John Brown's body of literature

Since everyone's talking about some body in the grave, here's Mark Tapscott. Tapscott in the 1970s hoped to be an authority on the topic; both he and Brown are/were Republicans, after all. Tapscott says he'd done a few draughts before slipping out of college into partisan politics and whatever-it-is he's doing now.

Tapscott's contribution is that he uncovers that John Brown actually had a political programme of his own beyond 1856 Frémont north-state freesoilism. It's little known, but the North abolitionists under William Garrison considered the US Constitution a "pact with Hell". From the abolitionist faction, against Frémont (who'd lost, so'd slithered away), Brown in 1858 cooked up a "Chatham Convention". Brown would be a Commander In Chief, a stronger Executive. The Confederate Constitution, on the funhouse side, had more states' rights, excepting slavery which was close to a Honduran forever-clause.

Brown also had an immanent blood-atonement theology, around Hebrews 9:22, to read same as a Mormon or Gazurtoid should read it. We who appreciate René Girard read this passage rather differently.

Brown hoped for a Mutazilite Caliphate against the South's Hanbalite Caliphate, we might say. I think Brown at least kept the judiciary apart like the Deuteronomist proposed, so wasn't quite abolishing ol' Montesquieu. Tapscott would argue this judiciary would be toothless.

That said: AI is holding Tapscott up to task. Brown presented his document as provisional, and may have meant it; a true Garrison might not do so. We would call it a wartime-constitution. If Brown was going to rule Southern States, would he expect to rule them long? I doubt Brown expected to live that long. He assuredly thought he could submit his crown to the Union having won the Civil War for them, after wringing some concessions, like the 13th Amendment we actually got. I mean, Lord-Protector Brown was going to be dealing with a majority-Republican North. We can compare the 1830s negotiations between the Texian Republic and the earlier Union.

Brown was, nonetheless, living a delusion. This is certainly a take Tapscott could have taken. He's turned into a lazy thinker and it's quite possible he had constructed a lazily-founded thesis. Probably why the college didn't let it through the door.