Longtime readers of this Substack will be very aware of my opinion that anti-slavery terrorist John Brown was one of the greatest villains in American political history.
Brown was regarded by his contemporaries as a demented serial killer who reveled in terrorizing innocent people, a traitor whose political radicalism were a cloak for base resentments and mental illness, who met his very well-deserved end at the gallows (One interesting fact I recently learned: Brown was the first American ever to be executed for treason). He very nearly succeeded in destroying our country. Few people bear more direct responsibility for engineering America’s preventable and tragic Civil War, and the millions of deaths that accompanied it, than John Brown.
Brown’s current reputation as a crusading freedom fighter is a relatively recent invention (beyond the efforts of various abolitionists who used Brown as a troll to express their hatred of white Southerners) that flows almost solely from our intellectually bankrupt and hopelessly compromised education system, obviously designed to erect the mental scaffolding for similar revolutionary anti-white terror targeted at innocent civilians in the minds of countless generations of libtards.
I’ve recorded three podcast episodes related to Brown. The first is on the book “War to the Knife,” which covers the Bleeding Kansas Crisis (the bloodiest period of which was kicked off by Brown’s brutal execution of 5 unarmed civilians in a single night). The second covers the film Ride with the Devil (1999), which is probably the best movie on the American Civil War, covering the irregular conflict in the Kansas and Missouri territories. The third is on the book “A Disease in the Public Mind,” which presents a novel (and convincing) theory that it was actually Massachusetts that caused the Civil War. Tragically, all three of these podcast episodes are free.
Imagine my pleasant surprise when I learned that there was actually an anti-John Brown Western made during 1940s. The film is Santa Fe Trail (1940), which stars Errol Flynn as future Civil War hero J. E. B. Stuart, who encountered Brown first as a young cavalry officer assigned to patrol the Kansas-Nebraska territory during the Bleeding Kansas Crisis, and then, by sheer coincidence/fate, during Brown’s infamous Raid on Harper’s Ferry, when Stuart volunteered to serve as Robert E. Lee’s aide-de-camp as Lee led the U.S. Marines who responded to Brown’s raid and eventually captured him. It was Stuart who walked into the killzone to offer Brown surrender terms and Stuart who signaled the final assault with a wave of his hat after those terms were refused.
You can watch the complete movie for free below:
Santa Fe Trail is pretty good as far as Westerns from this period go. Standard action, romance, etc. Raymond Massey, the actor who plays John Brown is fantastic as the villain. It’s uncommon for Brown to be portrayed in this way at all, making it all the more impressive that Massey managed to convey the darker side of Brown’s personality without descending into parody.
The movie certainly plays it fast and loose with history in several major ways, such as introducing George Custer of Little Bighorn fame (played by future President Ronald Reagan) as Stuart’s sidekick, although the two men never encountered each other except when their respective units faced off on the battlefield at Gettysburg. The film’s depiction of the Harper’s Ferry Raid is nothing like the actual event.
One aspect of this film that I really liked was that it goes out of its way to show how prominent the major players of the Confederacy were in American society before the Civil War. There’s an extended cameo where future CSA President Jefferson Davis, at the time of the story the US Secretary of War, delivers a speech at Stuart’s graduation ceremony at West Point. The American Civil War really was a brother war. These guys all knew each other. There was no good reason that these all these great people, with roots together that went way back, had to end up killing each other in such large numbers. Malignant types like Brown and the film’s fictional abolitionist West Point cadet Carl Rader worked very hard to make the conflict inevitable.
If you’d like to read more on this period, I’d recommend “Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative” and Stephen E. E. Ambrose’s “Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point.” I’m planning on recording podcasts on both of these eventually, though I’m still figuring out what I’m going to say.
The next podcast episode, on a grab bag of Xbox 360 WW2 shooters and historical revisionism more generally, should hopefully be wrapped early next week. However, this upcoming episode will be reserved exclusively for paid subscribers. If you’re a free subscriber who’s read this far down: Unironically man, fuck you.
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In a lot of ways, John Brown was really the first free subscriber
I'm very much looking forward to your podcast on Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative."
One thing that might be worth bringing up is the "narrative" aspect of his 3 volume set. Foote was, first and foremost, a novelist. And, he brought a novelist's voice to telling the history of the conflict - very different from most historians who take a more analytical approach to writing history.
It might be worthwhile in thinking about your upcoming podcast to supplement Foote with James McPherson's 1988 book "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era." It's now 40 years old, and a synthesis of the previous generation's scholarship on the conflict, but McPherson's history has stood the test of time. Compare and contrast the two approaches to telling the history of the Civil War between Foote and McPherson.
I also am particularly fond of McPherson's "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" and his "Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief." The two pair well together, and given your interest in Jeff Davis, this would make for an excellent podcast as you continue down your Civil War era.
Back when I used to teach U.S. history at the undergraduate level, I assigned a paper asking students to address the central question: "Was the Civil War inevitable?"
Here's a copy/paste of the relevant part of the assignment:
"Among professional historians there is a consensus that the institution of slavery – whether directly or indirectly – was the root cause of the American Civil War (1861-1865). What is not as well understood are the problems of inevitability and contingency.
Many historians view the Civil War as a conflict between two competing socio-economic systems that was bound to happen, whereas others view the Civil War as a conflict that began when politicians refused to compromise. While both sides agree that slavery was the precipitating factor, they disagree as to whether or not the war between North and South was inevitable.
For historians the concept of inevitability is important because it makes clear the timing of certain events. In other words, when were certain events bound to happen? Was the war between North and South inevitable from the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution when some states abolished slavery and others continued its use? Or, was war inevitable at a much later date? If the war was inevitable, when was it inevitable?
Likewise, contingency is important because it allows historians to examine why certain events played out the ways in which they did. At the heart of contingency is the question: what if? Take a specific event and imagine an alternative. Would history have played out the same way? If so, why? If not, why not? What if Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans had been willing to compromise on the issue of the expansion of slavery into the western territories: would the war still have happened?
For this paper you will need to read the primary sources in Jonathan Earle’s John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry, James Henry Hammond’s “Cotton is King” speech, William Henry Seward’s “Irrepressible Conflict” speech, and the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession. After reading these primary sources write a 7-8 page paper that addresses the following question of historical inevitability and contingency:
“Did Americans in the years leading up to the Civil War believe that conflict between the Northern states and the Southern states was inevitable? If so, why did they believe this? If not, why did they not believe that war was in the near-future?”
Your paper must have a clearly defined thesis and use specific examples from all the primary sources to support its claims. See the syllabus for the grading rubric."
Hopefully this framing will be of use as you think about the podcast - particularly as it relates to the idea that "bad things happen when people believe that bad things will happen." We must put on our psychic armor to prevent this!
P.S. If you haven't yet gotten a copy of Earle's "John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry: A Brief History with Documents" it's available fairly cheap on Amazon. Worth picking up, especially for the documents.