 He is both memorialized as a heroic martyr and visionary, compared sometimes with Christ, and vilified as a madman and a terrorist.Historian James Loewen surveyed American history textbooks and noted that historians considered Brown perfectly sane until about 1890, but generally portrayed him as insane from about 1890 until 1970, when new interpretations began to gain ground.John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut.