Prostrate Body Of John Brown example essay topic

He has been called a saint, a fanatic, and a cold-blooded murderer. The debate over his memory, his motives, about the true nature of John Brown, continues to stir passionate debate. It is said that he was the spark that started the Civil War. Truly, he marked the end of compromise over the issue of slavery, and it was not long after his death that John Brown's war became the nation's war. Born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800, John Brown was the son of a man extremely opposed to slavery.

When John was five his family moved to northern Ohio, to a district that would become known for it's antislavery views. Brown spent much of his youth in Ohio, where he was taught in local schools to resent compulsory education and by his parents to revere the Bible and hate slavery. As a boy he herded cattle for General William Hull's army during the war of 1812; later he served as foreman of his family's tannery. Brown moved around the country, settling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, taking along his ever-growing family (he fathered twenty children). Working at various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator, he was never financially successful. He was stubborn, possessed a notoriously poor sense of business, and had more than his share of bad luck.

In 1820 he married Dianthe Lusk, who bore him seven children; five years later they moved to Pennsylvania to operate a tannery of their own. Within a year after Dianthe's death in 1831, Brown wed sixteen year old Mary Anne Day, by whom he fathered thirteen more children. In the Panic of 1837, Brown -- like thousands of others -- would lose everything. In 1842, he filed for bankruptcy. But despite his financial setbacks, Brown always found a way to support the abolitionist cause. He participated in the Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadite's, an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.

Brown moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. Gerrit Smith, a wealthy abolitionist, had donated 120,000 acres of his property in the Adirondacks to black families who were willing to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish his own home there and teach his neighbors how to farm the rocky soil. 'He is socializing and associating with Blacks in this community,' comments historian, James Horton.

'This is something unheard of for a white man to be doing in the middle of the 19th century. Most abolitionists were lukewarm, at best, on the notion of racial equality. John Brown in this regard was, I think, remarkable. ' During the next twenty-four years Brown built and sold several tanneries, speculated in land sales, raised sheep, and established a brokerage for wool growers. Every venture failed, for he was too much a visionary, not enough a businessman. As his financial burdens multiplied, his thinking became increasingly metaphysical and he began to brook over the condition of the weak and oppressed.

He frequently sought the company of blacks, and in time he became a militant abolitionist, a"conductor" on the Underground Railroad, and the organizer of a self-protection league for free blacks and fugitive slaves. By the time he was fifty, Brown was entranced by visions of slave uprisings, during which racists paid horribly for their sins, and he came to regard himself as commissioned by God to make that vision a reality. In August 1885 he followed five of his sons to Kansas to help make the state a haven for anti-slavery settlers. Proslavery forces had terrorized the region, using threats and violence to influence elections in an attempt to make Kansas a slave state. (The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 dictated that the people of the territories would vote on whether to be fee or slave.) John Brown's resistance of proslavery forces in Kansas brought him national attention. To many in the North, he became an abolitionist hero.

His defense of the free-soil town of Osawatomie earned him the nickname " Osawatomie Brown,' and a play by that name soon appeared on Broadway to commemorate his story. In autumn 1856, temporarily defeated but still committed to his vision of a slave insurrection, Brown returned to Ohio. There and during two subsequent trips to Kansas, he developed a plan to free slaves throughout the South. For the next two and a half years, Brown traveled ceaselessly throughout New England beseeching abolitionists for money and guns to bring his war against slavery to the South.

A clandestine group of wealthy abolitionists, known as the 'Secret Six,' funded Brown, allowing him to raise a small army. Provided with moral and financial support from these New England abolitionists, Brown began by raiding plantations in Missouri but accomplished little. During the year, his hostility toward slave- after they burned and pillaged the free-state community of Lawrence. Having organized a militia unit within his Osawatomie River colony, Brown led it on a mission of revenge. In retaliation for the sack of Lawrence, he led the murder of five proslavery men on the banks of thePottawatamie River by dragged the unarmed inhabitants into the night, and hacking them to death with long-edged swords. He stated that he was an instrument in the hand of God.

In 1859 John Brown led a party of 21 men in a successful attack on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry. Brown hoped that his action would encourage slaves to join his rebellion, enabling him to form an emancipation army. Two days later the armour was stormed by Robert E. Lee and a company of marines. Brown and six men barricaded themselves in an engine-house, and continued to fight until Brown was seriously wounded and two of his sons had been killed.

John Brown was tried and convicted of insurrection, treason and murder. During his trial, Brown's last speech attempting to justify of the Commonwealth of Virginia in Charlestown goes as follows: "I have, may it please the court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted - the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the something again on a larger scale.

That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make the insurrection. I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case) - had Iso interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends- either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class- and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament.

That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound within them". I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons.

I believe that to have interfered as I have done- as I have always freely admitted I have done- in behalf of His despised poor was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments- I submit; so let it be done! Let me say one word further. I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances it has been more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt.

I have stated that from the first what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that kind. Let me say also a word in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them that Have induced them to join me. but the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness.

There is not one of them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with till the day they came to me; and that was for the purpose I have stated. Now I have done". Brown was, of course, executed (along with six other men involved in the raid) for seizing the federal arsenal at Harper's ferry in October, 1859, for the purpose of arming slaves for an insurrection. After the execution, Henry David Thoreau said in A Plea for Captain John Brown, "I read all the newspapers I could get within a week after this event, and I do not remember in them a single expression of sympathy for these men. I have since seen one noble statement, in a Boston paper, not editorial.

Some voluminous sheets decided not to print the full report of Brown's words to the exclusion of other matter. But I object not so much to what they have omitted as to what they have inserted. Even the Liberator called it 'a misguided, wild, and apparently insane-effort. ' As for the herd of newspapers and magazines, Ido not chance to know an editor in the country who will deliberately print anything which he knows will ultimately and permanently reduce the number of his subscribers.

A man does a brave and humane deed, and at once, on all sides, we hear people and parties declaring, 'I didn't do it, nor countenance him to doit, in any conceivable way. It can't be fairly inferred from my past career. ' I, for one, am not interested to hear you define your position. I don't know that I ever was or ever shall be. I think it is mere egotism, or impertinent atthi's time. Ye needn't take so much pains to wash your skirts of him.

No intelligent man will ever be convinced that he was any creature of yours. He went and came, as he himself informs us, 'under the auspices of John Brown and nobody else. ' Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance, that he acted 'on the principle of revenge. ' They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him.

I have no doubt that the time will come when they will begin to see him as he was. They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle, and not a politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed. I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North. Hew as a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them ashe was bid.

For once we are lifted out of the trivial ness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist".

In his book, Life and Times, Frederick Douglass described meeting John Brown for the first time. "Brown cautiously approached the subject which he wished to bring to my attention; for he seemed to apprehend opposition to his views. He denounced slavery in look and language fierce and bitter, thought that slaveholders had forfeited their right to live, that the slaves had the right to gain their liberty in any way they could, did not believe that moral persuasion would ever liberate the slave, or that political action would abolish the system. He said that he had long had a plan which could accomplish this end, and he had invited me to his house to lay that plan before me.

He said he had been for some time looking for colored men to whom he could safely reveal his secret, and at times he had almost despaired of finding such men, but that now he was encouraged, for he saw heads of such rising up in all directions. He had observed my course at home and abroad, and he wanted my co-operation. His plan as it then lay in his mind, had much to commend it. It did not, as some suppose, contemplate a general rising among the slaves, and general slaughter of the slave masters.

An insurrection he thought would only defeat the object, but his plan did contemplate the creating of an armed force which should act in the very heart of the south. He was not averse to the shedding of blood, and thought the practice of carrying arms would be a good one for the colored people to adopt, as it would give the ma sense of their manhood. No people he said could have self respect, or be respected, who would not fight for their freedom". On May 30, 1881, Douglass gave a speech on John Brown, in which he said, "The true question is, Did John Brown draw his sword against slavery and thereby lose his life in vain? And to this I answer ten thousand times, No! No man fails, or can fail, who so grandly gives himself and all he has to a righteous cause.

No man, who in his hour of extremest need, when on his way to meet an ignominious death, could so forget himself as to stop and kiss a little child, one of the hated race for whom he was about to die, could by any possibility fail. Did John Brown fail? Ask Henry A. Wise in whose house less than two years after, a school for the emancipated slaves was taught. Did John Brown fail? Ask James M. Mason, the author of the inhuman fugitive slave bill, who was cooped up in Fort Warren, as a traitor less than two years from the time that he stood over the prostrate body of John Brown. Did John Brown fail?

Ask Clement C. Vallandigham, one other of the inquisitorial party; for he too went down in the tremendous whirlpool created by the powerful hand of this bold invader. If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places and men for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia, not Fort Sumter, but Harpers Ferry, and the arsenal, not Col. Anderson, but John Brown, began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared.

The time for compromises was gone - the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union - and the clash of arms was at hand. The South staked all upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing to do that, drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not Brown's, the lost cause of the century". Although initially shocked by Brown's exploits, many Northerners began to speak favorably of the militant abolitionist. 'He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid... ,' said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts. 'No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature... ' Stephen Vincent Ben " et wrote "John Brown's Body", a poem of which he framed around the life and death of John Brown.

It commemorated the Harper's Ferry raid, and was a highly popular marching song with Republican soldiers during the American Civil War. Here are a few selections from the poem: "Listen now, Listen, the bearded lips are speaking now, There are no more guerrilla-raids to plan, There are no more hard questions to be solved Of right or wrong, no need to beg for peace, Here is the peace un begged, here is the end, Here is the insolence of the sun cast off, Here is the voice already fixed with night."John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave, His soul goes marching on. Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! His soul is marching on. He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true, He frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through, They hung him for traitor, themselves the traitor crew, His soul is marching on. John Brown died that the slave might be free, John Brown died that the slave might be free, John Brown died that the slave might be free, But his soul is marching on!

The stars above in heaven are looking kindly down, The stars above in heaven are looking kindly down, The stars above in heaven are looking kindly down, On the grave of old John Brown.".