num_pages: 434
description: This is the first full-scale biography of John Brown, one of the most controversial and influential figures in American history, to be published since the 1930's -- the first based on original research to appear in sixty years. John Brown was a profoundly religious man dedicated to emancipation and Negro rights, who failed at nearly everything he tried in his disastrous pre-Kansas career, who instigated the Pottawatomie massacre in all the hysteria and violence of the slavery struggle in Kansas, and who tried to overthrow slavery in the South itself by attacking Harpers Ferry and inciting a slave insurrection.Was Brown a vicious fanatic, or the greatest abolitionist hero in history? Stephen B. Oates has written an engrossing, thoroughly researched narrative of John brown's life and times which is neither an indictment nor a eulogy of Brown. Based on contemporary letters, diaries, journals, newspapers, published reports, and recollections and eyewitnesses, this book is especially notable for providing the first really full account ever written of Brown's career before he went to Kansas -- a period of misfortune, frustration, and personal anguish which deeply influenced his character and later actions. And it describes vividly the increasing violence that began in Kansas and reached its awful climax at Harpers Ferry and in the trial and execution that followed.
language: English
title: To purge this land with blood: A biography of John Brown
titlecomplete: To purge this land with blood: A biography of John Brown
characters: John Brown
genres: History, United States, American History, Religion, War, American Civil War, Race, Civil War, Biography, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 200
publisher: University of Mass. Press