John brown biography timeline templates
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HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
HIST 119 - Lecture 9 - John Brown's Holy War: Terrorist or Heroic Revolutionary?
Chapter 1. Introduction [00:00:00]
Professor David Blight: On a morning in the second week of March, 1857, Americans grew up living — they didn’t all quite understand it yet — but they grew up living in the land of the Dred Scott decision. And if you were African-American, that really meant something. Now 1857 is, of course, the final year of the playing out of Bleeding Kansas and we’ll return to that in just a second. And we’re going to discuss mostly today the story of one abolitionist; you could say the most famous abolitionist, certainly the most notorious American abolitionist, John Brown. John Brown never made it easy for people to love him. In some ways he wasn’t very lovable, until he died on the gallows, and the gallows made him heroic — at least to some people — and it made him all but the devil to othe
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Brown was more a man of the Old Testament than the New, a prophet and hämnare, a Joshua rather than a Jesus.Illustration by Edward Sorel
“Weird John Brown,” Melville called him, in a weirdly contemporary locution, and for a long time he was shuffled to the edges of American weirdness, among the staring-mad homicidal nuts and assassins. In the past several years, though, history, or at least some historians, has become kinder, and even reverent. Long before he led the botched and bloody anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, Brown, we are taught, was a moral visionary and a man of uncanny courage and integrity. Every one of his huvud moral convictions and most of his peripheral ones, too, have been vindicated by history. He was a dedicated feminist, who had his sons do the housework on terms of equality with his daughters; he was a farmer who had gentle and respectful relations with neighboring Native Americans, so that, even before he became famous as the figh
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Teacher Resources
Entire Unit |Lesson Plans
John Brown: In His Own Words | John Brown in Kansas
John Brown and the Secret Six | John Brown and Frederick Douglass
Planning the Raid | The Raid | Interrogation of John Brown
The Trial of John Brown | Was John Brown Insane? | The Execution
The Public Response
Entire Unit
History Professor Michael Eric Dyson once noted that, "America was founded on breaking the law." Ask students to describe the process to change a school policy that they don't like or disagree with.
Then discuss how to change governmental policies. Discuss and evaluate the ways in which policy is shaped and set, specifically including special interest groups. Issues that are relevant to your students should be used - for example, a local town sets a 10 pm curfew for teenagers, the state is considering raising the age for a driver's license, or the Federal Government decides to ban all skateboards in public places.
Ask students: Is it ever right to