John Brown was clearly flawed in real life. He did some terrible things, but he did some things none of us would have had the heart to do. His moral leanings were unquestionably admirable.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Strangely enough, the legend of John Brown, who was clearly crazy, helped the abolitionist cause and is thought to have precipitated the American Civil War.
People call him a terrorist, but you can use language to do many things and say many things about people, but John Brown was a hero.
The abolitionists were not like the rugged people out West, and they were not like John Brown, either. They were people who made speeches and did politics.
Jimmy Carter was unquestionably the most moral president of my lifetime, but he wasn't much of a president.
John Brown was tried for treason, murder, and inciting slaves to insurrection.
James Brown's life was really a metaphor for our inability to talk about matters like race and class in America.
John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.
James Brown was the Monday-to-Friday guy. He was the hardest man in show business. He was like your dad and your uncle: He showed up, and he hit hard.
We don't know who John Brown was, and in many ways, his work shaped where we are today. He was a Pennsylvanian. He was the prototypical Yankee who fought back and suffered in doing so.
John Brown was the abolitionist to end all abolitionists. People thought he was crazy. He was like John Coltrane playing free jazz, exhausting all possibilities in his approach to harmony and improvisation.