[Arkinsaw]

What about any person who goes to war and has to kill someone? Do not civilian deaths occur during every war?

John Brown was not a soldier. John Brown was not a legal representative of the people of the United States, the people of the north, or any government....he was not commissioned by anyone other than himself to wage war against either civilians or non-civilians. He was subject to no chain of command or law other than his own. His actions were in violation of the law in every jurisdiction in the United States.

There is no basis for your comparing of apples and oranges.

[bushfamfan]

Pointless that John Brown was not a ‘legal representative of the people of the United States’. It was legal for a slaveowner to rape, murder and brutalize their ‘property’ of enslaved men, women, and children and someone needed to step forward for freedom and a right of wrongs. Are you really going to argue that the United States was at a fine place in law at that point? It was gross injustice of our Declaration of Independence and ‘all Men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. It was a gross injustice against freedom.