John Brown Rape

On October 16, 1859, John Brown along with twenty-one men (five blacks and sixteen white) are going to capture the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, the reason was all in the name of abolishing slavery. The idea was that once the town was captures, slaves would come and join the up rise. This guerilla war started with two men cutting the town’s telegraph lines. Two men to remain behind for supplies and to arm the slaves. “The others seized a rifle works, the armory, and three hostages, including a local planter descended from the Washington Family” (Davidson & Lytle, p. 150). When people heard the gunfire and the church bells, they thought it was a slave insurrection (a violent uprising against the government). By late morning, Brown and his little

John Garraty describes Brown as so deranged “that rather than hang him for “dreadful act” …. It would have been far wiser and more just to have committed him to an asylum” (Davidson & Lytle, p. 154). Another historian, Allen Nevins, takes the middle ground on Brown and states, “all questions except for slavery, Brown would act coherently and rationally” (Davidson & Lytle, p. 154). A more contemporary biographer, Stephen Oates, in 1970, said Brown was ““not normal” that he had an excitable temperament and was obsessed with slavery” (Davidson & Lytle, p. 154). Brown had a history of actions against slavery, five months earlier before the raid on Harper’s Ferry, “Brown led a band of seven men (including four of his sons) in a midnight raid on some proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek” (Davidson & Lytle, p. 156). Under Brown’s order, the men in the raid took their broadswords and hacked to death five people. With his obsession against slavery, could this lead John Brown to become insane? Brown’s lawyers will try to prove