Here is the script for my town hall speech. My person is John Brown.
John Brown Town Hall Meeting Speech
Hey everyone, I’m sure you all know of me because of recent events. I’m John Brown, fifty-nine
years old, born in Connecticut in eighteen hundred. Now, even though the government has sentenced me to die in a month's time, I was still allowed to come here today to speak on slavery. I look here in this crowd and what lies before my eyes is a group of cowards. You slave owners have no morals, you have no god. And those words that just came out of my mouth will do nothing to change that. Nothing anyone can say will change how you feel. I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. Now, these cowards in the crowd here, I know who they are. Very simply they are the ones who refuse to look back at me as I look out at them. They fear this face because it is the face of a man who isn’t afraid to do what is necessary. One month ago on the 16th of October, I, and twenty one of my men, successfully captured the U.S. rifle factory at Harpers Ferry Virginia. I was going to provide slaves with the weaponry they needed to rise up against their so-called “masters.” I managed to capture a few slave owners, and bring an end to a few others. But if this plan had gone as I had hoped, I would not be on death row and set to die in a month’s time. This thought of slaves rising up, it scared the cowards of this audience more than anything else, and the local army was called before any real progress could be made. Had I so interfered on behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of their friends, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, every man in this crowd would have deemed it worthy of reward, not punishment. Now some of you cowards may see my imminent death as a relief, relief that a man who is like me, who is not afraid, is no longer out there. That is not the case. This is far from the end, my death is only the beginning. Very soon the people will realize that you cowards don’t listen to reason, you don’t listen to god, you only listen to blood. There are more people out there like me who will do what is necessary for the right of the people to be free. I was able to amass an army of twenty one men to raid harpers ferry, it would be foolish to think there aren’t more than that. So cowards, be afraid. Because justice is coming. And if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments-I submit: so let it be done.
Final Notes:
I think John Brown is a really interesting figure of the era. It is very easy to agree with his cause, but a lot harder to agree with his methods. He used violence and terror to send his message, but ultimately he was right. I used one of his quotes and looking back we can see it as almost prophetic: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood." A year and a half later, the civil war would begin. John Brown's actions are hard to take a moral stance on, because ninety nine percent of the time, we like to say violence isn't the answer. But in this case, John Brown was right about violence being necessary to end the institution of slavery. His methods went against the American ideal of peaceful protest, but he was fighting for the ultimate American ideal: freedom. He fought harder and more passionately than most anyone else at the time, and many northerners saw him as a hero for this.
Other quotes I used:
"Had I so interfered on behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of their friends, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, every man in this court would have deemed it worthy of reward, not punishment." (I changed court to crowd in my speech so it fit the setting)
"And if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments-I submit: so let it be done."
Sources:
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2011/spring/brown.html
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/john-brown
https://www.nps.gov/people/john-brown.htm
http://www.nellaware.com/blog/john-brown-quotes.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20have%20only%20a%20short,slave.%E2%80%9D%20%E2%80%94%20John%20Brown.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/05508.051_FPS.pdf
https://mrnussbaum.com/uploads/activities/images/brown.jpg
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