John Brown was not justified in his raids

John Brown was a man you lived in the mid eighteen-hundreds and who fought against slavery. John Brown had a very strong belief that slavery was wrong, and this is true, but he thought that in order to abolish slavery, violence would be the best way, that’s where he went wrong because violence cannot be justified unless it is in self-defense, Brown’s attacks were not in self-defense they were acts of revenge upon slave owners, therefore Brown’s attack had no justification. As pointed out before he went wrong when he led the raid at Pottawatomie Creek and the raid on Harpers Ferry.

The first raid that John Brown led took place on the night of May 24th, 1856, at Pottawatomie Creek. It consisted of seven other men besides him; it resulted of a killing of five men. These five men were brutally hacked to death with sabers, and these men supported slavery but weren’t even slave owners themselves. And after that they even ran off with stolen goods. On October 16th, 1859 Brown led 21 men on another raid on Harpers Ferry. Brown had expected to steal weapons from the U.S.’ arsenal and once he had the weapons he thought the slaves would join him in a revolt to end slavery right then and there but even though Brown was fighting for them, the slaves did not join him because after seeing him in action, they felt he was too dangerous to associate with.

Some view John Brown as self-sacrificing, courageous, and heroic because he was willing to die for his cause. Even many pacifists, who believe violence is unjustifiable, overlook his acts of violence because he was willing to die for his stance against slavery. They felt that in the times they were living in, violence can be justified, even though they wouldn’t use violence themselves,...

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Works Cited

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/brown/john_brown_menu.cfm http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2011/spring/brown.html http://www.newsandsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/513932/John-Brown-a-killer--not-a-hero.htm http://rhassig.edublogs.org/john-brown-terrorist/ http://www.historynet.com/john-browns-family-a-living-legacy.htm http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/brown/john_brown_menu.cfm http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/filmmore/reference/interview/washington06.html http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1907/johnbrown.htm http://spot.colorado.edu/~chernus/NonviolenceBook/Abolitionists.htm http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4i2975.html http://www.cfhi.net/DavidWalkerBlackWilmingtonAbolitionist.php

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-power-of-non-violence/