Questions About John Brown

[L Verge]

I believe that I have read that Edwin Booth supported the abolitionist views of Dr. and Mrs. Howe in the period right before Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. They were also using their influence to support his acting career in the North.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know if Edwin or the Howes knew the true intent of John Brown. By the way, I'm not sure that Brown's intent was to rip the Union apart. He was more intent on slaughtering slaveholders. Would that be called genocide today?

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(12-30-2015 08:51 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  Abraham, the answers to your query to the secret six is in wikipedia:
The Secret Six were Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns. All six had been involved in the abolitionist cause prior to their meeting John Brown, and had gradually become convinced that slavery would not die a peaceful death.

Of these six men, only Smith and Sterns were truly "wealthy"; the others consisted of two Unitarian ministers (Parker and Higginson) a doctor (Howe), at a time when men of medicine were "middle class", and a teacher (Sanborn). Gerrit Smith later bailed Jefferson Davis after the Civil War.

As to Lincoln and Seward, "NO." I believe that Douglass backed out after Brown approached himpersonally and made clear what he wanted to do.

A footnote on Julia's husband, Samuel G. Howe: He could have been wealthier if he had not been such a philanthropist to causes that included abolition. In his favor, he married into money, however. Julia Ward's father was a Wall Street broker and well-to-do banker, and one of her brothers married the granddaughter of John Jacob Astor.

Unfortunately for Julia, her husband took control of her finances upon their marriage (and he was nearly twenty years older than she). This allowed him to be even more philanthropic, and when he died, Julia found that she had virtually no money left.

As soon as John Brown was arrested, Samuel Howe fled to Canada to escape prosecution as a collaborator. By 1863, however, our Secretary of War commissioned him to a panel to investigate the freedmen's conditions in the South as well as in Canada (where many had fled via the Underground Railroad). This investigation was related to the January 1863 issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Interesting that this panel was investigating in territories that did not consider themselves part of the U.S. -- and Canada was definitely outside of their limits...