Questions About John Brown

[Eva Elisabeth]

I don't see Abraham Lincoln "appears to tempt fate and in mocking Southerns who still were for the Union". To my understanding he didn't approve of John Brown's action and in his Copper Union speech decounces southern attempts to blame the black nor any Republicans for it.

"Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair; but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live...” declare our belief that slavery is wrong;

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As for Seward, his biographer Walter Stage writes: "Seward denounced Brown's invasion of Virginia as treason and pronounced his execution to be 'necessary and just'" (p.183). When he spoke to the Senate on January 12, 1861, he suggested that, after the war, "to deter those like John Brown, Congress should pass a stiff law to 'prevent mutual invasions of states by citizens of other states'" (p.224).