His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid

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Paul Finkelman
University of Virginia Press, Nov 29, 2012 - History
An examination of responses to John Brown and the Harper's Ferry Raid by prominent scholars: what different segments of American society made of Brown's attempt to foment a slave rebellion and his subsequent trial and execution.

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Contents

PAUL FINKELMAN
3
BERTRAM WYATTBROWN
10
PAUL FINKELMAN
41
LITTLEFIELD
67
WENDY HAMAND VENET
98
PETER KNUPFER
119
Southern Politics and the Harpers Ferry Raid
149
JAMES O BREEDEN
174
ROBERT E MCGLONE
213
SEYMOUR DRESCHER
253
CHARLES JOYNER
296
Contributors
335
Copyright

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Page 43 - I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments — I submit : so let it be done.
Page 217 - ... to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved, that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.
Page 64 - I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.
Page 46 - John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave. John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave.
Page 58 - He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most part, see nothing at all, — the Puritans. It would be in vain to kill him. He died lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared here. Why should he not ? Some of the Puritan stock are said to have come over and settled in New England. They were a class that did something else than celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat parched corn in remembrance of that time.
Page 187 - This is my own, my native land"? Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand?
Page 135 - ... inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

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