John Brown
The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown's fighters were five African American men--John Copeland, Shields Green, Dangerfield Newby, Lewis Leary, and Osborne Perry Anderson--whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and who, even today, are little remembered. Only Anderson survived, later publishing the lone insider account of the event that, most historians agree, was a catalyst to the catastrophic American Civil War that followed.
Five for Freedom is the story of these five brave men, the circumstances in which they were born and raised, how they came together at this fateful time and place, and the legacies they left behind. It is an American story that continues to resonate.
John Brown used photographs to raise funds and recruit followers to fight for liberation of slaves.
Since publication and exhibition in 2009 there are new discoveries of a John Brown daguerreotype and a tintype. There were sixteen original portrait sittings. This full-color catalog of the exhibition with supplement adds many historic details and context of his life and movements.
Most of Brown's his original portraits were daguerreotypes. The prints are as close as possible to the original source, resulting in detail that is astonishing when compared with the familiar renditions in textbooks and the Internet.
Abolitionist and Free-State emigration to Kansas sponsors of several of the sittings wanted to utilize his charismatic force evident in the new medium.
The author/curator describes the practices of photography at the time, such as painted photographs, photographs projected onto canvas, as well as making reproducible negatives from the single-image daguerreotype with original photography copyright.
Association of some photographers with the Underground Railroad shows compelling evidence of John Brown s motivation and actions. Others were inventors and creators of new processes and techniques, which John Brown eagerly adapted, just as he wanted the newest weapons
Major collections of John Brown papers and artifacts are described by historians and archivists for readers who want to look for John Brown in their travels or research, and online. The definitive aspect of the exhibition and catalog is the dispersal of the early photographs into many institutional collections, which in turn copyright and reproduce them. This process is respected.
The catalog is revised with ten supplementary pages based on new research in September 2014.
John Brown to James Brown: The Little Farm Where Liberty Budded, Blossomed, and Boogied
John Brown's Spy tells the nearly unknown story of John E. Cook, the person John Brown trusted most with the details of his plans to capture the Harper's Ferry armory in 1859. Cook was a poet, a marksman, a boaster, a dandy, a fighter, and a womanizer--as well as a spy. In a life of only thirty years, he studied law in Connecticut, fought border ruffians in Kansas, served as an abolitionist mole in Virginia, took white hostages during the Harper's Ferry raid, and almost escaped to freedom. For ten days after the infamous raid, he was the most hunted man in America with a staggering $1,000 bounty on his head.
Tracking down the unexplored circumstances of John Cook's life and disastrous end, Steven Lubet is the first to uncover the full extent of Cook's contributions to Brown's scheme. Without Cook's participation, the author contends, Brown might never have been able to launch the insurrection that sparked the Civil War. Had Cook remained true to the cause, history would have remembered him as a hero. Instead, when Cook was captured and brought to trial, he betrayed John Brown and named fellow abolitionists in a full confession that earned him a place in history's tragic pantheon of disgraced turncoats.
His reach was long: he was a champion for women s rights, temperance, and most notably, the fight to end slavery and racial discrimination. The long list of visitors to his home in tiny Peterboro, New York included Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Susan B. Anthony, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth.
In this landmark biography that is destined to become a favorite of researchers and historians, Norman Dann paints a vibrant portrait of Smith based on thousands of letters, poems, and speeches Smith gave to and received from those he worked with and against in his lifelong crusade for freedom and equality.
Through the prisms of history, literature, psychology, criminal justice, oral history, African American studies, political science, film studies, and anthropology, Terrible Swift Sword offers insights not only into John Brown's controversial character and motives, but also into the nature of a troubled society before, during, and after the Civil War. The discussions include reasons why Brown's contemporaries supported him, attempts to define Brown using different criteria, analyses of Brown's behavior, his depiction in literature, and examinations of the iconography surrounding him.
The interdisciplinary focus marshalled by editor Peggy A. Russo makes Terrible Swift Sword unique, and this, together with the popular mythology surrounding the legend of John Brown, will appeal to a broad audience of readers interested in this turbulent moment in American history.Paul Finkelman is Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa College of Law. He is the author of many articles and books, including His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid and the Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference Peggy Russo is an assistant professor of English at the Mont Alto Campus of Pennsylvania State University. She has published in Shakespeare Bulletin, The Southern Literary Journal, Journal of American Culture, Shakespeare and the Classroom, and Civil War Book Review.
