Nicole Kopp
US History I
Mr. Bergen
April 20, 2009
Martyr or Maniac
During a divided nation one man stood out to show his support for the antislavery movement. His name is John Brown. This “Father of American Terrorism” led a life of failure in business until he decided to do something else with his life. When announcing to the other people in a church, “’Here before God, in the presence of these witnesses, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery,” no one would have thought this man would go on to kill and attempt to start a slave rebellion and leave such a huge impact on the rest of society. However his role in the Pottawatomie Massacre and the raid at Harpers Ferry would lead for him to become a very important figure in American history.
Before making his first impact by killing people, John Brown was a part of the Underground Railroad, helping slaves escape to Canada from his home in Ohio. It was only a matter of time before he decided to take a more drastic approach in helping to end slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the initial event that sparked another dispute over slavery. This Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854 by Congress and permitted the residents of the Kansas and Nebraska territories to vote on whether the territories would be free states or slave states. Both southerners and northerners were eager to make sure their views on slavery would come out victorious. After numerous people started moving to Kansas to be able to cast their vote for slavery or antislavery, there were still armed supporters of slavery, called “Border Ruffians”, from Missouri who went and cast their ballots on March 30, 1855. These illegal votes however led to legislature passing laws to allow slavery and get rid of the antislavery forces that were there. Instead of listening to the laws, antislavery followers set up a free-state government at Lawrence with a different constitution. “Bloodshed soon followed when a proslavery judge, Samuel LeCompte, sent a posse of about eight hundred armed men to Lawrence” (Berkin et al, 279). There they would arrest the abolitionists and destroy the town. These antislavery supporters however did not fire, which led for John Brown to take action. He gathered some volunteers and led them to the Pottawatomie Creek, where some cabins of proslavery followers lived, during the night of May 23, 1856. Here Brown and his men got revenge for the five antislavery settlers that were killed in Kansas by killing five proslavery men (Berkin et al, 279). This led to civil war in Kansas and John Brown became a leader and a recognized citizen.
However John Brown continued to strive for a bigger plan to eliminate slavery by having slaves from the south rebel against their owners. On the night of October 16, 1859 Brown led a group of men into Harpers Ferry, Virginia to raid the armory. At first his men were able to cut telegraph lines, collect hostages and chase off the one guard who was keeping guard. However it would not last long with citizens firing at Brown’s men, and eventually the military led by Col. Robert E. Lee would capture Brown and his men from the armory two days later. His attempt at such a feat was seen as crazy and ridiculous from both the North and South. However, Brown felt as though he did what he was able to do but it wouldn’t be enough to save the rest of the nation from going to war. His acceptance of his death dissuaded any rescue plans that were made. John Brown was then hung on December 2, 1859.
John Brown left an impact on Americans and American history. After his hanging, men like Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman wrote about him, immortalizing him in their essays or poems. Most abolitionists admired Brown and his efforts and it was clearly evident during the time period. However this man, who was compared to Jesus Christ by himself and Thoreau, was also considered a crazy maniac in later years. The image of John Brown as a maniac was created by Hollywood in Santa Fe Trail. It was during the 1970s, that studies performed by Stephen B. Oates and Richard Owen Boyer showed Brown as a “stubborn, monomaniacal, egotistical, self-rghteous, and sometimes deceitful; yet he was at certain times, a great man” (Chowder, 4). However most people do not acknowledge that he was a great man, even though his actions have been related to killings of today; such as the pro-life supporter, Paul Hill, who murdered a doctor who would perform abortions.
It is hard to say whether John Brown is a martyr or a maniac. He risked his life so that others, particularly slaves, could be granted their human rights. Although he tried to achieve this with violence, the times before the Civil War were already violent with fights even breaking out in Congress. John Brown did manage to show that a fight worth fighting for deserves a fight. That is why so many political extremists see him as an extremist, and “the founding father of principled violence” (Chowder, 6).
Works Cited
Berkin, Carol, Miller, Christopher L., Cherny, Robert W., Gormly, James L., Mainwaring, Thomas W. Making America: A History of the United States. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 2001.
Chowder, Ken. “The Father of American Terrorism” American Heritage Magazine. 51.1 (2000):1-6
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