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Tori Ellsworth
Assignment 11
One event that occurred leading up to the American Civil War was that of John Brown’s Raid on
Harper’s Ferry which could be considered the point of no return. This is because John Brown, an
abolitionist ho vowed to destroy the slavery altogether, led a small group of his sons and 22 other men,
some being black, to take part in a raid. On October 16th, 1859 they began to raid the arsenal where they
obtained hostages, but soon enough word had gotten around about the raid and Colonel Robert E. Lee
and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart led marines in where they defeated them. Although they were defeated
and Brown was later tried and executed it brought about new tensions between the states and led to a
widespread rumor that the North was going to invade the south. His raid caused further problems
between the north and south and made any compromises/peace practically impossible. With that being
said it can be seen that without this raid the American Civil War may not have occurred, as more
tensions arouse due to this raid. It causes people in the north and slaves in the south to want to strike
back against those in favor of slavery in order to put an end to it forever.
In my opinion the Kansas-Nebraska Act was not as important as Brown’s raid. I believe this
because this act was passed to allow Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not they
wanted to be a slave state or not. It repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, this in turn causes
controversy and problems, but to me, it was not as revolutionary as the raid. The raid sparked blacks
and the people of the north to make a greater effort to end slavery, and therefore led to a more
revolutionary bunch willing to fight back thus contributing to the point of no return for the American
Civil War.
