Midnight Rising: John Brown And The Raid That Sparked The Civil War?

Midnight Rising Book Review

Before reading “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War” by Tony Horwitz I believed that Abraham Lincoln was the man whose policies and beliefs sparked the Civil war and the Abolition of slavery. I believed that because even though there are many abolitionists in the history books none or are as famous or as notable as President Lincoln. I had never heard the name John Brown or how he and his small gang of followers may have single handedly ignited the fire that would spiral into a full-fledged civil war and national divide.
The argument over slavery and its moral convictions has had a presence in American society long before the time of John Brown. The talk of abolition started first in small church groups and among those who believed in true freedom for all. From that point the conversation in turn escalated into a nation divided and civil war. Although John Brown and his follower’s tactics were regarded as ill-advised and viewed as pushing abolition in the wrong direction, by the end of the novel the reader comes to realize that this mans beliefs and actions really did create the spark the fueled the nation to take action and fight for what they believed in. Before the abolitionist movement, most people in America saw slavery one of two ways; Northerners viewed it as a necessary evil to be ignored, and Southerners as an economic benefit and a white “freedom sustaining element”. Even the founding fathers whom we are taught as children to be the foremost advocates of freedom for American people, still only believed in equality for all white men. Therefore, since slavery was in the constitution, “if slavery was right then the Founders themselves had been wrong.” Which is why Antebellum Americans believed that slavery was not only the way things were done and had always been done but that they were actually above the Slaves. Brown on the other hand, whom was a devout Calvinist Christian, was raised and eventually raised his children to believe that a man is a man no matter color of his skin and that all deserved to be free and equal. Because of these views on equality and freedom, it was his belief that “battling slavery was his God-given destiny”. Even though Brown had these beliefs in place he never really did much to actively combat slavery until The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When the new and highly controversial law was passed that stated it was now a federal crime to aid a fugitive slave, express views of anti …show more content…
Although Brown was never named as actually taking part in the brutal murders of these slavery supporters he was known to have been “running the whole business”. The murders of these men were done in such a way to incite fear in the proslavery movement and show that the abolitionists, or rather John Brown and his abolitionists, meant business and were willing to kill what they believed in. As Horwitz notes, “Pottawatomie was, in essence, a public execution and the message it sent was chilling.” The Pottawatomie Massacre may be regarded as the initial spark in the violence that would soon come to be known as Bleeding Kansas because “instead of deterring violence, the massacre incited