Opinion of John Brown

[Psychic Octopus]

John Brown. What is your opinion of the man?

[Хahar 🤔]

Clearly a terrorist, and just as clearly a freedom fighter.

[Lief 🗽]

A great American.

[minionofmidas]

I like his last written words. And the beard he grew late in life, of course.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Clearly a terrorist, and just as clearly a freedom fighter.

[Mr. Taft Republican]

He went about aboloitionism the wrong way.

[The Mikado]

Kind of sucked at the terrorism part, too.

[Mechaman]

An advocate of murder.

Then again I'm the type of person who believes that killing is wrong, regardless of political agenda.

[tpfkaw]

I tend towards the opinion that murdering multiple people in cold blood makes you an auto-HP.  But then I'm just racist like that.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

FF, but I dont support terrorism. And that, in the end, is what he is. A terrorist. None the less, I vote FF.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     He was pretty much the abolitionist equivalent of Eric Rudolph; ergo an HP.

[Insula Dei]

What America needs today.

[Mechaman]

What America needs today.

What homicidal maniacs who advocate murder to advance their political ideology?

Am I the only person who thinks this is a completely deranged idea?  Oh wait, I'm talking about the nation that throws trillions of dollars towards bombing third world nations and oil exporters back to the Stone Age.

Guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Lief 🗽]

Systems founded on violence are very rarely overthrown peacefully, Mech.

[FloridaRepublican]

Meh, hard to say. He did fight to end slavery, and I applaud him for that, but he went about doing so in completely the wrong way. He was a crazy terrorist and killed innocent people, but his purpose was just. He's a little of both.

[Middle-aged Europe]

While some heroes are more of the Superman kind, others are more of a Batman. He was clearly the latter.

[Rooney]

John Brown was simply a madman who convinced idealists of a utopian future that could not exist. He was a tool of Eastern business interests (in the form of his Boston backers like Henry Ward Beecher) to acheive a long-shot goal. I do not think this makes him a hero, it simply makes him a mercenary. Those who argue that he fought against slavery need to find other heroes because Brown never killed a slaveowner (but he did kill a few free black men at Harper's Ferry). He was taken down by unarmed marines and given a trial where he got to spew some bile and hang. In the end he is given far too much credit for what he was worth.

An interesting tidbit is that John Brown's father taught Jesse Root Grant (Ulysses Grant's father) the trade of tanning. 

[minionofmidas]

Systems founded on violence are very rarely overthrown peacefully, Mech.

...which, of course, is what Brown was actually trying to do (comparatively peacefully. And seeing how events turned out...)