John Brown was born today, 211 years ago. He is one of the great unsung heroes of the Civil war, but he was executed years before it started.

John Brown

John Brown's Body was a popular marching song for the Union soldiers. You will recognize the tune as it is now used for "the Battle Hymn of the Republic"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSSn3NddwFQ

I hope this is a reminder to many who believe in equality and civil rights that many white men and women had made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom and equality. Although a militant move the motivations were based on no movement away from slavery. The South refused to accept the basic principles that it is wrong to own people. Then they separated from the Union.

The Civil war itself was not fought on the ideal of freeing slaves. Emancipation was not a pursuit of Lincoln's entering the Civil War with the south. It was the South Breaking Away from the Union. It was the actions of a few that stirred Lincoln and others to accept the idea that the constitution extended to all who lived here.

What is sort of forgotten is that the war on the Native Americans was simmering at this time. Their rights were stomped on and were soon to be subject to a war of extermination. The fight for emancipation would have long slow ripples extending to those who were here before our fore fathers. it would be more than sixty years after the fact that the Native Americans would begin to see equality for themselves.

The thing is it took the passions of one man and the actions of a hand full to show that freedom is something we should protect dearly and be willing to fight for. I would not say he led the blacks in his raid more than they all fought together for a common goal, to end slavery in America.

These men fired the first shot in the war to free the slaves, not Lincoln's Union Army! They are proof of what Americans can be when our backs are to the wall...



We are dangerous when pissed on!