John Brown Thesis

without his mother. Since a young age he was taught that people who commit son should be punished. He believed that owning a person was wrong. Brown wanted to get rid of sin “in himself and others” (Horwitz, 17).
Brown came up with a plan in order to free slaves, he shared this plan with many of his supporters. There were many people who supported Brown such as Gerrit Smith, Samuel Gridley Howe, and George Luther Stearns. He also had the support of his children. Smith was an abolitionist from New York. He helped Brown move to New York by giving him land in order to “help black pioneers survey, farm, and raise stock” (Horwitz, 33).George Luther Stearns helped Brown by sending him ‘two hundred revolvers, while also pledging thousands of dollars” …show more content…
After collecting the money he headed to Kansas. Brown had believed that “battling slavery in Kansas was his God-given destiny” (Horwitz, 44). Two months after Brown’s arrival in Kansas he became captain of the Liberty Guards. Brown and his followers took supports of the proslavery party hostage and murdered them. This became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. After this massacre Brown joined forces with another group of Free State fighters. This act “marked the first instance of organized units of white men fighting over slavery, five years before the Civil War” (Horwitz, 57). This is what led to Brown’s plot to attack Harper’s Ferry.
To start off his attack on Harper’s Ferry Brown and his supporters took Patrick Higgins and Bill Williams hostage. By doing this Brown and his supporters “had control of Harper’s Ferry’s guns (about a hundred thousand in all), rail lines, and river bridges, and they had cut telegraphic contact with the outside world” (Horwitz,131).The third thing Brown and his men did was take slave-owners such as Lewis Washington, John Allstadt, and his son