John Brown: terrorist, martyr, and antislavery radical

John Brown: Was he a murderer or a martyr?

The actions of John Brown raise many uncomfortable questions about how we view terrorism in modern society. It is often said that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' and that expression certainly holds true with John Brown in his raid on Harper's Ferry. Even before the Harper's Ferry raid, Brown was a "leader of antislavery guerillas" in Kansas and "fought [against] a proslavery attack against the antislavery town of Lawrence. The following year, in retribution for another attack, Brown went to a proslavery town and brutally killed five of its settlers. Brown and his sons would continue to fight in the territory and in Missouri for the rest of the year" ("John Brown," 1998). Brown was not above killing civilians and regarded brutality inflicted upon African-Americans as an evil that could be eradicated only with violence. On one hand, the nonviolent resistance of Martin Luther King Jr. is certainly more appealing to us today; on the other hand, the actions of slaveholders in the 19th century were clearly a moral evil and included the rape, brutalization, and even murder of human beings designated to be 'property.' Brown was hanged but his trial brought great attention to the antislavery cause. Henry David Thoreau, himself a passionate abolitionist, said of John Brown: "He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid" ("John Brown," 1998).