John Brown and Abraham Lincoln

In October 1859 -- just 18 months before the first shots of the Civil War -- militant abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, hoping to arm the area’s slaves and start an insurrection. That same fall, Abraham Lincoln -- then a prospective presidential candidate -- made a speaking tour of Midwestern states in which he called for more measured, political solutions to the problem of slavery. H.W. Brands talked about his book, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom, which compares and contrasts the stories of these two men and their radically different approaches to the era’s greatest question. The Lincoln Forum hosted this discussion and provided the video. close