American Experience; John Brown's Holy War; Interview with historian James Brewer Stewart, 4 of 5

oh the c'est ha wealthy businessman always hate instability commerce does not proceed predictably when the world is not predictable kansas made the world and predictable to merchants to cut manufacturers two industrialists to investors to people with vast fortunes were not all abolitionists we're not interested in african americans but who were interested in credit and finance instability in order and also in westward expansion lawrence's walls the big factory owners in new england who would always despised the abolitionist

who had contempt for african americans had at the same time by taking fifties deep fears that the destabilizing influence of slavery international development because kansas was part because western railroads would be so heavily compromised because the business order of the world was being upset by the slave power all those reasons we give someone like him as lawrence plenty of thought about signing checks for rifles to go to kansas for supporting free staters in kansas for having the city of lawrence kansas be the place where the free state legislature meets one of the great and important moments in the turning of the north toward civil war is the mobilization of the business community against the slave power which had in previous decades been the source of their financial richness and their support in the manufacturing of

cotton and textile so the idea that the business community would begin to align itself with freedom is to begin to understand that the most powerful forces in american business and conservative politics are now becoming opposed to the slovak or c it's a terribly important moment in the coming of the sort it just sort of big business hates instability large capital and large capitalists want to be able to know that the world is working smoothly and functioning well that investments are safe the progress can proceed that the world can move from quarterly statement

quarterly statement uninterrupted for large capitalists in boston and up and down the new england coast ports in kansas were terrible terrible disruption of the orderly progress of the march of western civilization and railroads and commerce and banks certainly amos warrants would start writing checks to provide rifles for the freedom fighters in kansas for these reasons what's at issue ok good as in any period of time a big business gets nervous with political instability and that certainly was the case for the great cotton merchants and industrialists of new england in the eighteenth fifties because of the turmoil and cancer so these are men who held the

abolitionists in contempt for two decades these are people who had no time whenever for wally african americans but these were people who indeed worried about the future of the stability of the economic system because of the deep disruptions taking place in the kansas border wars a tremendous change in attitude happens when it suddenly became clear to big an important family fortunes like the lawrence is the walls that it was necessary to intervene in the affairs of kansas to begin to arm kansas settlers to begin to provide rifles to begin to become involved in the anti slavery cruz said the great merchant of cotton very rapidly became great champions of american freedom in kansas and this was a tremendous turning point in the politics that led to civil war and eighty eight there's another separate these people were trying to save the beginning

optimal it's really to point c that's the discussion portion class and would answer big business during this period of time as in any period of time it's uncertainty it's instability was to know that its investments are safe i want to note that six months from now five years from now the world perceives him develops in an ordered fashion those were the concerns of the great cotton fortunes and the great manufacturing fortunes in new england in the eighteenth fifties although powerful families that for decades had scored and silas the abolitionists who had no time for the african americans who lived in their town of boston now these same people bring their mighty fortunes and their political interest to bear on supporting free staters in kansas why would this be we were developed the idea of creating new markets on the west coast the idea of waking up a cot in the republic as a free

capitalist economy the idea that one step following another step to create in which an empire that works to the pacific all of that in some fundamental way wanted by a slave power kansas that provokes a boom or civil discourse and a bit antagonistic interest to the nation's development as a free labor capitalist society certainly the great family fortunes in massachusetts would begin to turn around and start writing checks to freedom fighters in kansas to create a world of free soil free labor and free men were capitalist development could continue unimpeded by selfish narrow violence slave holders i no longer serve the interests of these east coast families and the fortunes and enterprises behind that you keep pushing the old regime

texas is big data yes yes it's a it's part of a tradition of course actually has sort of the historical and it's a historical tradition of violent displacement that people do without any sway recalls are human and people will work at this work and actually the violence in kansas

as it was was nothing new slimmer always had expanded that were indians displaced like a charity and georgia because of the need of south carolina and georgia players for more slave territory the displacement finally in big indian wars in florida of the seminole nation the notaries edition of the mexican border the march into mexico the provocation making mexico declare war and you have to be infiltrated their society for fifteen years slave owners and forced the revolution to make texas free of mexican violence armies career warfare displacement all our signature of slavery westward expansion

and there's a history that explains why kansas so quickly so volatile and record it as that is any contact with the air on track and then ok ok fine the third of that was moving the formula look at that a slave holder believe it more than they believed anything else in the team fifties that they needed the character they'd always felt that when slavery was an expanding economy an economy that always need to bring progress during the teen fifties it was expensive perhaps into nicaragua perhaps is taking over another country that way or perhaps it was an x in cuba buying it from the spanish finding more slave territory by turning the united states into a caribbean or latin american based fish but always it was extra legal always was just a little bit quiet always was it was it was with the idea of coming in and upsetting existing

arrangements they've been that way in the annexation of texas in the mexican war that followed that and now again in kansas it's no surprise that the expansion of slavery is accompanied by bloodshed accompanied by civil war accompanied by violence it's saving without a board without the caribbean perhaps kelley just talk about texas it does appear gaspar rivera more like a slave holders have always known analysts believe deeply that their institution needed to expand where was going to die moving to new areas was the compulsion that kept institutionalized and in the eighteen fifties that compulsion lead to intervention in nicaragua by private platter interests to try to set up a new slaveholding government there it meant moving into kansas with

the same time of course you power to try and force will buy lots of ballots wouldn't work it meant thinking about buying cuba from the spanish and it's not that perhaps indeed the idea that there was an aggressive slave worker see a group of plotters who wish to work their will by force of arms if necessary to make their institution grow and thrive is a idea that seems to have had a number of different pieces of evidence connected with that that make kansas part of a much larger power during the fifties so i mean you just i know that it's been the case but john brown must have felt very much at home in boston

in the eighties fifties because people we talked to saw him finally as he wanted to be seen as a man who connected the best and most militant traditions of liberty coming from the american revolution and maybe even earlier than that in the old english civil war of oliver cromwell were commoners protestants stood up against aristocracy royalty and evil the world of boston was filed in the world the puritans carried through the world the revolution and embodied in the eighteen fifties by powerful an imaginative unwilling men who remembered the stacks he's powerful unwilling men were the men who would become john brown's supporters would become john brown sympathizers who would become john brown's defenders after the raid on harpers ferry who saw him as an old puritan as an old

testament prophet is the embodiment of the revolution is the man who spoke the truth of the deep american past and the promise of liberty came back from way back in anglo saxon times the spirit of sam adams the spirit john are all alive in the fifties in boston as result of the tremendous struggles over the fugitive slave law of the deep concern that slavery was taking boston's third liberty and tearing it up and destroying it that patriotic men need to get to to assemble again on the ring began to pick up guns needed again to reform the liberties and the but one of her father's blood <unk> understood blog and in the setting of boston despite his humble origins and despite the fact that he was sitting in the drawing rooms of rich and privileged men he could make those men believe that he was that connection i go back for shorter is the grandfather says

yes it was about that the idea that he meant about that was then but they only so strongly in effect was a justice majority a conference on the moon ok i mean it's never try to freeze dried and because people are not yet because of the rhetoric of the implant ok i'm sorry when john brown at her boston and the faking fifties he found a world that understood the underworld that believed especially among its abolitionists that it needed to fight the revolution a second time that the first revolution hadn't worked

for the first revolution really had freed anybody a lot boston about an occupied by slavery federal marshals captured its essence a slave power dominated its politics the idea that the revolution needed to be fought again something the mentor thomas wentworth higginson samuel gridley howe and philips many many others emerson thoreau all the great voices that justify john brown's raid after he was hung at harpers ferry oh those people saw a connection to that revolution saw man who carried these old puritan roots with him carry this all revolutionaries you're with him had not been corrupted by the passage of time and the growth of slavery who could tell the old truths that their grandfather said points down about how to lay down your life or liberty and how to make the sacrifice is necessary for american freedom one more where we don't go back to the defense of

harper's its best which is what is the connection to the right locates fight and i don't know how i thought ok ok and so why do it when john brown and her boston in the two fifties he entered a world that really believed that understood him it was a world that is diddley was disturbed by the feeling that the american revolution needed to be fought again in the city streets and abolitionists and supporters of the republican party all felt that somehow the american revolution had not created the free republic grandfather instead the revolution had been corrupted unpolluted by slave or slavery reached its hands right into boston common

plenty of fugitive slaves occupying its streets with armies is time once again to remember what their grandfathers had told them about the shedding of blood and the precious hope of liberty john browne seemed to them to be a man who remembered those troops who live those troops who had to deep iyer will the puritan at the deep vision of a sam adams had a way of being able to bring the revolution and the president in the present so that we could have it again yeah sometimes it is if brown was

anything he was charismatic brown was anything he could make people feel empowered by being around him other individuals responses to register those individuals desires to be empowered desires to stop sitting and start walking stopped walking and start running stop running and start fighting brown because of his personality it's a personality like gandhi sits personality like any great charismatic leader he's the needs of the people who wish to learn how to be better to learn how to lead fulfilling lives can find that absent quality that will make you stand up

and really be a man it's a very strong man construction job as a picker he instructs these young men he chastises them for their weakness he sneers at them for their failings he tells them only partial truce because he has greater truth to tell later he involves them in conversations were they were to open themselves up while he remains only partly by drawing others to him he solve the problem all abolitionists had on one level of honor of working so hard for so many decades to try and abolish slavery and having never ever leveraged it's like so it's a very interesting

interaction but the question again was a protectorate if one thing is true about john brown is that he had a rare quality especially in private of charisma he invited you into his world and become a better person for having done so in public brown was a nondescript figure sitting across the table from you he became a wise man he became a challenging man he became an understanding that i became someone who made people feel who met him that he knew their secrets but he knew they were lacking state he knew their possibilities that he knew what they might be capable of

if they learn from him the man who he surrounded himself with and who became his supporters were all people in one where a deep frustration is but the problem of race about the inability to be able to actually liberated slaves about their own inadequacies is meant as a consequence of the lives that they lead their loss of heroism there sense that their lives were unfulfilled brown offered them he gave them a way to become inspired way to believe in themselves but a way to believe in themselves only of connected to him only of becoming part of his brother in which she was the patriarch just as you might have been in his family being able to control the relationships being able to know everyone's secret and being able to open himself as people needed to know what his plans and visions were a man of inspiration from a crisp

the proof basis not terribly important theme in washington the transition of nonviolent people to accept violence but probably the most dramatic transformation that the movement underground in the men and women who in the dedicated to decades of nine resistance who said to the world of the slaveholding is cordial and coleridge and his evil so therefore we will be non course we will follow the precepts of jesus was the standard in most important bedrock of most abolitionist police for a very long time

so in the eighteen fifties around john brown and others the idea that non resistance must be somehow transformed into an acceptance of righteous fire once three it terribly important threshold for abortions to step three what made them stuff throughout the feeling finally that they're non violence had gotten them know where the wind down and preaching peace and being rolled over by the violence of slavery impossible to continue to understand or fundamentally that you're black friends and neighbors are exposed to that or threatened by lives that the law's five times the sheriff wants that that violence reaches through a lot through the courts or the

occupation of your city by federal troops all of those things are fine make individuals one by one by one begin to say that the book of jeremiah is more important than the new testament that god should strike this evil institution and i should be an agent to help that happen as announcer to do today all right ok oh ok ok right because that i'm ok you're ok i'll do this what is the idea that slavery needed to be abolished peacefully toward everybody wanted we would've wanted that now but the idea that slavery will be against the idea that slavery should be abolished peacefully as of course the way that the abolitionists would want to go

the idea that slavery was so intolerable that it had to be abolished somehow made it possible for men and women who had long been dedicated to non violence finally some reluctantly and so the relief that they know are going to believe this anymore to embrace the idea that god's righteous violence was the best or regrettably the only way to finally obliterate the institution of slavery from the face of the earth the people's hearts and minds would not change but perhaps god almighty power in armies an unoccupied troops could do the same thing and that's great and then he's

always preferred slavery be abolished without harming assault but after twenty years perhaps longer i love peacefully demanding that slavery be abolished and finding instead that no slavery pro slavery and instead becomes harder from their point of view more violent from their point of view more vicious made it finally with hazardous for psalm and with the relief for others made it possible to embrace the idea that instead of appealing to conscience one had to appeal to god's vengeance one had to appeal to mighty armies one had to appeal to that retribution of a just an angry god and that is the kind of language that john brown understood the

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