Radio War Nerd EP #446 — John Brown's Insurgency, feat. Jeff Stein

I visited the John Brown Museum in Osawatomie, Kansas on October 7th, 2023.

The top five most amazing Americans (from a RWN perspective) who ever lived would be an idea for a fun christmas episode. You could extend it to the world for new year.

I tend to think of Brown as the final evolution of a particular American type. A religious fanatic, strongly rooted in Calvinism / Puritanism -- a throwback to the 1600s. The difference between Brown and the early Puritans is that Brown seemed to have integrated a much more expansive view of the "elect" to that included Native Americans, people of other religious faiths, he had a very expansive view of who was part of the human family (and egalitarian attitudes regarding the role of men and women). Brown's egalitarian attitudes survived the Civil War, however, the influence of Calvinism and Puritanism I see as a casualty of the era that emerged out of the Civil War. e.g. thanks to waves of immigration, the development of the country into a more full-blown capitalist system, the experience of a major civil war, and the end of slavery. I'm sure the strains are still present in the American culture, but it is more of a minor note, rather than a dominant feature, the way that it was in the northeast into the early 1800s.

Great ep. Any suggested reading on John’s anecdote about Garibaldi’s plan? I’m familiar with that story generally but not that specific detail.

This ep makes me miss Matt Christman

I loved Midnight Rising, and have been a Brown buff for a long time.

I've been through Hannibal, Missouri on many many occasions, and I would believe that Twain story as pure fact

Everyone was talking about how the South had done all the first strikes and saying, "See? They're starting all the violence!" and then getting upset that Brown did his raid. Did these abolitionists really want to win, or did they just want to feel superior? Same thing with a lot of the tut-tutting of the 10/7 attacks—yeah, there were some really awful parts of these attacks like the kidnapping of civilians and the hitting of the rave (the latter of which was probably unplanned, as raves are ephemeral), but Hamas had every right to strike the Israeli military bases inside Israel and kill Israeli soldiers. Or, put it this way: Liberals want the liberation movements they support to affirm their goodness. I want mine to win.

To the point about John Brown's followers being a motley crew, that diversity in the Northern side really does seem to be something that people are starting to wake up to about the Civil War, and I hope it continues to work its way into the cultural understanding of the war. I really want to see a Civil War Kelley's Heroes where a Wide Awake, an escaped slave, a German 48er and Fenian team up to, like, steal a train load of Confederate gold or something

Clousplitter is worth reading.

Holy shit this is the guy that got bullied by adam friedland https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EomvgVA4oL4&pp=ygUSY3VtdG93biBqZWZmIHN0ZWlu

New Zealand has become a huge Downhill Mountain Bike off-season training location for a lot of the top riders. Coronet Peak in Queenstown is a big one.

August Bondi bio?

Any reading series suggested for this?

Sorry haven't found the mental clarity to listen to this episode because I was thinking about Larry...Summers. Being someone who doesn't like to be told where to piss and in which direction. It comes as a suprise. That I think we need more Larry..Summers.

Jeff is a good lad who has done consistently good work, so him having an appearance on here is very nice

Helllll yessss gimme some some civil war!

That range is The Remarkables — so awesome

Excellent episode thanks for the conversation

As a longtime rwn subscriber, I loved being on. Ty guys for listening! Jeff

An important point to bring up that supports the idea that Harper's Ferry was basically just a really big underground railroad raid is that Harriet Tubman was supposed to come but fell ill! And her whole deal was the super sneaky backwoods raids and moving people up to Canada. The fact she was planning on being there tells us they were not planning some sort of general uprising, but an inflitration

To John's point about a reverence for the ability to appropriately quote the Quran, there's a really beautiful example of a a terrifying exchange of verse of this ilk between a vizier and cleric in Meša Selimović's Death and the Dervish.

John Brown is character that much more closely parallels figures from anticolonial struggles than he does anyone else in US history. He is America's Miguel Hidalgo, Dedan Kimathi, James Connolly, or Henry John McCracken (ie a rebel leader who stood up for a brutally oppressed national underclass- one who fought and died against an overwhelmingly superior force.) None of these men were saints, but few can argue in retrospect against their respective causes (such men make for great mural art or noms de guerre, but are not cherished by anglophone historians.) I think this is why he is so ambivalently remembered by American Whigs. He flies in the face of two of their most cherished assumptions- that the "slope of history bends toward justice" and "social change can only come through peaceful political means." In this respect, Brown is a bad dream of American liberalism and a bogeyman of the conservative movement. He is the embodiment of being “right too early” or “right for the wrong reasons.”

hell yes John Brown the original crazy white boy

What a crossover!

Lol too many John browns - two of them are YouTube geartubers, one of whom I follow and makes Patreon videos about guitar amplifiers and speakers and provides Patreon subscribers with speaker sims.

John was one of the most effective and important abolitionist. His birthday was earlier month. Thank you guys for making this episode.

YES overdue for a dedicated john brown episode