John Brown: Freedom Fighter or Terrorist

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John Brown: Freedom fighter or terrorist? The question can be applied to any number of situations over time and across space. James Tackach addresses one of America’s best examples of that very conundrum with his book “The Trial of John Brown: Radical Abolitionist” (Lucent Books, © 1998). And although Tackach starts us off with the vaguely synonymous query of “Traitor or Martyr?”, the point is the same. How do we reconcile or revile the man and his means? Biography of a Man and a Nation Appropriately, Tackach starts with the basics – offering insights into the personal upbringing and ambient politics which eventually led Brown to that fateful event at Harpers Ferry. Brown was born the son of a tanner and the grandson of a minister in turn-of-the-century Connecticut. Growing up in a hardscrabble lifestyle, Brown was first indoctrinated with anti-slavery rhetoric from his father, Owen Brown, who espoused the Calvinist belief that slavery was a sin. Further embedding these ideas in John’s mind was his experience as a young teen witnessing the brutality of another young man – a slave – being beaten mercilessly by his owner. While living in Ohio, the Brown family harbored escaped slaves on several occasions. This was also around the time when the United States saw the first vestiges of its slow creep toward civil war with the Missouri Compromise in 1820, the publication of Garrison’s “The Liberator” in 1831, and Nat Turner’s revolt that same year. Frederick Douglass published his narrative in 1845, more compromises were made between the North and South as newly acquired territories were gained after the Mexican War several years later, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” further outraged abolitionists. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act finally brought things to a boil between proponents and opponents of slavery, and John

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