Defenders of Brown argue that the raid was in retaliation for their hanging of a free-state man, for the murder of Brown's brother, for the murder of one of Brown's sons and arrest of another, for the burning of the free-state settlement at Osawatomie, and for outrages upon Brown's wife and daughter, although critics dispute these events happened. The revisionist history around John Brown, much of it motivated by Lost Cause of the Confederacy ideology, has in turn been called into question.