Question

Why was abolitionist John Brown executed?

Answer 1

The most important is probably that during the attack he led on the Federal arsenal at Brown's Ferry, he (or his men) killed four men. He was charged with five counts of murder, with conspiring to raise a slave rebellion, and with treason against the state of Virginia. A Virginia jury found him guilty on all three types of charge, and he was hanged a month and a half later.

It isn't that unlikely the jury was influenced by the fact that he had joyfully participated in the murderous mayhem known as "Bleeding Kansas," when pro- and anti-slavery zealots turned to intimidation and violence to attempt to get Kansas to adopt a pro- or anti-slavery constitution, and he was suspected of at least half a dozen brutal murders of innocent people who just happened to be on the other side of the slavery issue from him.

He was a vicious, violent, narrow-minded and self-centered man, and his hanging was more than justified. It's one of the sad facts of history that he nevertheless became a cause celebre for abolitionists. It's not unlike the sad fact that the Southern states chose to defend the admirable concepts of states' rights and individual liberty mostly in their application to the despicable practice of slavery.