John Brown (abolitionist)

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist who played a major part in the history of slavery in the United States leading up to the American Civil War. Brown took part in the violence during the Bleeding Kansas crisis, but his most famous action was his leadership of the raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in modern-day West Virginia). The killings that followed, Brown's subsequent capture by Robert E. Lee, his trial, and execution by hanging are generally considered an important part of the origins of the Civil War.

Further reading

• Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen (1996) (ISBN 0684818868)
• The Life and Letters of John Brown, edited by Franklin Sanborn (1891)
• John Brown and his Men, by Richard Hinton (1894)
• John Brown 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After, by Oswald Garrison Villard (1910)
• John Brown, by W.E.B. Du Bois (ISBN 0679783539)
• The Burden of Southern History, by C. Vann Woodward (1960)
• To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown, by Stephen B. Oates (1970) (ISBN 0870234587)
• John Brown: The Legend Revisited by Merrill D. Peterson (2002) (ISBN 0813921325)
• John Brown, Abolitionist : The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, by David S. Reynolds (2005) (ISBN 0375411887)