“Our duty to the slave, I think, demands that we speedily appeal to the task master’s fear. Let us teach, urge, and encourage insurrections, and the South will soon abandon her haughty attitude of aggression…if we want to make good terms with Slave Power, let us bring it on its knees first! And there is but one way of doing that: by attacking it, where it is weakest—at home. The slave quarter is the Achilles’ heel of the South. Wound it there and it dies! One insurrection in Virginia, in 1832, did more for the emancipation cause, then all the teachings of the Revolutionary Fathers…I dismiss the argument that we have no right to encourage insurrections, the dreadful punishment of which, if unsuccessful, we are unwilling or do not propose to share, by replying that I am not unprepared to hazard the dangers of such a catastrophe, and the chances of speedy death or enduring victory with the revolutionary slaves.”
-James Redpath, Journalist, associate and biographer of John Brown
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