His Soul is Marching On to Another World; or, the John Brown Isekai

54th of Summer, 5859

Azdavay, County of Casamonu

"Phew, that was really bloody tiring." Watanabe sat on a sofa in the office of the former mayor. He quickly threw away the "chestplate" (a round metal plate next to his heart secured there by some leather straps) which had heated up greatly under the sun such that he felt like there was a hot cooking pan strapped on his chest. The "chestplate" clanged loudly as it was set aside; it seemed especially loud as the room was empty aside from famous radical abolitionist and soap manufacturer John Brown.

Brown jolted up from hearing the loud noise. He took a deep sigh of relief upon realizing that there was no immediate threat to his life. "Young man, please do be careful with causing a disturbance." Watanabe bowed down in apology and muttered a "sorry" in English. Brown switched to speaking in English upon hearing his mother tongue. "Every Oriental I've come across seems to know the English language.”

Watanabe continued conversing in English as well. Despite somehow knowing the language of Gemeinplatz near perfectly, it still felt unnatural for him to use. The same was true for Brown. Perfectly speaking a language that should be perfectly alien to them felt odd, Watanabe likened this feeling to having his brain preprogrammed to make a perfect recreation of a classical painting without having any training in art. That was about the closest he could get with his lackluster understanding of literature (outside of isekai) and metaphors. “Hmm? Almost everyone on Earth knows English. I’ve seen it since the first year of elementary school. I imagine it’s similar for everyone else you’ve met.” Even English, a language he used mostly to browse online, felt more natural to speak. Watanabe had an odd way of speaking, with a passable Cockney accent (thanks to his high school English teacher being an immigrant from London) that sometimes revealed uniquely Japanese restrictions in its phonotactics.

“How interesting. How interesting…” Brown nodded a few times before returning to scribbling on a piece of paper he had on the desk.

“What are you writing, captain?” asked Watanabe, who had nothing better to do at the moment.

“A provisional constitution. I didn’t have time to prepare any due to lacking writing supplies back in Libertycave.” replied Brown casually, as if the act of preparing a constitution was as mundane as taking a walk in the morning. “Right now this town is in a lawless state, nor do we have any legitimacy to rule in the eyes of the people, and we have already had more than a few instances of people committing arson and theft. Apparently the mayor would hear such cases, along with collecting taxes and levies and…” The old man felt his head ache thinking about all this again. “For now, I plan on letting the old system of having an elected mayor and town hall continue as is with an extended franchise.”

“Uh… ‘Franchise’?” To Watanabe, that word was something related to business and not voting.

“Suffrage, the right to vote, it all means the same thing. Ideally we’ll have universal suffrage, along with a congress, a supreme court, and a president.” These were all things that Brown and his company back in the United States had planned for, so he was mostly going off of the Provisional Constitution he had written back then.

The basics weren’t making Brown’s head ache, he was rather worrying about the fact that he was dealing with a completely different political situation. Back in the United States, he had planned for his uprising to be provisional, something to be ended once the federal government banned slavery. Thus the Provisional Constitution was fit for a group of fugitives hiding and fighting in the Appalachian Mountains, a group not intending to build a state.

However, as he had thought of many times before, Gemeinplatz was a completely different beast. Brown didn’t want to get a feudal monarchy to end chattel slavery and be done with it. That just wouldn’t be right, to let there be lords other than the Lord, which was why Brown had switched his strategy and taken a town rather than staying up in Mount Curry. The seemingly obvious answer was to bring democracy to Gemeinplatz, but that came with major problems. First was the fact that the slaves were a minority compared to the rest of Gemeinplatz, which meant that they’d easily get outvoted if anyone decided on re-enslaving them, not to mention rolling back anything resembling racial equality. Second was the fact that Gemeinplatz lacked the infrastructure for democracy in the first place. Just saying “vote for someone!” wasn’t going to work out if there was nothing to stop fraud, bribery, cheating… Both issues needed a transitionary period to fix, which was why Brown was making what was only to be a provisional constitution. As for what was in it, “Be patient, young man. You’ll hear of its contents soon enough.”

“Alright, captain.” Watanabe himself felt sleepy. He wasn’t a public speaker, having had to practice for weeks on the speech he gave beforehand, and standing in front of a crowd to play the role of a hero had tired him. He sunk into the sofa, and closed his eyes…

Shinasi was making rounds around Azdavay, doing his duty as a watchman once more. The palisades comprising the town’s defensive walls were much easier to navigate compared to the mountainous terrain of Mount Curry, and Shinasi had made 23 (or 24, he had likely lost count of it at some point) full trips around the raised platform behind the palisades.

He occasionally passed by the solders of the League of Gileadites who saluted him every time he passed. Not that he outranked them, there still wasn’t actually a formal military ranking system other than Brown and Ayomide being “captain” and Tubman being “general”, but he had gathered respect due to his help in the slave uprising at Azdavay. Not that he had done that much with his last-minute help back then, but his veterancy had led to positive rumors about him popping up. “Captain Shinasi” was equally a captain as his counterparts by this point.

Other than the occasional town resident coming to protest them with insults, which Brown had explicitly instructed everyone in the League of Gileadites not to enact unjust punishment against the common people much to the mild annoyance of the soldiery, things were peaceful for now. Anyone who had the power to stop them also dabbled in slavery, which had meant that everyone who had the power to stop them had been hanged yesterday. Shinasi was curious as to what Brown and Tubman were planning on doing next, surely they were not intending to stay idle in this town, but Brown loved to only divulge details of his plans at the last moment only to those who really needed to know said details, and Tubman respected that enough not to leak much.

Shinasi was about to complete his 24th (or 26th?) round around the palisades when he stopped next to a gate upon seeing a group approaching. They were clearly not enemy soldiers considering they had children with them, nor did most of them carry weapons. Rather it was a caravan of people in a rather sorry state, with dirty clothes and tired eyes, who clearly had come travelling here in a rush. There were clearly some nobles among them along with their slaves, but they were all in various states of tired.

“Who are you?” called out Shinasi from his high position.

A well-dressed bloke came forward to reply to Shinasi. “We’re refugees from Casamonu! Please let us in, good sir!” His plea was echoed by many in the group with similar words.

Shinasi remembered something about there being a siege in Casamonu; it made sense that there would be refugees after whatever had happened there. There seemed to be no problem letting them in for now. “Let them in.” he said to a pair of soldiers standing next to the gate. They obliged and opened the door, much to the surprise of the refugees who saw the skin color of the gate’s guards.

“H-huh… Since when did they allow darkskins to be guards?” muttered one befuddled refugee who was the well-dressed bloke from before. “I need to see your manager, this isn’t good for the security of the town!” he complained to Shinasi.

“Oh, them?” Shinasi looked at his comrades-in-arms standing beside him, then he looked at the chained slaves in the caravan and had an idea. “Don’t worry, the mayor needed to cut some costs. It’s a temporary thing. As for your darkskins, could they line up next to their owners? The mayor has a new system to better compensate anyone whose slave escapes, so we need to register them to their owners, otherwise we cannot let you in. The rest of you can go in.”

Desperate and with no other choice, the nobles lined up next to their slaves while the commoners proceeded into the town. After making sure there was no one around, Shinasi talked to the nobles once more. “So, you’re all slaveowners? Glad that we got that out of the way. All your slaves are now free, and you’re all under arrest for theft.”