From Publishers Weekly
In the very first paragraphs of this biography, Bancroft Prize-winner Reynolds (
Walt Whitman's America) steps back a bit from the grandiose claims of his subtitle. Nevertheless, his book as a whole paints a positive portrait of the Calvinist terrorist Brown (1800-1859)--contrary to virtually all recent scholarship (by Stephen B. Oates and Robert Boyer, among others), which tends to depict Brown as a bloodthirsty zealot and madman who briefly stepped into history but did little to influence it. Reynolds's approach harks back to the hero-worship apparent in earlier books by W.E.B. Du Bois and Brown's surviving associates. John Brown waged a campaign so bloody during the Kansas Civil War--in 1856 he chased men and elder sons from their beds in cabins along the Pottawatomie Creek, and then lopped off their heads with broadswords as sobbing wives and younger children looked on--that fellow Kansas antislavery settlers rebuked him. Even the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison condemned Brown and his methods. After taking the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry in October 1859, Brown intended (had he not been swatted like a fly within hours) to raise and arm a large force of blacks capable of wreaking a terrible vengeance across Virginia. Yet Reynolds insists that "it is misleading to identify Brown with modern terrorists." Really? 25 b&w illus.
(Apr. 21) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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*Starred Review* Hero or villain? The "meteor" who lit the way for the war to liberate slaves, or a violence-prone, deranged fanatic? The debate about John Brown is never ending, and it often reveals more about his partisans or detractors than it does about Brown himself. Professor Reynolds is generally sympathetic to Brown, and although he doesn't break any new factual ground, he does offer an interesting perspective. He views Brown as a virtual throwback to his Puritan forebears. Like Oliver Cromwell and Jonathan Edwards, Brown approached political disputes as struggles between good and evil, and he was quite prepared to play the role of an avenging angel. Reynolds acknowledges Brown's penchant for violence but adamantly rejects the charge of insanity. The focus of this biography, of course, is Brown's commitment to the cause of abolition, and Reynolds credits Brown for framing the issue of slavery in stark, uncompromising terms. He glosses over some of Brown's un-Puritan-like traits, including his financial irresponsibility, but this is a very readable, well-argued analysis of an undeniably important and frustratingly enigmatic man, for all audiences.
Jay FreemanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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