ipl-logo

Justification Of Violence In Harper's Ferry Raid

564 Words3 Pages

Name: Sim Rand
Date: April 26, 23
Time: 25-30 minutes
Due: End of Class

In 1854 Kansas was admitted into the Union as neither a free state nor a slave state. This then causing violent conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces, to establish what kind of state Kansas would be. This then gave Kansas the nickname “Bleeding Kansas” after all the violent outbreaks occurring across that state. One specific raid, the Harper;s Ferry Raid, had its own significance led by abolitionist John Brown and his followers. This wasn’t Browns only account of violence as he did kill 5 pro-slavery men before the raid. I believe that his reasoning for violence isn't justified as there are many other ways to bring up an issue instead of violence. …show more content…

Brown chose violence which caused more harm than help. He made a plan to raise an army of escaped slaves to fight for their freedom. The thing he forgot to think about was how before when enslaved people used violence to justify their freedom, their lives became much more cruel. The plan in my opinion wasn’t thought through well enough to be able to establish anything. Therefore Brown was in total setting the enslaved people up for more violent treatments then at the time. If he had taken the peaceful route he could have made speeches and had peaceful protests that yes would be violent but would most likely bring the idea more into the spotlight, instead of promoting the idea that the Southerners thought the enslaved people were violent. The raid happened at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and lasted till Brown and his followers got arrested by the U.S. Marines. This did capture the attention of the Union, the Northerns making him a Martyr and the Southerners stirring up the idea that there would be more slave rebellions that would cause more violence. This would also lead to violence in Congress when Senator Sumner by Senator Preston Brooks, the outbreak occurred due to opposite opinions that Kansas should or shouldn’t be a slave state. In the end Sumner passed and the Northerns claimed it was an example of Southern violence and the Southerners saw it as the restoration of the South

Show More
Related

  • Bleeding Kansas Dbq

    164 Words  | 1 Pages

    When Brown was 55 he moved with his sons to Kansas territory after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 overrode the Missouri Compromise, which resulted in the strict ban of slavery above a certain latitude. This was a huge deal to both pro-slavery and anti-slavery fighters for before this act was passed the United States only consisted of twenty-two states which were divided among the two groups of fighters. Winning this territory for slavery, or for those against it, could really make a statement. During the settling of Kansas the events of violent acts that occurred during the period (1855) is referred to as “Bleeding Kansas”. Violence pursued throughout the year 1855.

    Read More

  • Harper's Ferry Raid Analysis

    93 Words  | 1 Pages

    In October 1859, the U.S. military arsenal at Harpers Ferry was the target of an assault by an armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown (1800-59). (Originally part of Virginia, Harpers Ferry is located in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia near the convergence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers.) The raid was intended to be the first stage in an elaborate plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia. Brown was captured during the raid and later convicted of treason and hanged, but

    Read More

  • John Brown And The Raid That Sparked The Civil War

    688 Words  | 3 Pages

    Horwitz successfully supported his argument by providing the information of Brown’s raids, particularly emphasizing the raid on Harpers Ferry. He provides the reader with the impacts and events leading to the raid from beginning to end, starting “when word of trouble in Harpers Ferry spread” to Brown facing “his own imminent and ignoble death” (Horwitz, 2011, p. 173, 184). Brown was obviously not the only abolitionist that had an impact on the beginning of the war; as is shown when Horwitz informs the reader of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and Bloody Kansas. He believed that slavery was a violation of God’s and the nation’s beliefs. Brown’s raid was a critical aspect that led an already broken nation to the brink of

    Read More

  • Book Report On Night By Elie Wiesel

    1038 Words  | 5 Pages

    At the Farm John Brown trained 21 men in his army and planned their capture of the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. John Brown not only created his own army, but he was also giving slaves rifles and pikes. He did this hoping that the slaves would join his army and free more slaves. He also hoped that this would scare the slave owners. When it came time for his army to fight the slaves never showed up.

    Read More

  • Who Is John Brown A Misguided Fanatic

    196 Words  | 1 Pages

    He wanted to help all the slaves be free. In Brown’s last speech it states that he didn’t do any harm to anything.’’ I have done--on behalf of God’s despised poor was not wrong. ’’He even told them he wanted to free slaves. He was innocent but people thought otherwise.

    Read More

  • James N. Gilbert's View Of John Brown As A Terrorists

    917 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a political zealot, he started a movement of a different approach towards antislavery and as a freedom fighter, he worked with those who carried similar beliefs in trying to help the slaves escape their harsh lifestyle. Despite other people who also believed that slavery should have been outlawed, they were not labeled as a terrorist. What differed from Brown’s political movements that seems to have lumped him in the category of a terrorist was that he, “personally directed and participated in the murder of five defenseless men”, but that does not necessarily make him a

    Read More

  • Why Did The John Brown's Raid

    1098 Words  | 5 Pages

    John Brown said before being hung,“(I) Never intended murder, treason, or destruction of property or the excite or incite the slave to rebellion or make insurrection.” During 1857, John Brown, an abolitionist, was raising money to help abolish slavery in the South, also to get an uprising of the slaves and to create a rebellion. The main plan of the raid was to get the slaves to join his rebellion, but it failed as a raid. Even though it failed as a raid it created a greater divide between the North and South. The last words of Brown were given to a guard before his hanging and those words were, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

    Read More

  • The Secret Six By George Brown Essay

    1087 Words  | 5 Pages

    Brown had a familial history of using violence to achieve freedom and giving aid to oppressed people. Brown was named after his grandfather who was a captain in the Revolutionary War. He grew up a Calvinist, and his father instilled a strong sense of God fearing faith in him. Brown would later teach that same faith to his children. When Brown was twelve years of age, he caught sight of a slave boy, no older than himself, being beaten.

    Read More

  • Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs

    1196 Words  | 5 Pages

    This raid was “in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery” (history.com). Brown grew up in an antislavery family and was determined to destroy the institution of slavery. He moved to Kansas in the 1850’s to fight in Bleeding Kansas. Brown personally sought revenge for the raid on Lawrence, Kansas. Brown ended up moving back to the East with dreams of a mass uprising of slaves.

    Read More

  • John Brown's Raid

    298 Words  | 2 Pages

    "His Speech to the Court at His Trial, 1859" John Brown's raid made the north and the south argue and complain about each other and more than normal. The north didn't seem to care about Brown's actions because he was taking the matter of slavery into his own hands and his beliefs were the same as his. The south was livid! How dare he take their slaves! It was a complete disaster in there eyes; he was helping black slaves get out of the south and up into Canada to be free from their masters.

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass And John Brown

    1201 Words  | 5 Pages

    Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut, on May 9th, 1800, and he later died on December 2nd, 1859. He is most well known for his violent attempts to end slavery, like the instance of “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856. John Brown was said to have based his role in the abolition of slavery on his religious beliefs and values, as his faith greatly influenced him. When Brown was away from his family, he would frequently write letters to his wife-at-the-time, Mary Ann Day, and 20 children, explaining to them where he was, what he was doing, and most unbelievably, how he was remaining joyful and evermore faithful in the Lord. Brown wrote a letter to his family when he first discovered he was to be hung, and in his letter he wrote; “ I am, besides, quite cheerful, having (as I trust) "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding," to "rule in my heart," and the testimony (in some degree) of a good conscience that I have not lived altogether in vain.

    Read More

  • Specifi Sumner

    2105 Words  | 9 Pages

    In the mid-1850s, the United States was being destroyed over the issue of slavery. The abolitionist development was getting to be progressively vocal, and tremendous contention concentrated on whether new states admitted to the Union would permit slavery. While blood was being spilled in Kansas, another violent assault stunned the country, particularly as it occurred on the floor of the United States Senate. On May 19, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a noticeable voice in the abolitionism development, conveyed an energetic discourse reproving the compromises that helped sustain slavery and prompted the current showdowns in Kansas. Sumner started by upbraiding occupants of new states could choose whether to make slavery legal.

    Read More

  • John Brown's Raid

    1693 Words  | 7 Pages

    He lived his life with a rare and noble conviction that all races are equal, and that “...slavery throughout its entire existence in the United States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion.” Furthermore, his thinking often exhibited religious principles; this is evident in his address to the Virginia Court, in which he quoted the New Testament twice and stated he was only acting “in behalf of [God’s] despised poor.” He strove to serve a God that would want all men treated with equity and kindness, and this aim is reflected in all of his actions. Many denounce Brown as a terrorist because they believe his intent was to terrorize and kill white, pro-slavery Southerners; however, he made it clear that this was not the case by saying, “I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite Slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.” According to Brown, his reason for raiding Harper’s ferry was to free slaves, much the same way he had freed 11 slaves from Missouri the year before (taking them to Canada after a 82-day, 1000-mile journey) without “the snapping of a gun on either side”.

    Read More

  • Raid On The Town John Brown Analysis

    1329 Words  | 6 Pages

    The reaction spoke load words in the North and the South. Some of his speech he gave prior to his sentencing basically said “what I did was trying to free slaves, nothing any man in this court would deem worth reward, not punishment . . . now it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life furtherance of the ends of justice. . . I say let it be done”.1 Theodore Parker was moved by Brown’s words saying “not only a martyr . . . but a saint”

    Read More

  • Why Was John Brown Considered A Traitor

    527 Words  | 3 Pages

    The second reason, John Brown led a revolt. “These men are all talk, what we need is action, action!” John Brown said before He and his men (in October 16, 1859) raided the Federal Arsenal armory, and as a result, shook the south. Upon hearing he was going to be hung he stated: “…if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle 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 submit; so let it be done!”

    Read More

More about Justification Of Violence In Harper's Ferry Raid

Open Document