The Zealot and the Emancipator
John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Texas historian Brands (Dreams of El Dorado) delivers an entertaining and insightful dual biography of revolutionary abolitionist John Brown and President Abraham Lincoln. Brown's participation in the 1856 murder of five pro-slavery settlers in Kansas and the 1859 attack on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Va., filled Lincoln with horror, according to Brands. To Lincoln, who promised voters during his presidential campaign that he had no intention of eradicating slavery in the Southern states, Brown was a fanatic whose "lawless invasion" threw slavery's supporters on the defensive and undermined the attempts of moderates to limit its power. In short, tightly focused chapters alternating between Brown's and Lincoln's perspectives, Brand narrates their progress, as Brown becomes convinced that he's God's chosen weapon against human bondage, and Lincoln emerges as a leader in the Republican Party and evolves his attitudes toward slavery. Though they never met, Brown and Lincoln both died as martyrs to "slave power," Brands writes, and spent much of their lives trying to answer the question "what does a good man do when his country commits a great evil?" Though much of Brands's material is familiar, he provides essential historical context and intriguing insights into both men's characters and decision-making. American history fans will be thrilled.
