The fact that slavery itself was an abomination and crime against humanity, he told us, should not be used to excuse Brown's penchant for both encouraging and resorting to extreme violence on behalf of its abolition, a personal trait which was on bloody display at both Pottawatomie, KS and Harper's Ferry.

Brown's own journey to socio-political radicalization likely began in 1837, when he became a self-avowed abolitionist following the assassination of the Rev. Elijah Lovejoy, a remnowned anti-slavery advocate, by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, IL.

A well-respected businessman who had developed an expertise in the raising of sheep and production of fine wool, Brown likely went off the deep end sometime after 1846, the year he and his partner Simon Perkins relocated their wool business and their families to Springfield, MA, a politically progressive city which was also a budding hotbed of abolitionist activity, and a place where Brown soon established himself as one of the movement's more articulate and intractable proponents.

Brown undoubtedly cut a very charismatic figure, and his influence was felt by no less than noted African-American leader Frederick Douglass, who first met Brown in 1847 following a speech he gave at Springfield's "Free Church," a black evangelical church where Brown was a parishioner.

Having then spent the rest of that evening engrossed in deep conversation with Brown, Douglass later wrote, "From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass. 1847 while I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful for its peaceful abolition. My utterances became more and more tinged by the color of this man's strong impressions."

Several of Brown's adult sons had moved to Kansas by then, which at the time was become engulfed in a simmering intrastate conflict between abolitionist and pro-slavery forces. Brown closed his wool business in Springfield and in 1855 joined his sons in Kansas, where he proceeded to fan the flames of abolition in that brand-new state.

(It should be noted that Brown fathered 20 children in his lifetime -- 7 with first wife Dianthe, who had died in childbirth in 1832, and another 13 with second wife Mary Ann, whom he married the following year.)

Alleging that pro-slavery advocates were plotting against his family, Brown impetuously decided upon mounting a pre-emptive strike of his own. Late in the evening of May 24, 1856, five of these alleged pro-slavery plotters were rousted from their homes by Brown and his sons and taken to Pottawatomie Creek, whereupon they were hacked to death with broadswords.

That unprovoked massacre ignited the powder keg which soon became known as "Bleeding Kansas." Somewhere between 50 and 200 residents on both sides were killed, and scores more injured, in the subsequent bloodletting during the three years of attacks and retribution which followed.

As Kansas historian Dale Watts notes, Brown and his fellow antislavery proponents in Kansas were hardly the innocent victims that their abolitionist friends back east sought to portray them as being. In many instances, Pottawatomie Creek in particular, they were clearly the antagonists and aggressors.

Suffice to say that as a role model for the anti-abortion crowd, John Brown is probably a pretty hard act to follow.

I got a better Idea, how about we list all the derange right wingers that killed people in those 50 years.

Just google Obama + the n-word..

And this makes no sense whatsoever.

When you try and compare the actions of the radical islamists you are just like the nut cases on the right who excuse Drear.

Really??