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4.5
I really do not recall how this book got on my "to read" list, but thankfully it did. John Brown had been treated as a psychotic for his raid on Harper's Ferry by many historians, a madman because he was a white abolitionist who sacrificed the lives of his family and himself for the America's ultimate sin: slavery. He befriended the likes of Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Tubman.I found this book timely as we currently live in divisive times that sometimes feel we can not overcome. "Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America", though revealing about a dark time in America, reminds me that maybe even this most divisive time can be overcome.At a time when white supremacists march to retain statues of heros of the confederacy (the real treasonous beings in my opinion), this book sets the history right. By using first hand interviews and documents, this biography reveals the lifelong motivation of John Brown totally based on his Christian faith. John Brown even rejected southern slave-holding ministers from coming to offer prayers at the eve of his execution. John Brown stayed faithful to his principles; he was void of the hyprocrisy we often see today.John Brown and his Harper's Ferry raid was the flash point leading to the civil war. After Harper's Ferry, "the south now found itself driven by a powerful psychological motive and impetus to secede.""It had reminded whites, north and south, that their fates were bound up with the fates of slaves, and it had forced them to imagine themselves in the circumstances of others, and others in their own, across the divide of race.""For Thoreau, the most spiritually corrosive life is lived by relatively privileged members of democratic societies who know in their hearts that their elected government is doing great wrong in their names, who derive personal and national benefit from that wrong, and who—out of convenience, conformity, cynicism, or despair—do nothing to stop or correct it."I end with John Brown's own words, “I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people, oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that has moved me, and that alone. We expect no reward, except the satisfaction of endeavoring to do for those in distress and greatly oppressed, as we would be done by.”Truly an emotional read and highly recommended for history buffs.
