His ambitions were commendable, while his actions were calamitous. He was a fanatic who had one thing on his mind, and no one could change it. He was John Brown, whose photo in the dictionary should be listed under “fanatic.” He was to die hanging from a rope (bought by the Federal Government) in Charles Town, VA (now, WV) on a cold December day in 1859.

John Brown was from a good family going back to the Pilgrims, proving once again that stupidity, fanaticism, and mental problems can afflict any strata of society. Brown’s father had as an apprentice Jesse R. Grant who was the father of Ulysses S. Grant.

In 1825, the John Brown family moved to Pennsylvania, where they purchased 200 acres and built a home, then started a tannery that soon employed 15 men. From 1825 to 1835, the Browns helped 2500 fugitive slaves find freedom since their home was a major stop on the Underground Railroad. He helped establish a school and became postmaster of Randolph, Pennsylvania.

Obviously, even fanatics can accomplish some good, but it never relieves them of their nefarious activities. After all, Mussolini made Italy’s trains run on time, and Hitler is responsible for the Volkswagen automobile. Oops, it is dangerous to say anything positive (even if truthful) about tyrants. It is acceptable to praise lefties such as Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Obama, Sanders, Biden, and what’s-her-name, etc., even when they lie.

In 1836, Brown moved his family to what is now Kent, Ohio, and in 1837, he made his famous and destructive vow mentioned earlier. The vow was in response to the murder of a famous Presbyterian preacher, newspaper editor, and abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy, who was shot and killed by a proslavery mob. His murder shocked the whole country.

In 1846, Brown moved his family to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he joined the Sanford Street Free Church. There he heard famous antislavery speakers such as black leaders Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, both former slaves. Brown greatly influenced Douglass toward more aggressively pursuing their cause. After spending a few hours with Brown, Douglass wrote in 1847, “My utterances became more and more tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.”

Douglass should have been more careful about his friends and associates.

Brown moved again in 1849 to North Elba, New York, a black community in the Adirondack Mountains, with plans to help blacks learn to farm. That was commendable, but fanatics take advantage of situations to further their good or bad causes.

All fanatics are dangerous, as seen recently in Washington, D.C. A half a million Trump supporters met in Washington on January 6 and resulted in an out of control mob invading the Capitol Building. Few in the media mention that only a few hundred were out of control, while hundreds of thousands made their opinions known by peaceful protests.

The mainstream media seem to think it is unthinkable that fanatics like BLM and Antifa would be involved in such a gathering as provocateurs. We know there were rabid fanatics (extremists) on both the left and right who broke laws, and all should go to the pokey for a year or so. Moreover, the violent ones who injured others should go to prison for a few years. That would cool some of their political enthusiasm.

Brown is usually called an intensely religious man, but he was a nut case, and his noble motives are no excuse for his excessive and violent behavior. He thought violence was the only way to stop slavery, and, incredibly, he was proclaimed a hero. He is considered one today by the non-thinkers. Neither Brown’s religious dedication nor his hatred of slavery justifies his zealotry. Neither do the political contradictions, confusion, and chaos give Brown any credibility.

Brown focused his concern on Kansas’s future statehood, then a territory, and made plans to move his family west. He took his fanaticism with him. Brown and the anti-slave settlers were hoping to bring Kansas into the Union as a slavery-free state.

U.S. President James Buchanan (a slave-leaning northern Democrat) determined to admit Kansas as a state as soon as possible, and he didn’t care whether it was a slave or free state. He wanted another state. Abolitionists had moved from New England to Kansas to help the cause of ending slavery. In contrast, proslavery citizens from Missouri and Georgia moved to Kansas to help make Kansas a slave state.

Proslavery people in neighboring Missouri continued to stir the pot in Kansas, helping keep alive the Free State and Slave State issue. Abolitionists in Kansas  were known as jayhawkers who took advantage of the chaos to bully the proslavers along the Kansas-Missouri border. Abolitionists were genuinely concerned with the possibility of another slave state.

A train wreck was in the making that Brown only caused to accelerate as he and his family moved to Lawrence, Kansas. Antislavery settlers from Massachusetts founded Lawrence to make Kansas (soon to be called Bleeding Kansas) a Free State, mitigating the influence of proslavery citizens. When Brown moved there, he made the political situation worse, much worse.

Lawrence was invaded by about 800 proslavery men led by the Douglas County Sheriff Samuel Jones on May 21, 1856. Jones had been shot in the back earlier and chased out of town, so he had the color of law on his side if not actual authority for the Lawrence raid. Two flags were flying at the head of the posse: an American flag and a flag with a crouching tiger. Other banners proclaimed “Southern rights” and “The Superiority of the White Race.”

The town leaders decided not to resist the posse but also refused to comply with their demands. Sheriff Jones told a town spokesman that all citizens had to surrender their weapons, but the spokesman replied that he could not command a town citizen to do anything. The town official did give him the town cannon, but the sheriff was not satisfied. Tyrants must always disarm free citizens.

After failing to destroy the Free State Hotel with cannon fire, the sheriff torched the building. He and his men then destroyed the Kansas Free State and the Herald of Freedom printing presses and threw the type and other equipment into the Kansas River. The sheriff’s posse then burned a large home, looted the town, and was dismissed by the sheriff, who went home for a cold refreshment.

The next morning, Brown and his sons, disappointed that Lawrence’s citizens had not resisted, went to the homes of proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas on May 24, 1856. The Brown family announced they were the “Northern Army” come to provide justice. They broke into proslaver James Doyle’s cabin and marched him and two of his sons down a road where Owen and Salmon Brown hacked their victims to death with broadswords. John shot Doyle in his forehead. Later that evening, the Browns visited two more cabins and brutally murdered two other proslavery settlers. None of those executed owned any slaves or had anything to do with the raid on Lawrence.

Brown lit the match that exploded the powder keg of three months of violence following the massacre, and 29 people died.

Shockingly, Brown is considered a hero, even a dedicated Christian, by many. No, not the kind revealed in the Bible where a Christian is one who has trusted Christ and experienced a changed life. Brown and his crowd did not act like Christians, and the Capitol mob did not act like Christians or Conservatives.

Of course, some of the riot leaders in Washington were far-left provocateurs.

The sacking of abolitionist Lawrence could not be justified. The fact that the proslavery county sheriff led the raid did not make it legal. The invasion of the town only antagonized the northern states and made the division more rigid. Pro Free State Republicans introduced a bill to bring Kansas into the Union as a free state while Democrats introduced a bill to bring in the new state as a proslavery state. The lines were drawn, and everyone chose sides, sometimes brother against brother.

Attempting to settle the issue, the territorial legislature (very proslavery) called for a Constitutional Convention in Lecompton in September of 1857. Free-state (antislavery) men were fearful that proslavery influencers would rig the election. They did. So, proslavery forces “won” that election as border ruffians poured over the Missouri border to stuff the ballot boxes.

When the Territory citizens voted on the issue, many fraudulent votes were cast from nonresidents from Missouri, resulting in massive violence that reinforced the area’s name of Bleeding Kansas. Some people estimated that up to 60 percent of the votes cast in Kansas were fraudulent.

With all the chaos, Kansas, as a free state, later became the 34th state to join the Union, not because of John Brown but despite him. Both sides committed atrocities, and this struggle between pro-and anti-slave forces in Kansas was a significant factor in the eruption of the Civil War.

Brown moved back east and met with two black leaders Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman, who greatly influenced him. With Tubman’s help, whom he called “General Tubman,” Brown led an attack on pro slavers, as well as a United States military armory, at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October of 1859.

(And now Biden wants to replace Jackson’s face on the twenty-dollar bill with Tubman’s.)

Brown’s motive for the raid was to get supplies, guns, and ammunition to arm slaves he expected to rebel and attract other slaves spreading rebellion throughout the South. Alas, the slaves did not rebel as expected. During the raid, a Baltimore and Ohio train left the station headed for Washington, where passengers reported the attack.

As the train pulled away from the station, a baggage handler was shot in the back and killed when he refused to obey Brown’s men. The victim was a free Black man!

Brown attacked the armory with 21 men, including his sons, but it was all over within two days. His men were killed or captured by the locals and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Brown was tried for the murder of five men, instigating a slave rebellion, and treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia and was found guilty on all counts.

On December 2, 1859, Brown was hanged in Charles Town and buried with the noose still around his neck. One of the witnesses to his hanging was an obscure actor named John Wilkes Booth, another fanatic.

Fanatics come from all groups of people and must not be excused, esteemed, or emulated by people of principle.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)

Only one in eleven Southerners owned slaves; however, a vast majority of the leaders did: politicians, educators, doctors, even preachers. In South Carolina 40% of Baptist preachers were slaveowners! That is a shame, a scar, and a scab upon that illustrious group.

There was no justification for Christian Americans and even pastors owning slaves and they did by the thousands. Churchill in his A History of the English Speaking Peoples revealed that 660,000 slaves were held in America by ministers and members of different Protestant Churches! Five thousand Methodist ministers owned 219,000 slaves while 1,400 Episcopalians held 88,000 blacks. Alas, 6,500 Baptists owned over 125,000 slaves. Furthermore, such slavery was defended in many pulpits Sunday after Sunday. Only the Quakers, as a movement, condemned slavery during the Colonial period. They were right on slavery while wrong on pacifism.

Some Liberals who are more interested in their agenda rather than the truth only present one side, the worst side, of the slavery issue. In many churches, especially Baptist churches, Blacks had active roles as leaders–even preachers–while the Anglican (Episcopal) Church refused them such positions. Some plantations even had churches or chapels build for the slaves.

After some slave revolts in the early 1800s, especially Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, Virginia law required black churches to have a white minister present for all services.

In the early days of the First Great Awakening that began in the 1730s, Baptist and Methodist preachers argued for the release of all slaves and an end to slavery but it was a losing battle and they eventually found ways to defend slavery! They used the Bible by twisting the passages and especially the “curse of Ham” to defend the indefensible.

Christian plantation owners were often leaders at the local Baptist and Methodist churches and were often overwhelmed with guilt. They knew the holding of humans was demeaning, disgraceful, and depraved but were stuck in the system. They had large plantations that required workers and slaves were the only answer. Many slave owners were aware of their greedy materialism and knew it was condemned by the Scriptures.

A wealthy Alabama slave holder warned his son: “Don’t let this world, or the honors of the world, yea I would add the Riches too, cheat you out of the love, and of course the favor of your blessed savior…I know it is not sinful to be rich, or honorable, but Mr. [John] Wesley says it is extremely dangerous, therefore we should watch and pray much in order to keep humble and devotional. . . .”

The Methodists tried to expel slave holding church members in 1784 but found it unenforceable and withdrew the demand. Baptists in Virginia denounced slavery in 1789 and the Kentucky Elkhorn Baptist Association presented a resolution against slavery in 1791 but it was so controversial it was dropped.

Presbyterian synods in New York City and Philadelphia in 1787 suggested that their members gradually end slavery and by 1792 most Presbyterians thought slavery should be ended. By 1815, Presbyterians decided that buying and selling of slaves was “inconsistent with the Gospel.”

Most Abolitionists who fought to free the slaves belonged to strong Methodist and Baptist churches; however, that does not ameliorate the fact that many ministers held slaves no matter how well they were treated.

In 1840, concerned Baptists formed the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Society and that decisive action forced the fence-straddlers to take a stand. In 1844, the Georgia Baptist Convention appointed a slave owner as missionary to the Cherokee Indians but when he came up for approval at to the General Convention he was rejected. The following year, southern Baptists withdrew to form the Southern Baptist Convention in Augusta, Georgia. The Methodists and Presbyterians also split over slavery. So there was no unanimity on the slavery issue.

In 1855, the soon-to-be famous Confederate General Stonewall Jackson broke the law every Sunday morning by teaching a Sunday school class of Blacks at the Lexington Presbyterian Church. That example of civil disobedience should have been emulated by every pastor and Christian worker. Alas, it was not.
The slavery scandal is a scab on society. Frankly, I think too many unprincipled people “use” the issue for their own selfish desires; however, it is time to admit the guilt of all participants and move on.

Nevertheless, there is a side of this issue that I have never heard discussed: the failure of local pastors to come down hard on their congregations filled with slave owners. It is one thing to discuss the evils of slavery in a denominational meeting with religious leaders and another thing to preach of its wickedness during a Sunday morning service. That was seldom done, much to the shame of Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian clergymen. Especially Baptists who have always made such a big issue out of standing for biblical truth. And still do.

Our theological ancestors faced influential plantation owners each Sunday morning and said nothing and many pastors today take a stand like a crippled chicken and keep silent lest they lose members, rock the boat, and maybe precipitate an IRS inspection of their church activities. Their local mayor may even demand a copy of recent sermons; and some pastors will probably turn in their sermons–like sheep, not shepherds.

While it is easy for me in the safe distance of the 21st century to criticize my fellow Baptist preachers of the past, it was still a major failure. Those of us today must learn from that failure. Preachers must major on biblical preaching; we must also give some direction to society. If anyone is against the killing of unborn babies, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against the perversion of marriage, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against porn, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against vile, venal, visual garbage on television it should be Baptist preachers.

While pastors in the past refused to take on the “colored” thing, most modern day pastors even refuse to take on the color television set that spews out visual garbage because they know it would split their church or put them in the unemployment line.

Baptist preachers preaching against vile television would be as explosive as a pastor preaching against slavery in the 1800s as leading plantation owners gasped and headed for their buggies. It didn’t happen then and it isn’t happening now.

Sometime, even preachers don’t walk their talk.

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