The old man: John Brown at Harper's Ferry

At daybreak on October 17, 1859, John Brown, with a party of eighteen men, black and white, took control of the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Brown believed that Northern abolitionists would join them, taking up arms or adopting mass political tactics to bring about the end of slavery. Instead, he and most of his surviving followers were captured the next day, and Brown was hanged for treason by the state of Virginia on December 2. The details of the raid and its aftermath have never been presented with such cinematic immediacy as in this volume. In addition, Nelson explodes the conventional dismissal of John Brown as a fanatic, and presents him as America’s greatest revolutionary, the organizer of a brilliant coup which succeeded, given a year or so, in beginning what it set out to do—to overthrow and dismember proslavery control of the United States government. Nelson captures the human pathos and high drama of the event, with its fascinating range of characters, both famous and forgotten, while helping the reader to understand its moral and political significance.