Brown was a northerner and believed that slavery should be combated with violence and not with peace, since the act of enslaving was a violent and aggressive act. Because of this thought he, together with a group of men led by him, forged the "Masstaque de Pottawatomie" in May 1856, where they murdered in cold blood five southern slaveholders, so that they could serve as examples to other southerners about what could happen to them if they rejected the abolition proposals.
