Who was Shubel Morgan?

Answer 1

The great American revolutionary abolitionist hero John Brown used the alias Shubel Morgan upon entering Kansas after meeting with sympathizers in Ontario, Canada in 1857. Here's more:

John Brown (abolitionist) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Brown

Daguerreotype of Brown, ca.1856.BornMay 9, 1800

Torrington, ConnecticutDiedDecember 2, 1859 (aged 59)

Charles Town, Virginia

(now West Virginia)Cause of deathHangingResting placeJohn Brown Farm and GravesiteKnown forPottawatomie Massacre

Raid on Harpers FerryChildren20 (11 survived to adulthood)Signature

John Brown (May 9, 1800 - December 2, 1859) was an American revolutionaryabolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre, during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in theunsuccessful raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859. Later that year he was executed but his speeches at the trial captured national attention. Brown has been called "the most controversial of all 19th-century Americans"[1] and "America's first domestic terrorist."[2]

Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia electrified the nation. He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five pro-slavery Southerners, and inciting a slave insurrection, found guilty on all counts, and was hanged. Southerners alleged that his rebellion was the tip of the abolitionist iceberg and represented the wishes of theRepublican Party to end slavery. Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that, a year later, led tosecession and the American Civil War.

Brown first gained attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis. Unlike most other Northerners, who advocated peaceful resistance to the pro-slavery faction, Brown demanded violent action in response to Southern aggression. Dissatisfied with the pacifism encouraged by the organized abolitionist movement, he reportedly said, "These men are all talk. What we need is action-action!" [3] During the Kansas campaign he and his supporters killed five pro-slavery southerners in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre in May 1856 in response to the raid of the "free soil" city of Lawrence. In 1859 he led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. During the raid, he seized the armory; seven people were killed, and ten or more were injured. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Within 36 hours, Brown's men had fled or been killed or captured by local pro slavery farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Brown's subsequent capture by federal forces seized the nation's attention, as Southerners feared it was just the first of many Northern plots to cause a slave rebellion that might endanger their lives, while Republicans dismissed the notion and said they would not interfere with slavery in the South.[4]

Historians agree John Brown played a major role in the start of the Civil War. David Potter (1976) said the emotional effect of Brown's raid was greater than the philosophical effect of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and that his raid revealed a deep division between North and South.[5] Brown's actions prior to the Civil War as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose, still make him a controversial figure today. He is sometimes memorialized as a heroic martyr and a visionary and sometimes vilified as a madman and a terrorist. Radicals of both the left and right have revered him as a man willing to take action against an institution he considered immoral.[6] Some writers, such as Bruce Olds, describe him as a monomaniacal zealot, others, such as Stephen B. Oates, regard him as "one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation." David S. Reynolds hails the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil war, and seeded civil rights" and Richard Owen Boyer emphasizes that Brown was "an American who gave his life that millions of other Americans might be free." For Ken Chowder he is "at certain times, a great man", but also "the father of American terrorism."[7] The song "John Brown's Body" became a Union marching song during the Civil War.

BTW I think that Answers.com biography of Brown is a disgrace.