The book is an attempt to understand why that paradox exists. He's a hero to African-Americans because he was a white man willing to sacrifice his life to free slaves. If a black man were willing to sacrifice his life to free white slaves, white people would certainly consider HIM a hero. It's not that simple, as he also was a terrorist. He thought by slaying a few, he was saving many.
Many terrorists use that guideline.
He was driven by Christian principles from the Bible, and his own psychological makeup. This novel is fiction, however. A great deal is based on historical fact. But there are enough blank spaces and periods in Brown's life and his son's, that there was a great deal of room for me to invent. Essentially, I was trying to use and bend history to the strict purposes of storytelling.