William Lloyd Garrison: Town Hall Meeting

 William Lloyd Garrison

My fellow Americans,

I am grateful to stand among those who have devoted themselves to the cause of human freedom. Yet, as we gather to discuss the future of this movement, I believe we must remind ourselves of the central truth that brought us here: slavery is a moral evil, and it must be abolished.

Let us consider what slavery truly is. It is the practice of treating human beings as property. Under this system, a person may be bought and sold, families may be torn apart, and laborers may be compelled to work without the freedom to determine the course of their own lives. The enslaved person is denied the most fundamental right of all: the right to liberty.

And yet, our nation calls itself free.

We know that America proclaims that all men are created equal and are endowed with rights that cannot justly be taken away. But what meaning do these declarations possess if millions of our fellow human beings remain in bondage? What is liberty worth if it is reserved only for those fortunate enough to possess it?

My fellow abolitionists, we must not allow the urgency of this truth to be weakened by political convenience. Slavery is not merely a disagreement between competing interests. It is a violation of justice, humanity, and conscience. No person should possess the power to claim ownership over another human soul.

Some may urge us to support gradual emancipation. Others may argue that we must compromise in order to preserve peace or maintain national unity. But I ask you: Can peace built upon oppression be true peace? Can prosperity built upon stolen labor be called justice? Can an unjust law make an evil institution righteous?

I declare that it cannot.

Garrison's publishing of "The Liberator"

I therefore continue to demand the immediate abolition of slavery. The enslaved must be recognized as free people, not as property. Their liberty must not be delayed until those who profit from their suffering are prepared to surrender their privileges.

But how shall we advance this cause? We must speak the truth without hesitation. We must expose the cruelty of slavery, challenge the laws and customs that sustain it, and persuade our fellow citizens to confront the contradiction between American liberty and human bondage.

Let us remember that our movement must not lose sight of those whose freedom we seek. This struggle is not simply about reforming a political system. It is about restoring rights that have been unjustly denied to human beings.

My fellow abolitionists, I urge us to remain united in our moral purpose. Let us not permit fear, compromise, or tradition to distract us from the justice we demand.

Slavery must end. Liberty must belong to all. And our work must continue until that principle becomes a reality.

AI Disclosure: I used AI to assist me in drafting and revising my first-person town hall presentation on William Lloyd Garrison and his opposition to slavery. I provided the topic, historical figure, intended audience, and approximate presentation length. AI helped me organize the speech, develop the wording, and adapt the tone for a town hall meeting among abolitionists. I reviewed the generated content and take responsibility for ensuring that the final presentation accurately represents William Lloyd Garrison's historical views.

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry

John Brown and the Road to Harpers Ferry

I did not expect John Brown to feel so vivid when I started digging into his story. Most historical figures stay trapped in the past. Brown does not. He comes across like someone who walked into the nineteenth century already burning with purpose.

He grew up in Connecticut in a strict religious home. His father despised slavery. Brown absorbed that belief early. As he moved through Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, he struggled to support his large family. He tried tanning. He tried farming. He tried wool trading. None of it worked.

What did work was his growing conviction that slavery was a sin that demanded action. Real action. Not speeches. Not petitions. Something that would shake the country.

John Brown

By 1849, Brown moved his family into a Black community in North Elba, New York. That detail struck me. It showed how deeply he wanted to live alongside the people he hoped to defend. It also showed how far outside the mainstream he already was.

Kansas changed everything. In 1855, Brown followed his sons into the Kansas Territory. The region was exploding in violence over whether it would enter the Union free or slave. Brown arrived with weapons and a sense of mission. He quickly became a leader among antislavery fighters.

When proslavery forces attacked the town of Lawrence, Brown took it personally. He believed he had a divine duty to respond. Three days later, he led a nighttime raid at Pottawatomie Creek. Five proslavery men were dragged from their homes and killed. It was brutal. It made Brown famous. It also made him feared.

Reading about that moment, I kept thinking about how far he had crossed the line. He was no longer just an abolitionist. He was a militant.

In 1858, Brown met with supporters in Canada. He laid out a plan to create a stronghold in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia. It would be a base for enslaved people escaping bondage. He even drafted a provisional constitution. His backers, known later as the Secret Six, believed in him. They funded him. They did not fully understand how far he intended to go.

By the summer of 1859, Brown was living in a rented farmhouse near Harpers Ferry. He gathered twenty one men. Some were Black. Some were white. Two were his sons. His goal was simple. Seize the federal armory. Arm enslaved people. Start a revolution.

On the night of October 16, he struck. Brown captured the armory and took hostages. He waited for enslaved Virginians to join him. They did not. Local militia surrounded him. By morning, U.S. Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee stormed the building. Brown was wounded. Ten of his men were killed. The raid collapsed.

Brown was tried for murder, slave insurrection, and treason. He was hanged on December 2, 1859. John Wilkes Booth stood in the crowd as a militiaman.

Brown failed to spark the uprising he imagined. Yet his impact was enormous. His calm, moral defense during the trial turned him into a martyr for the antislavery cause. Victor Hugo wrote that Brown’s execution would split the Union. Union soldiers later marched into battle singing “John Brown’s Body.”

When I think about Brown now, I see someone who forced the nation to confront the violence of slavery by making his own violence impossible to ignore. His raid did not start the Civil War. It made the war feel unavoidable. That is why John Brown still matters. He lit a fuse the country could no longer put out.

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used in a limited way in the assignment. I did research and took note on the topic, I then personalized those notes by adding my point of view, for example, things I learned or found surprising.  I than used Claude.AI to help me clean up the text for grammar spelling and punctuation, and I also asked the tool to help me shape it into the form of a blog post.  I then edited the text added links and added images with end captions.

Bible Team Challenge

                                          Bible Team Challenge: The Bible and Slavery

The Bible Allows slavery

After reading an article titled The Bible is clear: God endorses slavery, by the publisher Michael Pahl I found that there are about seven passages in the bible that talk about how God accepts slavery.

Law of Moses

In the New Revised Standard version of the Old Testament, readers notice many quotes from the bible that show that God permits slavery. For example in Exodus 21:2-11 it reads “When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years”, showing that you are allowed to buy a person and use them for labor. 

Both the Old and the New Testament both describe how harshly slaves were treated including being beaten, but received little to no consequences for how they treated them.

The Israelites are Oppressed

In Exodus 1:1-22 It talks about how the Egyptians owned Israelite slaves to hold power over them, but later the Israelites left Egypt and had their own laws. 

While coming up with rules that are concerning slavery, in Leviticus 25:44-46 God talks about what the Israelites are allowed to do, saying, “As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you and from their families who are with you who have been born in your land; they may be your property. You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property. These you may treat as slaves, but as for your fellow Israelites, no one shall rule over the other with harshness.” 

This demonstrates that Israel was permitted by God to own foreign slaves, and that owning slaves was a sign of God’s blessing.

Religious Argumentation Against Slavery

In the Christian Bible, Exodus 21:16 states that “And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.”  This means that, in the views of the bible, whoever takes a person should be put to death, whether the victim is sold or kept by the thief.

This presents a clear outline against the slave trade, by condemning the taking of people and selling them into slavery (as property to somebody else).

Another source regarding abolition and religion going hand in hand is “The Black Hearts Of Men” by John Stauffer.  This text examines the lives of 4 radical abolitionists; two black, and two white.  Talking about the division of race and how these men overcame racial and social barriers to work toward the end of slavery and racial oppression, Stauffer writes that these men unite “…in order to usher in a kingdom of God on earth.”  This describes how these four religious men all believe in their union under Christ, adding to the idea that the bible believes in the equality among men, regardless of skin color or social status.

In the same way as the Christina Bible, the Islamic Quran also has verses about slavery and its religious stigma; Quran 24:33 and Philemon 1:16: “And those who seek a contract [for eventual emancipation] from among whom your right hands possess — then make a contract with them if you know there is within them goodness and give them from the wealth of Allah which He has given you”

This passage outlines the moral obligation to free a slave if they contract to do so, and you find them a (man) of good faith.  Though it does not directly oppose slavery it is evidence of the Islamic religion and the morals it promotes being empathetic towards slavery, releasing one's slaves, and also demotes the kidnapping of people for slavery. 

Conclusion and reflection:

After looking at the two opposite sides in which religion views slavery, we can clearly see that in the eyes of religion there is no objectively “correct answer” to slavery.  Religious texts show empathy to slaves and condemn poor treatment of slaves, but at the same time they never teach followers to not practice slavery. And in ways promote slavery.  This does make sense though; because religious texts are meant to be interpreted by the reader and are not written law, we will not be able to find a concise answer for or against slavery.

 

Supreme Court History

 Supreme Court Video Notes

The Supreme Court's Long, Complicated History;

In Criminal Justice 

Every president who has ever sat in the Oval Office has tried to leave a mark on the Supreme Court through their nominations. It's one of the few ways a president's influence can outlast their own time in office.

I was surprised to learn that; since the Court's founding, just over 100 justices have served. The average term lasts around 16 years — though plenty of justices have doubled that, shaping the law for a generation or more.

John Marshal, Chief Justice, 1803

Some justices left an outsized mark. John Marshall was the first to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional, establishing the Court's power of judicial review in a way that still defines its role today.

Not every ruling has aged well.

The Dred Scott decision is widely regarded as the Court's biggest mistake. The backlash cost the Court significant public trust and authority — a reminder that even the nation's highest court is not immune to getting it fundamentally wrong.

Part of what makes the Court's job so difficult is its founding document itself. The justices are tasked with interpreting a constitution that is over 200 years old, applying centuries-old language to modern disputes its authors could never have imagined.

That's where oral arguments come in.

They're not a formality. Attorneys arguing before the Court need arguments that are not just sound, but genuinely persuasive — powerful enough to sway the justices' thinking in real time.

And once a decision is made, it doesn't stay quiet for long.

Written opinions are released to the press, and within hours — sometimes minutes — the ruling is already on air or in print, shaping public conversation almost instantly.

The Supreme Court's history is really a story about power: who shapes it, who challenges it, and how fragile its authority can be when it gets something wrong.

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used in a limited way in the assignment; I took ample notes while watching a twenty-minute video about the US Supreme Court. I then personalized those notes by adding my point of view, for example, things I learned or found surprising.  I than used Claude.AI to help me clean up the text for grammar spelling and punctuation, and I also asked the tool to help me shape it into the form of a blog post.  I then edited the text added links and added images with end captions.