I'll go first:
"something negative about John Brown"
The joke doesn't play in text.
Was anybody listening to NPR just now about John Brown compared to Abe Lincoln? Because I'm kind of glad our little group idolizes the man because he's as right as any white man has been possibly ever.
I know the meme where the only thing John Brown ever did wrong was die but as far as I can see, that's almost exactly true. He went on the bad kind of suicide mission. If he knew god wasn't real, he wouldn't martyr himself that way.
John kidnapped like 5 slaver-settlers in Kansas and BRUTALLY hacked them to pieces with an ax
lol this fucking guy 😂
He wasn't a good parent. Very very strict bible thumper. Although he did do this so they turned out okay:
Father, mother, Jason, Owen and I were, late in the evening, seated around the fire in the open fire-place of the kitchen, in the old Haymaker house where we then lived [Franklin, Ohio]; and there he first informed us of his determination to make war on slavery . . . by force and arms. He said that he had long entertained such a purpose:that he believed it his duty to devote his life, if need be, to this object, which he made us fully to understand. After spending considerable time in setting forth in most impressive language the hopeless condition of the slave, he asked who of us were willing to make common cause with him in doing all in our power to "break the jaws of the wicked and pluck the spoil out of his teeth," naming each of us in succession. Are you, Mary, John, Jason, and Owen? Receiving an affirmative answer from each, he kneeled in prayer, and all did the same. . . . After prayer he asked us to raise our right hands, and he then administered to us an oath, . . . [that] bound us to secrecy and devotion to the purpose of fighting slavery by force and arms to the extent of our ability. - John Brown Jr
I've been to his farmstead and the tour guide said she thought he was too radical :curious-marx:
He failed to enshrine the Bowie knife halberd in the imagination of armed resistance culture. (Dude had a bunch of custom Bowie knife pole arms fabricated for the Harpers Ferry raid from my understanding)
Bowie knife pole arms
https://amhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/collection/object.asp?ID=508
He agreed to make 1000 pikes for Brown at $1 a piece, payable in installments. After making 500 weapons, Blair halted production because Brown failed to pay him. Blair held the pikes for two years. In 1859, Brown reappeared at Blair's door with the needed funds to purchase 954 pikes and requested that they be forwarded to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Brown intended to issue these inexpensive weapons to an army of slave insurgents.
In my head I pictured these things being a lot more grandiose, but they're still cool.
I appreciate the raw efficiency of them. An army of a thousand slaves just jokin' and pokin' across the countryside. Beautiful image.
I wonder if there's a Total War mod that lets you field a regiment of freed slaves with pikes.
That might be the tipping point that gets me into rts games instead of just remaining a tabletop nerd
