John Brown, History and Comparison

John Brown, who was a major abolutionist, is mainly remembered for the murders he commited in the name of anti-slavery. Only murdering slave owners, some considered him a martyr, whilst others called him the first domestic terrorist. John Brown's soul aim in life was to eleminate all those who sided with slavery, taking his ideas to the extreme, and putting them to work in harsh manners. For Ken Chowder he is "at certain times, a great man", but also "the father of American terrorism." John Brown could be compared to a spider.

Born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800 to two very religious parents, he was brought up to revere the Bible, resent school and hate slavery. During his young life, he hearded cattle for Gen. William Hull's army during the war of 1812, and served as a foreman is his family's tannery. He was married twice, his first wife giving him 7 children, with whom moved to Pennsylvania and made their own tannery before she died, and his second that mothered 13 more of his children.

Brown's business life wasn't a succesful one, in the next 24 year he built and sold several tanneries amoungst other business ventures. These all failed, because Brown was not really the business type. His financial status being a risky one, he began to think more about the weak and oppressed. He spent a lot of time with blacks, living in North Elba, N.Y. ,a freedmen's community. He became a major abolitionist and the organizer of a self-protection league for free blacks and fugitive slaves.

In his 50s, Brown had visions of slave uprisings, where racists paid for their sins and he believed that God himself had given him these visions and that it was his duty to make them a reality. In 1855, he moved to Kansas to make it a free state, one where blacks could live in peace. The next year, when pro-slavery men burned and pillaged the free community of Lawrence, he turned from a relatively peaceful demonstrator, to a radical abolutionist who would stop at nothing until all slave-staters had been disposed of. He organized and led a milita unit within his Osawatomie River colony on a mission of revenge. The evening of 23 May 1856, he and 6 followers, 4 of them