Thanks for your reply. Regarding John Brown, the parallels to Nine-Eleven are uncanny. Brown and his followers were single-issue religious terrorists who believed bloodshed on a mass scale was their only real alternative. Backers were wealthy men who provided money to purchase arms and provide training/planning for the operation. Brown and his followers came to Harpers Ferry months before the actual attack and went into hiding nearby to await the right moment. After the attack Brown's supporters threatened Governor Wise with violence should anything happen to him, one claiming that his daughters would sew explosives into their skirts (an earlier version of suicide bombers) to kill him and other Virginians. After Brown's execution and funeral, his 'sacrifice' was praised throughout the North, where John Brown was compared to Christ.

Southern observers were understandably shocked by all this. For the remainder of 1859, newspapers in Alabama carried current news on John Brown, his attack, his plans to subjugate the South by bloodshed, his trial, his funeral and the Senate investigation into his supporters. The moribund militia system was revived and state funding provided to purchase firearms and artillery. State agents purchased rifles and revolvers from the same Massachusetts companies that provided weapons for John Brown. Volunteer companies chartered in Alabama during by the 1859-60 formed the basis of the state's first Confederate regiments. The Confederacy's early successes wouldn't have been possible without one year's head start, courtesy of John Brown.

As a neighboring state in similar circumstances, much of the above should relate to Tennessee.