Written in November 1861, Julia Ward Howe's lyrics for the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" identified the radical abolitionist John Brown as an Old Testament prophet, standing in judgment over America's wicked slaveholders by his acts of terrorism in Pottawatomie, Kansas and Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
This Fox News Channel program "John Brown: This Guilty Land" seeks to expose the myth of John Brown as prophet by examining his actions as part of the growing movement to end slavery at the close of the 1850s, which marked the end of two decades of Southern proslavery Presidents. Commentator Brian Kilmeade even seems to condone Brown's terrorist acts, as the program combines the violence at Harper's Ferry with more peaceful anti-slavery acts like Harriet Tubman's work in the Underground Railroad.
The program was successful in offering a survey of the main events that incited the Civil War: the emergence of Abraham Lincoln as the new Republican party's presidential nominee, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the question of whether to extend slavery to the new territories, "Bloody Kansas," the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks, Lincoln's Cooper Union address ("dare to do our duty!") on February 27, 1860, his improbable election as president, the secession of South Carolina, and the fateful firing on Fort Sumter in April, 1861.
The culmination of this concatenation of events resulted in the Civil War, or what is called in this program "the battle for the soul of America." From radical abolitionist and martyr, John Brown should be taken down a notch from the status of prophet to an all-too-human figure whose actions prefigured the grisly bloodshed in the American Civil War. After all, if John Brown had not acted the way he did, there would have been someone else just like him.
This Fox News Channel program "John Brown: This Guilty Land" seeks to expose the myth of John Brown as prophet by examining his actions as part of the growing movement to end slavery at the close of the 1850s, which marked the end of two decades of Southern proslavery Presidents. Commentator Brian Kilmeade even seems to condone Brown's terrorist acts, as the program combines the violence at Harper's Ferry with more peaceful anti-slavery acts like Harriet Tubman's work in the Underground Railroad.
The program was successful in offering a survey of the main events that incited the Civil War: the emergence of Abraham Lincoln as the new Republican party's presidential nominee, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the question of whether to extend slavery to the new territories, "Bloody Kansas," the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks, Lincoln's Cooper Union address ("dare to do our duty!") on February 27, 1860, his improbable election as president, the secession of South Carolina, and the fateful firing on Fort Sumter in April, 1861.
The culmination of this concatenation of events resulted in the Civil War, or what is called in this program "the battle for the soul of America." From radical abolitionist and martyr, John Brown should be taken down a notch from the status of prophet to an all-too-human figure whose actions prefigured the grisly bloodshed in the American Civil War. After all, if John Brown had not acted the way he did, there would have been someone else just like him.
