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The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom
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About This Book
From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands, the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, two men with radically different views on how moral people must act when their democracy countenances evil. 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. In 1854, when Congress opened Kansas territory to slavery, Brown raised a band of followers to wage war against the institution--his men tore proslavery 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 the coming race war that would cleanse the nation of slavery once and for all. Brown's violence pointed ambitious Illinois lawyer and former office-holder Abraham Lincoln toward a different solution to slavery: politics. A member of the moderate wing of the new, antislavery Republican Party, he spoke cautiously and dreamed big, plotting his path to Washington and perhaps the White House. Yet Lincoln's caution couldn't preserve him from the vortex of violence Brown set in motion. Arrested and sentenced to death, Brown's righteous dignity on the way to the gallows led many in the North to see him as a martyr to liberty. Southerners responded in anger and horror that a terrorist was made into a saint. Lincoln shrewdly threaded the needle of the fracturing country and won election as president, still preaching moderation. But the time for moderation had passed, and as the nation careened toward war Lincoln would see his central faith, that democracy can resolve its moral crises peacefully, face the ultimate test. Master storyteller H. W. Brands narrates in thrilling fashion how two men confronted America's gravest scourge in the moments before the nation's darkest hour.
Reviews
"An outstanding dual biography."
"Brands offers a nuanced middle path."
"Brands uses original sources and narrative flair to illuminate how Brown's fierce moral clarity eventually forced Lincoln to confront the sins of slavery."
"builds on strengths long evident in Brands's books, combining expert storytelling with thoughtful interpretation vividly to render major events through the lives of the chief participants."
"Though much of Brands's material is familiar, he provides essential historical context and intriguing insights into both men's characters and decision-making."
"The Zealot and the Emancipator relates these familiar events skillfully without pretending to offer new material or original interpretations."
"In these pages it is no fable, but instead one of the greatest, but surely the bloodiest, American stories."
"a fascinating narrative ..."
"In the end, Brands writes, 'Brown was a first martyr in the war that freed the slaves, Lincoln one of the last.'"
"Brands skillfully lays out nuances in these two men's lives, showing how both were affected by diverse characters from Frederick Douglass to Roger Taney."
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