John Brown was tried for treason, murder, and inciting slaves to insurrection.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
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.
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.
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.
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.
Slavery was the betrayal of the American Promise at the moment that promise was made.
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.
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.
I sedulously refrained from doing anything that would incite slaves to run away from their masters.
Before the American Revolution there were frequent slave uprisings, and a lot of people would run away.
John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.