EOTO#1 Reaction

    In modern US History classes, the timeline is often taught as something like this: Slavery existed from the birth of the United States of America, eventually the North didn't want slavery anymore, whereas the South did and got angry, which led to the Civil War. However, the Civil War did not simply spring up out of nowhere. There were many events that contributed to the rising tension between anti-slavery advocates and pro-slavery factions, which ultimately reached the boiling point that was Secession and the Civil War. Many of which gave us a tiny preview of the inevitable future, such as Bleeding Kansas. 

    Bleeding Kansas particularly caught my interest because it illustrated just how far anti-slavery supporters were willing to go to advance abolition and forcefully bring slavery to it's end. Following the Kansas and Nebraska act of 1854, pro-slavery settlers moved into new territories to scare abolitionists away and anti slavery advocates also moved to fight back. This led to a period of guerrilla warfare between an anti slavery militia led by John Brown and a pro slavery militia, which quite literally could be considered a preview of the Civil War.

    Along these lines, Nat Turner's Rebellion realized the White slaveholders' greatest fear, especially after hearing the recent news of the Haitian Revolution. Nat Turner was an enslaved man that believed he was an agent of God meant to deliver his people from slavery through violence. He gathered some other slaves and led a revolt, killing 75 white people in the process. This scenario calls to mind Thomas Jefferson's famous quote about slavery being akin to holding "a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go," for he could bite back for his mistreatment and the Haitian Revolution and Nat Turner's Rebellion are both prime examples of Black people justifyingly "biting back." 

    It's clear to see that in the years before the Civil War, arguably since the moment the colonists landed, there was an undercurrent of tension over the issue of slaver just waiting to boil over and these events demonstrated that there would only be one way the Country would put the debate to rest; violence.