By any stretch of the imagination, John Brown could never be considered an ordinary man. If anything, he was probably one of the most significant individuals in 19th century America. Not only during life, but even in death, his profound actions and words would change the course of a nation and lead it through the gates of hell into the Civil War.

His life started humbly enough with his birth in Torrington, Conn. However, Brown's partents were anti-slavery, which molded his early thoughts and future on the issue. His life could be described as checkered because it seemed everything he ventured into resulted in a failure. His many pursuits included farming, a tannery, cattle driver, land speculation, sheep rancher and a wool agent, all of which ended in financial disaster. All told, he failed in 20 business ventures. In his personal life, he was married twiced and sired 20 children, 11 whom lived to adulthood.

In 1848, Brown met Frederick Douglass, which further flamed his anti-slavery passion. He supposedly informed Douglass during the meeting about his idea of starting a slave insurrection in Virginia using the mountains as cover and for guerrilla activities Douglass seemed impressed with Brown and his emerging radical views on abolition.

John Brown eventually went to Kansas after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Several of his sons had already settled in the territory and wrote their father about the turmoil between the free-staters and pro-slavery settlers. Brown joined his sons in the territory and enlisted in the Pottawatomie Rifles, an outfit formed to protect Lawrence, Kan., from attack by invading Missourians, called "Border Ruffians."

Lawrence was plundered and burned in May 1856, which led Brown and his sons to seize five suspected pro-slavery settlers and hack them to death with broadswords on the Pottawatomie Creek. It became known as the "Pottawatomie Massacre." The incident elevated Brown to the level of a terrorist. The South scorned him, but he conducted speaking engagements throughout the North raising money for his militia. He returned to the territory in 1858, and launched an invasion of Missouri, killing one man and freeing several slaves.

Mr. Brown had become the embodiment of violence and butchery. During these years, he still harbored thoughts of leading a slave rebellion against the South. In 1859, he hatched a plan to seize the United States armory at Harper's Ferry, Va. (now West Virginia).

In 1794, Congress passed legislation creating four armories for the purpose of arming the country, as opposed to relying on foreign imports. The first facility at Springfield, Mass., consumed the entire allocation of the others. However, President George Washington was able to secure approval for t he construction of another armory at Harper's Ferry in 1798, which would be up stream from the proposed capitol.

On Sunday, Oct. 16, 1859, Brown and 21 of his cohorts attacked the armory. They took several captives, including the acting superintendent, and barricaded themselves in the engine house. He waited there, hoping slaves in the neighboring area would flock to Harper's Ferry and join his uprising. To his dismay, the slaves never came, and in time he found himself surrounded. In the initial attack, they killed five people, including a black freeman. Somewhat to Brown's surpris, the attackers retaliated by severing the telegraph lines and exhibited their own violence by cutting off the ears of one of his fallen men.

As the standoff progressed, two future Confederate generals would lead the effort to put down the insurrection. These officers were Col. Robert E. Lee and Lt. J.E.B. Stuart. Within a day and a half, the incident was over, with Brown captured and severely wounded and two of his sons killed. Lee would eventually command the Army of Northern Virginia and assume overall command of all Confederate forces. Stuart would become a general, as well, gaining a reputation as a dashing cavalier.

John Brown's trail began on Oct. 26, in Charlestown, Va. In many respects, it became the trial of the century and gathered much public interest, which would further lead the nation to civil discord. On Nov. 2, he was sentenced to death by hanging to be carried out on Dec. 2. On the fateful day of execution, Brown sat on his coffin as it left the jail and headed toward the gallows. As one of his last statements, he uttered, "I, John Brown, am now certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

By his attack on Harper's Ferry, the North and South became further polarized on the issue of slavery. To those people in the North, he was a hero. But in the South, the people became paranoid by Brown's raid, fearing the stage had been set for slave populations almost equal to the white population.

The South now saw little recourse, except secession from the Union in order to protect its rights. The 1860 presidential election became more of a referendum of whether Southern slave states would remain in the Union if Republican Party nominee Abraham Lincoln would win the contest. The Republican Party had become the northern party of abolition. As a result of Lincoln's election victory and a whole host of other issues, the first of 11 states to eventually secede from the United States was South Carolina on Dec. 20, 1860. The nation now marched toward war.

Of all of John Brown's deeds and words, probably the line "...the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood" truly foretold the future of the nation. Because by the end of the Civil War, thousands of mothers were left crying as their husbands and sons were left dying across countless battlefields. Indeed, John Brown's last words upon the gallows would soon tragically echo across the land.