“John Brown was known as a madman who used excessive force in order to achieve his goals” says Joseph R. Gilmore, but who was John Brown? John Brown was an abolitionist trying to free slaves, except he did that with so much violence and killing innocent people. It was also later revealed that those weren’t even his true intentions. This information is very important since most people think that he was an amazing person who just wanted to free slaves, but that was not the whole truth. John Brown was a villain because he killed innocent people and took them captive, he lied about everything in court, and he tried to start a civil war. For my first piece of evidence, I want to point out how many people John Brown killed or took captive. When he did his missions to …show more content…
According to document E, it says that the family he took three lives from didn’t own slaves, and were never planning to, they just lived in a pro-slavery area. Even Abraham Lincoln said he took it too far. Secondly, in court, he lied about everything he did. He lied about almost everything he did, claiming he never meant to hurt anyone or do anything to owners of slaves. He also ended up saying that his most brutal attack was “Without the snapping of a gun.” (Document F) Since he lied about almost everything, that is another reason to believe he is a villain. Even though he was facing death, he could have told the truth and tried to tone it down, not lie about everything. He also ended up saying something that would be completely contradicted in a later letter to his friend. Finally, he tried to start a revolt/civil war. In document G and H, it proves that John Brown WAS trying to start a revolt, despite what he said in F. He said, in a letter to his friend, that he “wanted to put the slaves in a condition to defend liberties” (Document G), which translates to putting the slaves in a place where they can fight back, or in other words, he was supplying them with