Lincoln was to the nineteenth century what Pol Pot was to the twentieth century.
Except that Lincoln didn’t do what John Brown did. John Brown started insurrection in an attempt to end slavery. He failed because the US government put down the insurrection.
Jeff Davis tried to start an insurrection that would promote slavery. He failed because the US government put down the insurrection.
Lincoln tried to end and insurrection started to promote slavery, and the EP was a wartime measure to weaken the insurrection, so the US could put down the insurrection.
Mr. President.
John Brown had defended Lawrence, Kansas against slave power raiders, and had held his position despite being greatly outnumbered.
From that he developed an exaggerated sense of the power of the defense. His desire was to use the modern arms of the Harpers Ferry arsenal to arm slaves, and teach them defensive-offensive tactics. (like the Hussites used) to infiltrate a slave power plantation, and then defend against the expected slave power counterattack.
Didn’t work because his defensive tactics were used against him. Local militia took up defensive positions preventing him from brining in slaves for his insurrection. A small contingient of Marines, augmented with adult leadership (Lee and Stuart) assaulted the defended building.
His trial was, to my mind, a legal travesty. Treason? For actions committed against a state to which he had never expressed nor owed no loyalty?
Don’t the lost causers tell us that really only one’s loyalty to ones’ home state was important? At the same time they ignore Breckinridge (former VP and presidential candidate) and his turning his back on Kentucky to sign on as a General with the pretended confederacy.
Of course John Brown did try to foment a servile insurrection. He was responsible for the killing of a freedman. That wasn’t enough for the slave power, and so a brilliant agriculturalist, a naturally gifted tactician and a political crank was (to my mind) illegally condemned to death. The slave power was never interested in legal nicities. They were about power.
Reminds me of some people today.