John Brown: Hero or Terrorist?
John Brown was raised by a devote Calvinist who taught all his children that slavery was a sin. During the War of 1812 Brown’s father won a contract to provide beef to American forces. He entrusted his son to drive the cattle to the armies’ outpost. During one of these drives the young twelve-year-old Brown lodged with a landlord who owned a slave about his age. He had witnessed the man beat the boy with an iron shovel. It was this moment in John Browns life that made him become the determined abolitionist he was and would lead him to later escalate the rising conflict between the North and the South over slavery.
Brown believed that no human was perfect because only God was. During the Second Great Awakening,
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John Brown’s son, John Brown Jr. was the first to decide to head down to Nebraska and become a farmer and a soldier for the war on slavery. John Brown Jr.’s other 4 sons decided to join him, as well as his father’s brother in law. After his son wrote to him one day about how half of the people fighting for freedom were not even armed and there was no military John Brown then decided to join his son in Kansas. This was the beginning to John Brown’s escalation as a radical abolitionist. Almost as soon as John Brown arrived there was blood spilled by a proslavery Virginian who had killed a free state settler after a dispute. There was then a protest meeting that quickly turned into taking up arms and everyone was ready for a fight. At this meeting John Brown was named a captain in the Kansas Brigade and was given command over a very small troop which mainly consisted of his sons (The Liberty Guards). There was little action that day as the governor was able to break up the situation by making the proslavery side retreat while the free state leaders announced that they had no intention of breaking the law in the new territory. Slowly John Brown was becoming more and more radical and wanting more action