Again, the ghost of john brown

“Shall a whole people be fed, for near half a century upon tiger’s meat, seasoned with viper’s venom, nor raven like the one, nor sting fatally like the other!” -William Gilmore Simms

Ever since the fateful events of September 10, 2025, the political right has been searching for the answer to the questions: “where do we go from here”, and a few more far-sighted asking “is there anywhere to go from here?”

The heart-rending assassination of the popular conservative speaker Charlie Kirk, in the presence of his wife and children no less, has provoked righteous outrage even among those who were less than cheerleaders for Kirk and Turning Point, U.S.A.

As heartbreaking as the whole event was, none of us should have been surprised by the Kirk assassination. In a world where the assassination attempts on Steve Scalise and Donald Trump, the George Floyd riots and numerous transgender Christian school shootings were quickly memory-holed by the mainstream media who deems the victims of these tragedies “deplorables”, it was sadly predictable that a prominent figure on the right would eventually die as a victim of left-wing violence.
In fact, Charlie Kirk himself saw it coming a year ago, posting on his X account:
 
“Assassination culture is spreading on the left…this is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb”.

But had the Kirk shooting occurred by itself, it would not have shaken the foundations of American politics the way it has. It was not just the act; it was the REACTION by our “fellow Americans” to the cruel taking of a man’s life in the presence of his family. Conservatives who consistently want to “reach across the aisle” and just get along awoke on September 11th to a social media celebration of political violence against the right. Not just from the AOCs and Matthew Dowds, the political nerds; but from the teachers who teach their children, the nurses who care for their elderly parents, the parishioners who pray next to them in Church.

​And herein lies the issue: Charlie Kirk, whether one loved him or not, was one of the last prominent voices in the country for open, civil debate. His assassination is a stark symptom of a deep disease within the American Union-civil debate is not only no longer possible, it’s not even a concept. The modern-day left has declared that the modern-day right are vicious, subhuman animals worthy of death. You don’t debate a vicious animal; you don’t reason with it. There’s only one thing left to do.
 
Americans have been down this road before, but it’s been a while; and the results still haunt the “glorious Union” today.
 

​On October 16th, 1859, John Brown and his band of proto-antifa held their final planning meeting at the Kennedy Farmhouse near Samples Manor, Maryland. At 8:00p.m. the “soldiers” broke from the Farmhouse down Chestnut Grove Road and began moving “down the still road, dim white in the moonlight, amid the chill October night.” Their destination: the United States Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), some 7 miles south of the Kennedy Farm. It was here that Brown hoped to acquire over 200,000 Army Rifles with which to carry out the Southern genocide he had dreamed of.

The names of his marauders were familiar to Brown. John Kagi, John Edwin Cooke and Aaron Stevens had been part of Brown’s company that had butchered innocent men and children on the Kansas-Missouri frontier years before. Albert Hazlet and Charles Tidd had been with the Abolitionist party that had fired on Federal troops at Fort Scott, Kansas.
Finding only a lone night watchman at the Arsenal, Brown, his sons and Kagi easily overran the Arsenal. Hazlett and Edwin Coppoc quickly secured the Armory. Cooke and Tidd had been sent ahead by Brown to cut the telegraph wires along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to prevent the peaceful town from alerting Baltimore and Washington, D.C. of their dreadful fate.

Brown’s men quickly took hostage one of Harper’s Ferry’s most prominent citizens-Lewis W. Washington, the great grand-nephew of George Washington. They demanded and received General Washington’s sword, so that Brown might use it to lead the genocide of Washington’s Virginia.
 
Up to this point, Brown’s raid had worked as planned-but fate was about to intervene. At about 1:00a.m. on October 17th, a passenger train on the Baltimore & Ohio pulled into the Wager House Station at Harper’s Ferry to exchange passengers. Learning the road ahead was blocked, the train’s Conductor and Engineer went ahead to investigate, and were shot at by Brown’s men. Station baggage master Hayward Shepherd, a free black man, was not so lucky. Going out to investigate, Shepherd was hit by a fatal shot from Brown’s “army”.

​The people of Harper’s Ferry, having heard the gunfire pouring over the valley, had been awakened from their slumber and began surrounding Arsenal. At about dawn on the morning of October 17th, a stray shot from Brown’s men killed Harper’s Ferry resident Thomas Boerly.
By now Dr. John Starry, who had treated the dying Heyward Shephard, had mounted his horse and in Paul Revere fashion, warned neighboring communities of the raid. In nearby Charleston, Virginia, the Jefferson Guard militia had been activated and was enroute.  Regular militia and volunteers were forming in nearby Frederick, Maryland.

With the situation quickly spiraling out of John Brown’s control, he had little choice but to let the passenger train proceed on the B&O Railroad. At Monocacy, Virginia the Conductor found working telegraph wires and sent urgent message to Baltimore. B&O President John W. Garret quickly wired President Buchanan, Virginia Governor John Letcher and the commander of the Maryland militia.
The rest of the story is well-known. President Buchanan and Secretary of War John Floyd dispatched Col. Robert E. Lee and Lt. J.E.B. Stuart to the arsenal, and by dawn the next day they had overtaken Brown’s men holed up in the Arsenal’s Engine House (though sadly resulting in the death of Marine Pvt. Israel Green.)
 
John Brown was hanged for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia on December 2, 1859. Leaving with one cryptic statement, Brown stated before his execution:
“I, John Brown am now convinced that the crimes of this guilty land will never purged away but with blood.”

Nobody should have been surprised by Brown’s Harper’s Ferry revolt. For years “fire-eating” secessionists like Rhett, Ruffin, Yancey and Benning had warned that such insurrections were the logical consequence of Republican/Abolitionist doctrines. But they were often dismissed by “normie” Southern whites as demagogues who made mountains out of molehills, malcontents who threatened revolution and change in a time of prosperity for Dixie. The cotton crop was one of the best on record, the tariff was low and there were still a handful of Northern conservatives.
True, there had been trouble on the faraway Kansas frontier, but with the South-friendly Pierce and Buchanan administrations holding court in Washington, D.C. what was there to fear?

But like the Kirk shooting, the Brown raid did something valuable: it shocked the opposition into reality.

Not at first. Initially, a general sense of relief washed over Dixie. Yes, Yankees had finally made their genocidal move toward Southern whites, but it had been a spectacular failure. Not a single Virginia slave had joined Brown’s revolt. Indeed, Brown’s first murder at Harper’s Ferry was of a free black man.  While Governor Letcher was less than pleased with the performance of the Virginia militia, the U.S. Marines had made quick work of Brown’s would-be army, and the few of Brown’s henchmen not killed were in flight as fugitives.

But in 1859-1860, as it is now, it was not just the horrendous act that got the attention of Southrons-it was the reaction of their “fellow Americans” to Brown’s failed attempt at Southern genocide that caught the attention of his intended victims.
 
Shortly after the failed raid, Alabama Fire-eater William Lowndes Yancey began asking his fellow Southerners how things would play out the next time especially if a Yankee Republican should win the White House next year:

Suppose… that the frontiers of this country will be lighted up with the flames of midnight arson….that towns are burned; that the peace of our families is disturbed; that poison is found secreted throughout the whole country in immense quantities; that men are found prowling about our land in order that it may be placed in our springs and wells; with arms and ammunition placed in the hands of a semi-barbarous people, what will be our fate?
Where will be the United States marshals to interfere? Where will be the dread of this General Government that exists under the present administration? Where will be the fear of the United States army to intimidate or prevent such movements?

As the months rolled by, the sage of Wetumpka and his fellow Southrons got their answer. The November 1859 elections in the North saw “Black Republicans” win more governorships, more legislatures, and more seats in Congress. In a startingly tone-deaf move, the new Republicans in Congress almost immediately moved to elect as the new Speaker of the House Congressman John Sherman-one of 68 Republican Congressmen who had endorsed Hinton R. Helper’s book “The Impending Crisis”-which had suggested just the solution to the problem of Southern whites that Brown had tried to carry out. Republican Governors Kirkwood in Iowa and Dennison in Ohio resisted Virginia’s extradition requests for Brown’s co-conspirators, allowing three of them to escape to Canada to avoid prosecution. A Senate Committee investigating the raid found evidence suggesting that Republican U.S. Senators William H. Seward of New York and Henry Wilson of Massachusetts had advanced knowledge of the attack on the Federal arsenal yet remained silent. Moreover, the financiers of Brown’s failed genocide is to call a list of Northern elites-Stearns, Forbes, Sanborn, Howard and Parker.

The reactions of the Republican/Abolitionist movement to Brown’s raid were largely covered in a previous entry of the Watchman (those-lovable-abolitionists-onpart-1.html) and as such, won’t be recounted here. But even among the so-called “moderates” of the new sectional party, the reactions were hardly reassuring. While stating that Brown must be dealt with accordingly for his crimes, Abraham Lincoln, of recent Lincoln-Douglas debate fame, stated that if Southerners attempted secession to escape the fate assigned to them, then “it will be our duty to deal with you as Old John Brown has been dealt with.”

Presumptive Republican front-runner William H. Seward publicly denounced Brown’s crime while privately praising his courage and morality “rising above that of his captors.”
 
Picking up on Yancey’s theme, Congressman Roger Pryor of Virginia declared that even if a Republican administration desired to enforce the laws for the safety of Southerners, they would be beholden to the fanatics in the party.

  “If William H. Seward should be elected to the Presidency…. he will discover that he has evoked a spirit which he cannot allay; that he has roused a storm which he cannot control.”

While noting that Republican Federal Officials might not directly engage in crimes, the Virginia Enquirer speculated that “the coming John Browns will pursue their iniquitous labors in full confidence that, if brought to trial, it will be by marshals, prosecuting attorneys, juries and judges that sympathize with them”.

The summer of 1860 did nothing to silence the Fire-eaters or reassure their opponents. The 1860 Republican Convention threw Seward overboard and nominated Abraham Lincoln for President. Following the banishment of an Abolitionist preacher from the State, a series of wildfires racked Texas from Dallas to Austin, followed by the discovery of strychnine in the possession of several slaves.
As the shadow of Lincoln’s election loomed larger over Dixie in the Fall of 1860, Southerners began hearing reports of military organizations called “Wide-Awakes”-named for John Brown’s murderous company in Kansas- drilling in Northern cities and determined to install Lincoln as President.
With the election of Abraham Lincoln in November, the conservative anti-secessionists were left scrambling. The so-called “overt act men”- cooperationists who wanted to wait for an overt act of Northern aggression before seceding- were disappearing throughout the South.
 
Chiding such men as “submissionists”, the Charleston Mercury declared:

​Although you see your enemy load his rifle with the declared purpose of taking your life, you are to wait…until he commits an “overt act”-shoots you..... Must the rattlesnake ACTUALLY strike us before we raise a hand against it?


The rest of the story is well-known. While Brown's raid did not immediately provoke secession, it snapped peaceful men into violent reality. The militia in most Southern States were reorganized and strengthened, providing a would-be army for a potential Confederacy. When Southern legislatures came into session the following year, all eyes were on how to proceed in the event a Republican won the White House in 1860. Laws ranging from expelling outside salesmen to expelling free blacks from the State were discussed. No longer deaf and dumb to the crisis, Dixie stood ready to meet it.

It remains to be see whether the Kirk assassination will haunt the mind of establishment  conservatives the way the Brown raid did 166 years ago.  But to the "deplorables" of 2025  the ghosts of 1859 are just as clear to today's as they were to Southrons on that chill October night all those years ago-if the left believes they "rise morally above you", your life is theirs for the taking. 

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