That's what the entire question hinges on. You define it.

A friend of mine was asking me about John Brown and in talking about him a thought occurred to me:

In some senses of morality, given the moral catastrophe that was slavery, and the extent to which it was normalized in American society, and to which slaves were suffering minute by minute, but no civil action was forthcoming to ameliorate their lot, you could say that John Brown's approach - fomenting slave rebellion - made him the only moral person of the day.

I'm not trying to say for sure that I think that personally. I'm still thinking about it. Curious to know what you all think.

You have to admit though... he was the only one of the period (among the whites anyway) who was convincingly against slavery. The rest of them just talked.

Or perhaps, the other side of the coin, is that he was a fool, violence is never the answer, and the moral ones were Garrison and Stowe and Douglass. Thoughts on that?

Some quotes of his:

"I don’t think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion."

"Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of their friends…and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference…every man in this court would have deemed it worthy of reward rather than punishment."

"If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments - I submit; so let it be done."

Who the hell is John Brown? I'm English. I've never heard of him - apart from his name as being in the first line of a marching song.

I would hit you with a LMGTFY but I'm trying to be less mean online:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)

John Brown was a northern abolitionist who ended up concluding that an unjust law was no law at all and attempted to foment a slave rebellion in the south by raiding a federal armory. His raid failed and he was tried and hanged in Virginia. He's been labelled a terrorist by many, a freedom fighter by some others.

He and his sons and a few of his followers, apart from the fighters in Bleeding Kansas, were the only white people to my knowledge that attempted to overthrow slaveocracy by force.

"he was the only one of the period (among the whites anyway) who was convincingly against slavery. The rest of them just talked."

This is certainly not true. Abolitionist 'talkers' often suffered loss of life and limb (not to mention property). I'm also fairly certain that an unpleasant fate tended to befall 'talkers' discovered to be involved in such non-violent endeavors as the Underground Railroad. And more importantly, 'talkers' sowed the seeds of thought and rhetoric in the national debate that made abolition possible.

To the question at hand: to say that John Brown (I will assume you are also including his followers) was the only moral man is to suggest that anyone who doesn't resort to homicidal (and suicidal) violence to right the wrongs they see in the world is not moral. That can lead to some very dark places (read the manifesto in the LAPD whistleblower/murderer thread). I suspect a world populated by people that "moral" would likely be a very nasty and violent place, with everyone too busy cutting off heads of sinners to ever extend a hand of mercy and compassion. I wouldn't want to live in that kind of world.

I don't meant to suggest he is the only one who gave his life. Just the only one to take up arms against the southerners.

"To the question at hand: to say that John Brown (I will assume you are also including his followers) was the only moral man is to suggest that anyone who doesn't resort to homicidal (and suicidal) violence to right the wrongs they see in the world is not moral. That can lead to some very dark places (read the manifesto in the LAPD whistleblower/murderer thread). I suspect a world populated by people that "moral" would likely be a very nasty and violent place, with everyone too busy cutting off heads of sinners to ever extend a hand of mercy and compassion. I wouldn't want to live in that kind of world."

I can understand this outlook.

But, on the other hand, when a wrong being committed is so egregious, and nothing else seems to be working, is violence not sometimes what is moral?

Would anyone here really say that a slave would not be justified in killing his owner? What then would be the difference if it was a northerner who killed the slave owner?

Again, I'm still undecided myself. In some senses, John Brown was proved right that only violence would end slavery by the Civil War. On the other hand, in some senses John Brown's actions set off the radicalization and violent climate that caused the war in the first place.

Yes, inciting racial warfare and civil insurrection is the perfect moral approach to the complicated, intractable problem that was Slavery.

This thing is too hard to deal with rationally--let's hit it with something!

So are you also in favor of bombing abortion clinics?

"John Brown was proved right that only violence would end slavery by the Civil War."

No, he was not. Slavery (on paper at least) ended in every other country without the need for a massive war that killed hundreds of thousands and left millions destitute.

"But, on the other hand, when a wrong being committed is so egregious, and nothing else seems to be working, is violence not sometimes what is moral?"

I believe that America's foreign policy of intervention and aggression around the world is a great evil. Does that make me justified in, say, assassinating pFe05pVMsxk+ikT65E4U2? Or blowing up the armed forces recruiting center down the street?

"Would anyone here really say that a slave would not be justified in killing his owner? What then would be the difference if it was a northerner who killed the slave owner?"

I believe slavery is a great evil. But murder is a greater evil. Would I judge a slave who killed his 'owner' differently than I would judge someone who killed someone else for cheating at cards? Certainly. But I do not think that the former is entirely justified, especially since there were a number of ways to fight slavery that didn't involve killing people (most popularly, perhaps, was running away).

With fear for sounding prejudiced and stereotypical - it really is bullshit some of the stuff white people say about slavery - and I feel bad saying that. John Brown, in my opinion, was a great man. Ideologically speaking murder is wrong, slavery is worse, and murder to stop slavery is a good deed. And how slavery ended in other countries is irrelevant given that conditions are different country to country. Oh and maybe not hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions destitute, but there were many other wars because of the injustice of slavery - see Haiti when it was owned by France!

I'm going to say something crazy and go out on a limb in saying that Harriet Tubman was also pretty high when it comes to "moral" in the antebellum south...

You really don't think it would have been justified for a slave to kill his master? Maybe we're on a different page here.

To me, it's justified in the same way a North Korean in a labor camp would be justified killing his guard.

And anyway you have a great point obviously bo_sox, and the title is simply meant to be provocative.

But as Socrates is saying, when you really think for a second about what continued slavery entailed for the four million black slaves in the south, it becomes hard to say that the violence of John Brown was unjustified. In fact, it even invites the question as to whether he was the only one doing the right thing.

There are very few modern equivalents to this type of thing, and even such that those things exist, without the benefit of hindsight we cannot really know what they are.

The point of John Brown from a modern perspective is that he was possible, as one historian put it "the most perceptive American of his generation."

That is to say - while nearly every one of his countrymen, even the moral abolitionists, were content to allow slavery to continue into the future, he did what he could to end it right away. If a few thousand whites were to die in that pursuit, which I'm sure he expected to happen, would it not be justified still?

I mean, we today know that the American slave trade cost the lives of millions of blacks. Putting an end to that would seem to be imperative.

The comparison with other countries is rather null. Slavery in the UK was nothing like what it meant for American Southerners.

It does make one wonder what modern "extremists" future generations will vindicate. Abortion clinic bombers, suicide bombers, rebel leaders... hard to say for sure of course. The lion's share of such violence is senseless.. but it would be painting with too broad a brush to claim that violence is never justified, wouldn't it?

I am not sure Brown's actions were justified. I believe they were right in principle, but to justify the abolition of slavery through killing slave owners is not necessarily the best explanation...

Maybe perceptive is a better word than moral for him. There are very, very few people on this planet that anyone should want killed in my mind, and slave owners, being a semi-normal part of the Deep South culture (yeah, not where he operated, I know, but still to be considered), aren't really on the top of that list. The fact that he killed scores of people makes me question his morality.

Slave owners aren't on the top of the of the list? Really?

The fact that they were normalized in the South is precisely why violence against them could be seen as the only meaningful or decisive course of action against slavery.

Thucy, you can see it as racism all you want, but the fact of the matter is that the North would have had slaves too if they had any reason for it. It's not like it was unique to the United States and the slave owners shouldn't be considered horrible bastard racists for it like they would be today because it didn't happen today, it happened in the 1800s.

The Quakers, many of whom were ardent abolitionists, would argue that violence is never moral, even when used to prevent or end actions of even greater violence. They posit that the only acceptable resistance is peaceful resistance and civil disobedience.

The Quakers are pretty cool that way. And nonviolent resistance has a pretty good track record.

Ctrl-F racism and let me know if I've mentioned that in the thread so far bro. Doesn't suit you to put words in my mouth.

Anyway the message of nonviolent resisitance is compelling.. I'm just not sure it actually holds up. Within a civil society, with rule of law, that sort of thing, sure. But if the system is itself corrupt, or there is no system, it's harder to say that it's possible.

You could argue that MLK's nonviolence only worked because of the path paved by the violent Civil War.

And even the non-violent MLK, when the worst of racial oppression (slavery itself) was already in the past, had this to say (Letter from Birmingham Jail):

"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action""

"Ideologically speaking murder is wrong, slavery is worse"

If that is so, does it not mean that it would have been more moral for slave owners to simply murder their slaves rather than keep them enslaved? It's a good thing none of those evil 19th century white people believed that, or the solution to the slavery problem would've simply been mass murder.

No, but it's nice to build straw man arguments Tolstoy isn't it. That is the definition of a false dichotomy and is nonsensical!

Thucy, the non-violent MLK... that word rings in my head. Non-violent. John Brown could have been something like MLK with the passion and devotion to the cause he'd shown. He'd never have been as prestigious and I doubt the black community would have taken him in, but what does that show that we remember MLK and dedicate a federal holiday to him instead of John Brown? They both worked toward the same larger scale cause of racial equality. We remember MLK because he did it justly and effectively... Brown only did the latter. Maybe he was a pragmatic thinker, but I've never thought that way, and by that one word it's clear you don't either.

MLK's contribution IS VASTLY overstated, because that is what the establishment wants to think (and/or maybe people in general). Not to go all conspiracy theorist but a big reason for change was fear of radicals like Malcolm X, and to some extent the desire for change that already existed. "The system" or perhaps in this case the majority of people, want people/themselves to think that nice peaceful protest in itself is adequate and anything else is illegitimate. This is because in many cases such a thing is easier to be ignored and is less damaging to the powers that be. I don't mean this as some big conspiracy by a few but a general observation.

Because he couldn't have done it without other people? No shit. He couldn't have done it without Malcolm X or the reverends he worked with. Hell, he couldn't have done it without the students in Birmingham either. He couldn't have done it without the thousands that rallied behind him. That doesn't take away from what he did.

I'm not saying he couldn't have done it without other people, I'm saying the change would have happened without him!

But it wouldn't have happened without Malcolm X? How much sense does that make?

It would have, but much delayed and his contribution was actually much more important. He gave the 'radical' 'extreme' position much more force than anyone else did, and arguably more than anyone else could have. Due to the pertinence of such a contribution I would say it is hard to overstate his contribution.

Nobody ever said Malcolm X didn't contribute... nobody ever understated it. I think you're understating MLK's contributions as a spokesman of the movement as a whole. It took a hell of a man to take that job.