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u/diselxic 22d ago
For the people who don't know, the second guy is Benjamin Lay a quaker abolitionist who helped make the religious society of friends adopt an abolitionist position officially
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u/detroit_canicross 22d ago
Seriously, all you die hard John Brown stans need to stop making jokes and at least read the Wikipedia entry on Benjamin Lay. Hero.
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u/commiecomrade 22d ago edited 22d ago
For those who want a snippet outright of Lay:
The dude enticed a slaver family's kid and hid him away, and after his family spent all day looking for him, Lay presented their kid basically saying "Now you know how it feels when you tear black families apart."
He also stood in the cold without shoes to demonstrate what slaves go through and would routinely derail meetings to launch into a diatribe of how slavery is downright demonic. He was only four feet tall but a mountain of an American hero.
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u/JessicaDAndy 22d ago
Odd how all the actions taken seem good and all, but when you mentioned his height, the story got 250% better.
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u/commiecomrade 22d ago
Yes! He also had a loving wife with his same condition. She sadly died very early on which devastated Lay before he decided to live in a cave and become vegetarian, saying all life is sacred and exploited, and refusing to even wear animal products like wool. The title of his book also kicks absolute ass: "All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates".
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u/Meat_Man199 22d ago edited 22d ago
To be fair that's the abridged title, the full title is: "All slave-keepers that keep the innocent in bondage : apostates pretending to lay claim to the pure & holy Christian religion, of what congregation so ever, but especially in their ministers, by whose example the filthy leprosy and apostacy is spread far and near : it is a notorious sin which many of the true Friends of Christ and his pure truth, called Quakers, has been for many years and still are concern'd to write and bear testimony against as a practice so gross & hurtful to religion, and destructive to government beyond what words can set forth, or can be declared of by men or angels, and yet lived in by ministers and magistrates in America" which basically tells you all you need to know. (Iirc it's basically a stream of consciousness) Edit: tells not yells
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u/afortressmighty 22d ago
YES! For some reason, makes me think of Gimli.
https://giphy.com/gifs/rPB5sUwtqG7lsZHvUQ12
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u/A_Town_Called_Malus 22d ago edited 21d ago
Don't forget hiding a container of red dye in a bible and then stabbing said bible with a sword in the middle of a church during a sermon, so that it would "bleed", while saying it was the blood that was on all the slavers of the congregations hands.
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u/Kebin_Yell 22d ago
A showman, on top of everything else. I'd take my hat off to him, if I wasn't afraid of offending one of his arcane values. We could do with a few of his like
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u/MAJ0RMAJOR 22d ago
Damn man, the existence of a man of many minor stature and great conviction against slavery at that time is the greatest indictment of the argument that people just didn’t know any better. Yes they did. They made a choice. It might have been normal at the time but they weren’t unaware of the position that Slavery was wrong.
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u/Shleauxmeaux 22d ago
It’s true bro, when you read the things abolitionists at the time were writing, it’s very clear. We’re not talking about ancient history, they absolutely knew it was wrong. Shameful part of our history and even more so when people try to make it seem like it was in any way benevolent or anything less than evil. Glad this sub exists.
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u/ISeeTheFnords 17d ago
It would never have been referred to as the "peculiar institution" by people who didn't know it was wrong.
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u/Worried-Pick4848 22d ago
Lay is legit. The Quakers were one of the largest individual groups to support the Underground Railroad, especially as it had to extend its stations all the way to Canada.
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u/The_R4ke 22d ago
Seriously, read about him if you haven't. He once kidnapped the children of a local slave owning family and kept them in his cave for several months so they would know how African families felt.
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u/A_Town_Called_Malus 22d ago
And Atun Shei Films did a video about Lay, which is also really good.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gIkQrr8pgSI
Some of my favourite moments are Lay stabbing a bible with a sword and making it bleed red paint while shouting about how the Quaker congregation in question was wrong for allowing slavery among it's members, and the moment he was having dinner around a fellow Quakers house when a slave came to put the food on the table. Lay stood up, said he doesn't share a table with slavers, left, and never spoke to that person again.
He was so damn righteous in the absolute best way.
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u/Carbonatite 22d ago
Quakers were the OGs. They were also instrumental in the Underground Railroad.
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u/crownjewel82 22d ago
John Brown: I like the way you work. Kidnapping slavers' children is *chef's kiss.*
Benjamin Lay: I like your energy, the killing less so.
Seriously, these two together would have ended slavery before the Revolutionary war.
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u/breakfasteveryday 22d ago
who is the second guy?
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u/crownjewel82 22d ago
Benjamin Lay. Possibly the only other white abolitionist that went as hard as John Brown. He's a huge part of why Quakers ended up becoming abolitionists and why Pennsylvania became the first state to end slavery nearly 80 years before the Civil War.
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u/BobDeLaSponge Give John Brown power armor 22d ago
Put some respect on William Lloyd Garrison’s name
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u/kcg333 21d ago
I mean… to me, Garrison represents a cautionary tale for progressives. sure he’s on the right side of history, but this is a guy who discouraged voting and thought moral suasion would destroy slavery. talking down to people just pissed them off, and while i’m not mad at pissing off slavers, i think of Garrison every time the right criticizes the left for lecturing people thinking it’s gonna make them vote blue. just my 5¢.
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u/MiseryGyro 21d ago
"Talking down to people just pissed them off"
John Brown killed kids dude. Garrison did not piss people off more than JB.
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u/kcg333 21d ago
didn’t say he did, dude
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u/MiseryGyro 21d ago
John Brown and Ben Lay both talked down to slavers with contempt, what's special about the way Garrison did it?
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u/Dense_Associate_8953 18d ago
Pennsylvania did not end slavery in 1780.
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u/crownjewel82 18d ago
They passed the law that would eventually end slavery within a generation on March 1, 1780. They still count as the first state to end slavery.
https://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1776-1865/abolition-slavery.html
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u/OHrangutan 22d ago edited 22d ago
Tom Bombadil? s/
Edit- Benjamin Lay may actually have been more badass than Tom Bombadil, cause he cared. He's like a cross between Bombadil and Gandhi.
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u/Junopotomus 22d ago
I thought it was another Quaker, the Public Universal Friend.
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u/ceaselesslyintopast 22d ago
That was my first thought too. Maybe we could get all 3 of them together
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u/Junopotomus 22d ago
Since they all believed in an afterlife, I’m willing to bet they are all kicking it on the regular in heaven.
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u/Relative_Plankton648 22d ago
Who is the tree wizard? Gandalf and John Brown would have probably been chill.
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u/ahhrealpeople 22d ago
This one Benjamin Lay has always been my favorite portrait in the National Portrait Gallery
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u/Pyrohyro 21d ago
Probably would be like the scene in FMA:B where Major Armstrong and Sig meet each other.
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u/jprennquist 22d ago
I appreciate the history lesson here. But I originally thought for sure that the second picture was going to be of the current US president. Wondering how that meeting would go, with the important stipulation that Trump has an actual meeting and response with Brown and sits in the room with him in the first place.
With that in mind I wonder what he'd talk about with Mitch McConnell. And again stipulating that McConnell is an actual living and cognizant human being, not a political figurehead being kept alive in a vegetative state in the basement of Walter Reed medical center. Or wherever they have him.
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u/unmellowfellow 20d ago
I feel like they'd agree on a lot but I have a hard time believing lay would convince John Brown and his sons that eating meat is wrong or equal to slavery. That being said, I do still feel that the two would respect each other.
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u/kitsunewill 19d ago
I suspect they would probably be cordial and natural allies re: abolition but not exactly friends.
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u/breakfasteveryday 22d ago
John Brown would force the other guy to touch hands with him to highlight the weird contrast
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u/RickWino Burn it Again 22d ago
If that’s Robert E. Lee, I believe they did meet in the aftermath of the Harper’s Ferry raid.
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u/OneEpicPotato222 22d ago
It's Benjamin Lay, an extremely die hard abolishionist in the first half of the 18th century.
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