Imagine you are the judge hearing the case brought against John Brown. Given what you know about the historical facts surrounding John Brown's efforts to end slavery and Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy of Transcendentalism, describe the ruling you would make on the charge of treason.

Nearly a century and a half after his execution, John Brown remains one of the most fiercely debated and enigmatic figures in American history. Brown’s earliest biographers-especially James Redpath, Franklin Sanborn, and Oswald Garrison Villard-were hero-worshippers who considered Brown a warrior-saint whose assaults on slavery represented the first crucial steps toward emancipation. During the 1930s and early 1940s, a more critical view arose. At a time when revisionists regarded the Civil War as a needless conflict fomented by fanatics and blundering politicians, many scholars followed the lead of James C. Malin, who argued that Brown was little more than an indiscriminate murderer, swindler, and petty horse thief, who had little genuine interest in anti-slavery or in the rights of African Americans.