To Purge This Land with Blood

A Biography of John Brown

By: Stephen B. Oates

Narrated by: 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

a bit outdated

I think that if more white people were like John Brown we wouldn't be where we are right now. As a society hell bent on maintaining the institute of slavery to further punish Black people for being partially liberated we need white people to emulate John Brown. His steadfast conviction of knowing he was right made him so ahead of his time in thinking they thought he was insane. This is something the author touches on neae the end of the book, and does a great job of framing it in how we, post emancipation, modern people understand his actions.

I wish he could see all the good he did by sparking a revolution. I wish liberals had stood by his side instead of quietly supporting him and only publicly doing it when he had been killed. Spineless compromisers are still amongst us and he would rightfully spit on him. Be like John Brown.

Louis brown

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

Who is a hero?

Who gets to decide who becomes a hero? John Brown was a fascinating man who played a pivotal role in the direction America would take in handling racism. After Bloody Kansas and the attack on Harper's Ferry, he laid the foundation of slavery being an issue that would no longer passively wait to handle itself bloodlessly over time, but could only be settled once and for all through bloody violence. Oates does a great job of going through John Brown's life, showing him as fallible more than the mythic hero/martyr he's been made out to be. He's still also admirable, but complicated. Check it out. I look forward to seeing more of Stephen B. Oates' historical works.

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.