One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Add in divisive politics and distinguishing between terrorists and freedom fighters depends entirely on the political and moral perspectives of the person telling the story. John Brown is a perfect example of this dichotomy.
He was one of the most divisive figures in 19th century America on the issue of slavery and racial equality. Brown began as a sane, deeply moral, non-violent man working to end slavery, but like so many fanatical people, his grip on reality slipped.
The spark that lit his fuse was the Great Compromise of 1850. This political waffle was cooked up by Congress to avoid deciding the issue of slavery. As settlers migrated west, southerners wanted to take along slavery while northerners insisted the new states had to be “free”. The U.S. Senate was grid-locked between the free and slave states. So Congress punted the issue to the local population to decide whether to become a slave or a free state.
At the time, the settlers in Kansas Territory lived in pro- and anti- slavery communities. Neither side could guarantee a win on the slave/free state vote. John Brown arrived with several sons in 1855, bringing a wagon load of guns. His violent campaign against slavery started the following year.
On May 21, 1856, a pro-slavery mob sacked the free town of Lawrence, Kansas killing an estimated 150 men. Quicker than you can think wacko nutcase Brown decided that God wanted him to punish the pro-slavery crowd in Kansas.
On May 24th, Brown and a few supporters randomly selected the farming community of Pottawatomi for a reprisal attack. At the Doyle farm, the father and his two adult sons were dragged away and shot within hearing of Mrs. Doyle and the younger children. Their mutilated bodies were found the following morning near the farm house. Two more men were murdered nearby on May 25th.
Predictably, pro-slavery newspapers in Kansas screeched about terrorism and murder after staying mum on the Lawrence murders. Free State Kansans excused the murders as an unfortunate consequence of protecting their folks. The stage was set for vigilantes to transform Kansas into the 19th century equivalent of a turf war between drug cartels.
As national attention focused on Bloody Kansas, Brown used his gift of oratory to stir the pot. He was as fiery as a camp meeting preacher scaring listeners out of hell; only he was scaring the hell out of southerners. Pro-slavery people called him the devil incarnate. Abolitionists glossed over the fact that Brown had a couple of screws loose and justified murder as a necessary evil to teach a lesson to pro-slavery supporters.
By 1859, Brown had attracted wealthy supporters among the New England abolitionist crowd. He used their money to organize an attack on the federal weapons depot at Harpers Ferry, now West Virginia. Brown planned to steal the weapons and distribute them to nearby slaves so they could rise up against their owners.
On October 16, 1859, Brown’s small force attacked the weapons depot and took hostages. A day later, 90 U.S. Marines arrived under the command of Army Colonel Robert E. Lee. His subordinate, Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart attempted to talk Brown into surrendering. When that failed, Lee ordered the Marines to bust down the doors. Two of Brown’s sons were killed in the assault and he was severely injured.
Brown went on trial for attacking the depot. He looked pathetic with his healing wounds, gray beard and gaunt appearance. But he was strong enough to make fiery speeches in his defense and practically begged to be hanged so that he could become a martyr. Instead of acknowledging that Brown was totally nuts, the court granted his wish. He was hanged on December 2, 1859.
Death transformed him into a powerful abolitionist symbol. He was compared to Jesus by Henry David Thoreau and Frederick Douglass praised him as a symbol of the fight against oppression. Union soldiers marched into war singing “John Brown’s Body”. The Confederacy despised him almost as much as they despised Lincoln.
We can still argue about whether John Brown was a terrorist or a freedom fighter. But he is a reminder of what happens when fanatics with a tenuous grip on reality decide to take the law into their own hands because they don’t trust elections to give them what they want.
Want to learn more about terrorists, anarchists, assassins, and guerilla warfare? Max Boot covers them all in Invisible Armies (2013) from ancient Mesopotamia to Imperialist China to modern Afghanistan and Iraq.
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