answering your questions in more detail. Brown was a complex man, while he was commited to ending slavery, his methods were extreme. Was he a lunatic. I would say so, even granting that aboloitionist was a relatively fringe position at the time, Brown was out on the far edge among abolitionists. The South had great fear of a black uprising.. they had dealt with several over the preceding 50 years. Vecsey being among the most notable. I think that Brown initially had high hopes for the raid, as people who go out to do something radical, often are fully convinced that they can do it, regardless of the odds and logistics against it.. I don't think he planned for his own death, he assumed there would an insurrection by the slaves, and that he and his men would escape into the mountains. Was his trail fair? I think the case against brown was pretty solid, and the verdict was forgone conclusion, however the governor probably could have commuted his sentence if he so chose. the trial was very polarizing, the South by and large wanted him dead, while he become a martyr for the abolotionist cause in the nOrth. john Brown's raid was a galvanizinf event, it set the two sections even more against each other. While the split between them was growing in the 1850s anyway despite attempts to repair it by Congress, Brown drove a wedge between them that excerbated things still further. In the abscence of Brown, it would have taken something else to set the North and South so firmly against each other.
