Just who was this man that could make southern mobs attack northerners, regardless of their views of slavery and make the fear of slave insurrection strengthen? His name is John brown and one might say that this former slave and black abolitionist just wanted to end slavery by causing violence between the north and the south. But to his men, his only intention was to start a general slave insurrection. For example he went to Harper 's Ferry and raided an armory with the intention of starting an armed slave army. Soon Brown became doubtful of this plan a couple of months into it and as he warned his co conspirators that it might fail. But even if it failed he would hope that it would lead to the destruction of slavery. After getting caught and …show more content…
The first example would be when he quoted John Garraty “dreadful act.. It would have been far wiser and more just to have committed him to an asylum”. The second example would be when Allen Nevins thought that John Brown was only insane when he was asked about slavery. The final major example would be when he talked about Stephen Oates, who thought that it was unfair to judge John Brown insanity. This was because if you were to call Brown insane “is to ignore the tremendous sympathy he felt for the black man in America.” All of these examples have the common idea that John Brown was somehow related to being insane. Conclusively throughout the article the author believes that John Brown was truly more insane than a genius which is shown through others …show more content…
But his men only saw him trying to start a general slave insurrection. Then after getting caught at the Harper 's Ferry and put in jail he tried to offer a contrary explanation of repeatedly denying his intentions to commit violence or to start a slave rebellion. Brown did this knowing that his death would strengthen the abolitionist movement. Americans soon started to see John Brown as either a calculating insurrectionist, a martyr or as insane. There were also multiple people wrote their opinions on John Brown 's sanity like John Garraty and Allen Nevins, who believed that he was truly insane. But the most remarkable of these writers would be Stephen Oates, who thought that it was unfair to judge Brown 's sanity because if you call him insane “is to ignore the tremendous sympathy he felt for the black man in America.” Overall most of his acquaintances saw Brown 's mental state change after the Pottawatomie killings. Also some people say that Harpers Ferry happened due to his insanity but this idea is denied by most. It was also shown that not only was Brown mentally insane, he was spiritually insane too. He had believed that God personally gave him the mission to end slavery. Also, Governor Wise stated that Brown 's sanity was as much of a Political and legal issue than a medical problem. At the time
Tony Horwitz’s book titled, “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War” is about the crucial invasion in U.S. history that resulted the start of the Civil War and describes how John Brown helped plan the invasion of Virginia. At the start of the book, Horwitz begins with depicting John Brown’s early life including childhood to adulthood. John Brown was born on May 9, 1800 in the unfriendly peaks of Torrington, Connecticut. When he was eight years old, his mother passed away which made him go through a drastic trauma such as feeling nervous and awkward towards other women.
Many Northern abolitionists, including Frederick Jackson, were ashamed of Brown. Most Northern abolitionists were pacifists and tried to emancipate slaves using newspapers, rallies, cartoons, and literature. Moderates on both sides also disliked Brown and his actions. Men like Abraham Lincoln, who wanted to preserve the Union at all costs, felt like Brown’s drastic actions would serve only to be yet another reason for Southerners to secede. As history shows us, Lincoln was right. Harpers Ferry convinced many Southerners that they could not live in peace nor safety as long as Northern abolitionists kept questioning their “peculiar institution” and pulling stunts like these, so they wanted to secede, almost like how certain people in the North had tried to leave society to create their own “utopias”. It appears that the only people who liked what Brown did were indeed the Transcendentalist writers in the Northeast who sought to leave society. As Davidson and Lytle point out, many historians think of the raid on Harpers Ferry as one of the most significant triggers to the Civil War.
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.
John Brown was a man who lived in the mid eighteen-hundreds and who fought against the evil of slavery. He had a very strong belief that slavery was unjust, and this is true, but he thought that in order to abolish slavery, violence would be the best method. That’s where he went wrong. John Brown led two attacks on slave owners and those who supported slavery, the first at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas on May 24th, 1856, and the second at Harper Ferry, Virginia on October 16th, 1859. At Pottawatomie Creek, joined by seven others, Brown brutally hacked to death five men with sabers. These men supported slavery but weren’t even slave owners themselves. On October 16th, 1859, Brown led 21 men on another raid on Harpers Ferry attempting to take possession of the U.S. arsenal and use the weapons in a revolt against slave owners, gathering up an army of slaves as he made his way south. Brown’s attacks were not in self-defense, they were heinous acts of revenge upon slave owners, and therefore his attack had no justification.
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.
A realist not only by artistic and significant persuasion, but by temperament, Sterling A. Brown has shown concern throughout his career with poetry as an art of communication. Brown's essential writings deal primarily with the literary portrayal of Afro-Americans. Brown renders in a trend that emerged from many types of folks discourse, a black dialect matrix that features the blues and ballads, the spirituals and work songs. Brown’s final referents are African-American music and mythology. Brown was born in May 1901 and graduated with honors from Dunbar High in 1918. when after he went to Williams college on a scholarship and was the only student awarded Final Honors. From 1922 to 1923 Brown took a masters degree in English at Harvard University.
Horwitz theorizes how John Brown sparked the Civil War. The author begins by introducing John Brown, the main character of Midnight Rising. John Brown was named after his grandfather, “a Connecticut farmer and Revolutionary War officer who married off to fight the British in 1776.”(Horwitz,2011,p.29) This could have been what influenced Brown to become an abolitionist against slavery.
In the 1850’s the Kansas Civil War, known as “Bleeding Kansas,” started and John Brown started becoming involved in this war leading a small group of men. He had remained fighting to create Kansas as a free state and led a raid known as the Pottawatomie Massacre in May 1856. This event turned into more of a show of their power than for getting revenge. With the involvement people changed their views on the abolition of slavery, “... many were losing faith in the electoral process as a means of destroying slavery- The Civil War was to prove them right- while some were increasingly inclined to believe that John Brown’s projected invasion...must be tried” (Boyer 7-8). He returned to Iowa and started on his next project, launching an attac...
In 1856 the same group attacked the Kansas territory where Brown and his family resided, which much like anyone would he saw as a threat and attacked in revenge killing 5 pro-slavery activists. Not much later the activists retaliated killing Browns son (Utter 1883). Brown and a group of men planned to go to Harpers Ferry, Virginia and seize the U.S arsenal. His plan was funded by various wealthy northern abolitionists and on October 16, 1859 his plan started to come into action. After the two-day battle back and forth between Browns men and the U.S Marines, seventeen people had died and Brown was arrested and put to trial, which led to the jury decision on November 2, 1859 for him to be hanged for murder and treason. Brown was from there on known as the first white man to die for an Africans freedom. He was called an abolitionist martyr for the sake of freedom. Browns deep roots of religion are one of the most obvious reasons for his actions. Slavery was an unjust system taking away basic God given rights of life, liberty, and happiness. Being a follower of Christ means that you devote yourself to teaching and living by Gods design, so when he was taught that this action was against the God he so loved how could he stand for it? When he was brought up under religion and firm discipline of course he would see it as unjust when he was exposed to the white
Within the article Stephen King continuously states that we humans all have insanity within us. In the article,
How the Actions of Governor Wise and the State of Virginia in the Case of John Brown may be easily Justified. After months of planning, John Brown and his twenty-one soldiers marched into the strategically located town of Harpers Ferry with the goal of starting a slave revolt which would lead to the abolishment of the institution of slavery. Within hours Brown and his followers had taken several hostages, and gained control of the armory, the arsenal, and the engine house. The following days consisted of skirmishes with the towns people and the arrival of the United States Marines. After a brief confrontation, the Marines easily captured Brown and his few surviving followers.
Douglass's life as a reformer ranged from his abolitionist activities in the early 1840s to his attacks on Jim Crow and lynching in the 1890s. For 16 years he edited an influential black newspaper and achieved international fame as an orator and writer of great persuasive power. In thousands of speeches and editorials he levied an irresistible indictment against slavery and racism, provided an indomitable voice of hope for his people, embraced antislavery politics, and preached his own brand of American ideals. In the 1850s he broke with the strictly moralist brand of abolitionism led by William Lloyd Garrison; he supported the early women's rights movement; and he gave direct assistance to John Brown's conspiracy that led to the raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859.
John Brown became a legend of his time. He was a God fearing, yet violent man and slaveholders saw him as evil, fanatic, a murderer, lunatic, liar, and horse thief. To abolitionists, he was noble and courageous. John Brown was born in 1800 and grew up in the wilderness of Ohio. At seventeen, he left home and soon mastered the arts of farming, tanning, and home building.
The Godfather of Soul Introduction We will look into the life of James Brown. He is known for his music. In his life, he had to face many obstacles, but through determination, he changed his life cycle. We will touch on the influences in his life, developmental stage and theories that best fit his personality. James Brown was born on May 3, 1933, in South Carolina.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, Young Goodman Brown, Brown goes on a journey through the forest that drastically changes him. While we never know the real reason why Brown went to the forest, the experience in the forest caused him to become a bitter, sad, and lonely man who couldn't look at life the same after that night. There were many events that occurred in the forest that caused this change in him.