately, not more hastily. An example of a capital case that occurred concurrently is the case of the slave ship Echo, engaged in the capital crime of trans-Atlantic slave trading, which was captured off the coast of South Carolina on August 21, 1858. I don't have exact dates, but the trials lasted into 1859. It goes without saying that South Carolina acquitted them all.

 

[peteanddelmar]

They should have given him time to recuperate from his wounds, then given him a fair trial. If the trial proved that he had committed a capital crime, then they should have hanged him. But there was no fair trial, just an organized lynch mob that convinced Northerners that Brown was telling the truth when he said he had no intention of inciting a rebellion.

But he WAS trying to incite a slave uprising! And he WAS a crazy murderer. He needed hung! I've never read that the speed of the trial made him into a northern hero. He just was in some quarters. The abolitionist ones. The hardcore ones.

 

[brass napoleon]

But he WAS trying to incite a slave uprising! And he WAS a crazy murderer. He needed hung!

I tend to agree, based on what we know now. The point is, however, that the opportunity to prove that to everybody living at the time was through a fair trial. Virginia had that opportunity, and instead they rushed him to the gallows, leaving Northerners to believe Brown.

I've never read that the speed of the trial made him into a northern hero. He just was in some quarters. The abolitionist ones. The hardcore ones.

He was a hero from the very beginning to a handful of hardcore abolitionists. However, by the time of his hanging he was a hero to many more Northerners, who believed his story and who admired the stoic way he conducted himself in the face of Virginia's organized lynch mob.

 

[Pat Young]

I assume the Virginia leaders felt they were handling him fairly, but I don't know of any objective bystanders who believed he was being treated fairly, do you? Certainly the source you posted didn't see it as fair:

The opinion of the towering French poet, novelist, and dramatist Victor Hugo was judged by many to be the verdict of the civilized world. He strongly opposed the punishment. Many in Europe followed Hugo's lead in their disappointment that America chose to execute a man for only trying to free slaves.​

Kill a few men to rescue slaves and they brand you a terrorist. Kill hundreds of thousands to keep blacks in chains and they name part of Route 1 after you. What a country!

As I have said before, if the people Brown had been trying to free were white men, women and children being held as slaves by blacks, he would be universally hailed as a hero by whites in the South. It is not the acts he committed, but the race of the people he was trying to free that so offends white Americans.

 

[brass napoleon]

But he WAS trying to incite a slave uprising! And he WAS a crazy murderer. He needed hung! I've never read that the speed of the trial made him into a northern hero. He just was in some quarters. The abolitionist ones. The hardcore ones.

Here's a good example of what I'm talking about. When news of Brown's raid first broke, the most staunchly abolitionist newspaper in this area, from the town where two of Brown's accomplices came from, reported this:

Most of our readers will have learned ere this that John Brown, late of Kansas, with two sons, and a few other persons, some white and some colored, in all seventeen, have been attempting by violence to assist slaves to escape...

Of these transactions we have to say:-

1. That we deprecate and deplore their occureence, especially because their tendency is to embarrass and retard those peaceful moral agencies by which we seek the removal of Slavery.

2. Yet they are only the natural result of the border ruffian violence, so long and so outrageously perpetrated upon unoffending citizens in Kansas. There this same John Brown had one son shot down almost before his eyes; saw the village in which he resided brutally assautled, its inhabitants murdered in cold blood, their buildings burrned and the whole settlement left a dreary desolation. He knew that all this was for no crime of his own or of his fellow-citizens; the spirit of Slavery wrought it all. He knew that the Federal authorities never lifted a finger to punish, or repress these outrageous wrongs. Is it strange that his sprit should be moved to retaliation, and especially to reprisals upon Slavery - the reconginized fountain and the cause of all that Kansas suffered? Yet to his honor be it said, revenge does not seem to have ruled his counsels in his recent raid upon Virginia. He declares, and for aught that appears, truthfully, that his sole purpose was to free slaves from their yoke and aid them to escape from their bondage, and that he regarded this effort as righteous and defensible.

We think he egregiously misjudged in regard to the means he used...

It is not our purpose to vindicate Brown; we think him misguided and we unqualifiedly condemn such a resort to violence; but it is certainly due to him that his deeds should be judged fairly, and in the light of their manifest motives.

And it is well that American Slavery, born of violence, and sustained only be ceaseless outrages upon all natural right, should see itself in its true light and should take conginzance of the impulses and passions which its insufferable wrongs tend to enkindle in human bosoms.

We have no fellowship with bloody violence. We deplore it when used even against slavey-holders, and yet more when wielded against the helpless slave. We deplore it in the former case, especially because it counteracts those moral appeals to the heart and the conscience of slave-holders upon which we rely for the termination of Slavery. It is our hope, our prayer and our endeavor, that Slavery may wither and die under the power of turth, love and righteousness. These are the weapons of our warfare against Slavery. Vengenace belongeth unto God - not to us...

Two colored men, sometime resident here, were with Brown in this tragedy; how they came there we know not; but we do know that such violence meets and has ever met among our citizens with decided reprobation...

- Oberlin Evangelist, Nov. 9, 1859

Source: <http://www.gospeltruth.net/oe/oe59/oep178.htm​

Yet after his execution, the same newspaper ran articles lionizing him, under the headlines "Execution of Good Men" and "John Brown's Wisdom". During the six week interval between those two issues, the ball of public opinion was entirely in Virginia's court. Virginia made a martyr out of him, much to the satisfaction of Brown himself.

 

[ForeverFree]

I come around enough to know that this poll is past being irrevalent.

I think the poll question is fair to ask. And there is proof to answer "yes," Brown had some effect.

In SC's Secession Declaration, it is stated:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States.

Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States.

They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.​

That last sentence is certainly, in some part at least, a reference to Brown's raid. If my recollection serves me, one or even two other states' secession declaration make at least an oblique reference to Brown.

So his actions did have some effect... or at least these secessionists seemed to say so. That he could have such an effect is worth noting.

- Alan

 

[CWguy]

From my view John Brown was not insane. From his hearing report had about his family could not be true. Insanity or any other disease does not run in just about everyone related to him. So I believe those findings by the court helped to portray him as insane to convince the jurors. I believed in what he did was right but I would have to be insane to risk my life and my sons to free the slaves. I know this will open up a can of worms for some but Brown's crime trying to help another be free by killing some that were in his way is a far lesser crime than the treason or traiting of our Government by the southerners during the Civil War. Whose crime was worse? These are only opinions. Someone mentioned this topic gets old after three times. Some of are new here and that means new opinions can be stimulating for the mind. History cannot be forgotten since we can learn from it.