To Purge This Land with Blood

A Biography of John Brown

De: Stephen B. Oates

Narrado por: Stephen R. Thorne

In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. His goal was to secure weapons and start a slave rebellion. The raid was a failure, but it galvanized the nation and sparked the Civil War.

Still one of the most controversial figures in American history, John Brown's actions raise interesting questions about unsanctioned violence that can be justified for a greater good.

For more than a hundred years after Brown's hanging, biographies of him tended to be highly politicized—then came historian Stephen B. Oates's biography of Brown. Since its publication, Professor Oates's work has come to be recognized as the definitive biography of Brown, a balanced assessment that captures the man in all his complexity.

©1970, 1984 Stephen B. Oates (P)2022 Tantor

Louis brown

Ketchup king of tigers park and the other two dogs in my backyard and they were just sitting

An Excellent, Even-Handed Biography Of John Brown

This is the second biography I have listened/read on John Brown, the first being the biography by David S. Reynolds. Having nothing to compare it to, I found the biography by Reynolds compelling and comprehensive, yet a little overboard on the transcendentalist opinions of John Brown. While I still believe that biography is very well written, I find this biography by Stephen B. Oates to be the better of the two. Forty years has not left Oates' biography irrelevant to our current state of affairs, as he does an excellent job keeping the events surrounding Bleeding Kansas and Harpers Ferry within the proper context - something many authors fail to do. If there is any moral anachronism it is barely noticeable, which is not often the case when dealing with the history of slavery in the United States and abolitionism. Oates does a satisfactory job in presenting slavery from the viewpoint of the 19th-century abolitionist, supported by their own words and writings.

Succinctly, Oates is very even handed on the complex issues preceding the Civil War, giving the south a fair presentation of their position as they understood it, and not as a 21st-century civil rights activist might.

The narration by Stephen R. Thorne was excellent, and I would be happy to find his name as narrator on future books of my never-ending list.

Great listen giving context to a complicated, flawed, and righteous man

This is an extremely complete picture of John Brown, warts and all. It details his religiously conservative and punitive upbringing, his heinously tragic family life as a young adult, his troubles as a businessman, and his ever steadfast belief that eventually God would use whatever his miserable circumstance for good.

I don't believe the second (or third) act of John Brown's life was driven by madness, but his "monomaniacal" focus on the abolition of slavery and the equality of all man would certainly seem that way in the days context.

Ultimately, John Brown is a tragic hero. He suffered greatly -- often by his own hand -- but ultimately wanted a brighter, better future. Ultimately, John Brown was right.