From 1526 to 1867 over 12.5 million people including men,women,and children were captured in the Atlantic slave trade. John Brown was an anti-slavery man who helped slaves. He was a huge person when it came to fighting for freedom, but he did it in awful ways. Slavery was a huge problem causing violence and major conflict between states. John Brown was a villain because he killed people, lied and used money for the wrong purpose. John Brown was a villain because he killed people. John Brown went out with six of his men to kill multiple men. They hacked at them with swords and cut their throats before shooting them. Out of the 5 people killed, at least two were very young men. Three of the people killed were a father and two sons. These people …show more content…
In John Brown’s trial statements, he claims he never planned for violence. He said he never intended murder, treason, or property damage. The plan was to help the slaves get free and then let them find their own way. In past statements and evidence, it shows him being very violent. He used pikes, guns, and hatchets; these items were also given to slaves by him. Along with freeing the slaves, he promised to take them to Canada, but at his trial said the opposite. John Brown is a villain because he used money incorrectly. John Brown was given money by a group called the Secret Six. The intended purpose of the money was as a defense mechanism to protect himself from pro-slavery people. Instead, he bought many weapons used for attack. John Brown was going to give the weapons to the slaves. He gave them weapons to attack their masters so they could get free. Seeing that he was supposed to be peaceful and used the money for the opposite purpose, he was breaking a lot of trust for many people. Some people think John Brown was a hero because he helped slaves. John Brown was part of 1 of the two companies that went to rescue slaves. The companies together saved 11 slaves. By doing this hopefully people will follow along. He raised awareness about the problem. Another thing is this probably saved those slaves lives and many
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.
If Brown truly conceives of himself as fallen, why would he snatch the child from one fiend to yield yet another, namely himself? Brown must believe himself untainted, or at least less tainted than various members of his community. (115)
What makes a hero or a villain? A hero is defined as a person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life. By this definition, there existed countless heroes in America during the 1800’s with relation to slavery. There were many abolitionists, particularly from the North, that exhibited courageous attitudes. It was these heroes that taught the southerners, who believed their lives could only prevail if slavery survived and expanded westward, what they knew was morally right (3, 92). John Brown is one abolitionist who stands out amongst the rest and has been noted as one of the most important men in the process of abolishing slavery. It was Brown’s work that sparked the revolts and fighting that would occur between the North and the South after his time. Brown can be considered a hero on account of his actions in Kentucky and Virginia.
the reader can see his duplicity. He is portrayed as a good person but if this were true, he would not have wanted to create such a wicked. being as if Hyde.
Although I do not necessarily agree with Brown’s actions of killing in retaliation when trying to end something that had been practiced in America since its creation, I do believe that when faced with such a large task that is seemingly impossible to overcome that some often take rash measures to force a result. Had Brown not taken the actions he did there might not have been another big push against the south, which sparked the civil war. Who is to say that some aspects of slavery wouldn’t have carried on into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? So by saying that I think that Brown was much more of a martyr than a terrorist, because if he had not jump started the war with the South then the corruption may have carried on much longer.
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.
...rator describes Brown as “a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man…” (2215). He can no longer look upon his community with the same hopefulness he once had. He becomes cynical of his surroundings and lives his life accordingly. His discovery of evil results in his loss of grips with humanity. He comes to believe there is evil in all people and is unable to accept it. He grows old with contempt for his former idols, and never again is he able to conceive of the idea that life is pure, grand, and good. At his funeral, his family has nothing encouraging to put on his grave, and neighbors do not even bother to attend. Thus, he is depicted, even in death, as an individual unable to find happiness in his own family and friends.
The next character is the man who Brown meets up with in the woods. This man is described as, "one who knew the world, and who would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King William's court" (Kelly, 191). This man can be seen as the devil. He possesses features that illustrate him as the devil. For example his walking staff is described as having "the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent" (Kelly, 191-192).
Furthermore, Brown assisted more than two-thousand-five-hundred slaves at his
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.
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