Was Brutus the Noblest Roman of Them All free essay sample

Was Brutus the noblest roman of all? â€Å"This was the noblest roman of them all† Mark Anthony said about Brutus in the play Julius Caesar, after Brutus had killed himself at the battle of Philippi. Although Brutus had participated in the assassination of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Julius’s nephew, was praising Brutus as a noble person. But how was he noble? In the beginning of the play, we meet Brutus, a highly respected, much loved, senator of Rome. He loved Rome as a republic and he has a good life until he is led astray by Cassius. When he becomes embroiled in the assassination of Caesar, he is very reluctant to do so. In the way he acted, you could tell he has sleepless nights over what he should do. He decided to kill Caesar for the good of Rome. We will write a custom essay sample on Was Brutus the Noblest Roman of Them All? or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This is an important point. One of the reasons why Brutus was noble is that he did not assassinate him for personal gain, but for the greater good, the good of Rome. Unlike the other conspirators, he was not envious, and acted in his best intentions. He had no bad motives. He thought he was right, so he went with his decision instead of being indecisive and cowardly. These reasons show that he was an honourable and noble man. He was popular which shows he was a good man as large numbers of ordinary citizens would not side with a bad man. In the scene when the conspirators plotted the assassination, Brutus said that they should not disrespect Caesar’s body by chopping limbs off but to give him a funeral and to make sure his body was like â€Å"a dish fit for the gods. † He also said not to kill Mark Anthony as he was not dangerous and that he wanted Caesars death to be a sacrifice, not a bloodbath. This shows he was a caring person and didn’t fit the persona of â€Å"murderer† unlike the other conspirators, who were all keen on killing Mark Anthony and who couldn’t care less about Caesar’s body. Brutus is trusted with Cassius’s secrets about the weaknesses of Caesar in an effort to turn Brutus against Caesar in a pang of jealousy and anger at Caesar for getting famous, while Cassius wasn’t. Cassius plants into Brutus’s head that he and Caesar are equal and that Caesar is just a weak coward. During the assassination of Caesar, Caesar took all the knife wounds caused by the other conspirators, but, when he saw Brutus with a knife in his hand he cried out â€Å"Et tu, Brute? (Even you, Brutus? )- Then fall Caesar! † This shows that he was very shocked at the best friend betraying him, because he was normally very loyal. After the assassination, Brutus speaks to the crowd, who were demanding an explanation. He was a good orator and when he justifies his reasons to kill Caesar he says If, then, that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. This shows that he was truly noble as it proves he did it for all the right reasons. He also allowed Anthony to speak at Caesars funeral. While it was a dangerous decision, it was also a brave decision. However Anthony swings the crowd over to his side and he partners with Octavius to get revenge on the conspirators. Meanwhile, Brutus and Cassius are h aving an argument. Brutus is accusing Cassius of taking bribes, and therefore undoing the goodness that Brutus thought that killing Caesar had done. He accuses Cassius of having â€Å"an itchy palm. † This shows that he was righteous and he loved by high standards. At the end Brutus kills himself, by running on a sword, rather than being captured and then paraded as a disgrace. In roman times, killing yourself would be the noble thing to do. However, he had his flaws, his main one was being too trusting, which led to his downfall. Following this evidence above, it is conclusive that he was a very noble man. He was trustworthy honest, mostly loyal, caring and honourable. His flaws are greatly outnumbered by his good deeds, to the extent that even his enemies accepted his nobility after Mark Anthony was avenged. Brutus was a reluctant conspirator, a clever man and decisively noble.

Biography of Horace Greeley

Biography of Horace Greeley The legendary editor Horace Greeley was one of the most influential Americans of the 1800s. He founded and edited the New York Tribune, a  substantial and very popular newspaper of the period. Greeleys opinions, and his daily decisions on what constituted news impacted American life for decades. He was not an ardent abolitionist, yet he was opposed to slavery, and he was involved in the founding of the Republican Party in the 1850s. When Abraham Lincoln came to New York City in early 1860 and essentially began his run for the presidency with his address at Cooper Union, Greeley was in the audience. He became a supporter of Lincoln, and at times, especially in the early years of the Civil War, something of a Lincoln antagonist. Greeley eventually ran as a major candidate for president in 1872, in an ill-fated campaign which left him in very poor health. He died soon after losing the 1872 election. He wrote countless editorials and several books, and is perhaps best known for a famous quote he probably did not originate: â€Å"Go west, young man.† A Printer in His Youth Horace Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, in Amherst, New Hampshire. He received irregular schooling, typical of the time, and became an apprentice at a newspaper in Vermont as a teenager. Mastering the skills of a printer, he worked briefly in Pennsylvania and then moved to New York at the age of 20. He found a job as a newspaper compositor, and within two years he and a friend opened their own print shop. In 1834, with another partner, Greeley founded a magazine, the New Yorker,  a journal devoted to literature, the arts and sciences. The New York Tribune For seven years he edited his magazine, which was generally unprofitable. During this period he also worked for the emerging Whig Party. Greeley wrote leaflets, and at times edited a newspaper, the Daily Whig. Encouraged by some prominent Whig politicians, Greeley founded the New York Tribune in 1841, when he was 30. For the next three decades, Greeley would edit the newspaper, which came to have a profound influence on the national debate. The dominant political issue of the day, of course, was slavery, which Greeley adamantly and vocally opposed. A Prominent Voice in American Life Greeley was personally offended by the sensationalist newspapers of the period and worked to make the New York Tribune a  credible newspaper for the masses. He sought out good writers and is said to be the first newspaper editor to provide bylines for writers. And Greeley’s own editorials and commentaries drew enormous attention. Though Greeley’s political background was with the fairly conservative Whig Party, he advanced opinions which deviated from Whig orthodoxy. He supported womens rights and labor and opposed monopolies. He hired early feminist  Margaret Fuller to write for the Tribune, making her the first female newspaper columnist in New York City. Greeley Shaped Public Opinion in the 1850s In the 1850s Greeley published editorials denouncing slavery, and eventually supported full abolition. Greeley wrote denunciations of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott Decision. A weekly edition of the Tribune  was shipped westward, and it was very popular in rural parts of the country. Its believed that Greeleys hardening opposition to slavery helped shape public opinion in the decade leading up to the Civil War. Greeley became one of the founders of the Republican Party and was present as a delegate at its organizing convention in 1856. Greeleys Role in Lincolns Election At the 1860 Republican Party convention, Greeley was denied a seat in the New York delegation because of feuds with local officials. He somehow arranged to be seated as a delegate from Oregon and sought to block the nomination of New York’s William Seward, a former friend. Greeley supported the candidacy of Edward Bates, who had been a prominent member of the Whig Party. But the tempestuous editor eventually put his influence behind Abraham Lincoln. Greeley Challenged  Lincoln Over Slavery During the Civil War Greeley’s attitudes were controversial. He originally believed the southern states should be allowed to secede, but he eventually came to support the war fully. In August 1862 he published an editorial titled â€Å"The Prayer of Twenty Millions† that called for the emancipation of the slaves. The title of the famed editorial was typical of Greeleys presumptuous nature, as it indicated that the entire population of the northern states shared his beliefs. Lincoln Responded  Publicly to Greeley Lincoln wrote a response, which was printed on the front page of the New York Times on August 25, 1862. It contained an oft-quoted passage: â€Å"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.† By that time, Lincoln had decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. But he would wait until he could claim military victory after the Battle of Antietam in September before proceeding Controversy at the End of the Civil War Horrified by the human cost of the Civil War, Greeley advocated peace negotiations, and in 1864, with Lincoln’s approval, he traveled to Canada to meet with Confederate emissaries. The potential thus existed for peace talks, but nothing came of Greeleys efforts. After the war Greeley offended a number of readers by advocating amnesty for Confederates, even going so far as to pay for a bail bond for Jefferson Davis. Troubled Later Life When Ulysses S. Grant was elected president in 1868 Greeley was a supporter. But he became disillusioned, feeling Grant was too close to New York political boss Roscoe Conkling. Greeley wanted to run against Grant, but the Democratic Party was not interested in having him as a candidate. His ideas helped to form the new Liberal Republican Party, and he was the party’s candidate for president in 1872. The 1872 campaign was particularly dirty, and Greeley was viciously criticized and mocked. He lost the election to Grant, and it took a terrible toll on him. He was committed to a mental institution, where he died on November 29, 1872. Greeley is best remembered today for a quote from an 1851 editorial in the New York Tribune: Go west, young man. It has been said that Greeley thus inspired many thousands to set out for the frontier. The most likely story behind the famous quote is that Greeley had reprinted, in the New York Tribune, an editorial by John B.L. Soule which contained the line, Go west, young man, go west. Greeley never claimed to have coined the original phrase, though he later expanded upon it by writing an editorial with the phrase, Go west young man, and grow up with the country. And over time the original quote was usually attributed to Greeley.

Drug Violence in Mexico Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Drug Violence in Mexico - Research Paper Example Mexican drug trafficking is not a new item in the history of the country; the country has since Prohibition years of 1917-1933 been exporting illegal substances to the United States, and even before that, in Civil War years, was seen as one of the major suppliers of opiates, including morphine and heroin used to treat soldiers (Gonzalez). Though drugs have been commonly used in Mexico during this time, even though they were exported to the United States, they were still only being used for medical purposes, therefore the government saw no need to regulate or otherwise deter their uses. If there were addicts, they were seen as â€Å"ill persons†, not criminals, and the government was more concerned about protecting the public from low-quality drugs in its desire to make laws against drug use than they were in sending people to jail for it (Gonzalez). Another reason that the Mexican drug trafficking grew and prospered, coming under the control of what is known today as the drug cartels, is that for a long time the attentions of anti-drug campaigns were focused elsewhere, specifically Columbia. With all of the United States attention focused on bringing down the Columbian cartels, it is only natural that Mexico would be able to â€Å"fly under the radar† of the anti-drug missions and grow unchecked to the size that it is today. However, once the Columbian cartels had been dealt with by the American government, the Mexican cartels took what they had learned, and made their own drug pipeline (â€Å"Losing Ground Against Drugs: The Erosion of America’s Borders† 1997). Now Mexico is considered a major drug producer, as well as a major supplier, both in United States and the world. It is the main foreign supplier of methamphetamine and to the United States, and although Mexico accounts for only a small share of worldwide heroin production, it supplies a large share of heroin consumed in the United States, with an estimated 90% of cocaine ent ering the United States through Mexico (Cook 1). Violence in the border region has begun to spill over and affect Americans, with more than 60 Americans kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico as of 2008 (Cook 1). Clearly, this is not the relationship that the United States envisioned with Mexico, though Mexico publicly does not support the actions of the drug cartels, as kidnappings and murders are generally seen as bad on both sides of the border. Today in Mexico, seven known drug cartels operate throughout the country: the Arellano Felix Organization, Beltran Leyva Organization, Los Zetas Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel, Carillo Fuentes Organization, Gulf Cartel/New Federation, and La Familia Michoacana, each with its own fluid area and territory of influence (Cook 3). However, that does not mean that each cartel is content with what they have accomplished, and since there are no fences marked with â€Å"this cartel’s territory here† or â€Å"keep out†, the borders are ofte n fought over. Infighting is common, and an almost immediate result of the rise in the Mexican drug cartels was a spike in violence, not just across the US-Mexican border where the cartels fought the authorities, but within Mexico itself, where the cartels wage turf wars against one another (Cook 13). Drugs are a very dangerous trade in Mexico. One of the biggest reasons for