In historian and author Stephen Engle’s view, few figures in American history can match the life of John Brown in importance. It spanned a half century during the nation’s tumultuous struggle over slavery. A devout Christian and abolitionist, Brown gained national attention when he led anti-slavery volunteers in “Bleeding Kansas”—a state-level civil war over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state. When he launched his raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 and died on the gallows on December 2 of that year, he garnered international acclaim and became a symbol of the anti-slavery cause. Engle notes that 95 years after Brown’s death, West Virginia journalist Boyd Stutler observed that “Hanging John Brown somehow wasn’t the end of him. The execution was a beginning rather than an end.”
Engle traces Brown's journey from a young zealot to a radical revolutionary. Though chiefly remembered for his role in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry, some scholars consider the complicated Brown to have been the spark that ignited the Civil War. For more than a century and a half after his death, generations have assigned herculean significance both to Brown’s failed insurrection and his remarkable posture in captivity and valor on the gallows.
Engle, a professor of American history at Florida Atlantic University, is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Reckoning with Justice: The Execution of John Brown.
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