Wilson’s brother was among the marines who stormed the engine-house at Harper’s Ferry, and he himself once thought John Brown the most distinguished Kansan. Years of research changed his mind: this critique follows Brown through the Kansas troubles and argues that the men who rode with him were drawn by plunder and adventure rather than any love of the slave.
A deliberately hostile revisionist account, best read alongside sympathetic biographies of Brown to see how fiercely his memory was contested. Download the free EPUB.