John Brown failed in his original intentions of creating a new country in the Appalachians and triggering a slave revolt. He more than succeeded in becoming a martyr for the abolitionist cause and giving something to rally behind. Also the civil war was inevitable by the time John Brown did his raid on Harpers Ferry, he was simply the Prologue not the cause, even if Brown was a Ghandi like figure there would’ve still be a civil war since the South was not going to give up the institution of slavery without a fight.
And y’know what they weren’t wrong, right up until WW2 more or less shattered the empire by overstressing and over extending it. There was no such pressure on the South without men like John Brown, reminder he wasn’t the only abolitionist raider just the one with the biggest militia and who earned the most glory.
But we can go round and round on this one indefinitely, I generally see pacifism unbacked by the threat of violence to be worthless and even with that backing I consider it contextual at best. The pacifism of King and Ghandi were nothing without the violence of Malcolm X and the Indian revolutionaries.
John Brown failed in his original intentions of creating a new country in the Appalachians and triggering a slave revolt. He more than succeeded in becoming a martyr for the abolitionist cause and giving something to rally behind. Also the civil war was inevitable by the time John Brown did his raid on Harpers Ferry, he was simply the Prologue not the cause, even if Brown was a Ghandi like figure there would’ve still be a civil war since the South was not going to give up the institution of slavery without a fight.
They told Gandhi the same thing, the British Empire would not give up India without a fight.
And y’know what they weren’t wrong, right up until WW2 more or less shattered the empire by overstressing and over extending it. There was no such pressure on the South without men like John Brown, reminder he wasn’t the only abolitionist raider just the one with the biggest militia and who earned the most glory.
But we can go round and round on this one indefinitely, I generally see pacifism unbacked by the threat of violence to be worthless and even with that backing I consider it contextual at best. The pacifism of King and Ghandi were nothing without the violence of Malcolm X and the Indian revolutionaries.