Questions About John Brown

[KLarson]

So, the 13th Amendment was not and is not "unconstitutional" because that is what Amendments do - they amend the constitution to improve it and make it better. The Bill of Rights is actually the combination of the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution, for instance. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery; the 14th and 15th gave the right to vote to black men and guaranteed civil rights to African Americans; the 19th gave women the right to vote, etc. As for your persistent view of Brown as a murderer who encouraged slaves to murder slaveholders, I think you are still missing some important historical facts. Brown's zeal was not in killing people, but rather his zeal lay in his passion for freedom for all people. It is necessary to reiterate that slaveholders and their supporters had long waged a murderous war on black people through the institution of slavery. What other motive did Brown need to defend black people's right to freedom than a war on slavery? Lincoln's goal was to keep the Union together. He did not order the first shots fired. He did not advocate secession. Those southerners who seceded and who took up arms against the United States violated the Constitution.
I found your comment that it was up to the slaves themselves to end slavery without a civil war to be strange and terribly uninformed in the extreme. How would that have been possible? Anti-slavery agitation sparked a movement of peoples all over the country who became determined to fulfill the demands of the Declaration of Independence, that all people are created equal. Slave had no power - none, zero. Slaveholders and their supporters had made it very clear they were not about to give up their human property, and the way of life that slavery secured for them, without fighting to the death. The fact that Lincoln knew that slaveholders would not be happy with his stance against expansion shows that Lincoln was on the side of right, but not that he was responsible for Civil War. The efforts on the part of slaveholders to expand slavery into the territories was reprehensible. They chose secession when resistance to their plans was formidable. They chose to fire the first shots. It was time for that heinous institution to end, and the Civil War and millions of pro-freedom people made it possible. Four million enslaved people and millions of anti-slavery supporters were terribly happy that it did.