United States History Common Core Lesson #4
STUDENT NAME: ________________________________________ PERIOD:
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TEACHER’S NAME: __________________________________________________________
CLASS/GRADE: __8th Grade / American History_____________________________________
TEXT TOPICS: ___ The Legacy of John Brown_
SOURCES:
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(Primary) Speech of Hon. Abraham Lincoln (June 16, 1858)_
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(Primary) Negro Insurrection at Harper’s Ferry (October 18, 1859) ___
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(Primary) An Abolitionist View of John Brown’s Raid (October 18, 1859)____ _
(Primary) The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection (October 19, 1859)__
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COMMON CORE STANDARDS COVERED: L.A.6.8.R.H.1.1, L.A.6.8.R.H.1.2,
L.A.6.8.R.H.2.4, L.A.6.8.R.H.2.5, L.A.6.8.R.H.2.6, L.A.6.8.R.H.3.8, L.A.6.8.R.H.4.10,
L.A.6.8.W.H.1.1, L.A.6.8.W.H.1.2, L.A.6.8.W.H.2.4, L.A.6.8.W.H.3.9
1. PREDICTIVE QUESTION: Answer the following question in the space below.
How do you think the actions of abolitionist John Brown impacted the nation prior to the Civil
War?
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2. VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION:
WORD
MEANINGS
1. whither
1.
2. avowed
2.
3. augmented
3.
4. insurrectionist
4.
5. levied
5.
6. sovereignty
6.
7. abettor
7.
8. desperado
8.
9. exasperation
9.
10. glut
10.
11. foray
11.
12. rankled
12.
13. preponderate
13.
14. menaces
14.
SUPPORTIVE QUESTION #1: Answer the following question in the space below.
How do you interpret the phrase “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” by then
Senator Abraham Lincoln in 1858?
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SUPPORTIVE QUESTION #2: Answer the following question in the space below.
When the Harper’s Ferry incident occurred and was reported by the New York Herald in
October of 1859, what was the attitude of the editor regarding the attack?
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SUPPORTIVE QUESTION #3: Answer the following question in the space below.
After reading documents three and four, what do you notice about the bias in each document?
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ESSENTIAL QUESTION: Answer the following question in the space below.
Frederick Douglass once said, “…I could live for the slave, but he (John Brown) could die
for him.”
After reading these documents, what do you think was the overall impact of John Brown on
U.S. History leading to the Civil War? Make an argument to support your answer using
details from the four primary documents.
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DOCUMENT #1
TEXT TITLE: Speech of Hon. Abraham Lincoln at the State Republican Convention
(primary document)
AUTHOR: Abraham Lincoln (June16, 1858)
Excerpt of the Speech of Sen. Abraham Lincoln
At the Republican State Convention, June 16, 1858
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge
what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and
confident promise, of putting an end to Slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly
augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. “A house
divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I don’t expect the house to fall—
but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall
rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward
till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.
DOCUMENT #2
TEXT TITLE: Negro Insurrection at Harper’s Ferry (primary document)
AUTHOR: New York Herald (October 18, 1859)
Startling News from Virginia and Maryland
Negro Insurrection at Harper’s Ferry
Strange and Exciting Intelligence
A most strange and almost incredible piece of information comes to us by telegraph from
Baltimore. It represents that a mob of negro insurrectionists, numbering several hundred, and led
on by white men, had seized on Sunday night upon the United States Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry,
possessed themselves of the arms of the government there deposited, sent wagon loads of rifles
into the interior, stopped and fired into passing trains, planted cannon upon the bridge over the
Potomac, cut the telegraph wires, seized and kept in custody the peaceable and orderly citizens
of the place, levied contributions upon the hotels and provision stores, shot several persons, and
otherwise committed dreadful havoc and onslaughts, all against the peace and sovereignty of the
people of the United States….. /continued on next page/
Our Baltimore dispatches leave us altogether at sea in regard to the origin and cause of the
outbreak, but our special dispatch from Washington gives more particulars. From this, we learn
that the Secretary of War has been officially informed of the dangerous extent of the movement.
It appears to be a regular negro conspiracy or insurrection, planned and organized for some time
past, and led on and directed by white men. The Secretary had information months since of the
existence of such a conspiracy, and on the intention of the negro plotters to seize upon the
Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, possess themselves of arms wherewith to arm the slaves of Virginia
and the neighboring states, establish themselves at Wheeling and other points, and regain their
freedom. He seems to have given no credence to the story when he first heard it, but it now
becomes fearfully verified.
It is difficult to understand how such a movement could have had any success, particularly in a
section of the country where the slaves are but few in number, and we are especially at a loss to
conceive how they could have gained possession of the Arsenal against the officers and
workmen of the government. But it seems too true that the blacks have actually gained the upper
hand at Harper’s Ferry. At all events, troops have been sent against them from Washington and
Baltimore, and tomorrow will probably bring us news of a terrible conflict, in which the negroes
and their white abettors will be made to pay dearly for their temerity.
DOCUMENT #3
TEXT TITLE: Opinions of the Black Republican Abolitionists (primary document)
AUTHOR: New York Evening Post (October 18, 1859)
Opinions of the Black Republican Abolitionists
(From the New York Evening Post, Oct. 18.)
The stories connecting the name of “Old Brown of Osawatomie,” as he is called, with the
leadership of this fanatical enterprise, are, we are induced to think, well founded; and in that
event the whole affair may be regarded as a late fruit of the violence which the slaveholders
introduced into Kansas. Brown was one of the early settlers in that new Territory; he was a
conspicuous object of persecution all through the troubles; his property was destroyed; he and
his family were cruelly treated on several occasions; three or four of his sons were killed by
Southern desperadoes; and these many exasperations drove him to madness. He has not been
regarded since, we are told, as a perfectly sane man. He has been known to vow vengeance
against the whole class of slaveholders for the outrages perpetrated by their representatives in
Kansas, and this insurrection, if he is at the head of it, is the manner in which he gluts his
resentments. Frenzied by the remembrance of his wrongs, his whole nature turned into gall by
the bitter hatreds stirred up in Kansas, and reckless of consequences, he has plunged into the
work of blood… /continued on next page/
Passion does not reason; but if Brown reasoned and desired to give a public motive to his
personal rancors, he probably said to himself that “the slave drivers had tried to put down
freedom in Kansas by force of arms, and he would try to put down slavery in Virginia by the
same means.” Thus the bloody instructions which they taught return to plague the inventors.
They gave, for the first time in the history of the United States, an example of the resort to
arms to carry out political schemes, and, dreadful as the retaliation is which Brown has
initiated, must take their share of the responsibility. They must remember that they accustomed
men, in their Kansas forays, to the idea of using arms against political opponents, that by their
crimes and outrages they drove hundreds to madness, and that the feelings of bitterness and
revenge thus generated have since rankled in the heart. Brown has made himself an organ of
these in a fearfully significant way.
No one can think of the possible results of an outbreak of this kind, should it become general,
without shuddering, without calling up to his imagination the most terrible scenes of
incendiarism, carnage and rape. In nearly all the Southern States the negroes greatly
preponderate in number, many of them, it is true, are too ignorant and stupid to take any
effective part in an insurrection; others, too, are profoundly attached to their masters or their
families; but these excepted, there are yet thousands able and willing to strike for their
emancipation. It has been impossible to keep them in entire ignorance of the blessings of
freedom, and of the possibility of attaining it by force of arms; the fugitive slaves of the North
have found means of communicating with their old comrades; the abolitionists have spoken to
them by pictures, if not by language; democratic orators have told them falsely that the entire
North was engaged in a crusade against the South for the sake of the slaves; and as servants in
the cities they have heard the talk of the parlor and the barrooms, and in innumerable other
ways have been made to think and to desire. When the hour comes, therefore, they will not be
found either so incapable or so docile as the slaveholders seem to suppose.
But what a condition of society is that in which one half the population constantly menaces the
other half with civil war and murder—in which the leading classes go to sleep every night,
carelessly, it may be, over the crater of a volcano, and in which the dangers do not lessen, as in
other societies, with time, but grow with its growth, until an explosion becomes as inevitable as
the eruptions of Etna or Vesuvius! What a condition of society, to be extended over the virgin
territories of the West—the seat of our future empire—and for which politicians should clamor
and sear their conscience and desperadoes should fight!
How insane the policy which would recruit and extend this form of social existence, even
while it is becoming unmanageable as it is. Open the gates to the slave trade, cry the
Southerners, who are as great fanatics as Brown; tap the copious resources of Africa, let new
millions of blacks be added to the enormous number that now cultivate our fields, let the
alarming disproportion between them and the whites be increased; it is a blessed institution;
and we cannot have too much of it! But while they speak the tocsin sounds, the blacks are in
arms, their houses are in flames, their wives and children driven into exile or killed, and a
furious servile war stretches its horrors over years. That is the blessed institution you ask us to
foster, and spread, and worship, and for the sake of which you even spout your impotent
threats against the grand edifice of the Union.
DOCUMENT #4
TEXT TITLE: The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection (primary document)
AUTHOR: Charleston Mercury (October 19, 1859)
The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection
The telegraph has informed us that this bloody outbreak is, by confession of its northern
ringleaders, a concerted movement of abolitionists and their black victims in southern States,
and has its ramifications in Washington, Alexandria, and in Baltimore. It is stated that
apprehension and excitement exist. We are satisfied there is exaggeration. While we can see no
cause for present alarm, none can blind their eyes to the audacity of the attempt, or fail to
regard it as a pregnant sign of the times—a prelude to what must and will recur again and
again, as the progress of sectional hate and Black Republican success advances to their
consummation. And what will be the effect? Are occurrences like these calculated to
strengthen the institution of slavery in the border States, by adding to its advantages and value
in the appreciation of the public there? Is not the condition of things to which we submit
inevitably tending to render slave property in the neighborhood of Mason and Dixon’s line a
dangerous and troublesome nuisance? Slaves can neither be kept nor managed. By our tame
and passive policy, the Cotton States, which are vitally interested in the institution, are actually
allowing slavery to be carried out of the border States. The continuance of this policy will
slowly but surely build up an Abolition party in States that now are strongly pro-slavery, and
ready to back us in resistance to the ever recurring aggressions of the North and of her people.
The march of events is onwards. Let the signs of the times be read and interpreted aright.