Happy Birthday John Brown of Torrington Connecticut

John Brown was born in Torrington Connecticut on May 9, 1800. He died in 1859. Hanged, found guilty of treason for trying to ignite a slave revolt in West Virginia. He resorted to violence to fight a wrong (human slavery) that irked him so much that he risked his life ( actually lost his) and that of his sons to stop end it. Please watch the You Tube videos or do your own research to find out more about John Brown.

Looks like history judges him as a strong factor in the fate of slavery being decided through the bloody civil war to come. Even in America an evil could only be corrected with the blood of men that really did not have a personal stake in the fight. Lets hope we have grown smarter since that and will never again turn on one another. America is still young. But we do have some evil things going on. Below is something that I cut and pasted from the Torrington Connecticut Histrical Socity web site.

As always, peace and all good to you. Protect the innocent, old, andweak,. may Christ have Mercy on us.

John Brown

Of all the sons and daughters ever born on Connecticut soil, perhaps no one has exerted a more profound impact on the nation’s history than John Brown. Born high atop the scenic hills of Torrington on May 9, 1800, the future abolitionist spent the first years of his life imbibing the stern rigors of his father’s old-line Calvinism. Though he soon moved west and for years was plagued by a series of disastrous business ventures, he never abandoned his faith. Indeed, emerging from the 2nd Great Awakening of the early decades of the 19th century as an evangelical Protestant, he eventually dedicated his life to eradicating what he deemed to be American’s greatest sin – the enslavement of human beings. Enlisting in the burgeoning abolitionist crusade of the 1830s, Brown initially hoped that slave owners might see the error of their ways through “moral suasion.” Still, like many other abolitionists, he warned that if southerners failed to emancipate their slaves voluntarily, an angry God would reap His revenge against the nation via a bloody civil war. When his plans to distribute guns to slaves to launch a guerrilla war failed, he was captured, tried, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death. Interestingly, Brown seemed to relish his notoriety and perhaps understood that his martyrdom might well bring the nation closer to a civil war that could end in the demise of slavery. At any rate, what is certain is that Brown’s daring actions sent shock waves throughout the country. In the North, he was hailed by many as a hero and Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that Brown “would make the gallows as glorious as the cross.” In the South, however, he was viewed by most as a typical abolitionist who wanted nothing less than a major slave insurrection. In all, John Brown was indeed “the meteor” who succeeded in polarizing emotions and elevating southern anxieties into a “crisis of fear” that set the stage for the impending Civil War.