*jimholstun commented on John Brown's Puritanical roots
<https://louisproyect.org/2020/11/28/john-browns-puritanical-roots/> *
When I discovered that Showtime had scheduled a series devoted to
John Brown, my first reaction was positive. With so much of …
Raul Peck, the brilliant Haitian director of LUMUMBA, I AM NOT YOUR
NEGRO, etc., was slated to film Russell Banks's great novel about Brown,
CLOUDSPLITTER, but it fell through. A goddamn shame.
Du Bois talks at great affectionate length about Brown's Puritan roots
in his magnificent biography.
For more on Puritanism, see the comments by that righteous carpetbagger,
Albion Tourgee, in his novel about Reconstruction, BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW
(1880)
"Accustomed to regard their race as peculiarly dependent upon the Divine
aid because of the lowly position they had so long occupied, they had
become habituated to associate political and religious interests. The
helplessness of servitude left no room for hope except through the
trustfulness of faith. The generation which saw slavery swept away, and
they who have heard the tale of deliverance from the lips of those who
had been slaves, will never cease to trace the hand of God visibly
manifested in the events culminating in liberty, or to regard the future
of the freed race as under the direct control of the Divine Being. For
this reason the political and religious interests and emotions of this
people are quite inseparable. Wherever they meet to worship, there they
will meet to consult of their plans, hopes, and progress, as at once a
distinct race and a part of the American people. Their religion is
tinged with political thought, and their political thought shaped by
religious conviction.
"In this respect the colored race in America are the true children of
the Covenanters and the Puritans. Their faith is of the same
unquestioning type, which no disappointment or delay can daunt, and
their view of personal duty and obligation in regard to it is not less
intense than that which led men to sing psalms and utter praises on
board the storm-bound "Mayflower." The most English of all English
attributes has, by a strange transmutation, become the leading element
in the character of the Africo American. The same mixed motive of
religious duty toward posterity and devotion to political liberty which
peopled the bleak hills of New England and the fertile lands of Canaan
with peoples fleeing from bondage and oppression, may yet cover the
North with dusky fugitives from the spirit and the situs of slavery."
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