Harper's Ferry, Harpers Ferry Quotes
It was not successful militarily and Brown and his followers were hanged, but they rapidly became martyrs to the cause of freedom and abolition. As such they inspired not only abolitionists but many of the Northern soldiers in the Civil War. There were verses to the Battle Hymn of the Republic which were often sung by the Union Troops.”
Brown wanted Douglass to join his band of 22 men for the raid on Harper's Ferry. Douglass not only refused to join but tried to dissuade Brown from carrying out the raid.
One of the interesting arguments made against slavery prior to the Civil War was that as the proportion of slaves increased in America in general and the South in particular, the security risk from a slave rebellion increases markedly to the point that it was just too risky. John Brown’s small attempted slave revolt at Harpers Ferry put the entire state of Virginia in a panic and Virginia had relatively few slaves compared with deep South states.
Douglass tried to talk Brown out of what Douglass thought would be a suicide raid. Douglass was right.
The last lines of the editorial were tragically accurate in predicting the Civil War. The more the slavery question was debated in the nation, the more polarized the country became. If the South would persist in trying to curtail men’s freedom and maintain slavery, the slaves had the same right of revolution and insurrection as was established in the American Revolution. That was the view of most abolitionists. Southern slave holders, feared an armed slave rebellion more than anything else, and observed that debating the issue of slavery was just riling up Blacks and whites and would instigate such armed revolutions. The Southern solution was to cease debating the slavery question. The Northern solution was to end slavery. Neither side would accept the solution of the other and the Civil War ensued.
John Brown, in a futile effort to start a slave insurrection, raided the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. His raid failed and he was captured and hanged. However, he became a martyr to the abolitionist movement, and his death is still sung of gloriously to this day. See {584889} and {604003}.
Brown was executed for trying to steal federal arms and start a slave rebellion. However, to many Americans, his moral judgment was correct. He became a martyr for many abolitionists, and some Northern Civil War songs extolled him and saw his as an early forerunner of a great moral struggle. See Thoreau {633849} as an example. There were many other Americans who were abolitionists and did not approve of either of the method his violent raid or its purpose of arming the slaves as they feared a bloodbath of vengeance.
