Essay 1 - Slavery

African Americans(both free and enslaved) encountered various hardships in the United States in the period leading up to the Civil War. In total, about four million enslaved African Americans suffered during this time.

However, among those millions of slaves were a select few people that lived to describe slave live(from their personal experiences) in great detail; Harriet Jacobs was one. She gives a great example in her writing about New Year's Day--a time for whites to celebrate but for slaves to be seperated from their families and sold off to new masters.

Another strong speaker describing slavery was Frederick Douglass. He had barely known his family, most importantly his mother, who he had only caught glimpses of in the night. Bearing witness his Aunt constantly whipped until blood rushed down her back was common, hearing her wailing through the night. Douglass also was deeply frustrated by the fact that he(and all other slaves) had no birthday, and that a slave's funeral consisted of being buried and moving on as if it had no special meaning at all.

What Douglass and Jacobs described were only the beginning of detailing how much slavery tortured African Americans across the U.S. When the Fugitive Slave Lawy of 1850 was passed, it made even free blacks in the North prone to being captured and sold into slavery. It also enabled slave catchers to be able to travel all across the U.S., and not just the South.

African Americans in the North did not have many rights in the first place. They were unable to vote, own land, testify in court and attend schools.

Slave codes limited African Americans even further. It restricted them from rights such as learning to read and write, leave their plantation without a written pass, and owning firearms.

Essay 2 - John Brown

John Brown is a man viewed in many different ways, yet still dedicated many of his actions (violent and non-violent) to ending slavery.

Among Brown's non-violent actions were donating money to abolitionist newspapers, raising a black child of his own, and giving land to fugitive slaves.

However, what sparks up such a great amount of controversy about him is his more violent actions; he once "electrified the nation" with his slave rebellion in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He also was tried for murdering five pro-slavery Southerners.

All of his acts, helpful or not to ending slavery, pushed the North and South further apart by causing the South to believe all Northerners are as berserk as him. In turn, the United States was drawn closer to the Civil War due to the dispute of Brown between both sides of the nation.

The North, on one hand, viewed John Brown's deeds as heroic. He had took a different intention on ending slavery as opposed to other abolitionists; physically taking action instead of simply talking about it. He had "opened the nation's eyes" in having them realize that words would not stop slave catchers and pro-slavery Southerners--his revolts would.

The South, however, saw Brown as a threat to the U.S.--they believed his acts of violence were out-of-control and drove slavery to be even harsher than ever before.