Violent techniques to try and bring an end to slavery

John Brown was an abolitionist who in my opinion chose violent techniques to try and bring an end to slavery,
that is what makes him something in between a hero and a terrorist. Brown was considered a God-fearing
Calvinist, staunch abolitionist, and was also a conductor on the Underground Railroad. [1] He claimed that he
was raised on purpose to break the jaws of the wicked. [2] By the age of 55, John Brown decided to move to
Kansas Territory and there conducted many violent acts. In 1856, Brown led a group of men that was
composed of his sons and other men to the cabin of a settler that was believed to have been proslavery. He
dragged the men and boys out the cabin and executed them. All these events are what caused a wave of
violence in the Kansas Territory. People believed that it was time to fight slavery with violence and chose to
steer away from any peaceful tactics. [4]
After the events in Kansas, Brown spent a couple years training an army of men to attack and capture a federal
arsenal in Virginia. With this he hoped to provide weapons to the slaves, so that they could join his army and
free more slaves along the way and once and for all bring an end to slavery. Brown viewed slavery as an evil
that had to be purged from the land. [5] To Brown’s bad luck, his plan for a massive uprising did not go
according to his plan. There were very little slaves that lived in the area that he raided, or they chose not to join
his army. John Brown was found guilty of treason, murder, and was hung shortly after.
Bibliography:
OpenStax. “Chapter 14 Troubled Times: the Tumultuous 1850s.” In U.S. History, 391-419. 2014.
https://content.umgc.edu/file/4c2f5603-1402-41ca-9f32-
ace952c46bf4/1/Chapter14TroubledTimesTheTumultuous1850s.pdf.