ABSTRACT
As abolitionists became more aggressive during the 1840s and 1850s, they grew more violent in word and deed. Increasing numbers of them engaged in antislavery violence and many more openly admired those who used force against slavery. Encouraged by underground railroad efforts and resistance to the fugitive slave laws, such tendencies strengthened bonds between black and white abolitionists. John Brown, the white abolitionist who in late 1859 led a biracial band into the South in a failed effort to spark a slave revolt, represents a culmination of these violent tendencies within American abolitionism.
