I leaned in high school that John Brown was crazy. I didn't learn the truth, that he was crazy like a fox.

How mentally unbalanced could he have been, really? He attracted a large, dedicated band of followers. He was able to secure the equivalent of millions of dollars in funding from a prominent woman abolitionist.

He intended to kick off a war to end slavery, and while his raid on Harpers Ferry did not immediately accomplish that goal, the war came, just like he planned. Historians think the war might not have come if not for Brown, or it might have come much later than it did. Slavery would have lasted much longer and might have spread south into Mexico and South America, a goal that enslaving plantation owners held dear.

But along came John Brown, crazy like a fox.