John Brown Beliefs

John Brown’s beliefs about slavery and activities to destroy it hardly represented the mainstream views of northern society in the years leading up to the Civil War. This rather unique man, however, has become central to an understanding and in some cases misunderstandings about the origins of the Civil War. Brown felt strongly about slavery being an abomination due to his religious upbringings. As a result, he advocated for the use of violence to eradicate the system. Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry further fueled the Southern belief regarding majority of Northerners being radical abolitionists.
Although the North and South both supported Manifest Destiny, division between the two regions became more prominent as new states were added to the
As a youngster, Brown took a trip to Michigan with his father and lodged with a family who owned a slave around his age. He witnessed the master brutally beat the young slave with an iron shovel. This experience was significant in his life because Brown later recalled that he became an abolitionist from that moment on. As Brown aged, the anti-slavery movement gained momentum such as Turner’s Rebellion and the publishing of The Liberator. His religious upbringing led him to believe that human-kind wasn’t perfect and that’s why he disagreed with the “Garrisonians’ ideal of human perfection” which was depicted in The Liberator. Although Brown became an abolitionist, by 1834, he began to believe that God wants the slaves free. It’s likely his religious beliefs influenced him to be a radical abolitionist because he thought this was what God wanted and took extreme measures against slavery. Following the murder of abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy, Brown vowed to devote his life to erasing
He was enraged by the Compromise of 1850, because although California was admitted to the Union as a free state, slaveholders received the upper hand in the deal with the Fugitive Slave Law. In response to this event, Brown composed “Words of Advice to the United States League of Gileadites” in 1851, which urged African Americans to unite in guerrilla bands to eradicate slavery. He urged African Americans to “defend their rights to the last extremity”. Forty four African Americans were a member of his League of Gileadites, but Brown had very little presence in the group so it didn’t accomplish much. Moreover, Brown played a prominent role in Bleeding Kansas. Following the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he was one of the many Northerners who flocked to Kansas in order to fight for it to become a free state. The region quickly transformed into a fighting ground between Northerners and Southerners. Following the sack of Lawrence, Brown became desperate for revenge as he believed in fighting fire with fire. It is believed that Brown ordered his men to carry out the killing of five settlers in the Pottawatomie Massacre, which deemed him as a renowned guerilla fighter and a wanted