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"The world needed John Brown and John Brown came, and time will do him justice." Frederick Douglass (1886)

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Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Quote Note
Author Richard Boyer on John Brown


". . .my admiration for the old man grows the more I see and learn of him.  I do not think him a fanatic nor do I see him as a religious nut.  I think of him as representative of the best of his age and time who did a job that needed to be done.  I do not feel in the least patronizing towards the Old Man.  On the contrary he seems to me one of the very greatest of Americans, in some aspects greater even than Washington or Lincoln.  He acted almost alone and a little in advance of the events he helped to forward.  Washington and Lincoln were not alone and advanced on the crest of great popular movements.  And neither acted with such immediacy as Brown and one can't help but admire a man who hits out and acts while everyone is talking."

Source: Richard O. Boyer, Twin Falls, Idaho, to Boyd B. Stutler, Charleston, West Va., August 8, 1955, RP01-0276E-F, Boyd B. Stutler Papers, West Virginia State Archives.

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