At pp. 152-153 of his book “Battle Cry of Freedom,” historian James M. McPherson provides a bit of analysis in regard to Pottawatomie, John Brown, and James C. Malin. Starting with the primary text and then moving into footnotes, McPherson writes--

“…Brown ‘went crazy — crazy,’ according to witnesses. ‘Something must be done to show these barbarians that we, too, have rights,' Brown declared. He reckoned that proslavery men had murdered at least five free-soilers in Kansas since the troubles began. Brown conceived of a ‘radical, retaliatory measure’ against ‘the slave hounds’ of his own neighborhood near Pottawatomie Creek—none of whom had anything to do with those murders. With four of his sons and three other men, Brown abducted five proslavery settlers from their cabins on the night of May 24-25 and coolly split their skulls with broadswords. An eye for an eye.”

Then in a footnote for the passage, McPherson cites his source and provides further analysis-- “18. Stephen B. Oates, ‘To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown.’ …A substantial part of the huge historical literature on John Brown focuses on the Pottawatomie massacre. Although some contemporaries denied Brown’s role in the affair, historians accept it while disagreeing about motives and details. The account here is based on that in Oates’s biography, the most recent and reasonable analysis of the massacre. Fuller details with a different slant on many matters can be found in James C. Malin, ‘John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-six’ (Philadelphia, 1942), a frustrating book because of its sprawling, structureless format, but based on an astonishing amount of research in Kansas history.”

In the following footnote McPherson goes on to state that Malin’s book “contains an exhaustive account of the various filters through which contemporaries and later historians viewed and distorted the Pottawatomie massacre.”