John Brown was not a timid man, he read the bible, was married, and had a family with 20 children. John Brown had a major cause in the start of the Civil War for a multitude of reasons. Some of the key reasons are his rules in the following: Bleeding Kansas(1854), The Pottawatomie Creek Massacre (1856), and lastly John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry(1859). The first key example of John Brown’s rule in the start of the Civil War is; Bleeding Kansas(1854). “The opening of the Kansas and Nebraska territories in 1854 under the principle of popular sovereignty provoked a protracted political crisis in both Kansas and the nation at large”(History.com). Rival governments, and armie bands between the two groups were created, which lead to a political crisis throughout the country. As hostility raised John Brown led the abolitionists in battle in the so-called “Wakarusa War”. The Missourians(Proslavery) raided an anti-slavery town and this was known as the “Lawrence Affair”. …show more content…
“A few days after the sack of Lawrence, Brown sought revenge. He was furious that the people of Lawrence had chose not to fight”(ushistory.org). Brown and his seven followers set out to the Proslavery town of Pottawatomie Creek and went out and brutally murdered five people of the town. “The sack of Lawrence and the massacre at Pottawatomie set off a brutal guerrilla war in Kansas. By the end of 1856, over 200 people would be gunned down in cold blood”(ushistory.org). This set off chaos throughout the country and created even more
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.
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.
In 1917, Houston, Texas was placed under martial law. The Houston Riot of 1917, or the Camp Logan Riot, was a mutiny by 156 African American soldiers of the Third Battalion of the all-black Twenty-fourth United States Infantry Regiment. The riot only lasted for one night, but it resulted in the deaths of four soldiers and sixteen civilians. In the days to follow, a total of nineteen people would be executed and forty-one were given life sentences.
On April 12, 1861, Abraham Lincoln declared to the South that, the only reason that separate the country is the idea of slavery, if people could solve that problem then there will be no war. Was that the main reason that started the Civil war? or it was just a small goal that hides the real big reason to start the war behind it. Yet, until this day, people are still debating whether slavery is the main reason of the Civil war. However, there are a lot of facts that help to state the fact that slavery was the main reason of the war. These evidences can relate to many things in history, but they all connect to the idea of slavery.
In the spring 1861, years of building tensions between the northern states and southern states resulted in the American Civil War. In 1680 an anti-slavery Republican, Abraham Lincoln was elected president causing seven southern states to secede from the union. These seven states included--Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas--. These seven states formed the Confederate States of America. The American Civil War lasted from April 12, 1861 to May 9, 1865 and claimed more than roughly 620,000 lives. So what caused the Civil War? The three main causes of the Civil War were differences between the north and the south in economies, disagreements in abolishing slavery, and whether the State or Federal
The fact that he never wanted the South to break away from the United States as it would a decade after his death, his words and life's work made him the father of secession. In a very real way, he started the American Civil War. Slavery was the foundation of the antebellum South. More than any other characteristic, it defined Southern social, political, and cultural life. It also unified the South as a section distinct from the rest of the nation. John C. Calhoun, the South's recognized intellectual and political leader from the 1820s until his death in 1850, devoted much of his remarkable intellectual energy to defending slavery. He developed a two-point defense. One was a political theory that the rights of a minority section in particular, the South needed special protecting in the federal union. The second was an argument that presented slavery as an institution that benefited all involved. John C. Calhoun's commitment to those two points and his efforts to develop them to the fullest would assign him a unique role in American history as the moral, political, and spiritual voice of Southern separatism.
...ree with Dew’s reasons for the Civil War, I believe Silbey made a great argument as well. The North and the South had been sectionalized for years on many issues, yet the majority of the congressmen had still come together when necessary for the good of the Nation, up until 1854. After Lincoln won the election of 1860 the Nation was divided by sectionalism. Due to the Nation being divided and the Southerners being paranoid about the slaves being freed, I believe both issues were causes that led to the Civil War.
This election caused the civil war because of what the southern states, the Confederate, perceived Lincoln to be. He was thought to be an abolitionist, meaning a person who wishes to abolish slavery completely. In fact Lincoln only wished to stop the spread of slavery, not to abolish it completely. He had no intention of changing the established social order in the south.
In this essay I am going to discuss the causes of the civil war and if slavery was one of the main reasons it happened. I think the civil war started because of lots of different reasons, slavery and the westward expansion being some of them, but I am going to talk about how I think slavery is definitely one of the main causes.1 In 1808 there were more than one million slaves in the United States. The number of slaves continued to increase. In some Southern states for example, South Carolina, slaves outnumbered the amount of the white population. Slavery started to come about around 1776. Slavery had been practised in British North America from early colonial days. Slavery was recognised in the thirteen colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence.
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. After the Turner revolt, the topic of slavery took over American politics (3,91). Congressman David Wilmot suggested that legislation prohibit slavery in new territories that were conquered from the victory in a war with Mexico (3,91).
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
The main problem in every event leading up to the Civil War involved the issue of slavery, making slavery the main cause of the war. The initial blame for the war can be pointed at America’s founding fathers who knew slavery violated every aspect of America’s liberty, but yet they still did not prohibit slavery. If it was not the election of President Lincoln that caused South Carolina to secede from the Union, allowing other states to follow, a different event would have triggered the war, making the Civil War inevitable. All in all, the Civil War was bound to happen and it became the bloodiest war in American history.
Lasting from 1861 to 1865, the Civil War is considered the bloodiest war in American history. However, the Civil War had seemingly been a long time coming. There were many events that took place within the fifteen years leading up to the Civil War that foreshadowed the eventual secession of seven “cotton states” from the Union. The end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859, and the outcome of the Presidential Election of 1860 all helped contribute to southern secession and the start of the Civil War; they each caused conditions that either strengthened the abolitionist cause, strengthened the pro-slavery cause, or strengthened both causes respectively; although the conditions made many Southerners want to leave the United States, the Northerners were adamant on going to war to preserve the Union.
John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut. He was born on May 9, 1800. He had four sons whose names were Frederick Brown, Watson Brown, Oliver Brown, and Owen Brown who all helped their father in the assassination of 200 pro-slave people. He also had four daughters. John Brown was the leader of Bleeding Kansas, therefore, he was very important. The event impacted John Brown because he got the satisfaction of killing the people who liked slavery. John Brown died December 2, 1859 at the age of 59.
The American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, or simply the Civil War in the United States, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865, after seven Southern slave states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America . The states that remained in the Union were known as the "Union" or the "North". The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. Foreign powers did not intervene. After four years of bloody combat that left over 600,000 soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring national unity and guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.