John Brown was an American abolitionist who appealed to the armed insurrection to abolish slavery. He was the author of the Pottawatomie massacre in 1856 in Kansas and an attempted insurrection at Harpers Ferry in 1859 which ended with his arrest, his death sentence for treason against the State of Virginia and his hanging.
John Brown's bloody activism, his raid on Harpers Ferry and his tragic end were among the causes of the Civil War. A highly controversial contemporary and historic figure, John Brown is thus described as a martyr or a terrorist, a visionary or a fanatic, a zealot or a humanist, depending on the political position of the one who describes him.
