John Brown, for example, believed that God had appointed him “a special agent of death” to “break the jaws of the wicked” and eliminate the “wicked curse of slavery.”
Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised on the Ohio frontier, Brown grew up in an intensely reverent Christian household. His parents were ardent opponents of slavery, and young John inherited both their fervent religious beliefs and their antislavery convictions. A confirmed Calvinist, he was convinced that a righteous and angry God demanded strict obedience and exacted stern punishment.

Brown struggled all his life to find a successful calling. He worked as a tanner, shepherd, and farmer, served as an itinerant minister, speculated in real estate, and traded in cattle, but never prospered enough to end his chronic indebtedness. Burdened by frustration at his business failures, Brown increasingly identified his suffering with that of the slaves. He developed an intense desire to punish slaveholders for their wickedness.

In 1837, when Brown learned that an antislavery editor had been killed by a mob in Illinois, he stood up in his Ohio church and declared: “Here before God, in the presence of these witnesses, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.” By mid-century, Brown had come to view himself as a latter-day Moses. God had dispatched him to free the slaves and lead them to the promised land.

It was on the plains of Kansas that John Brown initiated his campaign. Slavery had been prohibited from Kansas and Nebraska, but in 1854 Congress passed a law allowing the settlers of each territory to vote on the issue. Throughout 1854 and 1855 Kansas became a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery settlers. Brown called on volunteers to join him in a “secret mission.” On the night of May 23, 1856, he rode with four of his sons and three others into a pro-slavery village along Pottawatomie Creek in southeastern Kansas. These self-appointed vigilantes of virtue dragged five men from their cabins and hacked them to death with broadswords in front of their screaming families.

What came to be called the Pottawatomie Massacre ignited guerrilla warfare in Kansas. On August 30, Missouri “border ruffians” raided the anti-slavery settlement at Osawatomie. They looted and burned houses, and shot John Brown’s son Frederick through the heart. The elder Brown, who barely escaped, looked back at the burning village being devastated by “Satan’s legions” and muttered, “God sees it.” He then swore to his surviving sons and followers: “I have only a short time to live—only one death to die, and I will die fighting for the cause.”
In October 1859 fugitive John Brown sent shock waves across the United States when he and twenty followers, including five blacks, seized the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. He intended to arm slaves in the area and spark a slave insurrection throughout the South. But his plans were foiled when townsfolk discovered the raiders and alerted the militia. Brown and his men holed up in the fire engine house, where they were surrounded.

Colonel Robert E. Lee and his aide, Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, arrived with a force of marines that stormed the engine house. A young officer found Brown kneeling with his rifle cocked. Before the pious patriarch could fire, the marine thrust his sword forward, striking Brown’s belt buckle with such force that it bent the blade back on itself. He then used the hilt to beat Brown unconscious. The siege was over. Brown’s men had killed four people and wounded nine. Of their own group, ten died (including two of Brown’s sons) and seven were captured.
The wounded Brown was convicted of treason on October 31. At his sentencing he delivered an emotional speech: “Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice . . . I say, let it be done.” On December 2, 1859, Brown donned black pants, a black coat, and a black hat, climbed into a wagon and sat on a coffin as he rode to the gallows. He died “with unflinching firmness,” believing that slavery would be ended only through “very much bloodshed.”

Although Brown had failed in his effort to start a slave revolt, he had become a martyr for the antislavery cause in the North. As the editor of a Pittsburgh newspaper proclaimed, “While millions of prayers went up for the old martyr yesterday, so millions of curses were uttered against the hellish system which so mercilessly and ferociously cried out for his blood.” Brown’s desperate actions panicked the slaveholding South. Militia companies were called out to patrol the streets in every major city and town.

Was John Brown a bloodthirsty madman or a principled militant doing God’s bidding? Opinions continue to differ about the murderous idealist. Conclusions regarding his enigmatic personality remain hidden in the folds of history, heaven, and hell.
Today, religious belief remains a powerful catalyst for violence in the name of justice. John Brown has many modern counterparts who attack the innocent in order to remedy the alleged evils of society. Like Brown, these pious terrorists assault the complexities of injustice with the terrible certitude of violence. A nation of laws cannot endorse such murderous idealism. Abraham Lincoln spoke for many when he observed after Brown’s execution: "We cannot object [to his hanging] even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason."

-- David Shi is a historian, writer
and president of Furman University.