The Midnight Rising Sparknotes

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Nobody understands what really took place that night, the night that John Brown launched his raid on Harpers Ferry. Why it was done, what caused it and what the actual event itself caused was later discovered and well known by people centuries after it even took place. This raid, was one of the biggest reason a nation was left divided. The Southern part of America was its own “nation” where as the Northern part was thought of kind of as the same but opposite. “Midnight Rising” gives an in depth explanation and feel for the events leading to and the events caused by this raid. The book is based around the time period pre civil war ( circa 1859), In the first part of the book and overview and a little bit of background information is provided. Explaining where and when the raid was being planned and where it was going to be executed, and all of this being told through the perception of one of John Browns men .Prior to this event, Bleeding Kansas had happened and it caused an immense amount of outrage, blood shed, fear and frustration amongst almost every single person part of the U.S at the time. Nat Turners rebellion caused an uproar filled with fear, in the south and that was one of the things that had led up to the main event discussed in the book ( the raid on Harpers Ferry). During the time period the book took place, the southern part of America was pro slavery where as the North was not, and due to these discrepancies neither side could or would compromise and neither would be able to come to any sort of agreement on what to do with laws and rules and with the slaves either. Events such as Nat Turners Rebellion are what caused people in the south to become more fearful of slaves
” Though Turner failed to win any slaves their ...

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...lived, but that didn’t just change a little, it changed a LOT. In the south it was a custom to have a maid and people to do your farming for you, a stay in nanny, a cook, etc. All of that was “slave work” and since generation after generation was used to seeing slaves doing things for them, it stuck around and became a part of the culture. On the other hadn there was the north, which had become more industrialized and more self reliant and independent and, more educated and growing and moving forward kind of people, so to them slavery was far from being a part of culture it was just something horrible to anyone a part of their community. This huge divide between the two communities/societies is what led to the ultimate clash in all the US history, it was a huge deal and it itself was one of the biggest examples of sociological imbalance between a society/societies.

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