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[Legendary Mashine]

My Name
My Teacher's Name
Honors US History
1/09/07

John Brown: Starting the Civil War

The Civil War was in a time of many conflicting opinions. Why did the South secede and form the Confederacy; was it about slavery, or something more? Could there have been a peaceful way to resolve the conflicts? No one will ever be sure. Many factors can be identified; slavery still seems to be the root of the problem, as well as the fact that Abraham Lincoln was elected without any electoral votes from the South. However, there is one person who seems the most responsible for the war breaking out. John Brown did the most to start the Civil War, because he was the first one to really instigate violence when it came to whether or not there should be slavery.
John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut in 1800, and then moved to Ohio soon after. His father, Owen Brown, taught him to treat all people with respect, and brought him up to be very religious. When he was driving cattle around age thirteen, he stayed at a family's house for a few days, and met their slave. They were very kind to John, but they had a slave John's age and beat the slave right in front of him. This event in his life made a big impact on him, and he wrote it in his journal as what made him swear to himself that he would end slavery. (Barrett 15-16)
He started out using a few peaceful means, such as buying slaves and then setting them free, which he deemed too expensive, or trying to come up with plans to improve the Underground Railroad, which he felt wasn't efficient enough. However, after he didn't feel that these were working, he decided that peaceful means would not work. (Barrett 21) Finally, on May 24, 1856, when John Brown was angry that several pro-slavery men had destroyed newspaper offices, he gathered a small group of followers and killed five men at Pottawatomie, Kansas. (Barrett 26) Thus began his abolitionist group that made violent raids throughout "Bloody Kansas."
Perhaps his most famous raid was that of Harpers Ferry, which he did in attempt to incite slave uprising. Arriving on July 3, 1859, Brown pretended to be a prospector, and rented a farm. He even started acting as if he were about to buy land in the small town, and thus many townspeople liked him in hopes that he would buy from them. This act kept up until October 16, when he broke into the federal armory in Harpers Ferry with a large group of his followers and started the raid. (Barrett 42-43) Many townspeople were killed, and the raid was ended by Marines on October 18. The only slaves who were freed in the raid were the five that belonged to the mayor of Harpers Ferry, who were released by his will after Brown killed him. (Barrett 47)
It seemed as if John Brown's raids were what led to all the violence that would eventually culminate in the Civil War, what with him angering much of the South and the North simultaneously. Up until that point, slavery was slowly being ended through the government, such as when importation of slaves into the country was banned in 1808. Later, they planned to outlaw the trading of slaves between the states themselves. (Barrett 13) Other peaceful ways that abolitionists and others tried to slowly end slavery with, slowly giving the South time to find new ways to do their farm labor, were things such as popular sovereignty, and the Wilmot Proviso. Popular sovereignty, which was what was going on in Kansas at the time of John Brown's raids, was when the people of a territory got to vote to select whether they would come into the Union as a free or slave state. (Manning 16) The Wilmot Proviso, which did not get passed but would have been useful if it did, was an attempt to try to get all the territories gained from Mexico during the Mexican War to automatically become free states. (Manning 15) Those were the types of ways that slavery was slowly being cut down on.
Most of the other abolitionists, in fact, did not like the tactics used by John Brown. As said by Tracey Barrett on page 33, "Many people who hated slavery as passionately as he did were still not convinced that the only way to end it was through violence." Some such people were Harriet Beecher Stowe (Barrett 2, Harriet Tubman, and even Frederick Douglass, who was "for the policy of gradually and unaccountably drawing off the slaves to the mountains." (Barrett 40) After Brown was hanged for treason following the Harpers Ferry raid, the French author Victor Hugo said, "the rupture of the Union will fatally follow the assassination of Brown." (Barrett 55)
Indeed, John Brown may not have been the immediate cause that caused the South to leave the Union and the Civil War to begin, but he certainly was the one who got the ball rolling. Most abolitionists were trying to end slavery using peaceful means, such as those who were trying to end it legally, such as David Wilmot of the Wilmot Proviso, or illegally, such as Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Then, however, John Brown began his violent raids, and provoked much anger on both sides. From there, it all seemed to go downhill, until war began. This is why John Brown is the figure who did the most to start the Civil War.

Works Cited
Barrett, Tracey. Harpers Ferry. Brookfield, Connecticut: The Millbrook Press, 1993.

Manning, Chandra. What This Cruel War Was Over. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

[Black Yoshi]

I would have to say Calhoun. He planted the idea in the heads of the South Carolinians, who seceeded first, causing a chain reaction of other Southern states leaving because they either shared SC's ideals or out of loyalty to the reigon. But in general, most of Congress started the whole thing.

[Legendary Mashine]

XD someone replied to this post. Wow.

What the heck kind of alias is "Shubel Morgan" anyway. Like... Shubel. o.o; If I was going to make an alias in order to collect weapons, it wouldn't be Shubel.

Like... Robert Morgan? James Morgan? Grand Master Kickface Morgan? but no. Shubel. o_O

[Lord Bowser]

...Out of all the time I checked searching for something to criticize on, I only found an error in the date. I'm such a failure.

[Legendary Mashine]

[Super Postman]

The one who started it all.

Richard Nixon, hands down.

-shot for stupid comment-

[Mantis15]

I think the King of England back when the colonists were first settling in the US.

I think he was the one who had the idea of slavery first.

[Legendary Mashine]