John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry
Author: Jonathan Earle
Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2018-10-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1319241689

Despised and admired during his life and after his execution, the abolitionist John Brown polarized the nation and remains one of the most controversial figures in U.S. history. His 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, failed to inspire a slave revolt and establish a free Appalachian state but became a crucial turning point in the fight against slavery and a catalyst for the violence that ignited the Civil War. Jonathan Earle’s volume presents Brown as neither villain nor martyr, but rather as a man whose deeply held abolitionist beliefs gradually evolved to a point where he saw violence as inevitable. Earle’s introduction and his collection of documents demonstrate the evolution of Brown’s abolitionist strategies and the symbolism his actions took on in the press, the government, and the wider culture. The featured documents include Brown’s own writings, eyewitness accounts, government reports, and articles from the popular press and from leading intellectuals. Document headnotes, a chronology, questions for consideration, a list of important figures, and a selected bibliography offer additional pedagogical support.

John Brown's Raid

John Brown's Raid
Author: Jon-Erik M. Gilot
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2023-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1611215986

The first shot of the American Civil War was not fired on April 12, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina, but instead came on October 16, 1859, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia—or so claimed former slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The shot came like a meteor in the dark. John Brown, the infamous fighter on the Kansas plains and detester of slavery, led a band of nineteen men on a desperate nighttime raid that targeted the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. There, they planned to begin a war to end slavery in the United States. But after 36 tumultuous hours, John Brown’s Raid failed, and Brown himself became a prisoner of the state of Virginia. Brown’s subsequent trial further divided north and south on the issue of slavery as Brown justified his violent actions to a national audience forced to choose sides. Ultimately, Southerners cheered Brown’s death at the gallows while Northerners observed it with reverence. The nation’s dividing line had been drawn. Herman Melville and Walt Whitman extolled Brown as a “meteor” of the war. Roughly one year after Brown and his men attacked slavery in Virginia, the nation split apart, fueled by Brown’s fiery actions. John Brown’s Raid tells the story of the first shots that led to disunion. Richly filled with maps and images, it includes a driving and walking tour of sites related to Brown’s Raid so visitors today can follow the path of America’s meteor.

Midnight Rising

Midnight Rising
Author: Tony Horwitz
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2011-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1429996986

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Library Journal Top Ten Best Books of 2011 A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Bestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale." Tony Horwitz's riveting book travels antebellum America to deliver both a taut historical drama and a telling portrait of a nation divided—a time that still resonates in ours.

John Brown’s Trial

John Brown’s Trial
Author: Brian McGinty
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2009-10-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674035178

Here, Brian McGinty provides a comprehensive account of the trial of abolitionist John Brown. After the jury returned its guilty verdict, an appeal was quickly disposed of, and the governor of Virginia refused to grant clemency.

John Brown's Spy

John Brown's Spy
Author: Steven Lubet
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2012-11-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0300180497

Describes the story of the man who was entrusted with all of the details of John Brown's plans to capture the Harper's Ferry armory in 1859 and how he was hunted down for a $1,000 bounty and tried as a spy.

Creating the John Brown Legend

Creating the John Brown Legend
Author: Janet Kemper Beck
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2009-04-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786433450

One of the triggering events of the Civil War helped divide a nation but also launched a cannonade of persuasive essays and propaganda. Early press reaction to John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry ranged from indignant horror in the South to stunned disbelief in the North. Brown's supporters wielded great power with their pens: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Lydia Maria Child. This book explores the moment when literature and history collided and literature rewrote history. This volume features 30 photographs, maps, proclamations and broadsides and a detailed timeline of events surrounding the raid.

The Zealot and the Emancipator

The Zealot and the Emancipator
Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2021-10-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0525563458

From the acclaimed historian and bestselling author: a page-turning account of the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln—two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin. John Brown was a charismatic and deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to destroy slavery by any means. When Congress opened Kansas territory to slavery in 1854, Brown raised a band of followers to wage war. His men tore pro-slavery settlers from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Three years later, Brown and his men assaulted the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to arm slaves with weapons for a race war that would cleanse the nation of slavery. Brown’s violence pointed ambitious Illinois lawyer and former officeholder Abraham Lincoln toward a different solution to slavery: politics. Lincoln spoke cautiously and dreamed big, plotting his path back to Washington and perhaps to the White House. Yet his caution could not protect him from the vortex of violence Brown had set in motion. After Brown’s arrest, his righteous dignity on the way to the gallows led many in the North to see him as a martyr to liberty. Southerners responded with anger and horror to a terrorist being made into a saint. Lincoln shrewdly threaded the needle between the opposing voices of the fractured nation and won election as president. But the time for moderation had passed, and Lincoln’s fervent belief that democracy could resolve its moral crises peacefully faced its ultimate test. The Zealot and the Emancipator is the thrilling account of how two American giants shaped the war for freedom.

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry
Author: Jason Glaser
Publisher: Capstone
Total Pages: 19
Release: 2006
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0736843698

"In graphic novel format, tells the story of John Brown's 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia"--Provided by publisher.