“You detract from your already flimsy case when you attempt to demagogue.”
What I posted is a statement of fact- George Washington was one of the largest slaveowners of his day. You can call it demagoguery if you want, most would regard it as simple historical fact.
“Well, there you go again. You overstate both Brown’s influence, his support, and his impact. If he was “widely praised as something akin to a Messiah” some of that praise should have survived to the present.”
It’s not hard to find:
“Just days after the raid, Brown’s trial began. It would take a week. On November 2, the jury deliberated for forty-five minutes and reached their verdict: guilty of murder, treason, and inciting slave insurrection. The South rejoiced in Brown’s execution. But hanging was not the end of John Brown; it was the beginning. Throughout the North, church bells tolled for him. In Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau proclaimed, “Some 1800 years ago, Christ was crucified. This morning, Captain Brown was hung. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.” “
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/filmmore/description.html
http://antislavery.eserver.org/poetry/john-brown-poetry
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/filmmore/transcript/transcript1.html
“some of that praise should have survived to the present.”
If by “the present” you mean 2015, it seems to me like very little of our history has survived to the present.
Why is Arlington a cemetery? Who was the Yellow Rose of Texas? How many people did German saboteurs kill within our borders? How many people did FDR clap in mental hospitals without due process? What did Kennedy give Khrushchev in return for publicly ceasing to install missile silos in Cuba?
If you like historical novels, there is a great one about John Brown. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flashman-Angel-Lord-Papers-Book/dp/000721720X?tag=duc08-21 (Caution: contains some indecency.)
Just as I thought - a few fringe characters attracted to a fringe loonie. Some of them referred to as a “Secret” group. There were never any throngs of admirers. There was never an official sanction by any government.
I will admit that there was an uptick in the curious who were attracted to all the fuss, but where were all of the “copy-cat” uprisings? The vast armies of grass-roots abolitionists sweeping over the southern countryside? It didn’t happen and those who squawked dire about it were looked upon as “chicken-little” characters.