John Brown was a voice for the slaves who felt powerless and afraid to stand up for themselves. As blacks in America, slaves were misunderstood and misjudged. The slaves could both join him and risk death, or they could continue to live as slaves and suffer the whippings they were granted each day. Because Brown was surrounded by the unjust atrocities of slavery since childhood, he wanted nothing more than to see the practice abolished. John Brown had nothing, and the slaves had everything to gain from his up and coming actions. In 1800, Brown was born to a religious family in Connecticut (People of War 1). He looked up to his father, who very much opposed slavery. His family believed that slavery was cruel and unusual. Brown was taught from a very young age to treat everyone as equals. As he grew older, he began to think more about abolitionism. Around 1850, a Fugitive Slave Law Act was passed which asserted that citizens had to help slave catchers if they were instructed to do so (Midnight 37). This made it hard for slaves to escape from slavery. As a counterattack, Brown knew he could never help slavery, so he made the League of Gileadites which stated to resist slavery. He told them to, "Never confess, never betray, never renounce the cause  (Midnight 37). He believed that if killing one, two, or a thousand men in order to end slavery, that was alright because he thought God would forgive him in the end for doing worse in order to gain the greater good. Brown proclaimed, "I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood  (Civil War 1). John Brown was an abolitionist, so if a bloody stalemate was going to take hold here, then so be it. He gathered ammunition and gave weapons to the slaves and decided he was going to attack Harpers Ferry because it was a good trading place for an attack. On October 16th, 1859 Brown raided and held the arsenal in Harpers Ferry (History