Unresolved History Concerning the Devil’s Disciples: The Secret Six and John Brown

Was the War of Northern Aggression instigated by plotters? The most effective form of censorship yet invented has been the censorship of silence. If what has come to predominately be called the American Civil War was, actually, the instigated result of a genuine and profound conspiracy, then the wanted accurate narrative, meaning the proper and correct historical interpretation, of that important conflict should, thus, significantly change.

This historically pivotal controversy should, moreover, be overtly put into the main forefront of any debate concerning that conflict, not almost always shunted aside for possible postgraduate- level studies or just cursory mentionings in some American history books.

Was There an American “Civil War”?

But, first, it needs to be known that what had actually occurred was not, in fact, a civil war; by correct definition, a civil war necessarily means that two or more parties to a national conflict want to win over and control a nation, meaning, of course, its government; however, it is easily known that the Confederate States of America had never wanted, at any time, to take over and control the entire USA.

It was then, in truth, a legitimate independence movement similar to what the North American colonies did when revolting against their legitimate government, meaning Great Britain, which logically had claimed the rights of sovereignty over the colonies; and, this important reality must be thoroughly and appropriately considered because denominating it as a “civil war” is clearly, distinctly, a true political misnomer. The official original annals of the Federal government of the USA, moreover, had called it the War of the Rebellion.

One ought to consider, furthermore, that it is well known, at least to certain historians and other interested people, that many of the Radical Abolitionists, especially, thus, those in the higher leadership positions of Abolitionism, cared absolutely nothing for the United States of America – if it ever stood in the way of eliminating forever the entire institution of slavery in this country.

Such an extremist attitude had significantly disastrous empirical consequences: war itself. Thus, this article is a definite and conscious exercise in revisionist history intended to greatly provoke people into thinking hard and long about what will be discussed. Thus, if no civil war genuinely ever occurred, then what, in fact, actually had happened?

Hellishness as History: Cui Bono?

But, what really ought to be even much more shocking is that there is no sustainable massive curiosity, on the part of historians of this era, to extensively look into the various and complex manifold tentacles of the interrelationships regarding the plot and its many (indirect?) adherents. Besides financial and industrial interests to consider, there certainly were logically associated connections to the so-called Underground Railroad and other such logical Abolitionist centers of interest. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglas, and others of the supposedly enlightened literati of that era had praised John Brown and so greatly admired him.

The famous song about his body, soon created after his execution, rapidly elevated him to messianic proportions; and, he has, moreover, many active admirers today who tremendously revere his so highly honored memory. Radical Abolitionism, increasingly, is now perceived as having been fairly representative of the movement, in general, as to its then best and proper exemplification qua true idealism. But, however, what may this mean?

The implications and ramifications, the major and minor consequences, involved ought to be quite astounding, if any intense investigation should be done; this is, among other matters, concerning why more than 600,000 soldiers had to die eventually to reciprocate for the titanic passions that were deliberately let loose by the Secret Six, Brown, and his followers.

Besides the mentioned prodigious number of deaths, the tremendous and substantial loss of wealth in North and South to pay the price for such a war should, logically speaking, provoke many fertile lines of continuing research both suitably and substantively paralleling the essential importance of such a truly monumental event in American history. But, unfortunately, this has not been the (needed) case.

As time has passed, there has been a rather noted decreasing amount of interest in properly pursuing the interconnections, interrelationships, etc. that did and must have existed, perhaps, as early as the 1820s – as per, e. g., the significant need for the Compromise of 1820. So later, America, in the 1860s, became and was ideologically prepared, apparently, to so be quite radicalized and revolutionized by the revolution-from-above conducted by Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans.

Judging by such an extreme perspective, therefore, John Brown, when set in proper context, was more of a real revolutionist than, e. g., was V. I. Lenin; and, thus, his followers were basically the equivalent, in their increasing socio-moral and ideological radicalism, to a true bunch of hardened Bolsheviks, though rarely, if ever, does this overtly gruesome reality get fairly depicted in any (standard) American history textbooks. Why not? Why the reluctance? Why this shockingly enormous gap in American history?

And, though about 95% of conspiracies in supposedly recorded history are, as a rule, no better than silly fairy tales as to their absurdity, the Secret Six organization and all the co-conspirators involved represent the valid exception to the general rule; they were, in fact, truly members of a genuinely real conspiracy that ought, at a minimum, not ever be rationally doubted.

The brief bibliography, to this present article, illustrates plainly the overt truth and, moreover, extremely numerous websites, available on the internet, do then further demonstrably so attest to what should be reasonably known and accepted, as to the definite conspiratorial nature of what had once, in fact, really existed in America.

The focus of what will be discussed, however, will not be on almost everything that has been so well covered elsewhere, inclusive of the chief conspirators: George Luther Stearns, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Theodore Parker. Franklin Sanborn, and Gerrit Smith.

Rather, important matters that are either never mentioned at all or rarely thought about or written about only, perhaps, just obliquely at best will be, thus, dealt with here forcefully.

Because the end is used to justify the evil means in the Machiavellian logic of the Radical Abolitionists, it is often not recalled that, in the spirit of Lenin saying that an omelet cannot be made without cracking eggs, the first person murdered during the Raid on Harpers Ferry was, of course, [no surprise!] a free Black man, Mr. Hayward Shepherd.

The truly defiant radicalism, absolutely intense extremism, of the demonically obsessed adherents of Radical Abolitionism usually gets discounted, excused, rationalized, or even normally ignored in terms of only or mainly concentrating upon the unmitigated evil of slavery.

So, what had occurred there at Harpers Ferry, in 1859, helped to fairly quickly provoke a rather titanic conflict, of course.  Nonetheless, viewing the War for Southern Independence, the War Between the States, also called the War of the Rebellion, War of Northern Aggression, War of the Southern Confederacy, Second American Revolution, etc., as, ultimately, the direct result of a nefarious plot, a truly real conspiracy, significantly changes all other interpretations; the gross mischaracterization, therefore, of that particular struggle as a supposed “civil war” then greatly distorts and corrupts the needed proper understanding.

The people of the South, therefore, were not supposedly paranoid in stating their belief that greatly malignant forces, in the North, were then definitely aligned in a very vigorous and quite extensive scheme; it was clearly aimed at fomenting and sustaining thoughts favoring secession as then the only possible way out of a national political crisis qua dilemma, which was favored by the conspiracy to, thus, cripple the South.

American politics had become too ideologized and radicalized such that no viable alternatives were left concerning how the Southern people could, thus, rationally and reasonably sustain themselves athwart the vileness and hatred, calumny and spite, so crescively directed against them and, thus, practically all of their social, cultural, economic, and other properly nationalist/ Confederate aspirations.

Or, perhaps, as the sagacious Richard M. Weaver had well expressed it best, it was the clash of the Law against the Prophets; the South possessed the Law in that, e. g., if mere colonies could have once freely seceded from their mother country and it still claiming its sovereignty over and against them all, then, by obvious logical extension, states could ever more so, by right, freely disassociate from their central government in terms of a free compact of sovereign states; but, the North had the Prophets (Brown, etc.) who then had trumped the mere Law.

And, as might always makes right, as according to the ancient Machiavellian doctrine, the issue was then settled forever, by full force of arms, in that the armed prophets, as Machiavelli had so expressed the interesting matter, usually had historically triumphed (as with, e. g., Mohammad), not so the unarmed ones.

Nonetheless, this is not to simplistically suggest that all virtue and saintliness was in the South or that all evil and injustice was, as axiomatically, set in the North; neither life nor history is, therefore, ever that simple a proposition; but, what still needs to get properly discussed are the fundamental issues of ultimate right versus ultimate wrong, not just painting all or almost all things in blandly sophistical, nuanced shades of only perpetual gray.

Examination of the Historical Record

Unfortunately, what gets put into the typical textbook simply stresses the historicism of reading backwards into American history by easily denouncing the vilely heinous slave power of the Confederacy, while so conveniently ignoring the plain fact that the USA was itself then a slave-holding nation for over 80 years, extremely much longer than the newly-organized Confederate States of America, of course. Some truly good history is, therefore, very needed here to better illuminate, expostulate upon, the required presented discussion.

Up to the 1840s, it was popularly thought that if any section of the country were to really break away, it would be New England, not the South; this might have occurred, as a result, e. g., of the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in that the New England states were then quite afraid of losing most of their national power and influence over the nation and, again, at the Hartford Convention, meaning especially if the War of 1812 (AKA Mr. Madison’s War) had not stopped when it did.

Many influential people, in the North and especially New England, hated intensely (to put it mildly) the Mexican-American War and its (for them) bad results, which they then attributed to Southern aggressiveness and related pro-slavery interests; they, thus, adamantly hoped to find various cunning and devious ways and means to sternly and, moreover, permanently punish the entire South in as viciously vindictive a way possible; it was a truly wild fanaticism with suitably hellish consequences.

There was in existence a real vendetta, a truly horrendously terrible, blood-lust grudge, to then demonically settle; the essential explanation, therefore, for what had so occurred is then validly covered by an ancient emotion of satanically exaggerated passion, dedicated perniciously, to seeking a rather definitive reprisal/retribution: revenge.

It is the reason why this maliciousness festered, like an infected wound that could only be healed by permanently cutting out the threat perceived in the body politic, through the quite determined conspiratorial provoking of war.

The above suggests strongly why it is necessary to avoid any forms of historicism and, instead, to logically concentrate on following the story of a country in a clear and chronological manner. Prior to the War of Northern Aggression, for instance, the doctrine of states’ rights was not thought of as peculiarly limited to the Southern states alone; it was notably invoked in Northern states in explicit terms of the, e. g., Personal Liberty Laws created on behalf of runaway slaves.

One, thus, needs to intelligently note that the larger point being critically advanced, however, is that the South was both deliberately and cunningly maneuvered into a very desperate political corner, by the above-noted and real conspiratorial forces, obviously and distinctly hostile to vital Southern interests.

It was not, therefore, at all coincidental or supposedly accidental or by mere odd, haphazard, chance that the horrific and intensive center of the rather nefarious scheme and its allied plotters all came from New England (NE).

The is not meant, of course, to just simplistically imply that it was only, merely, the Radical Abolitionists from NE who were involved; what is forcefully contended is that the primary focus of the substantial and substantive engineering, funding, intellectual power and support for disunion efforts, for the pressuring of the South toward secession, was of the confirmed nature of a conspiracy whose end was, thus, conveniently served by a war that the South could never really hope to win.

To illustrate and properly extrapolate by taking or citing an important empirical instance, cotton cultivation, e. g., in India ruined the contemporary chances of what had been once called King Cotton. Research has, in addition, substantially confirmed that it was just an illusion to ever expect any realizable foreign support for the Confederacy; France barely held on to Mexico; and, with the conclusion of the war, the victorious Union had pressured the French to, thus, fully withdraw all their support for Emperor Maximilian; the British, for their part, had no tremendously real desire to then start a manifestly pyrrhic fight with the USA, as France, of course, was still notably regarded as their most natural rival power needing to have its influence mainly checked.

At the time, the many significant advantages existing, for the Union were disproportionately in favor of the power of the Northern states in specific terms of population, industrial capacity, railroad infrastructure, etc.

It is inconceivable, in such a context, that the majority of the Secret Six and their largely covert cohorts had, therefore, simply lost all or most influence over the important course of national affairs; after all, e. g., the Reconstruction Era in the South, after the horrific war, was further deserved punishment, righteous chastisement, from the heated point of view of the radical cabal.

Why the Basic Historical Silence?

Thus, the traditional historical narrative, usually given in the official or standard history texts does not ring true, to say the least; and, consequently, many deliberate and, perhaps, some unconscious lies are presented as being the simply objective facts as to what had really occurred from the 1820s to at least the 1870s.

One of the logical reasons, of course, is that the victors of a conflict usually tend to write the predominant number of history books, not the losers. In addition, one would not gain any advancement, in the highly Leftist American historical profession, by decisively painting many historical personages in harsh colors as being much less than altruistic, less than genuinely noble, less than fully idealistic, etc.

Another reason, which has often been advanced, is that what has been rightly called the Anglo-Saxon mind generally or regularly scoffs at and is appalled by any conspiracy theories as, thus, being just strange, nonsensical, or Latin-European-Continental mind creations simply too foreign and beneath contempt to the presumably superior intellects of the Anglo-Saxons.

Yet another cause why the revisionist history presented here will be rejected has to do with the availing need for the descendants and institutions, historically and personally connected to the conspirators and co-conspirators especially, to suppress the truth through a continuing, needed coverup of the inconvenient facts, activities, etc.; it is the censorship of silence by omitting to mention matters thought best left unsaid so that no related discussions could occur questioning the official teachings pertaining to the normally accepted causes and consequences of the war.

Reputations, both historical and contemporary, would, at the least, be very seriously harmed; institutions, from that era and those that consequently had developed, and their then assumed (noble/valuable) intentions would be so gravely questioned to the profound detriment of those people involved, not just simply the institutions alone.

In short, way too many assumed vital American interests are clearly at stake and, thus, the disgusting enormity of the brutal truth (a conspiracy dedicated to exacting truly enormous revenge) must be carefully and deliberately, consciously and forcefully, suppressed forever.

It is almost impossible to pick up history books and, moreover, certainly not textbooks dedicated to an objective examination of the true centrality of the conspiracy to provoke a devastating war upon American soil, which had then naturally greatly profited the political, economic, industrial, commercial, immigration, and other obviously important interests of the Union; such success had, therefore, inclusively benefited New England as well.

Of course, those who do defiantly raise any such major objections are usually denounced and quickly dismissed, vilely marginalized, by the academic establishment as being just so-called neo-Confederates intent on figuratively (read: ignorantly) re-fighting the lost war by “winning” in only argumentative terms of biased reference.

But, this is purely ad hominem attack, not the truly valid and proper use of appropriately historical, reasoned, and genuinely fair means of argumentation, discussion, and dialogue. It is an often crude way of conveniently dismissing criticism by ignoring or discounting it in terms of just verbally discrediting any suggestion of a valid alternative view.

This non-scholarly way, forever, closes off any dissension and disagreement; this is done by excluding, axiomatically, any thinking/writing that is considered heterodox versus the pro-Union interpretation (orthodoxy) that just denies, meaning instantly ridicules, any conspiracy theory whatsoever.

And so, the pious and contemptuous censorship of silence fully demonstrates its significant and ongoing effectiveness to a certainly maximum degree of empirical efficiency. Thus, in sociology, there is the highly valuable distinction between what is said to be latent (covert, hidden, or not openly expressed) versus that which is manifest (overt, open, or explicitly stated).

The broadly idealistic, manifest expression is, historically, well seen in the overall emancipation movement properly centered around Abolitionism, of course; but, on the other hand, the ugly, latent, and harsh reality substantially unexpressed was the rather dominant passionate need for getting at an enormous revenge direct so venomously against the Southerners.

Conclusion

What is vitally needed, therefore, is an ongoing historical research project to more thoroughly investigate what had happened, who were the people involved, what did they do and with whom did they interact pertaining to the larger conspiracy set well beyond the Secret Six, John Brown, and his more immediate cohorts. Will this ever be done?

At a basic minimum, however, it can be quite realistically said and without fear of contradiction: Not likely. The both pertinent and convincing reasons were given above, of course. And yet, until such a national heritage narrative project comes fully into needed existence, the full legacy of the Secret Six, John Brown, and many others, as it directly relates to both what happened and still now continuing into the present day, will remain a highly critical instance of substantially unresolved (really, thus, unacknowledged) American history.

Bibliography

H. W. Crocker III, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War.

Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War.

Kevin R. C. Gutzman, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.

Clint Johnson, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South.

Edward Renehan, Jr., The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown.

Jeffery Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, the Secret Six, and a Theory of Slave Violence.

Otto J. Scott, The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., 33 Questions about American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask.