Chapter 264
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On Thursday October 18th Eve was at the basement of Jenkins' church. The refugees now numbered more than thirty. One of them handed Eve a pamplet, asked her to hand these out to her friends. Eve decided to read it first. It was a tribute to John Brown. Eve remembered learning about this man in history class. He was a revolutionary abolitionist in the 1850s. Brown led a poorly planned mutiny on Harper's Ferry, attempting to inspire a slave rebellion. This failed, almost everyone in Brown's army was killed. John Brown himself was executed in December 1859.
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"'Did John Brown fail? John Brown started the war that ended slavery in this country. He helped make this a truley free nation.' These were the words of Frederick Douglas, the ancestor of our first president. John Brown gave his life to end slavery. Although Abraham Lincoln initially denounced John Brown's methods, lincoln would eventually end slavery with much more greater bloodshed. Brown knew that the crimes of this guilty land could not be ended except through violence. His only mistake was in vainly thinking he could do it himself without too much bloodshed. Were John Brown alive today, he would again give his life in defiance of today's evils. Chemical weapons, genocide, concentration camps, even the return of slavery. Only you can decide for yourself how much you're willing to sacrifice. Decide if the evils in society is worth the potential bloodshed."
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Eve decided not to take the John Brown pamplet. It didn't expressely support armed insurrection, merely praised a historical figure, and was making their best guess as to what he'd to today, were he alive. But she didn't want to have to explain to the sector police why she had it. Eve also thought about some of the charges in the leaflet. Slavery, there were rumors of desperate refugees forced into labor, even sexual acts, by unscrupulous, armed individuals. There was probably some truth to these. Wealthy individuals and politicians who openly "owned" these people. General Gardner was believed to have a few unwilling participants at his estate. Eve saw Gardner in the news with Ms Wynter, a business associate or Mr Dole. When Dole began funding militias Wynter informed on him and turned her assets over to the loyalist army to win the war. Now it seems she was Gardner's mistress, one of them anyway. As for the charge of concentration camps, when Eve thought about this, the Brooklyn sector was a concentration camp. People forced here, rounded up because of their political beliefs and/or their ethnicity, forced to perform labor for the state. That was the definition of concentration camp.