There is a case to be made that John Brown’s actions at Harper’s Ferry were morally and intellectually defensible, being based directly on the principles in the Declaration of Independence.
Of course, they were in practice a horrible idea and led directly to secession and our Civil War.
Koresh was just a perverted nutjob out for himself. That’s something JB was never accused of. Say what you like about old John, he certainly wasn’t operating out of self-interest.
On Saturday night, May 24, 1856, John Brown and his band visited house after house upon Pottawatomie Creek, and, calling man after man from his bed, murdered five in cold blood. They first visited the house of Doyle, and compelled a father and two sons to go with them. The next morning, the father and one son were found dead in the road about two hundred yards from the house. The father was "shot in the forehead and stabbed in the breast. The son's head was cut open, and there was a hole in his jaw as though made by a knife." The other son was found dead about a hundred and fifty yards away in the grass, "his fingers cut off and his arms cut off, his head cut open, and a hole in his breast."
Then they went to Wilkinson's, reaching there after midnight. They forced open the door and ordered him to go with them. His wife was sick and helpless, and begged them not to take him away. Her prayer was of no avail. The next day Wilkinson was found dead, "a gash in his head and side "
Their next victim was William Sherman. When found in the morning, his "skull was split open in two places, and some brains were washed out. A large hole was cut in his breast, and his left hand was cut off, a little piece of skin on one side." The execution was done with short cutlasses brought from Ohio by Brown.
-excerpt from "End of an Era"