Du Bois opens with Africa and the slave trade, then follows John Brown from his upbringing and failed businesses through his work among fugitive slaves, the bloody struggle in Kansas and the long planning of a blow against slavery in Virginia. Throughout, he reads Brown’s life as a moral question for America and for Black Americans.
Published in 1909, Du Bois’s defence of Brown remains a key text in the history of American abolition. Download the free EPUB.