As I mentioned before, I will continue to write about the abolitionist figure John Brown. For those of you who are new to my blog may be confused as to who he is and why is he is the center of a passion blog. I plan to answer all your questions here.
John Brown was born on May 9th, 1800. He had a very challenging life and lived in poverty for the majority of his life. He was a notoriously, horrible businessman. He had multiple businesses that all failed, and as a result, he was always moving around the country searching for new opportunities. Sometimes this meant leaving his family to fend for themselves while he tried to find work. He had twenty children with two wives. However only nine of them reached adulthood. Their deaths ranged from tragic accidents, illness, and losing their lives while they joined their father abolitionist cause.
John Brown was also a profoundly religious man, which certainly had an impact on his hatred for slavery. However, John Brown was also a deeply depressed man who even contemplated ending his life. This is my theory as to why he became so committed to ending slavery, and it gave his life purpose and meaning; he finally had a mission. That is not to say he was not committed to equality all throughout his life. He attempted to create a school for children of freed slaves, lived on a racially integrated farm, and was even apart of the underground railroad. He routinely hid individuals running for their freedom in his home.
What makes John Brown stand out from the other abolitionist from the time is his commitment to bold action. He was not a believer that newspapers, pamphlets, and nonconfrontational actions were going to solve anything. So for the last decade of his life, he gathered weapons and supporters and started to engage in battles with proslavery forces. Most notably was his battles in Kansas, where he killed proslavery forces. It can be argued that John Brown and his men sparked Bleeding Kansas, and if you are interested in learning more about this, you can read my other blogs where I talk about it extensively. John Brown is most well known for his unsuccessful raid on the Federal armory in Harpers ferry. There he was planning to steal weapons(or destroy them…) and begin plans to eradicate slavery.
The reason I chose John Brown as the subject of my passion blog is that I find it admirable that John Brown radically stood up for equality when he had very little support from other prominent white abolitionists. His legacy is also extremely controversial, and I plan this semester to address some of this. The questions that intrigue me the most are:
1). Is it ever ethical to use violence?
2). How are morals form? Is morality relative to space and time? Or are there universal morals?
3). Did John Brown spark the civil war?
4). What is the legacy of John Brown? Here I want to look at what exactly has changed in terms of race and power structures since John Brown.
Comment if you have questions I can address next blog or comment on your initial reactions to John Brown!