John Brown

Part I of Essay
Born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800, was the son of a wandering New Englander. Brown spent much of his youth in Ohio, where he was taught in local schools to resent compulsory education and by his parents to revere the Bible and hate slavery. As a boy he herded ....

Part II of Essay
.... He frequently sought the company of blacks, for two years living in a freedmen’s community in North Elba, New York. In time he became a militant abolitionist, a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, and the organizer of a self-protection league for free blacks and fugitive slaves. By the time he was fifty, Brown was entranced by visions of slave uprisings, during which racists paid horribly for their sins, and he came to regard himself as commissioned by God to make that vision a reality. In August 1885 he followe ....