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Blue Laws of Connecticut. The death penalty as a criminal punishment. Death Penalty in the USA Information About

John Brown Kalma Anna Iosifovna

"Blue Laws of Connecticut"

Gray rocky hills surrounded the Browns' cabin on all sides. It was almost impossible to sow here, even cattle had difficulty finding food.

The mother often lost her milk, and then, according to Indian custom, the child was hung in a basket from a large tree so that he would listen to the birds singing and not cry. But the boy still cried from hunger, and his father cursed with grief this dead Connecticut, where it is just right for a family man to strangle himself.

Owen Brown, father of John Brown. (Daguerreotype.)

The country was harsh, and the settlers had a hard time. Cold rivers, deep gorges with black, as if charred trees, gray ravines, from where a dense, whitish fog rose in the evenings - such was the homeland of John Brown.

People here were like nature - rude, taciturn, stubborn. In the continuous struggle for existence, they have almost lost the ability to dream of anything other than a well-fed life and bins full of wheat and corn. Their feelings were as simple and primitive as the tools in their hands - an ax, a hammer, a saw ...

They worked hard here, clenching their jaws, then watering every inch of the earth, uprooting trees, throwing stones into the abyss in order to somehow adapt this land for sowing. They ate coarse food - corn cakes, beans with lard, crackers soaked in water ...

They slept in a heavy sleep without dreams, without taking off the clothes in which they worked all day, slept in damp, still unfinished log cabins. Having matured, they took a woman into the house, because someone needed to cook, sew and wash, and also because the Bible does not tell a person to live alone. In every hut, this thick book lay in a place of honor, the only book that was read here. People believed in heaven and hellfire. On Sundays in church, the preacher threatened smokers with eternal torment. Then everyone - men and women - sang mournful psalms with voices that were not accustomed to singing, with colds. On Sunday, it was forbidden to speak loudly, laugh and kiss your wife. So said the Blue Laws of Connecticut, established by the first Puritan settlers.

The same laws stated that "any person who wears gold or silver cords, gold or silver buttons, silk ribbons or any other superfluous ornaments will be subject to a tax of 150 pounds sterling."

The lawmakers did not think that there were no people in Connecticut who dressed in gold and silver, and that this state is much more suitable for another “Blue Law”, which states that every indebted debtor can be sold into slavery for his debts.

All of America was already secretly laughing at the "Blue Laws", the bones of their creators had long since decayed in the ground, and in Connecticut they continued to blindly obey them, and the inhabitants were even proud that their state was called the "state of harsh laws."

There has long been a rumor in Connecticut about good land in Ohio. Four years after the birth of John, his father, Owen Brown, harnessed his only horse to the wagon, put his wife and children there, and, having loaded all his simple possessions, moved to Ohio.

He pitched a tent in the river valley, near the village of Ekron. Here was black, fat land, good pastures. Huge orchards stretched across the valley, and in spring the old knotty trees bloomed in lush pink.

Few German farmers lived in the valley, but the majority of the population consisted of the original inhabitants of America - the Indians. Indians and whites hardly communicated. But Owen Brown did not share the prejudices of his compatriots. He did not at all believe that only whites should rule the world and command people of other races. He believed that if a person is honest, courageous and works well, then the color of his physiognomy does not concern anyone.

He often made such speeches at home and at the same time added that the Americans would still have to pay for their attitude towards the Indians and Negroes. Some they have deprived of their homeland and driven from place to place, others are not even considered as people.

Owen Brown's words did not differ from deeds.

When an Indian neighbor, Jonathan Two Moons, had a child, Owen Brown gave him milk from his only cow, and his wife treated the child. For this, the grateful Indian helped Owen cut down trees for the hut. Then the Browns' cow fell ill, and another Indian, called Red Buffalo, cured her.

The Indians were excellent hunters, fishermen and farmers. They knew the properties of local herbs and skillfully cared for livestock. They had their own way of growing maize and tobacco, which ensured a rich harvest. Indian women made excellent jackets and trousers from deerskin, sewed shoes - in a word, it was pleasant and useful to be friends with such neighbors.

Little John quickly made friends with the Indians. He grew up a closed, silent child. Rarely laughed, rarely played with white boys. But in the hut of Jonathan Two Moons, he was a frequent visitor and at the age of seven he was fluent in the mean guttural language of the Indians.

Indian boys gave John colorful stone balls, and once gave him a live squirrel. The squirrel became completely tame, slept in his bosom and scratched his chest with sharp claws. John carried her into the forest - "smell the pines", and then suddenly the squirrel ran away. She climbed up the tree, disappeared into the dense foliage, and no matter how John called her, no matter how he beckoned, the squirrel did not appear again.

It was the first grief in his life. At home, John told his mother that the squirrel had betrayed him and that from now on he knows that misfortune awaits him in life.

The mother was superstitious and took the prediction quite seriously. This boy was so different from her other children. Those were outright village tomboys, and she spanked them on their pants torn in a fight, but this one always kept to himself and at the age of eight said things that made adults uncomfortable. At eight he was tall, dark and muscular. The Indians taught him how to drive a light pirogue and how to fish for raw meat. He knew how to set snares for birds and traps for small animals. He knew how to throw a lasso on a running horse at full gallop. And he dressed like Indians: soft moccasins, buckskin pants and a goat jacket. Jonathan's old squaw had a beautiful pattern embroidered on his trousers in red and blue wool.

You're all ours now, Connecticut boy, Jonathan Two Moons told him.

This old Indian still remembered the battles at Fort Dunen, he could tell something about the scalps he took in his youth from the enemies - the “pale-faced”, about the vodka that, in exchange for land, the conquerors gave to the Indians. But Two Moons only frowned when the "Boy from Connecticut" tried to question him: the wounds were still too fresh, they had not yet healed. Now Jonathan looked as much a pastoralist and farmer as his neighbors, but his squaw still carefully kept an old carbine and a piece of cloth embroidered with war signs in the corner of the hut.

When John grew up a little, his father instructed him to guard the herd. In the Ohio Valley, the Brown family was lucky - there were lush green pastures. Scott grew fat quickly. Soon the Browns had several cows, many sheep and goats. The mother could hardly cope with the poultry and the garden. On the advice of the Indians, my father began to tan leather. This turned out to be profitable, and he was already thinking about sending John to school. The boy taught himself to read labels in Burns' shop. Burns sold bacon, salt, sugar, flour to the settlers; from the inscriptions on these goods, John learned to distinguish letters. His mother forced him to read the Old Testament, but the boy preferred to graze cattle.

From morning to evening he was lost in the fields. Cows lazily chew their cud, sheep huddle together as if they are cold, although heat pours from the sky like a molten stream. John rides on a bare horse through a green valley. The hot wind whistles in his ears, he shouts something wild, enthusiastic, and with his bare heels beats the sides of the sweaty horse.

One day, the inhabitants of the valley noticed that their Indian neighbors were very excited about something. When John entered Jonathan's hut, Two Moons was sitting at the table, humming a song, cleaning his old rifle.

What happened? the boy asked him.

My brothers went up on the other side of the border, - answered Jonathan.

This meant that the Americans again deceived the Indians, promising them a new treaty on the freedom of tribes and the inviolability of borders, but did not fulfill these promises. Now the war, apparently, began in earnest. All the adult Indians left the village, and Two Moons told John that they were being led by the "Prophet" himself.

The Shawnee Indians called one of Tecumseh's brothers "Prophet". Tecumseh, the leader of the tribe, wanted to form a great Indian union from the warriors of all the tribes. According to his plan, the soldiers were to convene an Indian Congress, which would manage all Indian lands. Tecumseh began negotiations about this with Indiana Governor Harrison. But Harrison did to the Indians just as all the "pale-faced brothers" always did to them.

When Tecumseh came to negotiate at Vincennes, the governor's residence, Garrison ordered the Indians to be lured into the premises and the entire delegation arrested. Tecumseh, sensing something unkind, offered to hold the meeting in the open air, in the garden. The Indians and American officers sat down on the grass. Tecumseh, stately, muscular and resplendent in his embroidered cloak and feathers, laid out the demands of the tribes. But then soldiers rose from behind the trees and surrounded the unarmed Indians. The governor himself supervised the beating of the "savages".

Tecumseh managed to slip away, and Garrison's betrayal turned all the northwestern Indian tribes against the American settlements. A decisive battle took place on the banks of the Tippecanoe River in November 1811.

More than a thousand Indians fought with eight hundred well-armed and trained soldiers, commanded by Harrison. The "Prophet" himself led his compatriots into battle. He sang martial songs loudly, and the Indians believed that he spoke them from bullets. They fought like crazy. For a long time the outcome of the battle was guesswork. The Whites won, and Garrison sacked and burned the village of the Prophet to the ground. The Indians turned to England for help. England was at that time busy at war with France, and the United States, taking advantage of the opportunity, declared war on her.

Death of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames. (From an engraving by Gallstone after a painting by Chappel.)

The campaign of 1812 began, unsuccessful for America and even led to the capture and burning of the capital of the Union - Washington.

This war was not at all a “war over fishing”, as they later wrote in American textbooks, but a continuation of the US struggle for independence and liberation from British custody. In addition, the United States sought to seize Canada, which belonged to England.

Like all boys of his age, John Brown dreamed of fighting. His father sent him instead of himself as a driver with a regiment that went to the place of hostilities. This assignment immediately put John in close proximity to the war. True, his herd was at the very back of the train, but still there was a smell of gunpowder, and he could chat with the soldiers as much as he liked.

Horse manure, soldiers' swearing, cannons stuck in the mud, typhus patients, trampled fields, devastated farms - oh, what a terrible and everyday side the war turned to him!

From the very first days, the war aroused disgust in him. Before his eyes, several unarmed Indians were shot. The wounded were transported on jolting carts. Typhoid fever raged among the soldiers. Their spirits were weakly supported by whiskeys and a hymn just composed about a star-spangled banner. The British ships were said to have captured the entire American fleet.

On the border, near Niagara, there were bloody battles. England sent some of Wellington's best regiments to Canada. American soldiers cursed the government and fled to their homes.

The “Boy from Connecticut” drove his flock and listened carefully to what those around him were talking about.

Once a passing captain at the postal station gave him a book. It was the first book in his life, not counting the Old Testament. He read it in one gulp at the bivouac, gasping with excitement, indignant at the soldiers who yelled in his ear, demanding the usual portion of oatmeal from the cooks. The book told about the life of the great Carthaginian commander Annibal. The father took the nine-year-old Annibal to the war. Going on a campaign, he forced the boy to take an oath before the altar that all his life he, Annibal, would be an implacable enemy of Rome. Since then, Annibal's life has been dedicated to fulfilling this vow. He learned to run, to shoot, to drive a chariot, all for the sole purpose of making himself fit for war with the Romans.

When John finished the book, he was seized by such a powerful stream of new feelings and thoughts that the former little shepherd boy, who loved squirrels and stone balls, drowned in this stream forever. An ebullient world, a world of heroic deeds, opened before him.

As in a flash of lightning, for a moment, the magnificent and distant life of the ancient heroes appeared before John. But Annibal was just as much a boy as he, John, even younger than John. Annibal's oath haunted him. Now, too, there was a war going on, and an American boy could have sworn an implacable hatred of the British. But to John's surprise, England did not evoke hostile feelings in him, and he rather liked the captured English soldiers whom he saw - they had a funny dialect, and they deftly whistled on makeshift whistles.

And everything that he saw in this war was not worth such a solemn oath. John Brown wrapped the book in an old neckerchief, tucked it in his bosom, and took his place in the train next to the foragers and cows. The satellites did not notice a change in him. He was dressed in the same deerskin trousers and high boots with cuffs, he had the same fixed and attentive eyes under his wide eyebrows, and he, as always, was silent and listened to what was being said around him. But they did not suspect that the “boy from Connecticut” had disappeared forever and that now young Annibal himself was riding with them on an unsightly horse!

The American squadron moved further and further south. Now on the way he had few farms and small peasant farms. On both sides of the road stretched vast tobacco and maize fields. Hundreds of blacks worked in the fields. Tobacco, maize, blacks - all this belonged to rich planters. Sometimes the squadron stopped for the night near the plantation house, and then Negro messengers invariably came running to humbly ask the gentlemen to come to the owner. Of course, the invitation only applied to officers. But one day the messengers came for John. The planter wanted to ask the driver something about the cows being shipped out of Ohio.

The boy curiously crossed the threshold of a manor house, built in the old English style, with a large hall and an open area where hammocks were hung. The gentlemen were intoxicated. The red faces of a colonel and two junior lieutenants floated in a thick tobacco mist. The uniforms were unbuttoned, the sabers were drawn into a corner. Negroes rushed about like mad, serving lemons, sugar, whiskey.

In an armchair, with huge legs in yellow boots resting on the table, the owner was reclining.

You should drink, young master, he said to John, war requires sacrifice.

The boy refused, and the owner wrinkled his nose in displeasure.

Mark my word, this guy is going to be a Methodist preacher.

John quietly touched the book in his pocket. Annibal was always with him. The officers laughed at his resolute air and pursed lips.

Then something happened that forever decided the fate of John Brown. At first glance - an insignificant episode. The little Negro servant stumbled and spilled green liquor on the Colonel's new waistcoat.

The Negro was about the same age as John. They did not scold him, they did not even shout at him: it was considered indecent. The owner simply took a whip with an iron tip and began to beat the Negro in a measured manner on the head and face. The room was quite quiet.<о. Офицеры рассеянно глядели по сторонам, полковник оттирал салфеткой пятно на жилете. Свист хлыста, впивающегося в человеческое тело, мычащий от боли мальчик - это было все.

John, with a force unexpected for himself, snatched the whip from the owner. For a second the planter and the Connecticut boy looked at each other. Both were breathing heavily. Then the elder averted his eyes:

I told you the boy wants to be a preacher,” he said with a forced laugh.

That same evening, standing at the edge of the forest under a noisy maple, John vowed to be an implacable enemy of slave owners and devote his whole life to the fight against slavery.

The moon, the loneliness, the rustling of the grasses set the boy's imagination romantically. He would have liked to cut his hand to seal his oath with blood, but he remembered that adults swear on the Bible. Then, placing his right hand on the Life of Annibal, he loudly pronounced his vow.

In late 1814, five thousand Englishmen under the command of General Ross landed at the mouth of the Potomac River. They put the American militia corps to flight and entered Washington. The capital of the United States, which had existed for only fourteen years, went up in flames. The British set fire to the White House, the Capitol - the glory and pride of the young republic. At sea, the Americans lost two of their best frigates, in turn capturing several British warships.

Three months later, peace was concluded. In this world, both sides returned to each other all the gains. The reasons for the war were passed over in silence. A treaty was also made with Indian tribes in the northwest. The Indians renounced two-thirds of their lands and pledged to settle on a reservation, that is, in a territory specially designated for them. The regime on the reservation consisted of disarming the Indians, imposing heavy taxes on them, and gradually depriving the Indians of self-government. In addition, the reservation was flooded with missionaries who, with the help of vodka, successfully "converted savages to the true faith."

The war was over.

The soldiers were returning home. Returned home and John Brown. Father and mother barely recognized their son in this thin, tanned teenager who smelled of horse sweat and cheap tobacco. The whole family listened in amazement to his stories about the campaign. He spoke briefly and precisely, using new, apparently bookish, words. The simple-minded Ohio farmer was flattered to have such a son. He invited neighbors to listen and marvel at the boy. John combed his hair in a new way, every morning he asked for hot water for washing and frowned if obscenities were spoken in front of him: he had heard too much of them in the squadron.

You must become a priest, said John's father. It was the best that a simple leather tanner could come up with for his son. His fantasy extended no further than Reverend Moses, where the sons of the richest farmers in the area were educated. John did not care: all his Indian peers had long since left the valley, he felt lonely and alien in this village, where everything after the war seemed somehow unreal to him.

On an autumn day, a newcomer appeared at the Reverend Moses's establishment - a tall, slightly stooped youth in a long frock coat and a white kerchief around his neck.

Moses taught theology and catechism to farm heirs between the ages of fifteen and twenty. There were big guys in the classroom who were used to digging the ground and driving around horses. The word of God was to them, as they say, "not a horse's fodder." Reluctantly, they listened to the commandments of bliss, and then rushed to the saloon - to fill the sacred thirst with wine. After the psalms, they simply needed to clear their throats with an obscene song. But the title of priest was profitable and honorable, and they courageously humbled themselves in the classroom.

They didn't like the rookie. He did not go to the wine cellar with them, did not sing songs, and did not follow the maids. At the same time, he was not what they called "prude" and "fasting." Classes, apparently, were of little interest to Brown. He sat staring straight ahead, and if Reverend Moses asked him, Brown answered with some hesitation, as if he had to make an effort to remember what had just been said.

The young people looked askance at Brown. The newcomer was clean to the point of dapperness, his boots shone, he cleaned them with a piece of suede, which he dressed himself in his father's tannery. Next to the poorly washed youths in coarse flannel shirts, he looked like a dandy. But when they tried to invite him to dance with them, Brown refused.

It hurts me to look into his eyes, - said little Speed, the first bully and merry fellow, - this little one has eyes like a drill.

And the disciples of Reverend Moses were hardly surprised when, six months later, at the morning roll call, it turned out that John Brown was gone and that he had left the school forever.

At home, he told his father that he had studied the Holy Scriptures, but that he was more interested in tanning leather. Owen Brown was sorry to part with the dream of a learned son, in addition, church sermons brought a sure income. He wanted to insist on his own, but for some reason, looking at the stern face of his son, he said nothing.

On the river bank, not far from Owen Brown's tannery, there was an abandoned cabin. Here John settled with his cousin Levi. Both young men wanted an independent life, both were crushed by the patriarchal family system. They liked to run in the morning, right out of bed, to the river and splash in the icy water, cook their own food, inventing fantastic dishes from beans, eggs, milk and sugar. However, they kept their hut immaculately clean, and Levi assured that no woman would disdain to settle in such a house.

The small handicraft business flourished. Brown's skins went to Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and Owen Brown began to think that his son had done the right thing by not becoming a priest.

Behind the house, the skins were wet in the tanning vats. John himself covered them with oak bark and filled them with water. He was the best at cleaning skins from wool and processing raw materials. Now his hands were constantly yellow, his dress and hair were saturated with the pungent smell of leather. But John did not pay any attention to this, and when Levi said that the girls would not like him because he smelled of leather, he only grinned in response.

He was twenty years old. The features of his face were finally defined: bright, cold eyes sat deep under a large forehead, his mouth was constantly compressed. He still spoke little and rarely laughed. Levi, an unsophisticated fellow, looked at his cousin with some timidity. The brother was not interested in girls or prayer meetings. Levi couldn't understand him.

Only once did he see John excited and excited. It was the night that a runaway Negro from Virginia knocked on their door. John himself hid the fugitive in the barn and kept watch near the hut all night. The Negro was young and was shaking all over, assuring that he was being chased. Every rustle seemed suspicious to him. When a horse's stomp was heard in the dark, the fugitive almost died of fear, and John grabbed a carbine and told Levi that he intended to fight for the black man to his last breath. His eyes burned, his voice trembled, and Levi did not recognize his always reserved brother.

Later it turned out that a herd was being driven past the house and there was no chase. John let the negro out of the barn, harnessed the horse and himself took the fugitive to reliable people on Lake Erie. And there the negro was transported to a safe place, and John, telling Levi about it, rejoiced and laughed as he had never laughed before.

The neighbor Lask baked bread for two bachelors. She brought warm rolls, and her daughter often came with her, a little pale girl with exorbitantly large eyes. The girl had a fresh, high voice; she willingly sang sacred hymns and psalms. In the evenings, while her mother talked to Levi about the harvest and the price of bread, she sat with John on the porch and sang to him. The young man listened to the clear, ringing sound of her voice and looked at the pale little face raised to the moon. Did he love her? He probably wouldn't have been able to answer that question himself. Anyway, when he told Levy that Diant was moving into their house, he was convinced he was marrying for love.

The little girl, having become Brown's wife, did not become either a mistress in the house or an assistant in business. This was not the kind of wife a tanner or a farmer needed. For days on end, Diant sat indifferently at the doorstep. From time to time she disappeared somewhere, and her relatives could not find her. One day John found her in the woods. Diant was on her knees, praying out loud. Her face was wrinkled like that of a crying child, and she beat her chest with her fists. John was horrified: a hypocrite or a lunatic - it was equally bad.

He hoped that the first child would cure his wife of her quirks. But John Jr. appeared - their firstborn, followed by Jason, Owen, Fredrik, Ruth, and the wife continued to serve prayers in the forest and sing psalms at night.

John waved his hand at her - she was of little use in the house. He himself nursed the children when they fell ill, and he rocked them when they needed to sleep. This tall, bony, and cold-looking man had a huge store of tenderness, and he generously spent it on children.

From the children in the house became crowded. John added a few rooms, but that wasn't enough. In addition, Brown's earnings have decreased. Tanning ceased to be a profitable business: leather factories appeared in big cities, which made leather faster and better than a small handicraft tannery. In addition, in cities, people, according to rumors, had an easier life, they made money faster.

The steam locomotive was recently invented. It was like the second "discovery" of America. Railway fever swept the country. As at the beginning of the century all enterprising people were engaged in maritime trade, so in the thirties everyone rushed to build railways. Rails, sleepers, picks, shovels - everything became the subject of speculation. There were rumors about the fabulous profits received by the railway companies. These rumors troubled the peace of the peaceful farmers of Ohio. Many of them put their savings into road construction and hoped to make a considerable profit.

Diant's mother came to talk about it and strove to get in during those hours when her brother-in-law was at home. John was becoming uneasy: the widow Lusk bored into him with small, angry eyes and snorted contemptuously every time he spoke. The son-in-law was an incapable bumpkin, he could not even dress up his wife, and his children were forced to run barefoot.

Diant sang hymns and seemed not to hear anything her mother was saying. However, she herself suggested that John move to Crawford, a village near Richmond, where she had relatives. Richmond was becoming a big city, and it was easier to look for work there.

In the spring of 1828, the John Brown family sets off. Parents and children ride on one of the first American trains, a description of which Dickens left us:

“There are no first and second class carriages here, but there are carriages for men and women. And since whites never ride with blacks, there are also carriages for negroes - a kind of long clumsy chests.

Shaking, noise and a lot of walls, few windows. The carriages are similar to omnibuses: from thirty to fifty people fit in them. Places crosswise, and sit on them in two.

In the middle of the wagon there is a stove, which is heated red-hot with coal, so that from the heat there is fog in the wagons. There are many newspapers in the hands, but they are not read much. Everyone talks to whom he wants - familiar and unfamiliar. They talk mostly about politics, about banks and about cotton. Quiet people avoid talking about politics, since new presidential elections will be held in three and a half years, and party passions are hot even now.

The railroad track is very narrow. The train comes to a stop in the woods, where it is as difficult to get in as it is to get out of it, crosses highways where there are no outposts, no policemen, nothing but a wooden arch, on which is written: "When the bell rings, beware of the locomotive."

Artisans are busy with their work, many of the inhabitants lean out of windows and doors, boys play kites, men smoke, women chat, children scream, pigs dig in the sand, unaccustomed horses neigh and rush to the very rails - and now the dragon rushes forward, scattering around a shower of sparks from his wood-fuel - rumbles, roars, howls and trembles, until at last the thirsty monster stops to drink, the people crowd around, and you breathe freely again.

Crawford met the new settlers not too friendly. Relatives and themselves were interrupted by odd jobs. John Brown barely managed to get a postmaster's job. The family settled in a large, cold house. The younger children often got sick. After the blooming Ohio Valley, nature here looked miserable and underdeveloped - stunted oaks, stunted fig trees, white ledges of rocks protruding from the ground, like bared teeth. John didn't like new places. But Negroes lived here, and this circumstance immediately absorbed all his attention, made him forget about the inconveniences of his own life.

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“And the trees are blue…” On an unusually hot August day in 1969, I got off the half-empty electric train in Komarov and headed for Ozernaya Street. The day before, we agreed with Daniil Alexandrovich Granin to finalize the composition of the book at his dacha

And the purely secular aspects of life felt the pressure of Puritan fanatics. For petty theft, they were beaten with a whip and given into slavery. For adultery, they were sentenced to death. It is better not to read the so-called "Blue Laws" of Connecticut at night ...
In Boston, cruel punishments were also relied upon for smoking tobacco, "slandering", "wearing bright and flashy clothes", non-observance of Sunday rest, when nothing was supposed to be done. Those who were merely dipped into the Frog Pond in the city center as a form of punishment could consider that they got off lightly - six months after the founding of Boston, in March 1631, a certain Philip Ratcliff was publicly cut off his ears for "lack of piety" (in which this is what was expressed, the chroniclers did not specify ...)
1641. In Boston, two lovers are hanged for "adultery." How much this affected public morality, again, is unknown.
1644. All Baptists have been expelled from Massachusetts.
1648. In Boston, a certain Margaret Jones was hanged for "witchcraft".
1650. A certain Solomon Franco is expelled from Massachusetts - for his Jewish origin.
1651. The city of Boston banned fancy dress and dancing.
1662. The first official censors are appointed in Boston to review all printed matter.
1686. The first attempt to carry out a theatrical production in Boston - immediately banned by the authorities.
1690 An attempt to publish the first newspaper in America - immediately banned by the authorities.
1700 year. All Catholic priests have been expelled from Massachusetts.
It is not surprising that the great American poet and writer Edgar Allan Poe wrote later: “I am sincerely ashamed that I was born in Boston ...”
The New England Puritans were damned consistent about one thing: they crushed all in a row, regardless of nationality and religion. They cut their ears and dragged their compatriots to the gallows. Jews were pressed (who in the state of Massachusetts received all civil rights only in 1821). In both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Scots and Irish were forbidden to settle in New England - with the exception of a few reservations around three cities in New Hampshire (but not in the cities themselves, God forbid!).
The reason this time is not in dislike for specific nationalities, but in religious hatred. The Scots and the Irish were Catholics, and the Puritans were particularly persecuted by the Catholics.
A contemporary American historian has noted that the Puritans "rapidly developed an unusual combination of boundless attraction to brilliant religious disputes and a fierce rejection of other beliefs" (3).
As for “religious disputes”, it is said rather optimistically: those wishing to enter into discussions or ask uncomfortable questions should have been more careful: there are many examples when the simple-minded who made “wrong” remarks were persecuted in the most cruel way. Well, and if someone encroached on the monopoly of "official" ...
In 1634, in Massachusetts, a certain Ann Hutchinson organized a kind of bible study circle. There was no such heresy in her statements - but the trouble is that the colonists very quickly began to assert publicly: Mrs. Hutchinson preaches better than "university graduates dressed in black." In addition, Ann was categorically against the division of believers into "worthy" to be admitted to the church and "unworthy".
It was here that the “men in black” took her seriously: they dragged the sick and pregnant woman to the church court several times, tried to declare her crazy, a heretic, almost a witch, and in the end they were expelled from the colony. It doesn't look like "brilliant religious disputes"...
Well, the "hard rejection" of other beliefs took the most unattractive forms. When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Catholic missionaries began to be very successful among the Canadian Indians, they were quickly captured by the Puritans and sent in chains to England. Out of pure envy, among other things - after all, the efforts of the Puritans to convert at least one single Indian to their faith were not crowned with success ...
Well, when at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Catholic preacher Sebastian Rusl appeared on the territory of present-day Maine, the Massachusetts immediately sent an armed detachment into the forests with instructions to remove a dangerous competitor. Soon, Rusl was found and killed (according to one version, the Puritans, in addition, tore off his scalp and solemnly brought him to Boston) (133).
In May 1844 in Philadelphia there was the most natural Catholic pogrom directed against the Irish (and far from the only one). They smashed entire neighborhoods where Catholics lived, attacked the church. The police could not do anything due to the obvious inequality of forces: a crowd of several hundred Puritan rioters simply dispersed the few subordinates of the local sheriff (she was armed not only with clubs, but also with a considerable number of guns) (58).
The Salem witch trials

Puritan fanatics are also on the conscience of the Salem "witch hunt" in Massachusetts (1692). In fact, a believer should not doubt the existence of witchcraft, and not all cases of witch execution should be dismissed as “exaggerated cases”, but the “Salem trial” very clearly looks far-fetched and had no real basis.
I remind you: as a result of the Salem hysteria, nineteen women were executed - solely on the basis of the "testimonies" of two unbalanced young girls (the great-grandmother of the famous American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury was among those executed).
Tellingly, the Salem nightmare was not at all the result of a revelry of a "stupid, uneducated" crowd. On the contrary, the most educated gentlemen played the leading role. The verdict that the kids were “victims of witchcraft” was issued by a certified doctor. The court that sentenced unfortunate women to the gallows and to the fire was also run not by illiterate laborers, but by intellectual and educated gentlemen of New England: pundits from Harvard University (at first called Cambridge College) - at that time primarily theological educational institution (of course, they taught there in the strictest accordance with Puritan doctrines).
In a word, puritanical New England was for a long time a very creepy place where it was sometimes deadly to drop a careless word, a bright ribbon in the hair of a village girl who decided to dress up was considered a mortal sin, and the dictatorship of the “men in black” was not much inferior to those European regimes that are commonly called "totalitarian".
There was only one single oasis in the wilderness, not imaginary, but real freedom - the village of Providence, the future capital of the future state of Rhode Island. Founded by the same pastor Roger Williams, who was expelled by the Puritans for calling buy, and not to take land from the Indians, and in addition demanded to abandon the church dictate over the minds. The Puritans made a mistake, not bothering to finish off the shrew in time - and Williams hosted everyone who was pursued by the "men in black". They were furious, but they couldn’t do anything: Williams, having gone to England, managed to straighten out in Parliament a patent for the territory he had mastered, and he no longer depended on the authorities of New England at all - and any violent actions against Providence would be illegal.
The state of Pennsylvania also lived quite freely - since it was founded and controlled by the Quakers, opponents of the "official" church and any kind of coercion in matters of faith (and the Quakers adopted laws much softer than in the rest of New England).
But apart from these two unconditional oases of religious tolerance and freedom, New England was still not the most pleasant place to live - and what is there, the most unpleasant place on the North American continent.
And what about the South?
But in the South, from the very beginning, religious tolerance and freedom of religion were enshrined in law. As early as 1649, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Religion Act, which allowed Christians to any directions to freely confess their faith - without any dominant church.
At first, southern religious freedoms, as we see, concerned only Christians. But just twenty years later, in 1669, South Carolina adopted the "Charter of Liberty of Conscience", where freedom of religion was already guaranteed to everyone - "pagans, Jews and sectarians." That is why it was in Charleston, the capital of South Carolina, that the largest Jewish community in the United States quickly formed.
(Anyway, for the sake of historical accuracy, it should be mentioned that southern Jews did not particularly bother with religion. The Jewish community of Charleston was capable of horrifying European orthodoxies: out of seven hundred of its members, only four families observed kosher, special dietary rules, only two families observed according to the canons the Sabbath of Judaism, and the local rabbi was married to a Catholic woman, which did not cause the slightest indignation among his flock (149).)
With the victory of the American Revolution in the South, in Virginia, the Religious Freedom Act, drafted mainly by Jefferson, was passed. The reader can read it in full in the Appendix. Let me just say that this document "by the rights of the law" introduced complete freedom of religion.
The Puritans of New England certainly did not like such innovations, but they could not do anything: firstly, the South did not obey them in any way, and secondly, after the revolution, the balance of power changed in the most decisive way. With the achievement of independence, the royal ban on colonists to develop territories to the west of the colonial border established in London automatically lost force. The Americans poured into the western lands, creating new ones there. territories and then the states.
(I remind you: a territory is an area that already has well-defined boundaries, but does not reach the population of a full state, and therefore does not have the right to send its representatives to Congress, and is governed directly by federal officials. As soon as the population of the territory reached 60,000 people , it was transformed into a state).
In the new territories and states, the Puritans, who found themselves in the position of one of many groups, no longer had any power, and, no matter how much they wanted to, they could no longer introduce their own rules, their own, frankly, dictatorship: when the “men in black” tried to seize power, they, vulgarly speaking, could tear their hands off ... Initially, the United States consisted from 13 states, and by the beginning of the Civil War - already from 34. And the new states from the very beginning were spared from puritanical dictates.
True, the traditions of northern fierce intolerance towards any dissent turned out, as one would expect, to be damned tenacious: after all, the “men in black” did not go anywhere, they lived in the same place and were not going to lay down their arms, using the slightest opportunity to commit another indecency ...
Even against the backdrop of all the heinous things committed by the puritan zealous fighters against dissent, the long-term persecution of Mormons, or parishioners of the Church of Latter Day Saints, stands out. The United States has been independent for fifty years, the times of puritanical diktat and omnipotence have long since passed away, but come on ...
You can share Mormon beliefs, you can not share them. However, the most obvious fact must be recognized: the Mormons were persecuted for many decades solely for their beliefs…
Founded in 1830 in New York State by Joseph Smith, the Church of Latter Day Saints, unlike many other sects, has never sought to mangle and reshape the Bible and already existing Christian doctrines in its own way. Smith supplemented Christian faith through the Book of Mormon. According to him, an angel named Moroni once appeared to him and pointed out the place where the ancient golden plates are hidden, on which the Book of Mormon was written in ancient times. Smith found the notes and with the help of Moroni translated them into English - a story about the struggle between good and evil tribes that came to the New World from Europe before the birth of Christ.
I repeat, to believe or not to believe Smith is a purely voluntary matter (by the way, at the same time, in 1830, several respectable and wealthy citizens testified that they had seen these tables - and people without exception were serious, not prone to adventures and participation in dubious cases ).

Joseph Smith

The new teaching, crucially, was spread without any coercion - coercion in America at that time would have been unthinkable on the part of a lone enthusiast like Smith. The results, it must be admitted, are impressive: in 1830 Smith's church numbered six people, in 1844 - fifteen thousand. It was the number of converts that probably caused the envious malice of the Puritan preachers, who lost thousands of parishioners. Persecution began, all kinds of harassment, to which the enraged "men in black" were much more likely.
In 1844, the Mormons, unable to withstand the constant pressure, moved to the state of Ohio, where they perfectly equipped several villages (Mormons both then and later were characterized by incredible industriousness).
In Ohio, the same oppression began very quickly. The Mormons wanted one thing - to work quietly and live according to their own rules, but they weren't given this... They had to move to Missouri.
There the persecution began. Mormons moved to Illinois. The local lawyers, on some completely false accusation, put Joseph Smith and his brother in jail - and then a mob burst in and, with complete indifference of law enforcement officials, killed both Smiths ...
Brigham Young, who replaced Smith as head of the Church, realized that Mormons would not be allowed to live in peace in the "free USA". And he made the only possible decision: since the persecution of the Church does not stop, all its parishioners should move away, to a place where there is neither American jurisdiction nor ill-wishers at all.
After studying the reports of the same Fremont traveler, Young chose a place that was truly located in the middle of nowhere: in the territory of modern Utah, near the Great Salt Lake. The land was completely uninhabited, wild and seemed completely unsuitable for life: the Great Salt Lake fully answered its name, the water in it was so salty that it was suitable for seasoning dishes instead of ordinary table salt. Near the lake was the largest salt marsh on planet Earth - a layer of purest salt located right on the surface several miles wide and a hundred long. The places seemed so lost and unfit for man that no one had ever settled for hundreds of miles in the area. Although this area was legally considered Mexican territory, the Mexicans did not show up there, and the Indians bypassed it.
Young, modern American historians acknowledge, planned and orchestrated the resettlement "with the precision and talent of a great wartime general" (3). More than seventy thousand people, in three groups, one after another, set off on a long journey of 1400 miles (about 2253 km). Horses and wagons were sorely lacking, and a significant number of Mormons made this way through the mountains and waterless deserts, rolling wheelbarrows with belongings in front of them. The Mormons trudged in the heat and in the cold - and yet they also had to fight with the attacking Indians. The exact number of deaths during this journey is unknown - but there were thousands graves. Those who survived, led by Yang, nevertheless reached the goal and founded the city of the Great Salt Lake - Salt Lake City. The dream came true: the Mormons were now completely alone, far from their enemies, on "no man's land", in fact.
What happens next is like a fairy tale. Mormons worked tirelessly and very quickly turned Salt Lake City into a real the capital- a large beautiful city with numerous squares, well-designed houses and wide boulevards. Each the tree had to be planted with one's own hands, but the Mormons had an amazing industriousness, and therefore parks and orchards soon turned green in the former barren places. In less than twenty years, the followers of Joseph Smith laid 227 irrigation canals, making 154,000 square miles of the former bleak desert suitable for farming and horticulture.
Even the great American writer Mark Twain, who poked fun at the Mormons for a long time (sometimes completely in the tradition of the still non-existent Soviet anti-religious propaganda), nevertheless paid tribute to their undoubted merits. Admitting through gritted teeth that there was “nothing harmful” in the Book of Mormon, he wrote objectively: “We must not lose sight of the fact that for forty years these unfortunate people have been hounded - hounded relentlessly, without pity! The crowd hooted after them, beat them and fired at them; they were subjected to curses, contempt and exile; they fled into the wilderness, into the desert, already exhausted by disease and hunger, breaking the centuries-old silence with wailing and littering their long path with graves. And they endured all this just because they wanted to live and believe as their conscience told them to. All this must be remembered, and then the undying hatred that Mormons have for our people and government will become clear.
Pay attention to geography: the Mormons were oppressed and persecuted exclusively in northern states...
The Mormon troubles were just beginning... In 1848, the Mexican-American War ended with the defeat of Mexico, and the territories inhabited by the Mormons were transferred to the jurisdiction of the United States. A year later, the Mormons, disturbed by such news, declared their lands the "Desirete State" and established a "free and independent" government. As you might guess, with Yang at the head.
Although the population was sufficient to formalize Utah as a full state, the US Congress, well aware of the Mormons' "undying hatred" of Washington, in violation of all written laws, approved Utah only as a "territory", that is, as already mentioned, in fact "second-class" administrative unit, deprived of the right to send its representatives to Congress and ruled directly from Washington. True, given the prevailing realities, Congress approved Brigham Young as the governor of the territory - Washington was well aware that the Mormons would not obey anyone else, and if they rebel as one, it would be extremely difficult to force them because of the remoteness ...
Here began the famous California "gold rush" - to which the Mormons, with rare exceptions, remained completely indifferent. Mark Twain: “Over the following years, wave after wave of settlers pulled through the deserts and the lands of the Mormons to California, but despite this, the church remained unshakable and faithful to its master and master. Hunger, thirst, need and grief, hatred, contempt and persecution from others did not shake the Mormons in their faith and devotion to their leader. They even withstood the temptation of gold - and how many nations it ruined the color of youth, pumped out the last juices! Of all the possible trials, the test of gold is the most severe, and something very solid must be laid in the people who endure it” (162).
Even when they were under the rule of the United States, the Mormons at home preferred to live by their own mind, emphasizing not the written laws composed by the "guys from Washington", but the communal Justice. In justification, they stated quite logically: Utah - Mormon land. Mormons, without anyone's help, with their own labor, turned wild deserts into blooming gardens, and therefore consider themselves entitled to live here according to their own laws. Those who do not like this can simply choose another place to live, because there are plenty of empty lands on the continent.
Washington appointed a hell of a lot of federal officials to Utah, hand-picked in New England and those states notorious for their anti-Mormon terror. Yuta refused to accept them. Then a 3,000-strong detachment of the regular army moved across the desert. The Mormons did not fight with him, and the officials solemnly took their places - but it all ended in embarrassment. Mark Twain: “However, when these gentlemen were installed, they were no more useful than stone idols. They made laws that no one paid attention to and that could not be enforced ... federal judges sat only for the amusement of the defiant crowd that was going to gawk at them in their spare time, because there was no one to judge, there was nothing to do, and there were no cases(emphasis mine. - A. B.)».
By the way, during the “gold rush” there were only two groups of people who absolutely did not succumb to the pursuit of the “yellow devil”: Mormons and Russian settlers from the former Russian colony Fort Ross ...
The obstinate Mormons, who never wanted to be imbued with the "originally American spirit" of money-grubbing and greed, were kept for many decades in the position of second-class citizens. Utah became a full-fledged state only in ... 1896, when all legal chicanery was exhausted and leaving it in its former position would be a flagrant violation of the American Constitution and American laws.
But for a long time, for a very long time, that same “undying hatred” of the Mormons for the American way of life made itself felt. There remains the most curious testimony of Soviet writers, who in 1955, during a trip to the United States, met with the governor of the Mormon state of Utah: “We talked about taxes, about politics. The governor said that he was against the concentration of large capital in one hand, because money is a force that can be abused against the people” (223). For the US, the statements are, to put it mildly, non-standard. It must be assumed that it was for these and similar beliefs of the Mormons that official Washington pressed for so many years, where completely different beliefs were in use ...
This is where the first chapter ends - it turned out to be damn long, but I am sure that it was necessary: the Civil War, I repeat, did not break out suddenly, the North and South went to it for many decades, and the reader should have been given an idea of a long, intricate, multifaceted , an ambiguous American history that has little to do with a set of stamps.
And now let's talk about slavery, about its supporters and opponents on the eve of the war. And again, reality does not fit into common clichés - everything was much more complicated than we were told by Uncle Tom's Cabin and school textbooks.
So, south of the Mason-Dixon line, slavery survived ...

Chapter Two

Black and white

Philanthropists tend to exaggerate the suffering of those they sympathize with.
H. L. Menken, American humorist

1. A shackle ringing is heard ...

I am not at all going to justify or defend slavery - it deserves neither justification nor defense. I'm just going to look through my usual habit with a strong magnifying glass to see some details, particulars and significant little things that are usually missing in established stamps ...
First of all, it must be clarified that it would be wrong to assume that everyone in the American South was a slave owner. By 1860 there were eight million whites and four million slaves in the fifteen slave states. However, out of eight million white slaves, only 384,000 owned. Of these, 77,000 owned one Negro each (as you might guess, this was not a plantation worker, but simply a servant). More than two hundred thousand slave owners had no more than ten Negroes each - which again is not enough to establish a real plantation. If with so many Negroes the owner took up the land, it was only for his own food, and not to receive any kind of income.
real planters in the South, there were about two thousand three hundred people - those who had a hundred or more slaves.
Thus, the vast majority of the white population of the South (more than eighty percent, to be exact!) did not receive absolutely any benefit from slavery. What was detailed in the book Southerner Helper's "The Imminent Crisis", published in 1856. Using a huge amount of statistical material, Helper just deduced the just given percentage of those who had no benefit from slavery and, like many southerners, believed that the preservation of slavery was leading the South straight to a crisis.
As early as 1851, a scientist from the University of South Carolina, W. Greg, said that almost half of the white population of this state (that is, almost one hundred and forty thousand people) “for the most part did not have certain occupations and did not produce anything and, it seems, vegetated in conditions that are not far removed from the conditions of life during barbarism. According to Greg, the standard of living of many whites "was only one notch above that of the Indians who lived in the forest" (93). They lived by casual day work, hunting, fishing, petty slave trading and petty theft - often in conjunction with black slaves.
What does this tell us? Firstly, the South was not at all like a mythical land, entirely inhabited by "evil planters." Secondly, and more significantly, it was precisely those same 80 percent of the population who had absolutely no benefit from slavery that just bore on their shoulders the entire burden of the four-year war with the North, which was outnumbered, much better armed, dressed, well-fed. If this is exactly what happened, then the Civil War all the more does not fit into the primitive picture of the struggle between "slave owners" and "opponents of slavery." The white poor southerners clearly did not defend the privileges of the planters, but something

Gray rocky hills surrounded the Browns' cabin on all sides. It was almost impossible to sow here, even cattle had difficulty finding food.

The country was harsh, and the settlers had a hard time. Cold rivers, deep gorges with black, as if charred, trees, gray ravines, from where a dense whitish fog rose in the evenings - such was the birthplace of John Brown.

They slept in a heavy sleep without dreams, without taking off the clothes in which they worked all day, slept in damp, not yet finished log cabins. Having matured, they took a woman into the house because someone needed to cook, sew and wash, and also because the Bible does not tell a person to live alone. In every hut, this thick book lay in a place of honor, the only book that was read here. People believed in heaven and hellfire. On Sundays in church, the preacher threatened smokers with eternal torment. Then everyone - men and women - sang mournful psalms with voices that were not accustomed to singing, with colds. On Sunday, it was forbidden to speak loudly, laugh and kiss your wife. So said the Blue Laws of Connecticut, established by the first Puritan settlers.

The same laws stated that "any person who wears gold or silver cords, gold or silver buttons, silk ribbons or any other superfluous ornaments will be subject to a tax of 150 pounds sterling."

A typical native of this "state of harsh laws" was John's father - Owen Brown. Laconic, gloomy, powerful as an oak tree, with a weather-beaten cheekbones face, he was proud of his strength, endurance, unpretentiousness of his tastes. Sometimes, on purpose, perhaps as an example to his children, he exercised his will: after a whole day of work, he wanted a lot and greedily ate, but he moderated himself, ate only a little. I wanted to lie down to rest, he went to work, and where it was more difficult. He didn't smoke, didn't play any games, didn't drink anything, not even homemade beer; his gods were labor, harsh simplicity, and physical strength. He said that he was created by nature to fight, and to fight precisely with it, that is, with nature itself, and at the same time with a grin showed his steel muscles, all his huge, strong bones, hands knotted like tree branches. From dawn until late at night, he was on his feet: he uprooted, felled, sawed trees, plowed the ground, built, sheared cattle, burned coal, tanned leather. The family of Owen Brown had to obey the uninterrupted rhythm of this work. Even the smallest had their own duties: for example, the youngest son Samuel had to bring dry wood chips for the hearth. If the wood chips were wet, he had to dry them. Sometimes at games, Samuel forgot about his duties: the chips turned out to be raw. At dawn, the ruthless hand of the father raised the son, put him, barefoot, on the icy floor and gave him a thorough beating.

Be hard on the kids, Ruth, Owen told his wife. - Teach them to work. Remember that only work awaits them in life. Don't pamper them.

Owen Brown treated only one member of the family with careful tenderness - his wife Ruth. She was a small, fragile woman with two long dark braids, braided like a girl's. Owen still remembered the days of their young love, meetings in church, long walks through the dark village streets. She loved him, and yet she did not want to be his wife. Why? It was a secret, a wall that he could not overcome in any way. What's stopping her? Does she love someone else? Is she promised to anyone?

Ruth shook her dark head with heavy braids. Then what?

I can't, she said. - I can not. Leave me, don't ask.

Owen Brown did not know then that Ruth considered herself not entitled to marry, have children. She was the pastor's daughter. Her mother died in madness, one of the sisters too, both brothers were periodically subject to bouts of mental illness. And the poor girl lived in constant fear that she was about to be attacked by madness, that she was about to be seized by a black disease. And then her younger sister got married and gave birth to an idiot child.

I can't marry you, she told Owen. - I can not.

Then Owen went to her father. Could her father persuade Ruth? If she does not marry him, he will leave this place, he will die, he loves her so much. It is not known what the pastor talked about with his daughter on the summer night, whether he blessed her for marriage, reassured her, or promised that madness would not be repeated in her children. But after this conversation, Ruth gave Owen consent. The pastor father himself married them. A year later, they had a girl, whom they named Ann. She was insane and suffered from violent seizures.

All this is told here in such detail, not to give liveliness and interest to the narrative, but to explain what happened many years later, during the trial of John Brown. Then the enemies and friends of John Brown took advantage of this hereditary illness in the mother's family in different ways: some in order to get John's acquittal, others to slander him, to present his entire struggle for the rights of the oppressed as outbreaks of insanity.

After Ann, two more sons were born - John and Samuel. These were healthy, strong, though a little wild, to match the nature in which they grew up.

Owen Brown's words did not differ from deeds.

The Indians were excellent hunters, fishermen and farmers. They knew the properties of local herbs and skillfully cared for livestock. They had their own way of growing maize and tobacco, which gave a rich harvest. Indian women made excellent jackets and trousers from deerskin, sewed shoes - in a word, it was pleasant and useful to be friends with such neighbors.

Little John quickly made friends with the Indians. He grew up a closed, silent child. Rarely laughed, rarely played with white boys. But in the hut of Jonathan Two Moons, he was a frequent visitor and freely explained himself in the mean guttural language of the Indians.

It was the first grief in his life. At home, John told his mother that the squirrel had betrayed him and that from now on he knows that misfortune awaits him in life.

The mother was superstitious and took the prediction quite seriously: her boy was so different from the rest of the children! Those were frank village tomboys, and their mother spanked them for their trousers torn in a fight, but this one always kept to himself and, at the age of seven, said things that made adults uncomfortable. He was swarthy, tall and muscular. The Indians taught him how to drive a light pirogue and how to fish for raw meat. He knew how to set snares for birds and traps for small animals. He knew how to throw a lasso on a running horse at full gallop. And he dressed like Indians: soft moccasins, buckskin pants and a goat jacket. Jonathan's old squaw had a beautiful pattern embroidered on his trousers in red and blue wool.

You're all ours now, Connecticut boy, Jonathan Two Moons told him.

The rumors hardly deceived Owen Brown: there really was land in Ohio, but every five years it had to be reclaimed from the forest. The forest was everywhere, it stood like a solid green wall, there were bears, and wolves, and deer, and badgers in it. Each farmer was at the same time a hunter, and when people returned from hunting, they ate all the booty they brought in together, as in those Indian tribes that lived nearby. It was necessary to clear a place for a hut, and little John Brown for a long time remembered the voices of people who felled the forest, huge fires, on which trees were pitched, branches and stumps were burned. Owen built a low log house with an attic for children and large sheds for livestock and grain storage. There was a room in the house where father and mother slept and where the whole family gathered for a meal. The walls were made of beams covered with clay, caulked with moss so that the harsh winter wind would not blow through, a wide fireplace made of blocks of sandstone. Roughly knocked together tables and chairs, bunks for sleeping - that's the whole situation. In winter, the walls were covered with blankets and reindeer skins to protect from the cold. Downstairs, behind a deerskin curtain, Ann slept. Upstairs, along with John, slept Samuel and Levi - the son of Ruth's deceased friend, whom she sheltered, a fragile, sickly boy four years older than John: at eleven, he was no taller than seven-year-old John.

Everyone has heard that each US state has its own laws. Many people also know that sometimes these laws are, to put it mildly, stupid and funny. So let's, in our stormy and gloomy time, relax a little and smile.

State of Arizona

A man can legally beat his wife no more than once a month.
. Any act committed while you have a red handkerchief on your face is considered a crime.
. It's against the law to play cards with Indians in the street.
. Donkeys are not allowed to sleep in the baths.
. Glendale: Cars must not be driven in reverse.
. Hayden: If you disturb American rabbits or bullfrogs, you will be fined.
. Camel hunting is illegal in Arizona.
. In Arizona, it is illegal to view photos of naked people until Sunday noon.
. If you are over 18 years old, then you cannot smile if you have more than one missing tooth visible when smiling.
. It is illegal to refuse a person a glass of water.
. Maricopa County: No more than 6 girls can live in one house.
. It is illegal to smoke cigarettes within 15 feet of a public place unless you have a liquor license.
. Mohave County: If you are caught stealing soap, you must wash it all over yourself. Only then will they let you go
. Nogalez: No suspenders are allowed.
. Oral sex is a type of sodomy and is punishable by law.
. Prescott: No one is allowed to ride a horse up the stairs of the county courtroom.
. You can be imprisoned for 25 years for a cut cactus.
. Tucson: Women are not allowed to wear pants.
. When attacked by a criminal or a robber, you can only defend yourself with the same weapons that the attacker has on you.
. You cannot have more than two dildos in the house.
State of Alaska

The laws of the town of Fairbanks forbid the moose to have sex on city streets.
. Even though bear hunting is allowed, it is forbidden to wake a bear for taking pictures.
. Fairbanks: It's illegal to give moose vodka.
.In Alaska, it is illegal to whisper in anyone's ear while hunting moose.
. It is forbidden to throw moose from a flying plane.
. Kangaroos are prohibited from entering barbershops at any time of the day.
. Moose cannot be viewed from a flying aircraft.
State of Arkansas

Teachers with too short hair are banned from promotions
. A voter is not allowed to vote for more than five minutes
. It is forbidden to keep an alligator in the bathroom
. State Required to Ensure Hormone Growth in Arkansas Midgets
. It is forbidden to call Arkansas otherwise than "Arkansaus" in colloquial language
. At Arkansas State University, two people cannot hold hands while standing in a doorway unless they belong to the same student union.
. In Arkansas, it is illegal to kill any living creature, even worms and flies.
. Flirting between members of the opposite sex on the streets of Little Rock can result in a 30-day prison sentence.
. It is illegal to buy or sell blue light bulbs in Arkansas.
. It is illegal to pronounce the name of the state of Arkansas while drunk.
. Little Rock: Dogs can't bark after 6pm; it is illegal to drive your cow down the main street after 1:00 am on a Sunday; It is forbidden to use a bicycle bell in places where food or soft drinks are sold
. The legislature of Arkansas passed a law that states that the river is forbidden to rise above the main bridge in the state capital.
Alabama

. Any display of naked body parts is prohibited. The law does not apply only to children.
. Anniston: It's illegal to wear blue jeans when you're walking down Noble Street.
. All women convicted of treason are required to stay at home after 21-00.
. Bear wrestling competitions are prohibited.
. Children from incestuous marriages are considered legitimate.
. It is forbidden to play dominoes on Sunday.
. Hunting on Sunday is prohibited.
. Marriages between relatives are allowed.
. Blind people are not allowed to drive.
. It is forbidden to impersonate a priest.
. It is forbidden to injure yourself so as not to go to community service.
. It is forbidden to beat yourself to be pitied.
. You can not wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in the church.
. It is allowed to drive in the opposite lane on a one-way road if you have a lamp on the hood of your car.
. It is forbidden to wear shoes with high heels.
. It is forbidden to seduce a woman by promising to marry her later.
. It is forbidden to blow your nose on the street in windy weather.
. Jasper: It is forbidden to beat the wife with a stick if the diameter of the stick is larger than the husband's finger.
. Lee County: Banned from selling peanuts on Wednesday after sunset from the sun.
. It is forbidden to wear a mask on the street.
. Men are not allowed to spit at women.
. It is forbidden to open an umbrella on the street if there is a danger that this will frighten the horse.
. It is forbidden to sell empty nuts.
. Swimming pools are required to close between 23:30 and 06:00.
. If you race If you put salt on the rails, you can be sentenced to death. . Slavery is still legal in Decatur, Alabama.
. Croquet is illegal in Fairfield, Alabama.
. Women have the right to keep all the property they had before marriage in the event of a divorce. However, the law does not apply to men.
. It is forbidden to chain a crocodile to a fire hydrant.
. It is forbidden to drive without shoes.
. It is forbidden to carry ice cream in the back pocket of your trousers.
. It is forbidden to drive a car if the car does not have a windshield wiper.
State of Colorado:

Dealers banned from selling cars on Sunday
. Colorado Springs: You are not allowed to wear a pistol holster on your body on holidays, election days, and Sundays
. It is forbidden to bring a horse or mule above the ground floor of any building in the state of Colorado
. Denver: You are not allowed to drive a black car on Sunday
. Durango: It's illegal to wear inappropriate clothing for your gender
. In Denver, Colorado, hairdressers are prohibited from massaging naked clients except for training purposes.
. It's illegal in Denver to lend your vacuum cleaner to your neighbor.
. It is illegal to kiss a sleeping woman in Logan County, Colorado
. In the state of Colorado, women are forbidden to appear on the streets in a red dress after 19-00
. Drunk people are not allowed to ride horses
. In Denver, it is illegal to mistreat wild and domestic rats.
. No liquor sales on Sundays and Election Days
. Pueblo: Dandelions are forbidden to grow within city limits.
. Sterling: It is mandatory for a cat to wear reflective beacons on the back of the torso if you are going to let her go outside at night
. It is forbidden to tear the tags from pillows and mattresses.
State of Connecticut

It is forbidden to discuss politicians during a card game.
. Advertising balloons are illegal in Hartford, Connecticut.
. Bloomfield, Connecticut: It is forbidden to eat in your own vehicle.
. It is forbidden to brand your pigs.
. Devon: It's completely illegal to walk backwards after sunset.
. Pharmacists in Connecticut must pay $400.00 annually for the use of alcohol in their formulation.
. Guildford: Only white Christmas lights are officially allowed to celebrate Christmas.
. Hartford: You are not allowed to cross the street while walking on your hands.
. In colonial times, Hartford, Connecticut had an ordinance that allowed any resident to rent the town circuit for 2d.
. In Connecticut, any dogs with tattoos must be registered with the police.
. In Hartford, Connecticut, it is illegal to plant a tree on the street.
. In Hartford, Connecticut, it's against the law to kiss your wife on a Sunday.
. In Simsbury, Connecticut, it is forbidden to carry out your political campaign in the city dump.
.It is forbidden to shoot from a revolver in the direction of a city highway.
. It is illegal to dispose of used razor blades.
. It's illegal to gather shellfish at night in Connecticut.
. New Britain: Fire trucks are not allowed to go faster than 25 miles per hour, even if they are going to a fire..
.You are not allowed to use a white cane unless you are blind.
. Marriages of abnormal and stupid people are forbidden.
. In the New Haven Colony, any young person under the age of 16 can be executed if he disobeyed his parents, was "stubborn or disobedient."
. Waterbury: It is illegal for any beautician to hum, whistle, or sing while working.
. You can be stopped by the police for riding your bike at more than 65 miles per hour.
. You cannot buy alcohol after 20:00 or on Sundays.

Thank you

4. Vampire with a Bible in his hand

John Brown was born in Connecticut - that is, he was a puritan in the square. All of its negative traits come straight from puritanism: fanaticism, belief in "God's chosen people", fierce intolerance of other people's beliefs and fierce faith in the holy rightness of their own ideas. It was in Connecticut of sad memory that the Blue Laws demanded the sale of a debtor into slavery, and on Sunday it was forbidden to speak loudly and laugh. It was in Connecticut that a husband was punished if he was caught kissing his wife on a Sunday. "Whoever wears gold or silver cords, gold or silver buttons, silk ribbons or any other superfluous ornaments, will be subject to a tax of £150." This is also from the Blue Laws of Connecticut ...

The biography of John Brown causes a kind of dreary amazement - it rarely happens that a person is so fatally unlucky that he turns out to be so useless, incapable of finding a use for absolutely anything. Pathological loser. Judge for yourself: at first he studied to be a priest (it didn’t work out), then he was engaged in leather tanning (he burned out), he served as a postmaster (he didn’t cope, he was fired), he traded wool and timber (without much success), he was a shepherd, he tried to become a sheep breeder-entrepreneur (with that sad result), worked for a cattle merchant, tried to start his own farm, briefly served as a land surveyor, was briefly a bank director, a land speculator, bred racing horses ... A sad nuance gives an idea of his business qualities: by the beginning of the civil war in Kansas, Brown, as a malicious bankrupt , wanted in 20 US states out of the then 34. It smacks of the Guinness Book of Records.

The wife went mad and died - which did not add to Brown's kindness and peace of mind.

As for children, a certain pathology is clearly visible here. As Brown's eldest son later recalled, dad started a kind of account book, where he diligently wrote down the sins of his young son and the penalty due for this:

for not obeying his mother - 8 rods, for careless performance of work - 3 rods, for lying to me - 8 rods.

When enough "debts" had accumulated, Brown thoroughly whipped his son, and then ... forced his son to flog himself to the point of blood. It clearly smells, scientifically speaking, of mental deviations, although due to the prescription of years and in connection with the death of the patient, it is impossible to make an accurate diagnosis. By the way, Brown's wife and daughters were required to wear dresses of exclusively "modest" brown shades. What he would do with his daughters, seeing colored ribbons in their hair, is not difficult to predict.

Where can a person with such a biography and habits go - a fanatical loser, a spiteful idealist?

John Brown

Yes, to war, of course! Shooting and slaughtering dissenters requires neither business qualities nor honest labor. As they say - a horse, a gun and a free wind ...

In Kansas, the "Captain Brown" squad left a noticeable trail of blood. The logical conclusion was the same nightly murder of five farmers - just because they were "supporters of slavery." By the way, two of these "supporters" were youngsters, almost boys - and begged Brown to spare them, because they are so young. The Captain said through his teeth:

- Lice grow from nits ...

And both youths were hacked to death with sabers along with others. It was too much even for Kansas - and, as already mentioned, many like-minded people turned their backs on Brown (believing that only those who come out against you with weapons in their hands should be killed, and slaughtering unarmed people at night means defiling the idea ...).

When peace finally came to Kansas, new Governor Jerry quietly squeezed out Brown from Kansas. He did not dare to arrest him openly, so that, God forbid, he would not unleash a new outbreak of civil war, and acted more cunningly: he gave the order to declare Brown outlaw and arrest him, but tried to make sure that Brown knew about it in advance and imperceptibly disappeared ...

Brown did just that, quietly disappearing from Kansas. By that time, he was offended to the core by the behavior of former comrades-in-arms in the war: they, opportunists and egoists, did not want to follow Brown's high ideals. Many northerners did not want to let planters into Kansas - but only because they wanted to set up their own farms on new lands. And blacks were treated worse than the most ardent southern racists. Brown, on the other hand, did not recognize half-measures: following Stevens, he believed that blacks should be released all and immediately - and let someone else sort out the consequences ...

Showing up in places much quieter, Brown seemed to have calmed down and engaged in peaceful commerce. However, his half-brother Jeremiah Brown left memoirs that shed light on many things ...

“He came to visit me and I did my best to convince him to return home to his family and mind his own business. I also told him that the path he was following could lead to the death of both himself and his sons ... He answered me that my disapproval upsets him, that he is doing his duty and must follow the path he has chosen, even if it threatens the death of himself and his family. He is quite satisfied, he told me, that God has chosen him as his instrument for the destruction of slavery. Judging from the whole manner of his behavior and from his conversation, I came to the conclusion that he was completely crazy about the question of slavery, and I let him know what I thought of him.

Jeremiah was a layman, living in Ohio, and probably had a poor idea of the Puritan New England sourdough. If a person begins to repeat that he has been chosen by God for some high mission, expect trouble ...

Brown led a seemingly ordinary, unremarkable life - he traveled a lot, met people, had decent conversations. But his interlocutors were entirely abols, from pacifists to extremists, from the "official abolitionist" Negro Frederick Douglass to the "subway conductor" Harriet Tubman.

John Brown secretly plotted the Great Plan...

This plan suffered from everything, but not pettiness, and the plans were cherished downright Napoleonic. It was supposed to attack the arsenal in the Virginian town of Harpers Ferry, seize more weapons and ammunition there and take them to the mountains of Virginia, ideally suited for a guerrilla base. Brown's detachment was planned to be deployed into a whole army: its members were to become commanders of groups made up of Canadian blacks living there in exile and blacks liberated from plantations. The "guerrilla republic" was to gradually cover not only Virginia, but also other slave states, until the final victory.

It should be noted that in theory everything looked quite convincing, it was thought out and worked out to the smallest detail. Sometimes mutinies planned with much less scrupulousness ended in success. Brown can be accused of anything but insanity. He was fanatic, and this is quite different ...

In addition, and not least, dozens of people worked on this plan. Brown has long established close ties to Abol organizations, both peaceful and extremist. And by that time there were many of them. Approximately 150,000 blacks from the United States settled in Canada (other sources specify that this figure refers only to black Baptists, without taking into account other denominations). Among the Abols there were many very wealthy people (like the white lumber merchant Stephen Seat, who built a shelter for the elderly blacks, which cost four hundred thousand dollars). In Ohio, Negroes owned approximately 10,000 acres of land; in New York State, property totaling $1,160,000. Among the Negroes, there were already enough successful businessmen of their own (Frederick Douglas, by the way, was one of them). The African Methodist Church had 20,000 members and owned $425,000 worth of property.

Organizations like the American Moral Reform Society, True Bands, the Massachusetts Negro General Organization, the Negro Society, the Phoenix Society were non-violent and clearly stated their goals: perfection and training in his crafts. That is, they were engaged in charity work, maintained schools, and published legal newspapers.

Well and secret societies were not limited to one "underground railroad" with its several hundred white and black activists. There was also the Freedom League, the Liberation League, American Secrets. These were truly secret societies, and therefore it remained unknown what they were doing. In the most general terms, some kind of illegal activity in the South. It was with these societies that the increasing number of murders in the South were associated. trusted blacks who acted as secret agents for their white masters and infiltrated illegal organizations with the aim of their subsequent extradition. (Well, yes, there were such Negroes, but what did you want? Universal solidarity solely because of the color of the skin? This, sorry, is a utopia. Russian peasants who ransomed from serfdom to freedom were also not particularly eager to alleviate the fate of their "brothers by class, "who continued to languish in captivity. Man is a selfish creature. Some Negroes joined secret organizations, others diligently tracked them down and betrayed them ...).

Apparently, Brown raised a lot of money for his enterprise without much difficulty. In May 1858, on the territory of Canada, in a simple wooden hut on the bank of some stream, a “convention of friends of freedom” was held. More than thirty blacks and twelve whites gathered - very often people are not poor, later one of them became a major in the northern army, the other became a congressman, the third worked for Abraham Lincoln in the White House.

A noteworthy nuance: they were entirely radicals. Of the moderate, respectable, albeit prominent figures of the Negro movement, not a single person was called, which is understandable - the moderate issues discussed there would have led to panic ...

The convention discussed the future of the United States in all seriousness, as well as methods of struggle. Several people, who are completely “hawks”, put forward an original idea: since it is, frankly, difficult to defeat the system in peacetime, you need to wait until America is embroiled in some serious war with states like France or Spain - good for something like there would be prerequisites. Here and shy away in the back ...

Such a plan was vigorously opposed by John Brown, who declared that it was a sin to use the misfortune of his native country to stab her in the back. The idea did not pass the vote. The Convention took up something else: it proclaimed the abolition of slavery, and then began to draw up its constitution for a new, free state, which would certainly arise in the course of a guerrilla war - the power of the “reactionaries” would fall everywhere, both in the South and in the North, and then the Provisional Government of the New USA.

After that, as you might guess, they began to enthusiastically divide the portfolios. The president of the "renewed" United States was not appointed - after all, the position is elective and it is necessary to wait for the will of the people. But they appointed the commander-in-chief of the armed forces - John Brown, as well as the secretary of war, secretary of state, treasurer and a couple of congressmen (actually, congressmen were also supposed to be chosen, but the audience wanted to please a few "nice guys").

So, neither more nor less: the United States, which they did not even suspect, now had a new government, a new constitution, a new Declaration of Independence (it’s a pity that that barn has not survived to this day, it’s still a historical place, you could earn money on tourists unmeasured...).

However, Brown, who went through a good school of conspiracy and civil war, did not even say a single word to this high assembly, what he was about to undertake where. By the way, quite reasonable foresight, intelligent talkers who love to crackle about freedoms and share portfolios, would certainly disheveled all over the wide world, it would come to the authorities ...

The new constitution in some ways looked very extravagant. In the future free republic, all property was declared "common property", ministers and congressmen were not supposed to be paid (I wonder what the ministers were supposed to live on?), weapons were allowed to be owned by everyone and everyone was ordered to carry them openly. Particular attention was paid to strengthening marriage ties: it was even planned to create a special “search bureau” that would look for separated spouses throughout the country and “help them reunite” (no one was clearly going to listen to the opinion of the divorced couples themselves).

By the end of the following summer, 1859, members of Brown's shock detachment, 22 whites and either six or seven blacks (the exact number of blacks historians have not been established) began to gather one by one to the farm acquired by Brown near Harpers Ferry (among them were Brown's three sons and his two sons-in-law).

The detachment, to be sure, was small. Brown tried to recruit more people among the white settlers of Kansas, his former associates in the Civil War, but no one agreed. Before the speech, Brown met with Frederick Douglas - after all, the most prominent and influential Negro leader - and openly offered to join the squad.

Douglas, as already emphasized, was a respectable man and was not at all eager to exchange an arranged life for running around in the mountains and forests with a musket at the ready. He stated that an attack on the arsenal would be a challenge to the government and would turn the whole country against the Abols.

Brown's response came down to something like this: "Sneeze!" He said that "the country needs some kind of emergency event." Douglas, dumbfounded by such enthusiasm, began to mumble something about the need to "confine ourselves to the gradual and imperceptible removal of slaves to the mountains."

He didn’t know the “captain” well, who had drawn a lot of blood in Kansas ... Brown just “wanted to strike a blow that would stir up the whole country.” Such horrors even more frightened Douglas, who was overgrown with fat, he honestly writes in his memoirs that “he refused out of caution, or maybe out of cowardice” (53). So they parted, each remaining with his own. When Douglas's position became known, many blacks refused to participate in Brown's expedition.

The most curious thing: by that time, the government could have intercepted in no time all the inhabitants of the Kennedy Farm farm, who had been practicing there for a couple of months in possession of weapons and, for some reason, drill! Brown himself, no matter how he observed the strictest secrecy, once loosened his tongue in front of a certain Pole from Prussia, whom he knew from Kansas. The Pole did not think of anything better than to tell everything he knew to a certain Babb, a correspondent for one of the newspapers in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Shortly thereafter, Secretary of War Floyd, who was vacationing at the resort at the time, received word "of the formation of a secret society whose purpose is to free the slaves in the South by general insurrection, and the leader of this movement is old John Brown of Kansas." A fairly complete description of the plans of the conspirators to attack the arsenal and subsequent actions was attached. It is believed that it was Babb who laid Brown - a very strange coincidence ...

However, the Minister of War (like once the highest dignitaries of the Russian Empire, to whom the plans of the Decembrists were described in advance and very accurately) did not take any measures. He had absolutely no sympathy for the abols and the liberation of blacks - apparently, the person was just too lazy to mess around and leave the cozy resort. Subsequently, Floyd justified himself before the Senate commission: “I was sure that such an immoral and criminal plan could not be conceived by any of the citizens of the United States, and therefore I simply put this letter aside and did not think about it again until Brown began your raid.

It's all about patriarchy - then in the States there was nothing even remotely similar to the FBI or any kind of secret service: there was only local police involved only in criminal matters (as now, then in the USA there was no single body of police leadership) . So any conspirator felt at ease ...

The "Captain" waited for reinforcements for a long time - but not a single person joined him. Among the "progressive" historians, there is a version that the reinforcements were late, but it is hard to believe in this: Brown stuck out on the farm for almost four months, during which time anyone who really had such a desire, a hundred times would have managed to get there. Surely many of those who beat their chests and swore to take over the entire South overnight, having gone cold, realized what they could get themselves into, and stayed at home ...

And they opened fire almost immediately. Brown's men shot dead Negro- one of those who came to be released ... Different sources call this Negro differently: some are "porters", others are "watchmen". Most likely - the second: well, what should a porter do on the street long before dawn?! Be that as it may, the Negro behaved incorrectly: when he saw a suspicious armed mob, he screamed, wanted to raise the alarm, so he was rashly sent to the next world ...

Then Brown and his thugs broke into the house of Colonel Washington, George Washington's own grandson, and took away two family heirlooms: a saber, which was presented to George Washington by the Prussian King Frederick the Great, and a pistol, presented to Washington by the famous Lafayette. He immediately put on a saber, immediately armed himself with a pistol, the field marshal became, at least where ...

This episode is thought provoking. The coincidence is incredible. Accidentally the first house the good fellows broke into turned out to be the home of Washington's grandson, accidentally Did Brown first grab the historic weapon that belonged to America's national hero? Such accidents, in general, do not happen. They must have been on a tip-off for almost three months, stuck under the city, they probably sent reconnaissance there, managed to collect some information. Going to battle for the rights of the oppressed, armed with Washington's saber, is, of course, spectacular ...

They took the colonel hostage, grabbed a few more people - and rushed to the arsenal. On the way, another early passer-by was shot, this time a white one: the poor fellow was ordered to stop, and at the sight of an incomprehensible armed caudle, he only accelerated his step, so he had to ...

Brown's people occupied the arsenal without the slightest hassle - because (the patriarchal simplicity of the South!) It was guarded by a single soldier who foolishly left the guardhouse and was instantly twisted.

Sending two of his men to meet "reinforcements from the rebellious Negroes", Brown settled in the arsenal.

There were quite a few army rifles in the arsenal, even a couple of guns were found - but there was absolutely no ammunition (which Brown did not expect, believing in his simplicity that “everything should be in the arsenal”). Not a single "rebellious Negro" showed up. Brown's messengers were intercepted on the road, where they waited for several hours in vain for a crowd of "black brothers." Who was shot, who was arrested.

The inhabitants of the town, having come to their senses from the first fright, grabbed hunting rifles and other weapons, whoever had what they found, and surrounded the arsenal. A detachment of the local militia arrived in time to help them from neighboring Charleston, and later federal troops alerted appeared: a hundred marines under the command of US Army Colonel Robert Lee, the future commander-in-chief of the southern army ...

By the way: no blacks could come to the rescue also because the town of Harpers Ferry was at a considerable distance from more or less large plantations and the slaves did not know what was happening. Why Brown this did not foresee in advance, it is incomprehensible: he studied this area carefully, he should have known ...

The shooting went on for about a day. Then the sailors knocked out the gate with sledgehammers, burst inside and grabbed the survivors. John Brown and his gang were tried in a Virginia court for "conspiring with slaves to rebel, for treason against Virginia, and for committing murder without extenuating circumstances." Brown was sentenced to death, and his accomplices to prison.

Northern lawyers tried to present the "captain" as insane, but he himself protested against this. And he refused offers to run away: either he wanted to play the role of a martyr to the end, or, seeing such an inglorious collapse of his plans, he fell into complete prostration. Most likely, it's both. Be that as it may, Brown definitely liked the role of a martyr: he managed to deliver several beautiful speeches, and in the end he honored with the last words the priests who decided to confess him - they are wrong, some kind of pagans, he himself knows better what is pleasing to God ...

Brown was hanged...

There is no way to attribute all this to “southern reactionism” - in any state, even southern, even northern, such antics for Brown would have ended in a noose. Moreover, the arsenal was not a private southern shop, but federal property, a military facility of the US Army.

Harriet Tubman, who often fell into a trance and assured that she was visited by visions and prophetic dreams, “attached special importance to one of them, which she had a dream just before meeting with Captain Brown in Canada. She dreamed that she found herself in some wild place, where there were rocks and thickets everywhere, and suddenly saw a snake there, whose head was peeking out from behind the stones. The snake rose higher above the stones, and its head turned into the head of an old man with a long gray beard. This head, said Tubman, "was looking at me like that, well, right now it will say something." But then, next to the first head, two more younger heads appeared. While Harriet stood and thought what they wanted from her, a large crowd of people ran up to the heads, who cut down first the heads of the younger ones, and then the head of the old man ... Harriet saw this dream again and again, but could not understand its meaning until she met with Captain Brown and did not recognize in him the same old man whom she had seen in her dream” (53).

Brown's two sons were killed during the siege of the arsenal by government troops ...

John Brown's speech bears all the characteristic features of a modern terrorist act: for ideological reasons, a group of armed men seized a military facility and took hostages, hoping to achieve their goals by using force. It was first a terrorist attack on the territory of the United States - and possibly on the entire continent.

Both sides tried hard to portray Brown as a madman - both northern lawyers and some southerners who did not want to see the full seriousness of the problem. However, Governor Wise of Virginia, who no doubt had no sympathy for Brown, said in a speech in Richmond:

"He was a man with a clear head, courageous, strong in spirit, a fanatic, full of conceit, but firm in his convictions, honest and intelligent."

The Russian envoy Stekl reported to St. Petersburg: “In any case, it is very doubtful that this explosion was the act of several individuals, pushed by fanaticism and that restless mind that is so characteristic of Americans ... Several letters found in Brown make one suspect that him with the abolitionists of the North and even with some senators of their party. The newspapers of the South accuse these latter of being the main instigators of the attempted insurrection at Harper's Ferry, and allege that the attempt was connected with the ramified abolitionist organization of the North."

Southern papers were telling the truth, and Stekl, ill-informed, even downplayed the evidence. Brown, going to take the arsenal, left a whole suitcase of papers on the farm, which were immediately discovered: maps, plans, the text of the constitution adopted in Canada, extensive correspondence with like-minded people in Canada and in the North ... All this immediately got into the newspapers - and a lot of people, whose names were mentioned there, went on the run. Frederick Douglass was the first to reach Canada, and several other prominent Abols immediately joined him. A bunch of wealthy philanthropists who donated to blacks began to dissociate themselves from Brown in print ... In a word, the commotion was terrible, and the Abols suffered fear. The young Republican Party was downright hysterical, assuring that it had nothing to do with it and always stood up for constitutional methods of solving the problem. Abraham Lincoln was also quick to disassociate himself from Brown's "crazy" performance.

The events in Harpers Ferry literally split the country, which researchers of the most diverse political orientations do not doubt, and brought the Civil War closer. Southerners, rightly declaring that they were faced not with a crazy trick of a madman, but with a serious, well-planned conspiracy, began to arm the entire white male population without exception. Distrust of the North went off scale beyond the critical line: who could guarantee that this last conspiracy?

And the northerners now had their martyr. One of the prominent abols, Howe, barely catching his breath after fleeing to Canada, began, not particularly lowering his voice, to cynically say: a dead Brown will bring more benefits to the movement than a living one ...

All this pandemonium brought one harm to blacks in the South: in the southern states they began to "tighten the screws." In the same way, at one time, the “rebellion” of Nat Turner worsened the situation of blacks not only in the South, but also in the North (where the state of Pennsylvania in 1837 deprived free blacks of voting rights).

The split over the "Brown case" occurred throughout the rest of the world. Anyone who considered himself even a little “progressive” angrily condemned “the murder of a hero by southern barbarians” - and revolutionaries of all shades, stripes and calibers literally went into hysterics, singing “martyr” in every way. Really the evil inflicted by Brown, the murder of random, innocent people, did not interest this public at all: you never know what costs are possible during a noble struggle against reaction ...

The most striking example of intellectual fanaticism is the speeches of Victor Hugo. The great novelist, all his conscious life, was also an ardent defender of all kinds of revolutionary bastards, whom he heartily adored and justified in his own way, with delightful disregard for reality ...

I already told in one of my previous books how Hugo tried to save an ordinary criminal who killed a woman for a couple of coins from a well-deserved gallows. Now Hugo, with the same passion, turned to the American government with a demand (not a request, but a demand!) To urgently pardon Brown ...

“John Brown, this liberator, this warrior of Christ…”, “Puritan, a man of faith, a man of austere life, imbued with the spirit of the Gospel, he gave these people, his brethren, the cry of freedom. The Negroes, exhausted by captivity, did not respond to his call. Slavery makes souls deaf. Finding no support, John Brown nevertheless began the struggle; having gathered a handful of brave men, he entered the battle; he was riddled with bullets; two youths, his sons are holy martyrs! - fell next to him ... "

What are the words! A Martian unfamiliar with earthly realities might have thought that Brown and his sons were quietly walking from the library to the conservatory, but then they were attacked from the bushes by a horde of evil reactionaries...

Here, those techniques and tricks were fully manifested, which later (up to the present day) the domestic intelligentsia will use: if, in their opinion, a person was a “noble fighter” and fought for something “advanced”, it does not matter at all what he did in reality...

“Before Brown’s eyes are the shadows of his dead sons” ... Indeed, this reminds of a joke when a cunning lawyer, in order to help out a client who massacred his entire family, told the judges that his client deserves indulgence, because he is an orphan ...

But seriously, I have long had suspicions: was Brown’s speech a well-thought-out provocation? Brown himself, of course, did not think of anything like that - but are there many examples in world history when stubborn fanatics, hard-nosed idealists like Brown were used in the most cynical way in the dark by much less noble people? More precisely, they are not noble at all ... Here is the mysterious murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which served as the detonator of the First World War, and the no less mysterious murder of Kirov by a jealous idiot, who, very similar to Kirov, carefully summed up, and many similar cases, for a simple listing of which would take more than one page ...

Actually, why not? There is no doubt that behind the scenes of the Abol movement were people who were by no means sentimental and not romantic - money bags that financed the movement, because they saw it as a tool to achieve their goals and receive considerable benefits in the future. There is no doubt that at a certain moment it was already clear to these people: the South will not give up its wealth for anything, they can only be obtained by defeating the southern states by military means. Again, there are many examples in history when the "hawks" who planned the war surreptitiously provoked the enemy - and he, falling into the snares of cunning combinations, not only prepared for war, but sometimes even started first, not suspecting that he forced become a despicable aggressor...

Joking aside, I sometimes sit over the list of prominent abolitionists and try to find interesting contacts with the magnates who were gaining strength. The matter is not easy, historians usually give little space to boring economics, but the direction of the search is promising. Theoretically, it could also turn out that the cynical northern children, who dreamed of magnates turn into oligarchs, just used Brown to inflame relations between the North and the South to a dangerous limit, beyond which there can no longer be silence or reconciliation (as it, in fact, happened). The northerners already had the Book, now the Martyr appeared ...

So, Brown was hanged - which brought a flurry of reproaches and denunciations to the South, and the South, in turn, was filled with hostility and suspicion towards the North.

Life in the USA, of course, continued. The tragic was bizarrely mixed with the comic, and in the most seemingly ordinary events lurked (not seen, of course, by contemporaries) the beginnings of future great events ...

Somewhere in the United States lived the English unfortunate inventor and swindler Mr. Henson. The same one that in the middle of the 19th century, being in England, shocked compatriots with daring plans to organize air communication ... between the British Isles and India!

Henson, with great noise, published the drawings of his Ariel aircraft with a steam engine, which, according to the assurances of the inventor, would soon carry the British all the way to India. There was no romance here: Henson established the “Joint-Stock Company for the Operation of Steam Airplanes on the London-Calcutta Route” - and Parliament quickly approved it. Belief in technological progress then reigned downright childish, and the British crowd poured into the office of the newly-minted company, shoving at the door and arguing for the right to be the first to lay out their hard-earned money.

Henson spilled like a nightingale, painting his airplane: weighing 1360 kg, with a wing area of 550 square meters. meters and an engine with a capacity of ... 25 horsepower. In those days, not only ordinary people, but also engineers did not yet have enough experience to understand that such a frail engine would never lift such a colossus into the sky (and in general, no one yet understood that a steam engine was absolutely inapplicable in aviation) . Therefore, the money flowed like a river. Henson did not bury himself and, having decided that he had collected enough, fled with full pockets to the United States, from where it was almost impossible for deceived investors to scratch him out: then America lived according to the principle “There is no extradition from the Don.” Knowing Henson's previous cases, it is doubtful that he was engaged in honest work in the States - there are enough simpletons overseas. By the way, it was Henson's "chimera" that was subsequently used by Russian engineers to prove the unrealisticity of the Mozhaisky aircraft project (which they did not convince Mozhaisky in the least, and he continued to make my chimera…) (9).

The word "inflation" then simply meant "bloating as a result of the accumulation of intestinal gases" and was used exclusively by physicians (although inflation as such already existed). The word "pornography" appeared in the English language only in 1864 (although the phenomenon has existed since ancient times). Similarly, the English language did not yet have the words "specialist" and "individualism". Gasoline was sold in pharmacies and was used exclusively for cleaning clothes.

In New England, in Boston, an Irish emigrant named Patrick settled, who fled to the "promised land" from a severe famine in his homeland (when there was a shortage of potatoes in Ireland, and over a million people died of starvation in two years). In America, Patrick was not particularly happy - he worked as a cooper (that is, he made barrels) for fifteen hours a day without a break for weekends and holidays, lived, like most emigrants, in a damp basement. And at thirty-five he died of cholera, leaving four children orphans. Patrick's surname was the most common, unremarkable, common in Ireland about the same as in Russia - Ivanov or Sidorov: Kennedy.

The ancestor of those same Kennedys. Already one of the sons of the late cooper, Patrick Jr., rose quickly enough: seeing on the sad example of his father that you can’t make stone chambers with righteous labor, he bought a tavern in Boston. And taverns in the then USA did not just sell "fire water": the tavern was something like a club that covered many aspects of the life of the inhabitants of the surrounding neighborhoods - including politics. Patrick Jr., like many of his resourceful colleagues in the craft, became a political boss, by the age of thirty he was elected first to the House of Representatives, and then to the Massachusetts Senate. And off we go...

In the United States, mental illness has been on the rise at an alarming rate. The first American psychiatric hospital opened in Virginia in 1773. It had only 24 "beds," but for the first thirty years they were never filled at the same time. The second such clinic was opened only in 1816. But over the next thirty years, as many as twenty-two "psychiatric hospitals" appeared in the States ...

(In Europe, however, the same process was taking place - it is interesting that the explosive growth of schizophrenia in France fell precisely at the time of the revolution.

And yet, the number of patients in the United States was growing at a significant lag behind Europe. Religious people explain this by saying that Europe sank much faster into the most vulgar atheism, while America remained a country with unshaken religious foundations longer) (102).

In the United States, the most vigorous activity was developed by the newborn Republican Party, in the words of the American historian and poet Carl Sandburg, which was a strange sight: “Strange and contradictory elements gathered from all over the world and created a powerful party that combined youth, various programs, religious fanatics, homegrown philosophers and ambitious politicians" (149). And then he added: "Influential groups of industrialists, railway magnates and financiers have come to the conclusion that this is a promising party."

This is where the dog is buried ... Initially, the program of the Republican Party contained only three points:

2. Recognition of Kansas as a "free" state.

3. Construction of a transcontinental railway to the Pacific Ocean along the most direct and expedient route.

All three points (no matter how noble two of them looked) when implemented, promised huge benefits to the very “powerful groups” that Sandberg wrote about. Especially the third, according to which, according to American practice, adjacent lands were automatically transferred to the railroad magnates (and in addition large state subsidies, which were considered downright indecent to return to the treasury).

finalized headquarters, who planned, how to put it more delicately, "long-term operations" against the southerners, who, like the notorious dog in the manger, were sitting on enormous wealth that caused increased salivation among northern businessmen.

Now there was the Book, and the Martyr, and the Party. It remained to add guns and cannons to this.

Abraham Lincoln finally appears on the scene, who will need other, much less noble qualities. Big Politics is not much different from selling your soul to the devil. However, many American presidents carefully supported the "myth of the log cabin" - despite the bewilderment of their own relatives. The simple-hearted mother of one of these figures even tried to convince her son, who was overwhelmed by journalists: “But you know very well that this is not true. You know that you were born and raised in a very decent house.” However, the son continued to talk about the “miserable hut”, where he allegedly grew up: I wake up, they say, I’m in my parents’ hut, comb my hair out of poverty with a spruce knot, put on rags and wander into the thicket to catch squirrels and tear wild onions so as not to die of hunger ... Another mother , much more caustic, commented on her son's outpourings of a "hard and joyless childhood" briefly: "He imagines us so poor that you just want to pick up a hat and raise money for him."

National tradition such, in general. In my opinion, it was only John F. Kennedy who broke it, with a disarming smile, spreading his arms: well, yes, guys, it so happened that I am the son of a millionaire, what can I do if the card lay like that ... However, later Ronald Reagan again returned to the glorious tradition ...

But let's talk about Lincoln. Both American historiography and Soviet propaganda, for which President Lincoln was an undeniably positive hero, diligently portrayed the image of "the boy from the miserable hut." Harriet Beecher Stowe said: “Abraham Lincoln is a worker in the full sense of the word. He has all the qualities and abilities of the working class, and his position at the head of a powerful nation tells those who live by work that their time has come. In other words, every honest American hard worker, guys, can go to the presidency.

The figure for America, as they say, is a cult one, standing on a par with the "founding fathers" and George Washington. An outstanding, complex, devilishly ambiguous person, who managed to combine the most seemingly incompatible qualities in his person: at times - the noblest idealist, beautiful-hearted humanist and even romantic, at times - the most cynical, seasoned politician, strangler of democratic freedoms, dictator. The Americans are right: it was great man - only mediocrity is simple, like two pennies, unpretentious and unambiguous. Lincoln is different...

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