Imagine you and your wife are peacefully sleeping, and then there’s a bang on the door. You get dragged out of your house, a man you don’t even know starts hacking at you. Later. shoot you a shot. John Brown didn’t do many good things, he fought for a good cause, but did some brutal things to accomplish his goals. He was a famous abolitionist known for freeing slaves but also committing several crimes. It’s important to brand John Brown as a villain because history is doomed to repeat itself and if people in the future learn that John Brown is a hero, then they might use his tactics to solve some other world problem. Not only that, John Brown was a villain because he killed people even if they didn’t have slaves. He said he didn’t mean to make …show more content…
A letter from Mahala Doyle states that he murdered her husband and son. She also says that they did not own slaves and “never expected to own one”(Mahala Doyle Document E). In some documents, there is also evidence that Brown killed so many people, most of whom didn’t even own slaves, that his own followers started to get scared of him. As a rule, when someone's family dies and they want to write a letter to the murderer, they usually pour their heart into that letter. Mahala Doyle was obviously stating how she didn’t like John Brown for killing his family for no reason. John Brown and another group liberated slaves, took men captive, and even killed a man. He even admits that he “took some property”. Killed one white man”(John Brown Document A). He also forcefully liberated slaves, which means he was willing to use violence (which he did) to free slaves. As a rule, if you kill someone you are committing treason whether people know you killed that person or not. Brown is just openly admitting that someone working under his influence killed someone, he published this in a newspaper, as if he wanted people to know what he could …show more content…
But isn’t it true that he not only tried to raid the arsenal, he also murdered people, injured people, and destroyed/took property from other people, and the only good thing he did was free slaves. Even though he liberated a lot of slaves, he still committed a decent amount of crimes to do so. Not only that, he also influenced other people to murder people with him. John Brown was a villain because he killed people, started a rebellion among slaves, and took people captive. Just think of the poor husband and kids that John Brown killed, even though they didn’t have slaves and didn’t plan on ever owning them. And yes, he did free a lot of slaves, but he still committed way too many crimes to even count. So, after reading about John Brown, do you really think he’s a good
In the biography Fiery Vision, The Life and Death of John Brown by Clinton Cox, I noticed that John Brown spent more time fighting for slavery than with his family. In finding this, I was very intrigued to learn that someone would fight for something he believes in so much rather than be with his family in time of need. I think that he spent too much time on the cause. Slavery is in fact wrong but to me, family would come first. Brown's family struggled to survive and only saw him every so often, but he did write to his family all the time. On one of his visits, before Brown was really involved in the fight for slavery, he told his second wife Mary Anne Day to "consider herself a widow," and for his children to be "committed to the care of Him who fed the ravens." I think Brown was telling his wife not to get her hopes up of him coming home to her. John Brown loved his family so much, but rarely spent time with them. When he did get to see them, he was a true father. Brown always sang, "Blow Ye the Trumpet Blow" to his family. John, Jr. one of his sons, said ."..For thirty years there was a baby in the house, and he sang us all to sleep...with that same hymn." Brown raised his family around church and required them to worship in the cabin every morning. If Brown loved his family so much why did he leave them? To fight a greater cause, slavery.
Silver has always been around but it wasn't until the 1500's to the mid 1700's that the
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.
It is April 1861; the Civil War has just begun with the first attack on Fort Sumter. The Southern states have already seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Now the country is split, Union in the North and the Confederacy in the South. Both the Union and the Confederacy will soon be in need of resources especially since war is about to be declared by Abraham Lincoln. Leadership for the Union and the Confederate armies are given away mostly to those with seniority rather than to those who deserve it by merit. James Ewell Brown (“Jeb”) Stuart is among the Confederacy leaders to gain his position as general not only because of his age but also because of his experience with fighting the Indians and other whites on the frontier in Bleeding Kansas. Jeb Stuart along with thirteen other Virginian’s was part of the Confederate leadership which was made up of a total forty-four men. Jeb Stuart was given his position because of the seniority he had over the other men signed up for the war, but did he also earn the position by merit and if so, does he keep his merit throughout 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.
In the colonization period, the urge to conquer foreign territories was strong, and many lands in the Western Hemisphere were conquered. With the colonization of these areas, a mercantilist relationship was formed between the conquered civilization and the maternal country. A major part of this was the restriction of exportation of native resources only to the mother country as well as the banning of trading with colonies of other countries. In turn, there was an increasing in the number of smuggling activities during the time. According to a British sailor named William Taggart in 1760, the illegal smuggling of goods into these areas had a positive impact because it brought prosperity to the people in Monte Christi, as there were only one hundred poor families. Likewise, Dominica governor John Orde praised the trading because it created prices much lower than with its maternal country. However, British admiral David Tyrell, Roger Elletson, Dominica governor John Orde, and a 1790 Bahaman newspaper report all had similar views on the harmful effects and corruptness present in smuggling. Despite this, physician George Lipscomb and British Lieutenant Governor Thomas Bruce had neutral opinions on the matter, and only stated what they witnessed in the process.
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.
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.
John Brown, who was an abolitionist, led a group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry which at time was in Western Virginia. This was an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and abolish slavery. John Brown was born in Connecticut in 1800 and was raised in Ohio. He came from an antislavery family which added to his want to free the slaves. He never succeeded at any business projects and resulted into his increased debt. In 1837 His life changed when he attended an abolition meeting in Cleveland, this was when he publicly announced his dedication to destroy slavery. The lead up to the attack at Harpers Ferry, the ultimate downfall of the attack, and John Brown’s death were what led to the Civil War and the end of slavery in America.
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
John Brown was a man you lived in the mid eighteen-hundreds and who fought against slavery. John Brown had a very strong belief that slavery was wrong, and this is true, but he thought that in order to abolish slavery, violence would be the best way, that’s where he went wrong because violence cannot be justified unless it is in self-defense, Brown’s attacks were not in self-defense they were acts of revenge upon slave owners, therefore Brown’s attack had no justification. As pointed out before he went wrong when he led the raid at Pottawatomie Creek and the raid on Harpers Ferry.
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.
John Brown was an American abolitionist, born in Connecticut and raised in Ohio. He felt passionately and violently that he must personally fight to end slavery. This greatly increased tension between North and South. Northern mourned him as a martyr and southern believed he got what he deserved and they were appalled by the north's support of Brown. In 1856, in retaliation for the sack of Lawrence, he led the murder of five proslavery men on the banks of the Pottawatomie River. He stated that he was an instrument in the hand of God. On October 16, 1859, he led 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan to arm slaves with the weapons he and his men seized from the arsenal was thwarted, however, by local farmers, militiamen, and Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Within 36 hours of the attack, most of Brown's men had been killed or captured. Brown was hanged on Dec. 2, 1859. He became a martyr for many because of the dignity and sincerity that he displayed during his popular trial. Before he was hanged he gave a speech which was his final address to the court that convicted him. And he was thankful to Bob Butler for letting him send that text in electronic form. "This court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to the instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of his despised poor, I did not wrong but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingles my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say let it be done." (http://members.
Many slave masters tried to defend owning slaves by claiming it’s not breaking any laws or hurting anything and in contrary it is actually bettering society. On November 27, 1789, John Brown wrote a letter to his brother Moses defending his right to take part in the slave trade. John Brown claims he needed to own slaves to pay back a debt in Europe. Which his debt would be left to his family if he were to pass away without fulfilling it. John Brown claims that if slaves weren’t with him they could be with someone else that could treat them worse. Brown views the slave trade as doing a favor to the slaves. In 1837, William Harper wrote, “Slavery in the Light of Ethics,” which can be summarized as we don’t know the effects of abolishing slavery and we should be worried of the aftermath if slavery was to be abolished. Putting an end to slavery would be bad for Southern