What is John Brown's Proper Place in History?
When determining John Brown's proper place in history many aspects have to be considered. First, are his personal actions, as well as the actions he inspired in others during his lifetime. Brown crafted a plan that he believed would end slavery in America. He felt that although slavery had been outlawed other in places where it already was allowed, that this simply was not enough. He saw the practice as barbaric, violent, cruel, inhumane, and contrary to the founding beliefs the United States was based upon. He had considered the options present to him, including those already being unsuccessfully implemented by Abolitionists of the era, and determined that it would be by force that slavery would come to an end. Brown and an army of less than two-dozen men raided the arsenal at Harper's Ferry with the hopes of achieving one of two goals. The first was to seize the 100,000 weapons stored at the Arsenal and begin
Brown risked everything when he realized that this was the case. Although his first plan of arming slaves for revolt didn't come to fruition, his second plan for sparking a national conflict did. He also realized that likely his initial goal of capturing the weaponry to arm a revolt of slaves was not going to be successful, not with the small amount of men he had at his command, so he ensured that even with failure he would be successful. Fears of Nat Turner style insurrections, fears of what happened on Santa Domingo in the 1790s. It was a completely selfless act of martyrdom that led to the abolition of slavery, a practice that was deeply entrenched in American culture and protected by the same Constitutional rights that it was paradoxically against. He believed that whatever happened was God's will, and trusted that, in the end, the righteous would prevail, even if that meant he lost his mortal life as some sacrificial lamb. And that this would tap into the greatest fears that southerners had. It was this Calvinistic outlook on life that allowed him to justify violence to counteract the violence of slavery. an armed revolt of slaves through the South. He took the ultimate stand against something that was morally reprehensible, and for that, he will always be an American hero, in the truest sense. He clearly considered the other options at his disposal, and found that they were lacking in effectiveness. He tapped into that and knew that his whole court of was to further polarize the country and to play on these, the fears of southerners.
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Acceptance Essays
