An American Spartacus

Recently, a senator claimed he was having his Spartacus moment, indicating that he was going to the mat for some principle, risking being expelled from the Senate because of his unruly behavior.  That was hardly the case.  It turned out to be quite a joke on this “brave” politician, as the supposed confidential information he said he was revealing at his own risk had already been approved to be released.  Hardly Spartacus; more like unintentional, egg-in-your-face comedy.

But there has been a true American Spartacus in our history, even though he himself was not a slave nor a black man.  His name was John Brown, an abolitionist but with a puritanical, visceral hatred of that “peculiar institution,” American slavery.

Financed by a cabal called the “Secret Six,” a small group of well-off abolitionists in New England, John Brown went about acquiring 950 pikes and 198 Sharps Rifles for a planned…