Merril D. Peterson, on his book “John Brown: The Legend Revisited” (2002), creates a new panorama in the consciousness of American History. Motives of a historical figure are important, as well as the event of its development. Peterson recreates the events and the place John Brown had in the thoughts and imagination in American society after his death in 1859 to the present. Peterson develops a significant and well-established John Brown was a passionate abolitionist. He promoted giving arms to fugitive slaves, that way they could fight for their liberty. When Brown arrived east, he lofted his campaign to revolt the slaves to freedom with an assault in 1859 to the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. This invasion was called “a miserably weak…show more content… He thought his divine mission was to free the country of slavery. Peterson states on a passage how Brown was usually known “He is a man of clear head, of courage, of pure ingenuousness. He is cool, collected and indomitable.” (2) Peterson on his book triggers the importance of reputation and image; “commonly among historical actors, fame is an accumulation of something constructed over time. With John Brown, it came like thunder all at once.” (171) John Brown became an important entity in 1859 after his death. Brown made northerners think and take him as a martyr that die for an important cause. He became a hero and inspired tons of poems and speeches that will end up filling the hearts of many citizens of the United States.
He impressed influential figures such as Frederick Douglass, Henry D. Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had similar ideas about abolition as John Brown did. Upon his death, the legend emerged and John Brown began appearing everywhere in all kinds of erudite forms, such as poems and hymns and dramatic ways. Northerners believed southerners had murdered John Brown; his death resolved the troubling issue between moral, suasion and righteous violence well before the war
