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Historical person

John Brown

John Brown was an American abolitionist who believed armed action was necessary to destroy slavery. After violent conflict in Kansas, he led the 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, was captured and executed, and became a polarising martyr in the crisis preceding the Civil War.

Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in October 1859 was intended to trigger a broader uprising against slavery. The raid failed, and Brown was captured by forces commanded by Robert E. Lee, tried by Virginia and executed for treason, murder and inciting insurrection. His death sharply intensified sectional conflict: abolitionists often treated him as a martyr, while many white southerners saw the raid as proof of a wider threat to slavery.

In George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, Abolitionists associated with the Underground Railroad pressure him to enter John Brown’s organisation, while competing agents seek to use the proposed uprising for their own political ends. In James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, Henry Shackleford, a young enslaved boy, is swept into John Brown’s antislavery band after violence kills Henry’s father.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring John Brown (1 series)

The Flashman Papers in Order

by George MacDonald Fraser 12 books 4.2(80,547)

The Flashman Papers present the supposed memoirs of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, the bully expelled from Rugby School in Tom Brown’s School Days who becomes a decorated Victorian soldier despite being a coward, liar, opportunist and sexual predator. George MacDonald Fraser places this fictional witness inside documented nineteenth-century…

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Standalone books

Standalone books featuring John Brown (1 book)