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In a society where Americans of African heritage could be killed for no reason other than the whim of the master, and with absolutely no legal libilities for the master, but rather the legal liability of the state to compensate the master for the lost slave, the actions of John Brown were nothing new. Certainly we can not endorse such notions, but we can observe that John Brown's contribution to history was ulitmately most profound, and as a nation we have much to thank him for.

On a similar note, I would point out that the Abolitionist movement really got rolling when state courts thumbed their noses at Federal law. What president will want to send troops to occupy a state because it outlaws abortion and denies SCOTUS? I don't know now, but in John Brown's time, there were many states that did, and even pro-slaver presidents refused to send any troops into these states, even when they locked slave masters up for ten years at a stretch.