His actions as a guerilla fighter, including the “Pottawatamie massacre”, are a persist challenge to anyone who looks at the situation seriously. As the mini-civil-war in Kansas showed, the slaveowners were willing to use violence and break the law on a massive scale to expand slavery. Other than rigid legalism or actual pacifism, I find it very difficult to find reason to condemn his actions as an anti-slavery fighter, even on tactical grounds. At the same time, because people today looking for excuses to commit violent acts for some fringe cause point to Brown's example, I also think it's important to understand the very real threat to freedom and democracy he was confronting.

The notion that he was “insane” just doesn't hold water. (Ironically again, some of those hoping to have his life spared after the Harper's Ferry raid promoted the notion in hopes of having him pardoned or at least not executed.) I have seen one essay by Bertram Wyatt-Brown making a plausible case – tricky as psychohistory is – that Brown suffered from depression. It could help explain some very particular mysteries, like why he delayed so long in evacuating Harper's Ferry with the captured weapons. But it can't explain his political actions and decisions, much less does it make them “insane”. And it certainly can't explain why he actions had such a lasting impact and why he is still a powerful symbol of freedom.

I have ancestors who lived in Ashtabula then moved to Indiana and Michigan. My great grandmother attended Oberlin just after the turn of the century. I never knew her, but the house she was born and raised in is in northern Indiana and is featured on a couple underground railroad websites. I found a copy of her 1901 HS commencement program online. She gave a speech entitled “Not so Black as They're Painted.” I would love to know the text of that speech!

Regarding RGW, a while back I had a discussion with him about Brown seizing a federal arsenal and secessionists doing the same thing. He doesn't see the similarities. Somehow secessionists are to be celebrated but not Brown.

Is this a period song or did these folks just write it?