Assassination Vacation

Abolitionists were opponents of legalized enslavement within the United States. The conflict between politicians in the South, where enslavement was legalized, and abolitionists in the North was the major tension that led into the US Civil War. The fame the abolitionist John Brown achieved for leading the raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, was a major influence for both the assassins John Wilkes Booth and Charles Guiteau, albeit for reasons that had little to do with Brown’s opposition to enslavement.

The term “Bleeding Kansas” refers to a series of massacres and clashes that took place between 1854 and 1859 in the Kansas Territory (which was being settled by the United States but was not yet a state) and western Missouri. The overall conflict was between settlers who wanted to outlaw enslavement when Kansas became a state, and those who wanted to incorporate legalized enslavement into Kansas. Historians consider the conflicts a major precursor to the US Civil War. As Sarah Vowell points out, John Brown fought in an early confrontation and suggests that she believes he was responsible for worsening the violence, which is one example of Vowell’s opposition to political violence.