The Zealot and the Emancipator

June 15, 2020
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.

Starred review from September 1, 2020
In this dual biography, historian Brands (Dreams of El Dorado, 2019) explores how two radically different men contributed to the abolition of slavery in the U.S. Both John Brown and Abraham Lincoln had stepmothers, but that was about the extent of their similarities. From early on, Brown felt a calling, a sense of urgency, to free the nation's enslaved peoples from their bondage. He believed education was key, but his convictions demanded more immediate action. In contrast, Lincoln was the calculating politician, nevertheless determined to realize the assertions of equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. Brown's path was to foment slave rebellion. He took up arms to thwart slavery's proponents in Kansas, not hesitant to shed blood. Lincoln took a more circuitous route, gathering support and building a reputation within the nascent Republican Party. Brown's assault on Harpers Ferry ended in notoriety and death. Lincoln ceded the moral high ground to Brown, but held the nation together till the time was right to issue a formal proclamation of emancipation; yet both paid with their lives. Brands skillfully lays out nuances in these two men's lives, showing how both were affected by diverse characters from Frederick Douglass to Roger Taney.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from August 1, 2020
The veteran historian maintains his high standards in this study of two of 19th-century America's most significant figures. Although still controversial, John Brown (1800-1859) needs no rehabilitation. Brands, the chair of the history department at the University of Texas, reminds readers that Brown was not only an abolitionist (an extremist position for the time); he considered Blacks equal to Whites, an extraordinary belief shared by few contemporaries. He was also deeply religious, obsessed with freeing the slaves--even by violence, which seemed the only way--and charismatic enough to convince many establishment abolitionists to finance his campaigns. With his sons, he traveled to Kansas to participate in the nasty 1850s conflict between free-state and pro-slavery settlers, where he severely damaged his reputation with the 1856 Pottawatomie massacre, during which his band dragged five pro-slavery men from their beds and murdered them. Brands delivers a gripping account of his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry but succeeds no more than colleagues in explaining its utter incompetence. Capturing the nearly undefended armory was simple; clumsy efforts to provoke a slave rebellion failed, and Brown dithered when escape was easy. Severely injured during his capture, he was tried and hanged. The author rocks no boats by affirming that the raid galvanized the nation and set it on course to civil war. Wisely avoiding another standard biography of Lincoln, Brands confines himself to a sharp portrait of a fiercely ambitious Illinois politician yearning for electoral office. Like nearly all Republicans at the time, he opposed expanding slavery and, like most, promised not to interfere with it in existing states because the Constitution, a sacred document, protected it. Lincoln considered slavery wrong, but winning elections depended on White voters, so his arguments stressed slavery's harm to White interests. Opposition Democrats accused Republicans of believing that Blacks were equal to Whites. In defending himself and his party, Lincoln's statements about race went beyond what, from other historical figures--presidents included--has led to toppled statues. An outstanding dual biography.

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August 1, 2020

Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Brands examines John Brown and Abraham Lincoln to highlight two different approaches that can be taken to a looming moral quandary, with Brown taking the radical path and Lincoln turning to politics as (initially) a more moderate approach.

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