John Brown's Pike (1:18 scale) by zanzastoys

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Happy 4th of July from Zanzas Toys!
This year, we're commemorating the heroic abolitionist John Brown by re-creating the pikes he had made for his raid on Harper's Ferry.
What John Brown said of himself:
"I have only a short time to live, only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no peace in this land until slavery is done for.“– John Brown, Kansas Territory, 1856.
“Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of their friends…and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference…every man in this court would have deemed it worthy of reward rather than punishment.”
— John Brown, speaking on November 2, 1859 during his sentencing.
"If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments-I submit; so let it be done."
— John Brown, speaking on November 2, 1859 during his sentencing. John Brown would be hanged.
“This is a beautiful country.”
— Spoken by John Brown while seated on his coffin, as he rode to his execution on the gallows.
What others said about him:
"John Brown’s zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light; his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him. The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." – Frederick Douglass
"Politically speaking, the murder of John Brown would be an uncorrectable sin. It would create in the Union a latent fissure that would in the long run dislocate it. Brown's agony might perhaps consolidate slavery in Virginia, but it would certainly shake the whole American democracy. You save your shame, but you kill your glory. Morally speaking, it seems a part of the human light would put itself out, that the very notion of justice and injustice would hide itself in darkness, on that day where one would see the assassination of Emancipation by Liberty itself. ...
Let America know and ponder on this: there is something more frightening than Cain killing Abel, and that is Washington killing Spartacus."
-- Victor Hugo in an open letter Actes et paroles written December 2, 1859, published in New York Times and quoted in a biography by his daughter Adèle
"He done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."
-- Harriet Tubman, as quoted in Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (2004), by Kate Larson.