Dear David, In my opinion, John Brown is neither a Hero nor a Terrorist. He is a man who fought on what he believe is true. He stood for what he think is right and that drove him to do things even if that means killing people in the process. John Brown has the right mindset of pursuing racial equality and to free the slaves. However, I do not agree in the way he tried to handle the situation he was given. I truly believe that he is a good person and wanted to make a difference in their time, I just don’t approve with the unnecessary killing what he had done to those five people that was murdered at Pottawatomie. We can apply one of Robert McNamara’s lessons to justify John Brown’s action at Pottawatomie with “In order to be good, you may have to engage in evil.” Feeling as if he was a complete failure and that of someone who has nothing left to lose, John Brown is willing to do whatever it is for the purpose of his cause. I can understand why he thought that killing these people is justified since at the time, all that things that support his cause seems to be falling like when the free-state men of Lawrence fell to the hundreds of armed border ruffians. Another is when the abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner was almost beaten to death with a cane while working at the senate floor. John Brown felt as if it was an attack by the South to further hinder his cause to free the slaves. The Pottawatomie Massacre ignited an all-out war in Kansas where one of his sons got killed in Osawatomie trying to defend the town from 250 border ruffians. It is sad that the action he felt was just led to death. The northerners hailed him as a hero for defending Osawatomie and even celebrated him in Broadway at a theater in New York. By that time, he was able to gather supporters for his cause to finally drive slavery away and to the heart of the Southerners.