What if John Brown died in Kansas

There isn't an interesting foot note in Robert E. Lee's biography that says he captured the leading abolitionist before the war started.
 
Probably Civil War tensions a lot lowered. Someone once said, "The Civil War started not at Fort Sumter, but at Haprer's Frerry."
 
That depends on if the Civil War still breaks out or not and the number of troops involved. You could see a Civil War still break out but with less backing in the South of the lower classes. This could hurt them badly.
 
There would have been different words the the song that was purloined to become the Battle Hymn of the American Republic. One source has it that the song was initially about a Union Army Sergeant. Apart from that probably little else with the main effect being on John Brown and his place in history.

Effectively he was a terrorist like his pre-war opponent Quantrell. Fredrick Douglas tried to talk him out of it, few slaves rose in support because they were aware of the fate of slaves in failed insurrections. Slavery was not abolished by individual acts of terror but a mass campaign. Frederick Douglass realised that and lobied effectively behind the scenes to raise the first African American regiment in the US army. This played an important role in ensuring Lincoln did not renege on abolition to get relected
 
I doubt this really prevents the war. Tensions were already at a boiling point, as witnessed by Bleeding Kansas. That was a full-fledged guerilla war with acts of murder and terrorism by extremists on both sides.

Without Brown there may not be such a central figure of controversy (Beecher instead?), but there were more than enough Copperheads and Fire Eaters to keep tensions dialed up to 11.

I also think Lee still makes a name for himself despite no Harper's Ferry notoriety. Maybe he starts at a lower level, say Brigade.
 
A big question is how much worse will it be for Confederate recruitment. There was a lot of propeganda down south that Yankees were going to arm all the slaves and have them rape and pillage the countryside. A lot of that was do to John Brown. Without that I don't think they get quite as many recruits. This could hurt them early.
 
I have to wonder how removing John Brown affects the slavery debate, and not just in the usual manner. John Brown's actions marked a major turning point in the conflict because, in the minds of many northerners, it was no longer quite so extreme to openly advocate the abolition of slavery. removing him removes a rallying figure for the national abolitionist movement.
 
I doubt this really prevents the war. Tensions were already at a boiling point, as witnessed by Bleeding Kansas. That was a full-fledged guerilla war with acts of murder and terrorism by extremists on both sides.

Without Brown there may not be such a central figure of controversy (Beecher instead?), but there were more than enough Copperheads and Fire Eaters to keep tensions dialed up to 11.

I think you are underestimating the impact of John Brown on the coming of the war. The Fire Eaters had been around for decades. They had never been able to convince a majority of the voting public in the South that the danger of remaining in the Union was such that secession was absolutely necessary.

And tensions between the North and the South had been "dialed up to 11" for decades as well. There had even been a major secession crisis in 1850, which had fizzled out because the Southern voting public could not be convinced that leaving the Union was necessary. There were quite a few Southern politicians who had originally been secessionists...Herschel V. Johnson (Stephen Douglas's running mate in 1860) among them...who became convinced, after the failure to achieve secession in 1850, that the Southern people would NEVER vote for secession, which shows just how much of a major defeat the secessionist Fire Eaters suffered in 1850.

And then, all of a sudden, in 1860, the Fire Eaters are successful...to the surprise and dismay of a great many people (some of whom became leaders in the Confederacy while the Fire Eaters were left out in the political wilderness), the South seceded. The reasons why that happened have everything to do with the mind of the South and the psyche of the Southern people at the time.

One of the favorite arguments of the Fire Eaters in trying to get the Southern voting public to support secession was that the radical Northern abolitionists would support slave uprisings in the South. It was a highly effective argument, since fear of slave uprisings was a major factor in the Southern psyche. But there was one problem...it had never happened. Yes, the abolitionists had sent printed tracts into the South to encourage slaves to escape. Yes they had set up an Underground Railroad to aid escaped slaves. Yes, they interfered with the recapture of slaves who had escaped to the North. But for the vast majority of white Southerners who did not own slaves, these were not immediate threats.

Then, in October 1859...just over a year before the 1860 Presidential Election...the worst fears of the White South seemed to be on the verge of coming true. Radical Northern Abolitionists had...just as the Fire Eaters had been predicting for years and years...come into the South and attempted to foment a slave rebellion. And the scope of John Brown's plans, as they came to light, were truly frightening. He wasn't planning a mere local rebellion. He intended that the slaves rise up all over the South, which would have meant huge loss of life among Southern whites, whether they owned slaves or not (slave rebels in previous rebellions had not been particular as to which whites they killed).

This fear, in turn, hardened Southern attitudes and produced extremist demands at the 1860 Democratic Convention which led to the breakup of the Democratic Party, further polarized Northern public opinion, and produced the election of Lincoln, and with it, secession and war.

The events which produced war in 1861 are a tapestry of many threads. John Brown is a major thread binding many others together. Remove that thread, and the tapestry unravels. Kill John Brown in Kansas, and you likely do not have a Civil War in 1861.

I also think Lee still makes a name for himself despite no Harper's Ferry notoriety. Maybe he starts at a lower level, say Brigade.

Well, in the unlikely event that was still comes in 1861, the fact that Lee would have not had the Harpers Ferry experience would have had little to no impact on his rank in the war. Lee was still a very well-thought-of and high-ranking officer in the U.S. army before the war. It was widely known that he was thought of as Winfield Scott's likely successor as Commanding General of the U.S. Army (Scott was grooming him for that). He would still have been among the first men selected for Full General's rank in the Confederate army.
 
I have to wonder how removing John Brown affects the slavery debate, and not just in the usual manner. John Brown's actions marked a major turning point in the conflict because, in the minds of many northerners, it was no longer quite so extreme to openly advocate the abolition of slavery. removing him removes a rallying figure for the national abolitionist movement.

Actually it did the opposite. It made abolitionists look like violent radicals. This did not help them up north.
 
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