Chapter 6 Written Reflection

Table 3

Ulyses Urias Rivas

FYS 191

07/19/23

Chapter 6

After reading Chapter 6 “JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN” I kid you not I have
never heard of John Brown or even knew who he was until now. But what’s crazy to me is that there is a
lot to be said about him. It seemed that he was a man of his word; he was a leader who stood with action
and wanted things done. Who saw equality between colored people and whites. Who saw racism as wrong
and as a mistake that shouldn’t have occurred in the start. Until this chapter it makes students like me
realize that our elementary, middle, and high school textbooks didn’t teach us anything. We didn’t hear of
these people until now when another book or textbook introduced the truth.
Throughout this chapter, I got to see a difference between what leaders and what others thought of
John Brown. In this chapter, I got the truth that many textbooks thought of John Brown as crazy a
mentally ill as a person who wanted to have peace and who wanted to speak about equality for everyone.
It can be stated that he wanted equal rights even if it meant violence was going to be brought into action.
He didn’t see slavery as a right and I support him for it. Even stated in this chapter “Many black leaders
of the day- Martin Delaney, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and
others—knew and respected Brown” (Loewen, 180). He was admired, he was respected as the leader he
was as an advocate. John Brown wasn’t an enemy, he had a voice and wanted to be heard for who he was.
Even if others stated that he was crazy, insane to the point where he wasn’t okay. Brown made history and
was destined for greatness as a leader and a change for the new world. He was admired and viewed as
much more than an unstable man. He was a leader in people’s eyes that didn’t want to settle just for the
world but wanted a change from racism, a change in his people to view the world as he did. Even if
Abraham Lincoln was a leader people admired there are some things in the past that we don’t know
because we didn’t live during that age. But if we lived during this time we would have seen the truth of
everyone and society. It seems that even if Lincoln had slaves there was something he also saw with the
freedom of slavery. He saw it as wrong as Brown but didn’t want to jump into it and attack right away
instead he wanted time to wait and say something while Brown jumped in with violence. In the end, I
don’t see eye to eye with everything that happened. Yes, it hurt me knowing what happened to Brown and
how people thought of him when it was a change he wanted but history is history to the point where
anything happened and it’s up to us to find out. The truth comes out in the end.