John Brown: Spark of the Civil War

535 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: impacts of slavery in america

In the years of my life, I’ve been known by multiple other names, Nelson Hawkins, Isaac Smith, Old Osawatomie Brown, Old Man Brown, Captain Brown, but largely by my own. I am John Brown. You can call me a “radical abolitionist”, for my dedication to ending slavery. Others call me persistent. I have never been one to quit, I’ve reached as far as possible to make my goals happen. My most famous words were my last; “I, JOhn Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land, will never be purged away, but with blood. I had now as I think; vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.” It means that our country, America, has seen sin and won’t ever fully recover on its own, but with war, the wrongs of slavery will soon fade. We will see peace as a country, but it may take sacrifice.
I was born on May 9th of the year 1800. My family lived in Torrington, CT, but soon after, relocated to Ohio, where I spent my young life. My early ancestors sailed to the Americas in the 1600’s on the Mayflower. A lot of things scarred me early in my childhood. Onc...

Show More
Related

  • Tony Horwitz Midnight Rising Sparknotes

    792 Words  | 2 Pages

    Brown had his mind made up to travel on the pathway to Harpers Ferry right when he was born and believed he is the only one that has to lead this battle. His parents were passionate Calvinists who taught their children to view life as an endless fight contrary to evil. The battle of John Brown was on a more personal level where he remembered a memory when he was five years old and his mother whipped him for stealing a vast amount of brass pins. In addition, the battle was somewhat on a political point as well because Brown and his family considered that the sincere had to be spectators against the bad people in America. They assumed that the biggest evil during their time has to be none other than the establishment of slavery. Therefore, the father of John Brown replaced their family residence in northeast Ohio into a stop on the Underground Railroad and made his son into a dedicated abolitionist. Brown’s developing participation in the movement in the 1830s and ’40s made him set his commitment as well as the rising nationwide fight over slavery’s position in a country supposedly devoted to equal opportunity. During this era, abolition...

    Read More

  • John Brown: Villain Or Hero?

    342 Words  | 1 Pages

    John Brown should be remembered as a villain and a hero because he took armed possession of the federal arsenal and launch a massive slave insurrection to free the nation’s 4 million slaves.

    Read More

  • John Brown Was Not Justified in His Raids

    967 Words  | 2 Pages

    Violence inflicted upon other people cannot be justified unless it is in defense of one’s own life or the defense of a group of lives, such as a town where war has been waged upon it. In the case of John Brown, his raids were neither in self defense nor for the preservation of life for a people. Though it is a fact that many slaves were treated harshly and abused, there are many that were treated with kindness and respect, even given an education. The slaves, though oppressed, were not all in danger of losing their lives. John Brown’s use of violence is nothing more than bullying and intimidation, in attempt to persuade slave owners and their supporters to change their views.

    Read More

  • The Meaning Of July 4th For The Negro By Fredrick Douglass

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    After suffering the overwhelming ferociousness and inhumanity of being a slave for over two decades, a black man by the name of Fredrick Douglass fled from enslavement and began to make a concerted effort to advance himself as a human being. Combating many obstacles and resisting numerous temptations, Douglass worked assiduously to develop into a knowledgeable gentleman rather than the involuntary alternative of being an unenlightened slave. In doing so, Douglass successfully emerged as one of the Civil War era’s most prominent antislavery orators. From his first major public speech at the age of 23, Douglass became widely renowned as a premier spokesperson for Black slaves and the movement for the abolition of slavery. In one of Douglass’ most distinguished speeches, “The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro,” he uses the intermittent occasion of speaking on behalf of African Americans to a multitude of White Americans to outline arguments against slavery.

    Read More

  • John Brown as the Villian or Hero

    1962 Words  | 4 Pages

    Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry affected American culture more than can ever be understood. Tension between the North and South was building in the 1850's. Slavery among many other things was dividing the country into two sections. Brown was executed on December 2, 1859 for his murderous out-lash on society. Was his mind so twisted and demented that he would commit cold-blooded murder? The answer is no. John Brown was a man with a goal and a purpose. When he said that abolition could not be achieved without blood he was right. It is one of histories great ironies; John Brown's struggle preceded the Civil War by only 17 months. Thousands of people were killed in the Civil War, yet John Brown is still looked on as a criminal. He was not a criminal but a hero, fighting for what was right. He was a man ahead of his time.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Tony Horwitz's 'Midnight Rising'

    744 Words  | 2 Pages

    There are authors who speak differently of John Brown, and this is proven in the following two monographs. The novel “Fire from the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown” by Louis A. DeCaro reveals Brown’s roots in Puritan abolitionism and theorizes that Brown’s reasoning for the raid was because of his religious preferences. The second novel is Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America by Evan Carton. Here, in this monograph, the author makes it very clear that John Brown fought for slaves because he truly cared for one to have equal rights. The previous historiographies differ in believing why John Brown proceeded in fighting for the slaves.

    Read More

  • The Blacks in the Civil War

    333 Words  | 1 Pages

    For the beginning, in the middle and in the ending of the Civil War in the United States, the Black Americans were central as soldier and civilian. At first, people tried hard to get around this fact. Even President Abraham Lincoln administration sent Black volunteers home with an understanding that the war was a ''White man's war". The policy was eventually changed not because of humanitarianism but because of the Confederation's battlefield brilliance. The South brought the North to a realization that it was in a real brawl that it needed all the weapons it could lay hands on.

    Read More

  • John Brown's Abolishment Of Slavery

    1214 Words  | 3 Pages

    By researching and explaining John Brown’s deontological ethical perspective for the abolishment of slavery I now understand that something that at first seemed like terrorism against his own country was just a man standing up for what he believed in. He stood up for the rights of his fellow people! No one would like their rights, belongings, and families ripped from them to become owned by another human that has no proof of being superior to them and John Brown understood that. He did what he had to do as a follower of Christ and a strong willed American to find a resolution to the corrupt system of

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Radical And The Republican

    1023 Words  | 3 Pages

    . .’, concludes James Oakes’ book with the aftermath of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination. Oakes discussed the respect Douglass gathered for Lincoln over the years and the affect his assassination had on both himself and America as a whole. Oakes even brushed over Douglass’ relationship with Andrew Johnson, the president succeeding Lincoln. Analyzing his experience with the new president, it was safe to say that Andrew Johnson had no consideration as to what Douglass and Lincoln previously fought for. Johnson did not have the same political skills as Lincoln did, and he did not retain the same view for America that Lincoln did. It was obvious that Douglass held Lincoln at a higher standard than Andrew Johnson, stating that he was a “progressive man, a humane man, an honorable man, and at heart an anti-slavery man” (p. 269). Oakes even gave his own stance on Andrew Jackson, “It was a legacy that Andrew Johnson could ever match. When all of Lincoln’s attributes were taken into consideration - his ascent from the obscurity to greatness, his congenial temperament, his moral courage - it was easy for Douglass to imagine how much better things would be ‘had Mr. Lincoln been living today’.” (p. 262). It is hard to imagine the pre-war Douglass to have said something like that as opposed to an older, much more reserved Douglass. With the abolishment of slavery, so came much discrimination. Without

    Read More

  • The Road to the American Civil War

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    The majority of speculations regarding the causes of the American Civil War are in some relation to slavery. While slavery was a factor in the disagreements that led to the Civil War, it was not the solitary or primary cause. There were three other, larger causes that contributed more directly to the beginning of the secession of the southern states and, eventually, the start of the war. Those three causes included economic and social divergence amongst the North and South, state versus national rights, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case. Each of these causes involved slavery in some way, but were not exclusively based upon slavery.

    Read More

  • Stephen F. Austin

    591 Words  | 2 Pages

    I was born November 3, 1793 in Austinville, Virginia to Mary and Moses Austin. When I was nine years old we boarded a flatboat to go to Missouri so our family could live without being in debt. We arrived in Missouri and were planning on having a two-story house. Nearby, there was also a barn, stable, smokehouse, blacksmith shop, and henhouse. I often played with the neighbors, which are Indian children.

    Read More

  • The Political Writings of Charles Brockden Brown

    1870 Words  | 4 Pages

    Charles Brockden Brown, famous as the first professional American writer, was an inventive creator of novels, stories, pamphlets and journal articles. His life extended from 1771-1810, over some of the most significant periods of American history. He came from a Quaker community of Philadelphia, a very intellectually and politically active city. Not surprisingly, Brown was “swept up in a strong current of challenges to traditional authority” (Watts: 51). He was heavily influenced by the thought of his time, notably Godwin, Wollstonecraft, French Revolutionary thinkers and the American “disciples” of Locke (Clark:110). Much of his political writing addressed specific situations, though Brown also held very strong beliefs on government and power generally: “[Law] is the shortest and safest road to the possession of power, and power must be desirable by bad men for its own sake, and by good men for the sake of the beneficial employment of it” (The Rhapsodist: 108). Due to this focus on legislative power, Brown’s political writings are intensely critical of the Jefferson government and its actions. “He is a moralist, and extractor of lessons from specific incidents, not a pointer of people in action” (Warfel: X).

    Read More

  • The American Civil War

    575 Words  | 2 Pages

    Following the American Civil War, the whole nation was forever changed and was the result of many good and bad things. Although it was a very costly war and was So, the Civil War did define us and made us the good and the bad things we are and led to an extremely significant change because slavery was abolished once and for all and African American rights followed many years later, the Federal Government imposed more power over the states, our country was divided for a while, and it left the nation in debt due to the fact that we fought each other.

    Read More

  • African American Soldiers: Pivotal Contributions in the Civil War

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Civil War is often thought of as white northerners and southerners fighting over the freedom of African American’s. African American soldiers would fight on both sides of the war. The eventual acceptance of African American’s and their contributions to the Union Army would be pivotal in the Unions success. African Americans were banned from joining the Union Army in the early part of the Civil War. President Lincoln feared that African Americans in the Army would persuade certain states, such as Missouri, to join the Confederacy. Once African American soldiers could join the Union Army they would contribute to almost every major battle of the Civil War. 180,000 African Americans served in the Union Army in 163 different units, and 9,000 served as seamen in the Union Navy.1 President Lincoln stated, “Without the military help of the black freedmen, the war against the South could not have been won.”2

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass

    560 Words  | 2 Pages

    This excellent biography fluently tells the life story of Douglass; one of the 19th centuries's most famous writers and speakers on abolitionist and human rights causes. It traces his life from his birth as a slave in Maryland, through his self-education, escape to freedom, and subsequent lionization as a renowned orator in England and the United States. Fascinating, too, are accounts of the era's politics, such as the racist views held by some abolitionist leaders and the ways in which many policies made in post-Civil War times have worked to the detriment of today's civil rights movement. The chapter on Frederick Douglass and John Brown is, in itself, interesting enough to commend this powerful biography. The seldom-seen photographs, the careful chapter notes, documentation, and acknowledgements will encourage anybody to keep on learning about Frederick Douglass.

    Read More

More about John Brown: Spark of the Civil War

Open Document