Peaceable emancipation by state action, according to the original program, was prevented by the rise of a sectional animosity which beclouded the issue.

As the leadership drifted into the hands of extremists, the conservative masses were confused, misled, or deceived.
The South undoubtedly became the victim of the erroneous teachings of alarmists who believed that the anti-slavery North intended, by unlawful and unconstitutional federal action, to abolish slavery in all the States; while the North had equally exaggerated notions as to the aggressive intentions of the South.
The opposing forces finally met on the plains of Kansas, and extreme Northern opposition became personified in John Brown of Osawatomie.

He was born in Connecticut in May, 1800, of New England ancestry, the sixth generation from the Mayflower.

A Calvinist, a mystic, a Bible-reading Puritan, he was trained to anti-slavery sentiments in the family of Owen Brown, his father.

He passed his early childhood in the Western Reserve of Ohio, and subsequently moved from Ohio to New York, to Pennsylvania, to Ohio again, to Connecticut, to Massachusetts, and finally to New York once more.