Wednesday September 23rd 7:00 PM

The Powderkeg

and

The Spark

Abolitionist Agitation and John Brown's Raid

A lecture with James Generic

@
Wooden Shoe Books
508 s. 5th Street
Philadelphia PA 19147
www.woodenshoebooks.com
sabot@woodenshoebooks.com
215-413-0999

Suggested Donation of $5 to cover Wooden Shoe's moving costs!

John Brown has been derided as a mad-man who helped start the American Civil War, which killed half a million people and uprooted American society as the industrial North fueled by cheap immigrant labor beat the sem-feudal plantation South run by racial chattel slavery from 1861-1865. He has been depicted as half-brained for thinking that he could start a slave-revolt which would create a Black republic in the mountains of Appalachia.

Or was he so crazy?

John Brown fed off of the anti-slavery activism of nearly 50 years of Abolitionist agitation. By 1859, the Southern planter-class society was totally on edge about the possibility of abolitionist attacks against the racial order of the South. John Brown knew this. He was a spark to the powder-keg, which, as his stated goal was, ended legal slavery in the United States.

Please join us for a lecture on John Brown and his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers' Ferry, the Abolitionist Agitation, and the response of the ruling classes of the South.

James Generic is a history enthusiast and long-time staffer at the Wooden Shoe Books collective