Prior to the 1840s and 1850s, there was a precarious balance of slave and free states in the U.S. Legislation like the Missouri Compromise helped maintain that balance, but tensions continued to build as more states petitioned to be admitted into the Union. Additionally, societal changes inspired many Northerners to take a stand against slavery, with more Northerners embracing abolitionist causes. Southerners, on the other hand, clung to the institution and remained economically dependent upon it, looking to spread it to new states. During the 1840s and 1850s, Northerners and Southerners deeply disagreed about the institution of slavery, creating a deep divide between the two that would lead to war. In the pre-war era, many Northerners were …show more content…
The South viewed slavery as a personal freedom, believing people to be property rather than individuals. They wished to keep this system in place in order to uphold their beliefs and want for control. This desire for a semblance of control stems from their smaller agricultural-based population, unlike that of the industrial North. This population disparity allowed for the North to maintain more political control over the South in terms of federal government and the House, which is why the South emphasized states rights. The Lecompton Constitution, a document that protected the rights of slave owners and ignored the free population of African-Americans, was a major cause for tension in this time, as it angered the North while favoring the South’s values. The fallout of this document ultimately provided a stepping stone for the angered North to take part in attacks on Kansas, due to the actions of John Brown and his raid on the South. An extremist and evangelical with a focus on anti-slavery ideals, Brown desired to lead a slave revolt in the South. Brown attacked and looted the city of Lawrence before he and his sons traveled to a pro-slavery settlement in Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas. There, they took hostages and killed several men, inciting violence in Kansas, leading to an event known as Bleeding Kansas, in which brutal attacks and raids took place. This caused fear amongst the Southerners, who worried that their ideals would be cause for their death. Although Brown’s raid was unsuccessful, his actions raised tensions immensely in the Northern and Southern states and would set the scene for the eventual Civil
John Brown was involved in the Pottawatomie massacre during the vents of “Bleeding Kansas.” Brown and his sons had traveled to Kansas and attempt to make Kansas a free state, when the massacre occurred. The position of Kansas as either a free or slave state was dependent upon the people living in it, because this would be decided by popular sovereignty. The Pottawatomie massacre led
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
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.
A detailed storyline of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry is needed in order to understand the sectionalism between the North and the South. The John Brown’s Raid sparked the war due to the fact that it created a great deal of sectionalism between the North and the South. The raid lasted for 36 hours and the consequences of the raid lasted longer than expected, even after Brown died (“John Brown’s Raid”). In order to get to Harper’s Ferry, Brown was required to change his name due to him being known as an abolitionist so he changed his name to Isaac Smith. Also to produce a more convincing disguise, he was driven to rent out a farm and that he was New York.
The raid was a failure because Brown didn't get the help of the slaves the he wanted and he had no rations or escape route, so the whole plan was basically doomed. Local militia and citizens attacked brown and his men until troops under Robert E. Lee came from washington and arrested Brown. Brown was sentenced to death on December 2nd, Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Brown will make the gallows as glorious as the cross. As Brown was going to be hanged he handed the guard a note that said “I John Brown , am certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” Even though the raid was a failure, it made even more tension between the north and the south, which fueled the beginning of the civil
John Brown shows his violence in multiple raids for example, in John Brown’s Violent Rebellion t-chart where it states, “In 1859, John Brown, with 18 to 20 other people, attack the armory at Harpers Ferry”(John Brown T chart). John Brown chose to take a violent and aggressive manner of handling his viewpoint of slavery. When he attacks Harpers Ferry he had the plan of acquiring more weapons for him and his group in order to advance in the fight against slavery. His violence led to the death of many who did believe in slavery as well as the death of many who were opposed as they would go out and risk their lives to end slavery. John Brown gave others against slavery the power and will to take action and fight against the act of slavery as his and his sons’ bravery proved be one of the major points of injustice that led to the gruesome Civil War and
This is showing that instead of using his representatives to help free slaves in Congress, but instead he used violence. Then John Brown went to a proslavery town October 16, 1859 and killed five settlers with twenty-one men with him on another raid. The raids John Brown went on was an act of terrorism.
"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.
By the time he got to his 50's, he saw that slavery was not going to end peacefully. This led to an obsession with the idea of serving justice to black people and slaves. John Brown figured that the only way for it to end was for him to go and use force on white slave owners, which consisted of him killing them or hurting them and forcing them to give up their slaves. During this obsession with anti slavery, Brown planned a slave uprising at Harper's Ferry. John Brown started plotting to raid the town of Harper's Ferry and seize guns from the federal armory.
John Brown was an abolitionist that saw it as his duty to be a spokesperson as well as a fighter on the forefront in abolishing slavery. In his time, he took into his own hands to physically make a change for the sake of freeing slaves. On October 16, 1859, John Brown led eighteen men in a raid to capture a federal arsenal located in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. This arsenal contained rifles, muskets, and pistol, which he intended to give to slaves to provoke and lead an armed slave rebellion. During this raid Brown thought slaves would join his eighteen men to help them conquer the arsenal and to then start their rebellion, since he planned this to help the salves, but no slaves came to help Brown and his men.
John Brown has always been a controversial antebellum topic. Some have called him a hero for his bravery in the face of battle and death, and some have called him a villain because of his difficult-to-justify actions. John Brown has been called a martyr because of his good motives, but he was really an egomaniac, obsessed with the idea of destroying slavery. Brown’s history of violence in Kansas and Virginia proves this. The Pottawatomie, Kansas massacre, which John Brown planned as revenge for the sack of Lawrence, and orchestrated, was a preemptive strike against pro-slavery settlers.
John Brown was an extreme abolitionist who believed so much in the eradication of slavery, that he resulted to violence and bloodshed in order to achieve his goal. He felt he was "called by God" to end slavery by any means necessary. He failed to achieve his goal in his lifetime, but his actions had a major impact on the North and South before the Civil War. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was probably his most effective attack against slavery. This attack on slavery caused tensions to boil over in the North and South, creating a conflict which could only be resolved with war.
John Brown played a pivotal role in pushing for the civil war to take place. The acts of terror he used caused tension between the slave traders, slave owners and those against the acts of slavery. He acted as the mobilizing agent who challenged those people who never supported slavery to stand by him and help end slavery in America by freeing them (Russo & Finkelman, 2005). His actions of killing those farmers who owned slaves and freeing the slaves agitated the slaving traders and owners, and in turn this led to the occurrence of the civil war between the anti-slavers and the slave owners. Therefore, this individual played the role of inciter and mobilizing agent for the anti-slave states to join in the fight for freedom of the black people.
After mastering subjugation men ambushed the abolitionist town of Lawrence on May 21, 1856, Brown before long searched for requital. A couple of days sometime later, he and his kids attacked a social affair of hotels along Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five men with long swords and set off a late spring of guerilla battling in the tormented space. One of Brown 's kids was executed in the doing combating.
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed settlers of Kansas to decide on the question of slavery, was passed, pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers alike poured into Kansas to turn the tide towards their own end. The result was widespread violence and crime, known as “Bleeding Kansas”. In an act of revenge, Brown and his sons traveled to Pottawatomie Creek and killed five “pro-slavery” men, none of whom actually owned slaves. , His raid on the Federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, resulted in the death of an African American, who confronted Brown and three other civilians. Brown believed that other slaves would come to his aid and escape together to the Alleghany (Appalachian) Mountains, where they would be able to subsist and defend themselves from attack; when the slaves were sold further south, slavery would be purged from one county, making his attack a success.