On this episode of Our American Stories, to Southerners, John Brown was a dangerous villain. To many Northerners, he was a fanatic. But Brown believed he was an instrument of God, called to wage war against the evil of slavery.

David S. Reynolds, author of John Brown, Abolitionist, shares the story of how a deeply religious boy from Connecticut became one of the most feared and controversial men in America. Brown’s crusade against slavery would take him west to the blood-soaked plains of Kansas and eventually to Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where he hoped to ignite a rebellion that would free the enslaved.

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