[lentulusgracchus]

Surely, just how different individuals or groups or parts of the country reacted to John Brown is something that can be studied on its own, by evaluating arguments and assertions on their own merits, rather than by simply discounting whatever is said in a book by one author.

No, discounting is a necessary protection to the truth ... last year I read a new book about Alexander, in which the author spent a great deal of time doing just that, when confronting the disorderly state of ancient historiography about Alexander, from intimates who were constrained politically in their speech and recollections (one was murdered by Alexander for that reason) to those who were fabulists retailing tall tales to the public.

[x]

"Discount" may have been the wrong word because it's ambiguous. "Dismiss" is a better one in the context.

Being critical and simply dismissing arguments because of who makes them are different things.

Your sources and your own conclusions aren't always right. So I should just dismiss whatever you say?

Jefferson Davis, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, R.L. Dabney, the Kennedys, DiLorenzo? All of them pretty darned unreliable.

Gale Jarvis put together the theory you cite out of different incidents that others would interpret differently. I've caught Clyde Wilson saying things that didn't have any historical foundation.

Maybe these were honest mistakes -- I've made plenty of my own -- but if we start discounting or dismissing arguments or evidence of anybody we disagree with simply because we disagree with them, constructive argument becomes impossible.