John Brown Dbq
John Brown
Throughout the early history of the United States, the development of two clearly diverse cultures, the Northern culture and the Southern culture, had acted as an adverse foreshadowing of the internal conflict to come. The hostility between these two cultures peaked in the mid-1800’s over their different economic and social ways, but more specifically, over the issue of slavery. During this time, the South was defending their right to practice slavery, while the North’s desire to end this “inhumane” practice was becoming increasingly powerful. Yet, the North’s crusade to end slavery had no banner, no rallying point, or no kindling with which to fuel this burning desire. The North needed someone to rally behind, and John Brown became that person. Eventually, Brown would be martyred, but Brown’s death invoked the abolitionist spirit in all Northerners, and the anticipation of the North to follow behind him illustrates the rapidly, detrimentally changing North-South relationship between 1859 and 1863.
Essentially, between 1859 and 1863, North-South relations were taking a turn for the worse. Radical abolitionist ideals were sweeping the North, and these ideals took form through John Brown’s failed effort to provoke a slave rebellion at Harper’s Ferry in 1859. This invasion on a federal armory was organized by Brown. The invasion involved only a handful of abolitionists, and freed no slaves. In fact, one free black was among the numerous people murdered during the raid. This action was condemned by most of the southerners and some of the northerners, but John Brown became a sectional hero to most of the North. Two months after the raid, noted abolitionist writer Horace Greeley wrote an editorial in the New York Tribune (Document A) which stated that although John Brown’s raid was an “unfit mode of combating a great evil”, “his are the errors of a fanatic, not the crimes of a felon.” Statements such as these gradually influenced the public, and soon...
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