John Brown (1800-1859) was born in Torrington, Connecticut, the fourth of eight children. He failed at many jobs and by the 1850s had dedicated his life to ending slavery through violence. He believed, like in the Old Testament, that slavery was such a terrible sin it had to be ended with bloodshed. In 1856, Brown and his followers killed five slaveholders in Kansas in what's remembered as "Bleeding Kansas," and he later lost one of his sons in another raid. All of that was a prelude to the deadly events in Harpers Ferry, from which he'd emerge as an international martyr for the ages.