Alan Paton Quotes
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?
Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948, p. 98.
John Brown, in a futile effort to start a slave insurrection, raided the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. His raid failed and he was captured and hanged. However, he became a martyr to the abolitionist movement, and his death is still sung of gloriously to this day. See {584889} and {604003}.
Unfortunately, his close successors did not share Alexander’s surprisingly modern view.
His comment was particularly critical since he had been an early supporter of the military takeover of the government. See {595250}.
The Abenaki Indians from Canada had come South and raided many of the settlements of upstate New York. In the process, they committed many atrocities killing civilian men, women and children. Amhurst ordered Robert Rogers and his rangers to attack the Abenaki home villiage in Canada on a famous punitive raid. The Rangers, did indeed, raid the Abenaki and wiped out all the males of the tribe that were in the camp at the time. Amhurst hated Indians, but still had his standards regarding the killing of women and children, but was perfectly willing to kill all the mature males. There were no Geneva Conventions at the time. The same general introduced biological warfare by giving Indians smallpox infected blankets. See {619646}
Alan Stewart Paton was a South African author and anti-apartheid activist.
