John Brown Stereotypes

Between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, approximately 650,000 black Africans had been abducted from their homelands and brought to the United States. Many had been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean with the complicity of New England rum merchants and traders. But by the 1800s, the slave trade had stopped and slavery was illegal in the North. Most slaves in America by then had been born into their abject state. Yet slavery, centered in the South, dominated American life. Its cast its long shadow over national politics, local and congressional debates, and all the issues of territorial expansion within the United States. Abraham Lincoln had a Quote “ A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free…” (lincoln 21)

Migration has been one of the defining characteristics of black life and art in the United States since the first forced relocation of African slaves to America. Some of the other major movements include the Atlantic slave trade, the extension of slavery to the Mississippi Valley (1820-1850), the emancipation and escape of slaves to freedom in the North, the movement of free people of color from the South to the North and Canada, and the immigration of small numbers of black Americans to Africa. During and after the Civil War the emancipated black men and women moved north to secure their freedom. At that same time many northern freed black men went south as soldiers, and other men and women traveled south to teach in communal institutions. The Exoduster movement (1877 to 1881), during which forty thousand to seventy thousand African-Americans left the former slave states for Kansas was the first movement out of the South. Blacks, in protest against the loss of political rights, were in search of equality and opportunity in the West. Then and later, the "Talented Tenth": educated African-American leaders fled the rise

Slavery began in the late 16th century to early 18th century. Africans were brought to American colonies by white masters to come and work on their plantations in the South. They were treated harshly with no payments for all their hard work. In addition, they lived under harsh living conditions, and this led to their resistance against these harsh conditions. The racism towards the African Americans who were slaves was at its extreme as they did not have any rights; no civil nor political rights.

This is when his mission started to become more and more violent. Brown published an essay instructing African Americans to stay together to resist this new law. He ordered them to even if it took killing the slave catchers, that’s what they had to do. He formed an armed resistance against the Fugitive Slave Law. Brown’s United League recruited 44 African Americans. Following this, the Kansas-Nebraska Act surfaced, which allowed settlers to decided whether or not to be free or to practice slavery. Then, in order to achieve the southern support in the 1856 Democratic presidential nomination, Stephen Douglas proposed to divide the new territory into two. This meant that Kansas, since it was in the more southern of the two territories, would be made into a slave state. This would lead to the start of an organized militia against slavery.

John Brown was a misguided fanatic. He was admired by many abolitionists for standing up for the rights. However, was seen outrageous in the eyes of many Southerners. He has went far beyond outrageous and carried out a killing spree in order to prove slavery was wrong. He had a plan, however stirred in a lot of problems along with it gained him the name a “misguided fanatic”.

John Brown’s beliefs about slavery and activities to destroy it hardly represented the mainstream of northern society in the years leading up to the Civil War. This rather unique man, however, took a leading role in propelling the nation toward secession and conflict. Many events influenced Brown’s views on slavery from an early age. When he was older, his strong anti-slavery feelings had grown, and he became an extreme abolitionist. His raid on Harpers Ferry was one of the first monumental events leading up to the civil war.

Brown made many violent attacks through his long attempt to end slavery. One of Brown's rather horrific attacks was the murder of five pro-slavery settlers in the Pottawatomie Creek. It was once stated that brown did this act of violence out of rage, and it

true liberty and equality, the millions of women. Blacks, Native Americans, immigrants, and other minorities in America continued to languish in a society that ignored their rights. during the Age of Jackson, enslavement of Blacks, the ultimate form of inequality, was at a new high in

John Brown, an abolistionist who previously murdered five proslavery men in 1856, seized a federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to start a slave uprising, however it failed and he was caught, he was hanged for treason. Document 7 states that both sides, North and South, were both basically surprised; however some Northerners "began to call Brown a martyr for the sacred cause of freedom." Southerners were outraged that such a man would do this, and mobs would even assault people who held or were suspected of holding antislavery opinions. It also scared Southerners (especially those who held slaves) because they were afraid of slave uprisings. This was one step to the Union

Case, John Brown 's Raid, and the passage of the fugitive slave act that held

Some could call Brown a pioneer in being a civil rights activist for social and economic justice in this time period. Other people saw Brown as a mad man out for his own cause to be a hero and a martyr for equal rights and freeing the slaves. According to David King that Brown was crazy with the statement –“on the subject of slavery he was crazy” (Davidson p. 129). King was quoted saying this after he meet Brown after the Kansas fight. King described Brown as “an instrument in the hands of God to free slaves” and that Brown thought of his self as the person pick to free people from slavery (Davidson p. 129). Historians researching for answers for the clues if Brown was really insane might use this to back up their claim that Brown was crazy.

What if you were an abolitionist, you hated slavery and you wanted to abolish it, and you murdered five people? Would you be a hero or a terrorist after what you did? In the issue of slavery. John Brown faced with this decision.

Slavery was one of the reasons why the Civil War was inevitable. You would think the South was the only ones to hold slaves but in fact, the North held them as well. The difference was that the South relied

Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still lived in a unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence. This is when the Civil Rights Movement was introduced; an era dedicated to activism for equal rights and treatment of African Americans in the United States. During this period, people rallied for social, legal, political, and cultural changes to end discrimination and segregation. This era included endless amount of events involving discrimination to minorities. This movement occurred somewhere between 1955 and 1965 but the exact time span is debated.

The term civil rights have been defined as all citizenship rights from actions and decisions taken by the government to create equal and guaranteed living circumstances for all citizens, In specific, the Constitution Amendments No. 13, 14, 15, 19, and 26. (Barbour 2014 p.133).