A lecture titled “American Martyr: Why John Brown Is Thought Of As A Terrorist Instead Of A Hero” will be given by John Brown scholar Louis DeCaro Jr. on Saturday, October 17 from 3:30 until 5 pm at John Brown Farm in Lake Placid.
In December of 1859 John Brown was executed after leading an anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, part of the radical movement of tens of thousands of Americans struggling to undermine the institution of slavery in America before the Civil War. His body was returned to his farm in North Elba.
Louis A. DeCaro Jr. is Associate Professor of Church History at Alliance Theological Seminary in New York City. He has written ‘Fire from the Midst of You’: A Religious Life of John Brown; John Brown: The Cost of Freedom, and most recently Freedom’s Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia, with an accompanying collection, John Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from Charlestown. DeCaro is also the author of the blog John Brown the Abolitionist
This event is sponsored by John Brown Lives! Participants are invited to join the JBL! Board and friends at the Left Bank Cafe, 36 Broadway, Saranac Lake, for special prix fixe Thai dinner and cash bar.
For more information call (518) 744-7112 or e-mail info@johnbrownlives.org.
Photo: John Brown just three years before the Harpers Ferry raid (Southworth & Hawes, 1856).
Terrorist or hero? The reality is that he was a bit of both. Which he was more of depends on your sympathies. Like Snowden, he broke the law. In Snowden’s case espionage and in Brown’s case insurrection. Both did what they did because they believed in a cause and were impatient with the other options for bringing about change.
Snowden also didn’t hack people do death with broad swords like John and his sons did in Kansas.
The “other option” Brown was impatient with was the Civil War he predicted, which took the lives of more than a half million Americans.