Beecher's Bible: A Sharps 1853 from John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry
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On October 16, 1859 John Brown and 19 men left the Kennedy farmhouse and made their way a few miles south to the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. They planned to seize the Arsenal and use its arms - along with 200 Sharps 1853 carbines and 1,000 pikes they had previously purchased - to ignite and arm a slave revolt. Brown was a true fanatic for the abolitionist cause, perfectly willing to spill blood for a just cause. His assault on the Arsenal lasted three days, but failed to incite a rebellion. Instead of attracting local slaves to his banner, he attracted local militia and the US Marines. His force was besieged in the arsenal firehouse, and when the Marines broke through the doors the captured 5 surviving members of the Brown party, including Brown himself. All five were quickly tried and found guilty of murder, treason, and inciting negroes to riot. They were sentenced to death, and hanged on December 2, 1859.
Most of Brown's 200 Sharps carbines were left in the farmhouse hideout, to be distributed when the insurrection took hold. These were found by local militia, among them the Independent Greys, and some were kept as souvenirs - including this example.
There is an intriguing historical question as to whether Brown's raid was ultimately good for the country or not. It was extremely divisive at the time, and it can be argued that the raid was a major factor leading to Lincoln's election and the Civil War. Could slavery have been abolished without the need for a cataclysmic war if John Brown had not fractured the Democratic Party? To what extent is killing for a cause justifiable? Do the ends always justify the means? John Brown had no doubts about his answers to these questions...but maybe he should have.
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"I thought slavery a great moral evil. So anyway i started blastin..."
Unironically based
Only correct way to debate pro-slavery apologists.
"His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was a taper light, his was the burning sun. Mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the silent shores of eternity. I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave."
- Frederick Douglass being a fucking incredible writer
Reminder that this dude was entirely self taught in terms of reading and writing, and he was able to produce works of poetic brilliance such as the above. Goes to show how he was just as important as John Brown in defeating slavery and the disgusting ideology of slaveowners, in spite of his humbleness, disproving every word ever written about the inherent inferiority of black men and women. The pen and the sword may not be worthy opponents, but together they can turn the course of history.
@@TheRedKing247 Thanks for your message, and I totally agree. You're not a bad writer yourself, either!
Shut up, redditor
Wholesome
"I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with Blood. I had...vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done." -final words of John Brown
He wasn't wrong. Even the rivers that flowed during the civil war weren't enough to rid the states of those that believed in human bondage. Reconstruction was nowhere near harsh or long lived as it needed to be. Modern America still pays the price.
Not literally the last words he spoke, but the text of his last note he handed to his gaoler John Avis on the day of his execution.
@liamday7795 Agreed! Should have had more Sherman's Marches and fewer slaveholders getting to keep all their wealth and property earned on the backs of the enslaved.
Yeah, look what your country has now?@@liamday7795 Have a look at Haiti too, compared to their neighbor.
@@liamday7795 Modern america still pays the price? In what? I've never met anyone that owns slaves currently across the whole US. Most of my family beyond my mother's grandparents are southern and german, having my bloodline die would not save your country from anything. But since you believe in beating a mummified horse from about 200+ years ago, I'm assured there are issues you have deeper in your heart.
John Brown, a true American hero if there ever was one.
Yeah... not so much actually. He had a righteous cause but his methods were anti-hero at best... terrorist at worse.
@@thomaslyons441and I'm sure the English would have called many Revolutionists of the 13 Colonies terrorists as well.
@@thomaslyons441 There is no difference between terrorist and freedom fighter except who you ask
You know what they say? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Slavery was effectively ended in that Caribbean by 1886, without having to resort to a war that killed 100's of thousands of people.
The *Democratic* party fractured, allowing Lincoln to be elected, not the Republican. There was one Republican candidate - Lincoln. There were two Democratic - Breckinridge and Douglas (yes, *that* Douglas), as well as Bell from the "Constitutional Union" party, in its one-and-only appearance. That said... the electoral vote in our reality was Lincoln 180, everybody else 123, so it wasn't really that close. NY and PA had more electoral votes than the Carolinas, GA, AL, MI, AR, LA, FL, and TX *combined*.
Edit: Just to clarify: My comment had nothing to do with the present-day political issues, and none of the comments below should be taken to reflect understanding of recent political history. I was only referring on a *well-attested, undisputed* item, namely, the names and party affiliations of the candidates in the 1860 election. I feel that my comment was hijacked to discuss current-day politics.
My goof, sorry - didn’t catch that in editing
@@ForgottenWeaponswith the sheer level of political polarity nowadays it's easy to forget that prior to the southern strategy of the 1960s that the two big parties alignments were almost completely reversed. Might want to pin the main comment though as these comments are heated enough in some places. I hope this gun goes go somebody who appreciates its history, it belongs in a museum.
@@mikemurley8656Uhh, yes, the reversal of the parties absolutely happened. All you have to do is look at all the confederate sympathizers in the Republican Party. Also look at the change in policy during the time of the southern strategy. Before then, Republicans were progressives like Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Then they became traditionalists and conservatives like Reagan, Bush, etc.
@@mikemurley8656 Clearly that's why blue is the color of the conservatives in every other country. While there WAS a realignment, it wasn't so clean or complete as people like to pretend decades after the fact to fit either narrative. Anyone relying on the past as a political crutch is insufficiently focused on the future.
@@mikemurley8656 Then, pray tell, which members of which party today flies the Confederate Flag?
I live just 6 miles from Harpers Ferry and only 6 miles from Charles Town where Brown was tried and hung. I had to take photos for the local newspaper a couple weeks ago at the site of his hanging. This area of the country is so full of history and if one has a creative mind one can feel the history of the area. I also live just one mile from the site of one of Mosby's raids and had the honor of handling Mosby's revolver.
John Brown is proof that a man can be a criminal and a hero all at the same time.
@@jzeits one man's hero is another man's terrorist. a champion for abolition, he was a killer. Bleeding Kansas is too often overlooked when it comes to the issue of slavery and the US Civil War. the decade before secession was violent and bloody.
@@jzeits I live ~3 miles from where he was born. You can find various signs around Torrington proudly saying "Birthplace of John Brown".
The Southern historian Shelby Foote once said the biggest thrill of his life was the time he got to swing the 1840 Heavy Calvary Sword owned by Nathan B. Forrest over his head when he got to meet the Granddaughter of Forrest. The artifacts from The War Between the States, really do give us a connection and an admiration of the past...
@@jzeits like the Left today, that creature wanted to start a Race War. Only to Puppets is he a hero in any sense.
A real shame the pike footage was corrupt. They're imo, more interesting than the rifles.
He contracted several cutlers in Connecticut and ended up skipping out on payment. The hafts were actually rake handles basically purchased ready made and fitted with the tanged pikeheads.
One question - the blunt spike of it is by the design?
@@ifyoudontfailyouarenoteven6210 they're sharp enough to work, but ultimately, yes, by design.
It gives a little more material where it needs it to the point.
They were on (IIRC) ~7 ft pole. The leverage on a finer tip would have snapped off in use.
@@MrKronikDeception Thank you :)
I want to learn more about the pikes as well. I have inherited some similar and it's a great mystery!
From what I read somewhere the pike tips were based on a knife design that JB liked and he asked the manufacturer to adapt it to fit a pike. And they manufactured something like a thousand of them.
JOHN BROWN'S BODY LIES A-MOULDERING IN THE GRAVE, BUT HIS TRUTH IS MARCHING ON!
Another odd coincidence in the story... present at Browns hanging was a John Wilkes Booth, who noted that while he disagreed with Brown, he respected his willingness to act and die for his cause. And yes, that John Wilkes Booth
And yet Wilkes never fought for what he believed in.
nice piece of trivia. kinda chilling!
Also pressent at Brown's execution was a detachment of cadets from the Virginia Military Institute lead by a Major Thomas Jackson. This is before he got the nickname of "Stonewall"
Also preceeding his execution, Brown was presented a baby for him to bless and kiss, which he did. GD legend.
Wait you mean...famous theater actor John Wilkes Booth?
Grew up in Alabama, knew people who did not use bad language but when they got really mad they would say “I’ll be John Brown!”
Someone once interpreted Brown's actions like this, which stuck with me; if it was YOUR family being imprisoned, separated and sold, how would you feel about someone (like Brown) who was willing to kill and be killed to set them free?
Damn straight.
He himself said that in his speech at his trial.
@@thatcow86 probably where I got the idea! thanks
Considering the alternative it may not have bothered me terribly. But cannibalism is nothing I ever have to worry about personally. Because comics taste funny.
@@josephangiulo8601 It's actually quite a powerful part of it's speech so I'm sure you did:
"I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case), -- had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends -- either father, mother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class -- and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment."
I have no doubt it was this part of the speech that sent many northerners over the edge into becoming a full fledged abolitionist and demanding change such that Lincoln was elected, ultimately triggering the Civil War.
John Brown was an officer in the Masonic Lodge here in Hudson, Ohio and his Dad, Owen employed a man named Jesse Grant at his tannery who was the father of Hiram Ulysses Grant, or Ulysses S. Grant as he would become known. It is truly amazing how so many significant personalities became so intertwined in such out-of-the-way places.
See if you can find "The Class of 1848"; a number of Civil War officers were in that class at West Point. Thirty eight graduated in the class, 25 served in the war, on both sides. Of the 13 who did not, 9 died in service before the war, three before the war after they had resigned from the Army.
There was a fraction of people then and a fraction of them in the institutions
The opening of the John Brown raid was a raid on the farm of Lewis Washington, great-grand nephew of George Washington. He was taken hostage along with some others. The true goal of that raid was the capture of a sword and 2 pistols that had belonged to George Washington. Brown knew of them and wanted them as talismens. Lewis Washinton and some others captured with him were taken to Brown and kept as hostages in the firehouse with the main body. Also taken as hostages were arsenal workers arriving for the day's work. Amazingly they nostly all survived that experience and firefight. Next (or about the same time some were raiding the Washington farm) was the murder of Heywood Shepherd, a freed black railroad baggage handler. He had left the station upon hearing a body of men crossing the nearby railroad bridge at night. An unusual occurrence and he wanted to see what was going on. He saw, tried to get back to the station and they shot him in the back and killed him. A physician who lived nearby came to see when he heard the shot and the man's dying scream. When the doctor saw there was nothing to do, he left and Brown and his men let him. Upon getting back to town the doctor began ringing a church bell to warn the town folk, also dispatching runners to Charles Town. Meanwhile Brown and his men had captured a Northbound railroad train which had stopped near the bridge because the telegraph wires wer down. After explaining what was going on Brown allowed the train to depart. He later called that his biggest mistake. As soon as the train got to the next station it telegraphed alerts to the railroad HQ and to Martinsburg and Washington. DC. Response was immediate, first militia then Marines under the command of Robert Lee who rescued his relative and the other hostages. Actually the Marine Officer who tried to stab Brown in the chest, had first tried to cleave the man's head in two, but Brown was moving *he fired his Sharps hitting another Marine in the belly (he died soon) and the Marine's dress sword only made a deep gash in Brown's neck, but it was sufficient to knock Brown down. Since Brown was trying to npw unsheath his own (G. Washington's) sword the Marine Officer tried to stab his chest. The brass buckle of the sword strap over Brown's shoulder is what stopped and bent the Marine's light uniform sword double. Others joined in and Brown was captured. The firehouse is still standing as are some of the other key historical places involved in the John Browns raid. I pass by the courthouse where he was tried and hung several times a year.
When you were describing the wafer primer system all I could think was “what could possibly go wrong?”
james mitchener described the early sharps rifle and its firing system in his novel cetennial in great detail.he also mentioned the razor edge on the breech closer that was necessary to cut the paper cartridge open so it would ignite if the wafer exploded.this awkward system he said had only one redeeming feature ...it worked.
Ian, one historical correction. Most of the model 1859 and 1863 sharps (vertical breech) also had the pellet priming system. Many of the 50-70 conversions of these to metallic cartridge conversions by the military retained a useless primer feeder rather than spend the money to replace the lock plate.
like a really dangerous pez!
Douglass and Tubman both spread the word to not join up with Brown, believing the operation to be a suicide mission. Those 200 rifles were supposed to be in the hands of his men during the raid - he went ahead with the operation with only 10% of the manpower he had planned for. Additionally, he stopped a train as it was passing through the arsenal, but allowed it to pass through. As far as I'm aware, no one knows for sure why he allowed the train to move on, but it's probably related to the lack of manpower. Those on the train of course sent a telegram at the very next stop, and that's what blew the operation.
Douglass and Tubman were correct! Brown was a lunatic!
@@mahbriggsLost Causer spotted, opinion rejected.
@@LordVader1094
The only lost cause is you!
Learn some history! I don't defend tge South or Slavery, which is tge definition of "lost cause"! I merely point out that John Brown was a murderous psychopath! The fact that you think that makes me a supporter of slavery says more about you than it does about me!
Wouldn't a vanishing train also have set off a reaction, if a less specific one? Besides, John Starry also raised the alarm.
*_"Did John Brown fail? He certainly did fail to get out of Harper’s Ferry before being beaten down by United States soldiers; he did fail to save his own life, and to lead a liberating army into the mountains of Virginia. But he did not go to Harper’s Ferry to save his life. The true question is, Did John Brown draw his sword against slavery and thereby lose his life in vain? and to this I answer ten thousand times, No! No man fails, or can fail who so grandly gives himself and all he has to a righteous cause."_* -Frederick Douglass
*_"He done more in dying, than 100 men would in living"_* -Harriet Tubman
OP's post shouldn't be taken as Douglass & Tubman disapproved of Brown's goal or ideals, as is often the case when Lost Causer's get a hold of that bit of information
Also: Tubman helped plan the raid on Harpers Ferry, her absence was likely due to illness at the time, not choice.
"Tragic Prelude" at 1:28 painted at the Kansas Capital in Topeka is a really brooding piece of artwork. I do recommend seeing it in person
This painting is American Epic.
As a European, I must admit I might have known much about the American Civil War, but I had never heard of that guy and his raid, nor about its outcome; very interesting!
He's considered a bit of a hero in some leftist circles online in the US, but even among the US population he's relatively unknown due to the failings of our own education system. I learned about him in school as a kid, but I also learned about a shit ton of the things that most schools in the US simply don't teach at all, because of where my school is and how much funding it had, and who was providing that funding. The parents did not want revisionist history taught and our school district ranks still among the best in the US more generally. Even then we still missed tons of things like this that we simply did not have time for, so many of which I've learned about here due to Ian's work, as well as Karl's over on InRange TV, as well as other channels. I'm a bit sad still that Ian and Karl had a falling out, because this video would have been a great extension of Karl's own work to help document such history for a modern audience to watch online, and an opportunity for a follow-up video on site by Karl since some of it is still preserved for historic reasons today
If it helps they barely taught us anything about him in American schools either. It goes against the 'all your problems can be solved if you just be quiet and vote ' narrative
I learned about him from the Flashman novels, in particular Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. And later The Good Lord Bird miniseries. Both recommended
We did learn about John Brown in school, it was an intriguing story even in my youth. Our history textbook had at least a couple pages on it.
Never heard a word about him in my years in the Texas public school system
The reload time sucks, but the 149 damage that thing does is nothing to scoff at.
Hello friend Hunter :3
I understood that reference
Sparks my dude is based off a 1874 shiloh sharps Rifle, not this one.
A medium slot sparks carbine would be kinda cool but could be argued unnecessary. I’d like it though.
they should give it dum dum!
John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave, but his sharpe’s goes firing on.
Fantastic comment
not enough piss has been dumped on that mans grave
no conundrum here: his was the only correct response to slavery
Ian really gets out of his depth when he tries to get political.
@@dcbadger2How did he get political?
@@gr6373 Being anti-slavery is still "political" for conservatives.
@@Deadener I doubt you speak with many conservatives
@@gr6373 his little quip about how slavery could have been resolved without war, had those pesky abolitionists not gotten involved.
His soul is marching on
Glory glory hallelujah
Straight to Hell! He brutally murdered 3 innocent men in Kansas with swords then launched a evil , unwanted, Treasonous raid upon the US arsenal. About all he accomplished was to get his men including his own sons killed. Oh and he made Robert E. Lee famous.
I can't remember where I read it, but I saw it written somewhere that John Brown was feared by the establishment in large part because he represented something completely beyond their control: a white man with the conviction to kill and ultimately die for the freedom of black people. For all his flaws and mistakes I have a lot of respect for him and his willingness to fight for what was right. Anyone willing to die for the freedom of others is someone we can all learn from.
His soul is marchin' on.
would you feel the same about anti-abortionists?
@@johnnybagofdoughnuts4193Those anti-abortionist are probably the same people who voted for the policy of forceful sterlization of native american women in the 60s and 70s. They only care about that unborn child if it's white and still in the womb.
@@johnnybagofdoughnuts4193 yes. anyone who says otherwise is just as bad as the pro-slavers of the 19th century
@@johnnybagofdoughnuts4193Ah yes, the freedom to tell someone that their life means absolutely nothing because there is a chance they could birth a child.
You're right; modern day John Brown would totally fight for, kill for, and die for the ability for someone in power to place total control over someone else's body. That is sarcasm. If you think John Brown would do so you're stupid. Get fucked.
Hmm.... a carabine with a PEZ--dispenser. That begs the question if at that time PEZ was available with chewing tobacco flavour?
"Slavery's gay because you own another man" - John Brown
Correction on the election of 1860. Lincoln was elected because the Democrat vote was split between John Bell and Stephen Douglas.
Too Bad about the Pike Head Footage. I'm always interested in edged weapons from this period, including John Browning's broad swords. This antebellum period was kind of like the Last Hurrah for edged weapons. Soon too be eclipsed by cartridge loaded repeating firearms, making them a backup or weapon of last resort.
I was particularly disappointed because it does not resemble any pike head I have seen before. It looks more like a winged spear or boar spear.
Also the socket seems short.
Some quick research indicates they were made by a tool maker who had probably never made a pike head before.
They had short-ish shafts so it'd be closer to a spear orr a boarding pike than the classic idea of a long pike. With that in mind the crossguard makes more sense to avoid overpenetration.
Boy oh boy cant wait for “those”comments
According to my old OIC, a history major and a Marine officer, it was an officer that went in first and encountered Brown, so he would have been carrying a shamshir (the Mameluke sword Matine officers carry), and it would have been the only recorded time a Marine officer engaged in combat with a Mameluke sword. The one and only time, and it bends, adding to Brown's absolute certainty he was on a righteous path as God turned a blade that should have killed him and gave him time to be more than just a man putting together an uprising.
Worth noting that slavery got abolished in the UK much earlier and without significant violence for two reasons:
Many of the abolitionists were both Quakers and very rich.
This made it hard for the pro-slavers to portray them as _dangerous_ lunatics and even harder for them to argue that slavery built prosperity.
(Adam Smith had, a century before, published a paper saying that slavery _weakened_ the economy, and the Confederacy's "war machine" rather proved him right when the American Civil War came.)
In any case: in England and Wales there wasn't really any legal entity to abolish. The High Court ruled in 1773 that there never had been an act of the Westminster Parliament that made slavery legal!
This had been known long beforehand. When someone asked King Charles II what was the legal status of the black and mixed-race people on islands such as St Helena and Montserrat, he replied "they are my subjects, like any other." This was a concise but actually complete statement of the law as it stood at the time. Had Parliament been less determined to assert its right to over-rule the king, slavery in much of the world might have ended there and then.
Saint Helena is such a Beautiful place and one that I aim to visit before I finally Bow out, it's also where My Father was Born.
Thanks for that information. I don't recall ever hearing that before.
Indeed, it was the sensible way to do things at the time. UK then spent the next decades trying to stop slavery world-wide.@@tomhenry897
Except it wasn't abolished.
It was abolished *in England.*
Slavery was also just not as important to the slavers in the UK. British slavers simply saw it as a means to make money. The government compensating them for their freed slaves was something they'd accept. But in the American South, slavery had become more than just an economic system. It was the foundation of their entire society.
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with blood."
Bars
It's a funny quirk of history that John Brown has widely been forgotten, but if you hum a few bars of the song written about him - "John Brown's Body" - almost anyone would instantly recognise it.
The famous melody predated Brown's raid and execution by a good 50 years. Lyrics about Brown were fitted to the melody after Brown's death.
@@RealityOrganizedtrue, but John Browns Body popularized it at a much larger scale. Battle Hymn of the Republic and Blood on the Risers are both based on it.
Does anyone else want to have a look at John Brown's belt buckle? Freakin' thing _bent a sword._
Indeed!
says more about the quality of that sword really.
Makes sense really; when you've got a set of stones like John Brown had, it'd take a stout buckle to hold your pants up 😂
0:27 Ian "John Brown is best known for his raid..... (on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry) that cost him his life" Silly me, I thought John Brown was best known for being the cover model for Kansas' 1974 eponymous album.
The wait between Avatar movies is my heritage, since it lasted longer than the confederacy
I know how to get a lot of metal for some giant Aang and Korra statues
A tragedy that true Americans will never forget. RIP John Brown. It was a shame he wasn’t successful
In fairness, there aren't many other causes that one can be rightfully zealous about.
can pronounce all those fancy french words right but not appalachia smh
Proud of this part of my states history!
His soul's marching on!
Great video, at 14:52 I think you misspoke, the Democratic Party broke into factions not the newly formed Republicans.
I recently moved to western Mass and learned that John Brown spent time in Springfield getting to know and trying to recruit local abolitionists.
Which reminds me I need to visit the Armory museum.
You really should, it's a great museum. Also, if you're interested in aviation, the New England Air Museum at Bradley Field, just over the line in Connecticut, is well worth a day (or even two, it's expanded quite a lot over the last few years).
I have visited the battle site of Black Jack, a time or two, where some of John Brown's men did some preaching from those bibles. "He (Henry W. Beecher) believed that the Sharps Rifle was a truly moral agency, and that there was more moral power in one of those instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas were concerned, than in a hundred Bibles. You might just as well. . . read the Bible to Buffaloes as to those fellows who follow Atchison and Stringfellow; but they have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied in Sharp's rifle." - New York Tribune, February 8, 1856
Pretty good job with the history, but the Democratic Party split, not the Republicans
For anyone interested in John Brown, may I recommend the fantastic miniseries, The Good Lord Bird. Absolutely gripping and possibly Ethan Hawke's best performance.
wow thanks going to see it!
lol
Just so happened to be on a 19th century (western) kick. I'm definitely gonna give this a watch! Thank you!
🎶John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave
John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave
John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.🎵
GLORY, GLORY HALLELUJAH!!!
It is my understanding that the goal of the raid was not to have slaves escape and come to Harpers Ferry that morning in hopes of reinforcement and takeover of the town. But rather the raid was intended as more of a heist. There was a wagon train that was supposed to arrive once they had secured the Armory and then once loaded with weapons, escape into the Appalachians and start a insurrection from there. For unclear reasons the wagons did not show up, John Brown and his raiders were stuck waiting for them.
Many have thought that, but that was never the stated goal, and is confounded by the fact they already had plenty of weapons, and didn’t try to take more.
It seems more likely the armory was a political target that seemed a fitting tactical point to minimize armed response before their too delayed escape.
Well like I said they were waiting for a wagon train to arrive to take the weapons. Its not like they could carry off that many weapons with the few people they had. And the guns and pikes they had were not remotely enough to accomplish the goal of starting a guerilla war against the south.
It is the case that he was counseled against the raid by other abolitionists due to the high risk. And though he clearly was a zealot in his beliefs, he also seemed to be a very intelligent and goal driven person. He wanted a war against slavery, but I think he wanted to actually fight that war and win it. I don't think he intended to be a martyr with his raid. But in failing he decided that was the only option left to him after his capture.@@josiahsimeth3681
I can’t be the only one who’s ears pricked up when hearing “John Brown………” and then nothing.
If this channels taught be anything it’s that 99% of the time it’s gonna be “John Brown……..ing”
I’m totally aware of who John Brown was (and think that I view him as a sort of hero, a deeply complex and maybe psychopathic one, but overall probably a hero none the less) , but I’m amazed Ian could break 10+ years of conditioning and not add that “ing”to the name.
A fascinating tale! As an Australian, I was only aware of the Pete Seeger song, and it's interesting to hear the backstory behind it!
Jesus, I'm Polish, and we have some of this "cultural war" here (as everywhere in the world those days), but don't you think that you guys in USA are talking that a bit too far? Thought that slavery was an issue that almost all people can agree on. But looking at some comments here seems that I was wrong.
And apparently guy who died almost 200 years ago has something to do with Trump, Biden and Obama. And a top of that, Ian is the most professional and apolitical gun channel on youtube. I wonder where the debate would go on some other channels.
Even preference in coffee brands is seen as a statement of political affiliation here today; it’s crazy.
There is a lot of mythology that was taught to US school children about the civil war and US Slavery... Its utter nonsense, and the sort of nonsense youd expect to hear from a group that litterally called themselves the "daughters of the confederacy". They somehow managed to get in and actually write the history books on the US civil war between 1900 and 1990.
And did some darn fine trickery to still manage manipulating school books across the entire USA to this day. Thanks to thier ongoing presense more school children know the "history"(mythology) of McDonalds then the actual history of John Brown.
And that leaves a lot of folks thinking they "know" stuff they really do not.
I challenge you to find a single comment supporting slavery. People are debating the means that were used to fight slavery, not slavery itself. It is not clear cut at all and shouldn't be a surprise that it leads to debate.
@@3halfshadowsIf you are radically pro-freedom, any defense of the defense of slavery is a defense of slavery.
@@gnomatic Nice mental gymnastics. Does that logic apply to abortion, or any other subject for that matter? Most pro-life people oppose violent opposition to abortion. Does that mean they are defending abortion?
14:50 If I remember correctly, it was the Democrats who were broken into factions, which caused Lincoln (a Republican) to win. That would (methinks :) beg for a correction - another one!... Guess this was a very loaded episode :))
There wasn’t partisan unity quite to the level we expect it here in this day and age.
The issue of slavery was the big division on the face of the conflict, but there were deep cultural divisions below the surface as well. None of the four presidential candidates of 1860 were true abolitionists, but neither were they staunch expansionists either.
The issue wasn’t with the presidential candidates of 1860, the issue was the people and the evils they were willing to tolerate that led to war breaking out amongst them.
Breckinridge could have handily defeated Lincoln in an alternate timeline, but war would have still broken out. If you have an evil within your culture that you fail to address in unity as a people and do away with, conflict is the natural conclusion.
Brown was famously descibed as a lightning bolt for the war (i'm paraphrasing from memory).
For some reason I keep forgetting about the 1852 sharps rifle. I've always imagined John Brown and his sons with hunting rifles and shotguns.
A fabulous blend of rifle and a history lesson too! Great episode Ian.
Very cool.
Thank you for the history lesson.
More indepth than my history teachers ever did.
H I S T O R Y
History
My thinking on John Brown's embrace of violence is that his religious convictions led him to the deep belief that all humans are equal in God's sight. (Many abolitionists of the time were still quite racist; Brown by all contemporary accounts treated Black people as absolute equals.) Given that, he saw the violence *already happening every day* under slavery and determined that the only moral course was to stop those murders and rapes as quickly as possible.
Before you condemn him as a terrorist or a madman, ask yourself: if you knew, KNEW, that every day there were people being raped and murdered in that house right there, what would you do? Would you say "ah, well, but intervening to prevent murder is *violence* and that is always bad, so perhaps I shall write the rapists and killers in that house a letter asking them to negotiate a reduction in their crimes instead, and stick it in their mailbox? Or perhaps I shall vote in the next election for a city council candidate who proposes to buy the murderhouse from the murderers, so that the killing will end perhaps as soon as next year or the year after?"
As a non-American, just recently learned the story of John Brown. Good timing on that video for me
He's a cool guy
I'd not really known about him either (non-American as well) but I did know about Harpers Ferry during the civil war which was a continuous battle for about 4 years and not much was left of it by the end. Great see artifacts of the era had lasted, I was actually very curious about the pike head but oh well.
I think I only heard about him in a Oversimplified video two years ago and never looked into it. Very interesting story. I'm from Western Europe.
Noice
@@brandonsaquariumsandterrar8985 He was a loser that accomplished nothing but getting slaves killed and getting curb stomped by Robert E Lee himself.
Forgotten American history no more. Thank you Ian!
Now those are some amazing historical artifacts from our nations history! Thanks for sharing as always Ian!
Bring John Brown back, and give him power armor
Great video Ian, thanks for sharing this important piece of history with us. I would love to see that primer mechanism actually working! It's hard for me to imagine it being very reliable.
John Brown was a good man with a bad plan.
I personally doubt there would have EVER been a peaceful solution to american slavery. the south's entire economy was built on it and there's no way the plantation class would have given it up.
The whole nation’s economy benefited from slavery. Mechanization would have helped bring it down.
@@jasongcrow5313 He said "built on", not "benefitted". The South was woefully reliant on slavery economically. They chose to ignore the writing on the wall for over a half a century, when most of the Northern states banned slavery by 1804, and the govt banned the importation of new slaves in 1808. They refused to industrialize at any kind of scale, and thought slavery would just last forever. The South would not have given up slavery without some kind of external pressure. Because it wasn't just an economic issue for them, it was also an issue of social hierarchy.
And so they started a war, when the seeds they sowed were ripe for reaping. Military men of the South renounced their oaths to the Constitution, and attacked US soldiers. All with the aim to tear the country apart, and stand against everything this country was supposed to be about: Equality and Freedom.
@@Deadener I agree that we were terribly attached to the peculiar institution. I would go so far as to say the South was morally wrong for seceding, but they were legally within their rights (still are if you ask me). Secession had occurred within living memory at the Revolution. Thanks to Brown, the South believed that the North would violently take their means of livelihood and allow them to be murdered a la Haiti.
They secede to protect slavery. All of the federal army withdraws from every fort in the South, except for Sumpter. Lincoln leaves that bastion in the secessionist cradle to pick a fight. He got it. 1 million Americans died and Yankees today routinely insist on taking the moral high ground and call us Southerners traitors, nazis, whatever.
My question is if we are that horrible. Why didn’t you just let us go?
@@jasongcrow5313and yet it was the south that fought for slavery.
John Brown was interesting to me even as a little kid. Pretty amazing historical figure.
John Brown was a true patriot.
I was beginning to think, before you went in that direction, that John Brown is a real test case for the distinction between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. The cause was obviously just, and you'd have to be a full-on pacifist to believe it didn't justify some measure of violence to achieve it; but Brown's actions don't look all that rationally and proportionately directed towards the goal.
John Brown should be on your 100 dollar bills.
As a Kansas resident i want to thank you for covering one our only famous historical figures
Carry Nation, Clyde Cessna, Amelia Earhart, Eisenhower was raised in Kansas, Walter Allen White. There are a few. Not a heavily populated state, but there are historical figures from or tied to Kansas
George Washington Carver, James Naismith (Inventor of Basketball), Barry Sanders @@daviddavis1322
Elvira is from Kansas so take that up to 5
You have the fantastic Progrock band "Kansas" named for the state...
...and don't forget Dorothy and Toto!
Lincoln was the only Republican running in 1860 , the other leading candidates were both Democrats Steven Douglas and John Breckinridge (Southern) along with the Constitutional Union parties candidate John Bell.
We need some John Brown statues
If Christianity was more like him and less like the Falwell family, I might sign up.
Watching this with a Woody Guthrie album I got playing in the background seems almost too serendipitous.
If I could go back in time and stop Harper's Ferry, I would, only so that John Brown could have been around for the War and Reconstruction
DAMN, NEVER got in in 55 seconds before!!
Very worried that I’m going to see pro slavery interpretations of the confederacy
Sort by new.
Thanks for this. I find it fascinating when you spend a few moments putting a firearm in historical context.
Painting by John Steuart Curry, a great painter from Kansas.
“Grays” is most commonly used in military terms for cavalry units riding gray horses. There was also a black baseball team by that name. I don’t know why the team was called that.
Man, I swear they stole the head in that painting from a "Kansas" album cover.
(Edit: it IS a Kansas album cover).
Finally, I’ve been searching for a comment like this. Another man with good taste in music I presume?
(Also both the cover for the album and the thumbnail for this video are from a mural in Kansas state capitol building)
John Brown my beloved
Frickin early gang. Lets go boys
200 of the 1,000 pikes bought by Brown came from my hometown of Farmington, CT!
Absolutely fascinating historical coverage, with a nice dose of interesting philosophical/moral questions for good measure, thanks for this! :)
Oh shit. This is related to the American Civil War. Venture into the comments at your own risk.
Take a look around our country today. John Brown's raid is polarizing right now. Also, I think you misspoke regarding the election of 1860. It was the Democratic party that was split between slavers and non-slavers. The two parties largely reversed positions a century later, when the Dixiecrats switched to the Republican Party after the Democratic party embraced integration.
The GOP almost destroyed themselves internally after the Emancipation Proclamation.
"One day we're going to go back in time and give that crazy white boy armor and better guns"
I was unaware of that episode in American history. A pleasure for me to be able to go from weapons to historical events. P.S.: the tip of the spear seemed to me, at the beginning of the video, to be a smatchet knife and it seemed like a temporal contradiction hahaha. Greetings from Patagonia Argentina.
celebrated in the song, "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in his grave".
learn why Bleeding Kansas happened and the events to what led to the US Civil War
Will be a next topic to me. Thanks for the information@@recondo886
@@parrotraiser6541 I just looked it up online and saw that it uses the melody of "Glory Glory hallelujah" (or "Blood on the risers" if you're a Para). Is this correct? Greetings from Patagonia Argentina.
I thought the same, Welsh Fusillier's knife or Fairbairn Smatchet like.
Back when inserction wasn't accommodated by government paid tour guides...
Buried at North Elba, NY. He was also an authority on sheep. That funded his large family (18 children). If all Democratic party votes had been given to a single candidate, Lincoln still would have won.
Read "Patriotic Treason" by Evan Carton.
Harper's Ferry is a wonderful place to visit. So much history and so beautiful as well.
Regardless of Brown's methods, he was correct in that it would take violence to end slavery
Unless you were British. Then it's just money
@@daviddavis1322 i think, like with many political issues, it really comes down to what works for which situation, the political climate of america at the time was unlikely to reach a peaceful solution as many staked far too much on such issues
@@daviddavis1322slavery ended in the UK much later
@@37thgungrunts The British passed the Slavery Abolition Law in 1833...
@@daviddavis1322thing is southern slave owners didn’t want to give up their slaves.
John Brown was *based.*
Would JB be disqualified from gunning for President in the State of Colorado?
John brown was based as hell
Thank you for a engaging history lesson. If our teachers would have been half as interested in the subject when we were in school, a lot more of us would have stayed awake in class.
John brown’s body lies a mouldering in the grave…
Pretty awesome story and history. The rifle rocks too! Definitely a lot of "what if's" in the telling of Harpers Ferry Raid.
The 1852 Sharps seems like the world's first fifty calibre cap gun. 😁
Brown's last word's were "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do".
I can think of no other phrase that could give a bigger case of the willies to the assembled company.
For any unfortunate soul that happens across this comment, Brown's last words were actually:
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."
Once again, great video, Ian!
Tell me, have you ever come across a 1856 Springfield carbine with a detachable stock?
My family had one, handed down thru the generations which I played with as a child in the 1960s.
There was a brass turn screw which 'locked' two stock 'hooks' into the pistol grip.
"1856 Springfield" was clearly etched into the metal just above the trigger guard. I've tried to find a photo of the firearm but no luck. Thanks.
Glory glory hallelujah!
John Brown's body lies a moldering in his grave
Wow, less than an hour after upload! These Sharps are such a cool design, and John Brown is a hero.