Terrible Swift Sword

A song about the abolitionist John Brown. Is physical violence ever justified when confronting tyranny?

Is physical violence ever justified in the face of tyranny? One man in American history certainly thought so—abolitionist John Brown. He believed that slavery, as a moral abomination, could only be dismantled through force.

In 1856, Brown and his sons moved to Kansas, a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery factions. Tensions were high, and violence was erupting on both sides. Pro-slavery mobs attacked abolitionists, anti-slavery leaders were arrested, and newspapers silenced. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner was nearly beaten to death with a cane by a pro-slavery congressman.

For Brown, that was the final straw.

Not long after the assault on Sumner, Brown led a deadly raid against pro-slavery settlers in the village of Pottawatomie. He and his followers targeted three families, killing five men—some with pistols, others with swords. The violence was brutal, even medieval: limbs severed, heads hacked. Brown believed this terror was necessary to shock the nation’s conscience.

He was never arrested for those murders. In fact, among radical abolitionists, he was hailed as a man of principle—willing to fight fire with fire in a war already raging beneath the surface.

Three years later, Brown launched a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. He hoped to ignite a slave rebellion. Instead, two of his sons were killed, and Brown was captured, tried for treason, and executed.

Not everyone mourned. The widow of one of Brown’s Kansas victims wrote to him shortly before his hanging, expressing satisfaction that justice, in her view, was finally being served.

Even today, John Brown remains a lightning rod. His fury was righteous—but his methods, many argue, were not. By choosing victims at random to make a political statement, he blurred the line between resistance and revenge.

And yet, history doesn’t forget him. To many African Americans, he’s a hero. To historians, he’s a harbinger. John Brown's violent stand was a grim preview of the Civil War to come—the bloodiest conflict on American soil.