Summary: The Trial Of John Brown

Arguably, one can state that John Brown was a righteous martyr who died for the cause of the abolition movement. His letters to his wife and kids from prison back this claim: “I feel no consciousness of guilt” (John Brown’s Letters to his wife, Letter dated October 31). In another letter, he describes his sentencing as, “I am waiting the hour of my public murder” (Brown’s Letters to his wife, Letter dated November 30). Nonetheless, despite his moral justification for murder, John Brown was not a martyr; instead, he was a brutal terrorist who would stop at nothing to make a political statement. Brown’s thoughts surrounding slavery can be traced back to his childhood: John Brown was born into a family of slavery-hating devout Calvinists (The Trial of John Brown: A Commentary 1). Brown described one experience in particular as transforming him into a determined abolitionist: while on a cattle drive in 1812, Brown became friends with a slave boy at the house where he lodged. There, Brown witnessed his friend suffer beatings from household tools and be made to sleep wearing only rags, in the cold (The Trial of John Brown: A Commentary 1). It was in this moment that Brown dedicated his life to fight the social injustices that were taking place in the United States. Initially,

Brown replied, ‘No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my maker’” (Johns Brown’s Interview 1). This further indicated that Brown was willing to take responsibility for this brutal attack on American soil, demonstrating just how far John Brown was willing to go and perhaps how crazy John Brown had become. He viewed the act of slavery as an act against God, and through this brutal attack, he was fighting against the social injustices of man. Not once did he distinguish that he was fighting against the United States, despite attacking a federal