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"I...am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done."
- John Brown.
Yet our record bloodshed in the Civil War soon to come still wouldn't be enough to completely remove it all. Sure slavery was abolished, but things were still horrible for so many reasons for the following 100 years, and somewhat still are today.
I blame Reconstruction ending too soon, honestly.
That's what happens when you kill it's driving force and replace him with a sympathizer.
Let's not pretend that Lincoln being there would have magically resolved it all. Let's also not pretend he'd have cared to implement it to the level anyone might think.
We mythologize him, but he was ultimately a politician making calculated decisions for his career. That's why he wasted effort seeking more electoral votes by getting Nevada made into a state. That's why he chose Johnson to ensure he'd have some favorability with the south.
He did the right thing because it was politically convenient.
Lincoln wouldn't have magically resolved everything, as Lincoln was still from the moderate wing of the Republican Party (even if he became more radical as the war wore on), but it's hard to imagine a worse successor than Andrew Johnson, who wasn't even part of the big tent antislavery party. Traitorous fuck, no better than the copperheads.
It's pretty much a light switch though. Lincoln put this program in place and Johnson turned it off as soon as he could. Lincoln may not have won the peace but he would have at least tried.
i blame reconstruction in the first place, it was co-opted by the people who made this shit an issue in the first place
It was only abolished for the unincarcerated.
Even then, it was only legally abolished, some plantations never had any Union soldiers come, so they never freed their slaves, just kept them in "sharecropping" agreements but they weren't allowed to leave. Actual share cropping was also horrific and also sometimes had slavelike conditions.
Some of these fake "sharecropping" agreements stayed in place till the mid 1900s.
Here's a very excellent video by Knowing Better on Neoslavery.
He stood there frozen for a few minutes, that's how long the exposure time was before they discovered/invented materials that are more sensitive to light... and then of course, found ways to mass-produce them. Maybe he stood there five minutes?
Gotta wonder how his day was going before tidying up and being asked to stand there like a statue while staring straight at the box in front of him, and how it went after that. In that environment so familiar yet still utterly alien to our eyes. What did he have for dinner that evening. How were the restaurants and bars of the era?
It was a world of steam power but that predated electricity, except maybe for the telegraph, transmitting its' mysteriously instantaneous messages in Morse code wherever the country-spanning wires were laid out, and no further. A world where horses were as abundant as cars are today. A world whose nighttime was lit by candlelight and oil-lamp.
Yes and he chose a particularly challenging pose to hold for a Daguerreotype! Many subjects back then preferred to sit in a very relaxed pose and they even used a small stand to hold the subject’s head still!
I love daguerrotypes, they’re such a vivid look into the past. Exposures outdoors in bright sunlight only took a few seconds, but as this one appears to be taken indoors he would have indeed needed to stand there for quite a while. That’s probably why his left hand is blurry (he’s holding the flag in his right hand - daguerrotypes were laterally mirrored).
Also, see the faint parallel lines all over the picture? Those are faint marks made by the photographer as he was polishing the plate just prior to sensitizing it and loading it into the camera.
Damn he only lived 1 year. Must have had super Jack disease.
#JohnBrownDidNothingWrong
He does not look like he fucks around.
Based on what I've heard about the guy, he does not.
I have seen too much spirit photography and thought the flag was supposed to be a ghost at first lmao.
Looking like Abe Lincoln without the beard.
What flag is that?
The portrait, taken in Washington’s Hartford, Connecticut, studio in 1846 or 1847, exudes an intensity consistent with the subject’s fanaticism. He appears very much as one might expect—angry and determined. In the image, Brown raises his right hand, as if taking an oath; in the other hand, he holds a banner thought to be the flag of the Subterranean Pass-Way, his militant alternative to the Underground Railroad.
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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