John Brown ignited a powder keg, exploding America toward civil war. The abolitionist’s attack on Harpers Ferry fired passions over slavery, carving a canyon between North and South that no bridge could span.

Southern voices like South Carolina's Charleston Mercury declared the South must control its own fate or perish, while Virginians rallied in defense, vowing to fight back against what they saw as Northern aggression.

In response, the U.S. Senate launched the "Mason Committee" to investigate potential Northern conspiracies behind Brown's raid. Meanwhile, many Northerners, including Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott, viewed Brown as a martyr, elevating his death to a symbol of moral righteousness. Henry David Thoreau even questioned whether it was "possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Is there any necessity for a man’s being a tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves?”

The debate over Brown polarized the nation. Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, while opposed to slavery, distanced themselves from Brown’s violent methods, fearing it would harm their cause. Brown's actions, however, had a profound effect, splitting the Democratic Party and helping Lincoln win the 1860 election.

Brown’s raid heightened tensions, pushing the country closer to civil war. His legacy remains controversial: was he a martyr or a madman, a terrorist or a freedom fighter? Writer Herman Melville captured Brown’s lasting impact, calling him "the meteor of the war." Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem “John Brown’s Body” encapsulates this paradox:

You can weigh John Brown’s body well enough,

But how and in what balance weigh John Brown?

John Brown did not cause the Civil War; he catapulted America into civil war.