SPEAKER 1: It was a necessary (0:00) and it was the case that was working its
way to the courts to this court. So, it was in this context that various people
began, over a period of time began to sort of; well there was one other factor
which is since that pro slavery side was turning increasingly to violence to accomplish
its ends. As resistance to these anti, to this sort of, this resistance to the
measures that I was describing for this expansion is like power grows, there is
a sense that the pro slavery side is using violence to suppress it or to expand
slavery and now I noticed in your packet you had Furrows, ***** pronounce it Parrow
but the scholars say that he pronounced it Farrow they insist on the For in his
name. That’s another story. Farrow’s plea on behalf of John Brown
and in that he compares John Brown with two Virginians to start a slave revolt.
He compared John Brown to a guy named Walker, if you look at any of the, if you
look at any of the standard Furrow text, they’ll identify the Long Walker;
they will identify some obscure politician who is the Governor of Kansas. It was
in fact, William Walker who was thehe was the guy who launched these extra legal
expeditions to Central America and Mexico to try to annex some of the United States
as slave territory. He most famously took over Nicaragua for five years. Declared
it, heck, got the legislature of Nicaragua to declare it a state of the United
States that legalized slavery there. He never recognized, he never, he had the
backing of Cornelius (2:07) and a lot of nudge-nudge, wink-wink support from the
government, until finally he got into trouble with Vanderbilt and got assassinated.
But the thing is, Walker was doing these sort of extra legal military expeditions
to try to expand slavery and so some people began, and this was widely reported
in the press and so then, the question would be would somebody like John Brown,
doing an extra legal expedition to expand freedom instead of using violence? another
famous episode had to do with the two other famous episodes were once the Kansas
(2:49) Act passed, you had pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers moving into Kansas
and a war basically breaks out there between pro-slavery and anti-slavery as to
who is going to control the state and there were deathly atrocities on, um, mostly
on the pro-slavery side because they were, they actually were in the numerical
minorities. They were trying to assert their power through violence and John Brown,
who is a, a very strong abolitionist at that time in his mid fifties not in return
at all (3:34). But John Brown who was a strong abolitionist at that time in his
mid fifties not**** at all, but John Brown first rose to prominence in that war
in response to some of pro-slavery atrocities he decides to commit a retaliatory
execution and he picks up five pro-slavery settlers and kills them, it is basically
a lynching and has then come out with bronze swords and they hack them and you
know, it makes a sensation in Kansas needless to say. And it is a running debate
until today whether what were the political effects of that. What was called the
**** massacre, did it stop pro-slavery massacres? Where did it sort of put fear
into the pro-slavery side, you know. And there is a running debate, I mean some
scholars call them retaliatory executions. Some of them call it massacre. It really
depends on your point of view. Brown had very, what we had seen at that time was
very radical (4:49) ideas about black-white equality and both on the personal
level and on a political level and then he develops his idea that who is going
to start a slave revolt in the South. So that is what makes of the Parker’s
Ferry incident of 1859 when he and a small group of people, black and white attacked
that arsenal at Harpersbury Virginia with the idea that they are going to take
weapons from the arsenal and then using the armed slaves. So he had spent fair
amount of time contacting slaves in the area and their idea was that they were
going to go out of the hills of West Virginia and sort of start a guerilla war
there, where they come down and do raids on the plantations. It fails, he gets
captured by a group of marines, most of the Indian killed including (5:55) sons.
The marines led by Robert D. Lee and James Stewart actually led the marines, captures
him, by luck he is not killed and he winds up in his trial and execution which,
he is executed for treason in the State of Virginia though (6:14) was not a citizen
there. The case played very rapidly. He is captured in October and he was executed
in Virginia in December, but his conduct during that trial where he is imprisoned,
impressed a lot of people and he winds up being hailed by many people including
Farrow as a martyr. Now, one of the stories that I am telling is the story of
Theodore Parker and how he moves from being never a (6:51) but being opposed to
violent violence in various ways and how he comes to be one of the people who
gives John Brown money and guns and so forth Parker’s Ferry which he does
and there is a group of people who get together this a little, they will call
later in secret committee of six who get together to finally round and secretly
give him weapons and money and all those two military ministers and warrior were
acting military and lay people and one other sometimes at the military churches.
So, I mean it is a very interesting group of people and they all reach that conclusion
that violence was needed at this point. Now in outlining, you should come out
of this quickly, give a sort of progress in this but, before I just want to sort
of outline the options that were available at that time.
SPEAKER 2: Do you have, I mean like (7:48)?
SPEAKER 1: Oh sure, sure, sure. Well, I just wanted to say quickly. One, there
was a non-resistance, was widely interpreted as sort of Christ-like non-resistance.
That is, that you did not resist evil with evil and the idea how far you can
do to pushback. What that meant? Was it an open question? Whether that meant
for example (8:28) garrison being mobbed, as was in many events earlier where
abolitionist being being attacked by mob but just not fighting back. And then
by their Christ like behavior they would win converts, that was one part of
it. It was less, only a few people like Ballou were beginning to start to think
about it as kind of non-violent resistance. That idea had not quite been articulated.
The idea of violent resistance had a long pedigree and there were a lot of people,
who said here is the American Revolution, we are going to follow that example
of resistance (9:11). So that was the great positive example of American Revolution
you really want to hear right now. There was also these disobedience which begins
to sort out flow of revolution’s money explicated associated with non-violence,
because neither Farrow nor Peter Parker, who are the guy that were non-violent.
But the idea there was not followed and ahd a vision of it where it is non-participation
of evil and so it possesses and he says he is not going to pay taxes to support
the Mexican war. He goes to jail for a night till someone else comes and pays
the taxes for him but he did not want that to happen but that is what happens
when he gets out. And his point there in, is that he is trying to, how, how
can he live a life that is not, that is not participating in this school. Parker
becomes the leader of the resistance in the future of slave law in Boston after
it is passed and his version of civil disobedience is how do you change a law.
So he is much more interested in Institutions in creating a vigilance committee
who is going to organize people. He is telling jurors that if, if they have,
if somebody comes before them to convict a few who is guilty of resisting this
law it is their moral obligation to vote not to convict whatever the law is.
So he is essentially urging jury nullification. You can call it that. This is
not something a juror talks about it. It is Parker talks about and there are
various other things like that, I mean it is much more to talk about but they,
the options, the, some of the options of what we call non-violent resistances
came to be articulated especially by Gandhi, ah was not, had not really been
put forward as a coherent program.