I came across John Brown's speech at his sentencing. His main
point is that he never intended any violence but only the covert aiding of
slaves. What was his account of how the dead died I wonder. He also praised the proceedings and the witnesses against him who "for the most part" spoke honestly and truthfully. But he repeated the claim never to have intended the violence and deaths or that he ever called for a slave uprising or for anyone to follow him, for that matter.
I read aloud Kennedy's inaugural speech (it was one of the
options for training Dragon Naturally Speaking to recognize my way of speaking,) and can only say WOW. I don't dismiss as "boob bait for bubba" his
rejection of the idea that rights come from the State and his invocation of God
as the source of our rights. He was, after all, our first Catholic President. The WASPs and the Catholics agreed on the transcendent, so both could preach that old time American religion of individual rights. It wasn't just Kennedy's anti-Communism, though that is there in the speech too. Kennedy says the idea is the very essence of this country; in modern parlance, that idea is what makes us who we are. It is our identity insofar as we are Americans. And just as in Lincoln's day, we dedicate ourselves to the protection and furtherance of the idea of freedom.
I learned from an excellent lecturer that the Republican Party was formed on one major goal and mission, which united enough groups and factions to form a truly National Party after the collapse of the Whigs which split apart over the issue of slavery on geographical lines, with the Southern Whigs going one way and the Northern Whigs another. The modern Republican Party was founded to support the one mission that could unite a large number in the north: that slavery must not be allowed in the new territories acquired by conquest from Mexico. I wish the Republicans would return to their founding mission: "No further expansion of slavery" and invite a debate about what that would mean nowadays.