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Justification Of Violence In Harper's Ferry Raid

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Recommended: John brown slavery

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

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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.

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John Brown does choose a way of violence in a Harpers Ferry authority and the town itself, which is basically an insurrection. In “1854, Brown had been thinking, and talking, about an organized war against slavery in Virginia. His focus, from the beginning, seems to have been on Harpers Ferry, the site of a federal arsenal and armory” (Finkleman 5). He leads 21 men to the Harpers Ferry and made them destroy authorities like houses.

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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

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