Brown had a familial history of using violence to achieve freedom and giving aid to oppressed people. Brown was named after his grandfather who was a captain in the Revolutionary War. He grew up a Calvinist, and his father instilled a strong sense of God fearing faith in him. Brown would later teach that same faith to his children. When Brown was twelve years of age, he caught sight of a slave boy, no older than himself, being beaten. Brown related to the young slave boys since they, like him, were both motherless and being beaten. Witnessing this, Brown started what he believed to be his "eternal war with slavery." Brown too had been motherless and his father would often strike him if he disobeyed, so Brown felt as though he could relate to the slave boy. Being beaten as a child for religious reasons, Brown believed that violence weeded out sin. He would beat his children and himself if they had sinned against the Lord. Brown believed he was also supposed to punish others if they sinned as well. When he was younger Brown would act on an …show more content…
The men that made up the group called “the Secret Six” were Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Reverend Theodore Parker, Franklin Sanborn, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, George Stearns, and Gerrit Smith. Dr. Howe, Sterns, and Sanborn were mostly financial providers and supporters for Brown’s raids, actions, and other antislavery events. Reverend Parker and Higginson not only financially supported Brown, but both were very outspoken about their abhorrence of slavery. When preaching, Parker tried his hardest to convince the congregation of the evils of slavery, and that it was a national problem: he considered the practice of slavery a national sin, not just a southern crime. Parker would write speeches and sermons condemning anything that advanced slavery and praising everything that harmed it, claiming these actions “inherently