Questions About John Brown

[maharba]

Very interesting thoughts, Bill, Roger, and L.Verge. I'm not so sure of Lincoln's non-financial-involvement with John Brown. And Frederick Douglas was intimately involved with Brown, even supplying an escaped slave or two to take part in the raid. (Almost like "Lincoln's substitute" taking his official place in the Civil War later?). Lincoln always tried to keep up on affairs and gossip so as to position himself for best gains. His Coopers Union speech is striking in that portion where he taunts the South for disdaining "Black Republicans" and then ridiculing them for not (yet, then) being able to prove the involvement of Black Republicans with John Browns treasonous
raid to shatter the Union. In that speech, as I say, Lincoln was
tempting fate by going on to speculate an hypothetical

"assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods
over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven" --Coopers Union Speech

The Southerners who Lincoln was ridiculing and taunting in his speech, however, were those who yet supported the Union,
and did not want the insane, the 'Black Republicans', and Abolitionists to break it up as John Brown and his supporters.