Few men in American history have been at once as glorified and maligned as John Brown. From his attack of the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859, as part of a scheme to free the slaves, Brown has been called a saint and sinner, rogue and redeemer, martyr and madman. Brown rebelled against the American government, and he murdered men in Kansas in order to end the murderous institution of slavery. He denounced war, but made war on his government in order to end an existing war for slavery.

This anthology, which presents Brown's writing and diverse responses to his life and raid, offers a lens through which to analyze these tensions and contradictions. Extensive introductions to every source offer a close reading of language and provide full historical and biographical background.

Zoe Trodd is on the Tutorial Board in the History and Literature department at Harvard University, where she researches American protest literature. Her other books include American Protest Literature (2006), To Plead Our Own Cause: Personal Stories by Today’s Slaves (2008), and The Long Civil Rights Movement (2008). She has also published numerous articles on American literature, history and visual culture.

John Stauffer is the author of The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race, which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Avery Craven Book Prize, and was the Lincoln Prize runner-up. He is the editor of Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom; and is at work on a new book, By the Love of Comrades: Interracial Frienships, Democratic Dream, and the Meaning of Americ. He is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Hummanities at Harvard University, where he teaches courses on American literature and culture.