John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

by David S. Reynolds

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47 ratings, 4.09 average rating, 17 reviews (more data...)

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published

November 14th 2006 by Vintage

binding

Paperback, 592 pages

isbn

0375726152 (isbn13: 9780375726156)

description

An authoritative new examination of John Brown and his deep impact on American history.

Bancroft Prize-winning cultural historian David S. Re...more

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Angela rated it:

07/29/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

David Reynolds sympathetic yet critical and probing treatment of John Brown -- once among the most polarizing figures in America history -- is an amazing and thought-provoking book. I use John Brown, and the events surrounding the Kansas "civil war" ("Bleeding Kansas," 1856), along with the events of the raid on Harper's Ferry (October 1859), as part of my freshman seminar on social criticism at the University of Michigan. Brown is an excellent figure to include in such a c...more David Reynolds sympathetic yet critical and probing treatment of John Brown -- once among the most polarizing figures in America history -- is an amazing and thought-provoking book. I use John Brown, and the events surrounding the Kansas "civil war" ("Bleeding Kansas," 1856), along with the events of the raid on Harper's Ferry (October 1859), as part of my freshman seminar on social criticism at the University of Michigan. Brown is an excellent figure to include in such a course for two reasons.

First, Brown's religious background gives us an opportunity to think through the ways in which a religious orientation can inform a radical social critique of an injustice such as slavery. Reynolds is very good on the details of Brown's Puritan heritage and his Calvinist beliefs. Ahead of his time in so many ways, Brown also had an ecumenical streak and was willing to work with people of other faiths, including Jews. Slavery was for him a grave offense to God and its overthrow involved not only uprooting the vile practice but an affirmation of black humanity (as children of God) as well. Brown also, by the way, supported rights for women and advocated humane treatment of Native Americans.

Reynolds biography goes a long way toward supporting an argument (that I've long made) about the centrality of religious opposition to slavery which, I think, was more central than Enlightenment principles. OK, so Brown was inspired both by the dictates of God and by the Declaration of Independence but his clarity on the issue -- what some would and have called his crazed zealotry -- seems more divinely inspired. What lead Brown to kill in the name of justice -- Faith or Reason?

The other great question that John Brown helps to raise is whether it is morally permissible to kill in defense of justice, or, is violence an acceptable form of social critique? This is the question that made Brown such a polarizing figure, both before and after the Civil War. Henry David Thoreau does a beautiful defense, William Lloyd Garrison denounces him and historians and others are still divided on the issues posed by this "Calvinist terrorist."

I'm just nearing the end of the book now. I've enjoyed it so much that I'm not looking forward to finishing it. ...less

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Ginnie rated it:

(review of isbn 0375411887)

08/24/08

bookshelves: biography, history, to-read

The claims of Reynolds’s subtitle strike many as inflated; while John Brown certainly grew into a towering folkloric figure after his death, the historians who reviewed this book note that his actions were less a direct cause than an important symbolic precursor to the Civil War. I believe Reynolds is overly sympathetic to Brown’s use of violence. Though other reviewers counter that the author never turns full-scale apologist, the question of whether violence is an acceptable response to inj...more The claims of Reynolds’s subtitle strike many as inflated; while John Brown certainly grew into a towering folkloric figure after his death, the historians who reviewed this book note that his actions were less a direct cause than an important symbolic precursor to the Civil War. I believe Reynolds is overly sympathetic to Brown’s use of violence. Though other reviewers counter that the author never turns full-scale apologist, the question of whether violence is an acceptable response to injustice—even one as grave as slavery—hangs over the text, especially as Reynolds examines the parallels between Brown’s actions and our current understanding of terrorism. One thing is certain: John Brown’s legacy is as unstable a part of our national history as ever.

My suggestion is to read either W. E. B. Du Bois's John Brown, Stephen B. Oates To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown or Evan Carton's Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America first and then explore the Russell Banks novel Cloudsplitter

The review in The Atlantic via Powell's Bookstore had sounded good but I found myself disagreeing with too many of Reynolds assertions.

"When Abraham Lincoln gave an audience to Harriet Beecher Stowe, he is supposed to have greeted her by saying that she was the little woman who had started this great war. That fondly related anecdote illustrates the persistent tendency to Parson Weemsishness in our culture. It was not at all the tear-jerking sentiment of Uncle Tom's Cabin that catalyzed the War Between the States. It was, rather, the blood-spilling intransigence of John Brown, field-tested on the pitiless Kansas prairies and later deployed at Harpers Ferry. And John Brown was a man whom Lincoln assiduously disowned, until the time came when he himself was compelled to adopt the policy of "war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt," as partisans of the slaveocracy had hitherto been too proud of saying.

David Reynolds sets himself to counter several misapprehensions about the pious old buzzard (Brown, I mean, not Lincoln). Among these are the impressions that he was a madman, that he was a homicidal type, and that his assault on a federal arsenal was foredoomed and quixotic. The critical thing here is context. And the author succeeds admirably in showing that Brown, far from being a crazed fanatic, was a serious legatee of the English and American revolutions who anticipated the Emancipation Proclamation and all that has ensued from it."
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John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

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