约翰·布朗最开始在血濺堪薩斯危机中引起了注意力。不像大多数北方人认为应该通过和平手段,以談判模式,協調解决奴隶制废存问题,约翰·布朗认为应该采取暴动。他说:“这些人只會空嘴薄舌。我们需要的是行动,行动!”("These men are all talk. What we need is action - action!")
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1836年,约翰·布朗搬迁至俄亥俄州的肯特,在那里他借钱买了土地。在1839年的经济危机中,他蒙受了巨大的经济损失。西部州损失惨重。在当时借钱成风的背景下,许多像约翰·布朗一样的商人过于充满信心,都尝到了苦果。约翰·布朗甚至与另一个人争夺农场的所有权而被送进监狱。像那时很多跟他背景相似的人一样,约翰·布朗也想通过经商来还清债务。他从事牲口交易和马、羊的饲养。他喂羊的故事后来成为了他成名之后的一件佚事。1837年,为回应Elijah P. Lovejoy被谋杀事件,约翰·布朗公开发誓:“在这里,在上帝面前,在这些见证者面前,从我一生的这时起,我将我的生命献给废除奴隶制度的伟大事业!”(“Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!”)1842年9月28日,布朗被一家联邦法院宣判破产。
Finkelman, Paul ed. His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (1995)
Goodrich, Thomas War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861 (1998).
Malin, James. John Brown & the Legend of Fifty-Six (1942), the most influential scholarly attack on Brown (ISBN 978-0-8383-1021-2)
Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union. 2 vols. (1947), in depth scholarly history.
Nichols, Roy F. “The Kansas-Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (September 1956): 187-212. Online at JSTOR (also paper) at most academic libraries.
Nudelman, Franny, John Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War (2004).
Oates, Stephen B. To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown (1970).
Oates, Stephen B. Our Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, and the Civil War Era (1979)
Peterson, Merrill D. (2002): John Brown: The Legend Revisited (ISBN 978-0-8139-2132-7), how history has treated Brown
Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976), prize winning scholarly history of the era
Renehan, Edward J. The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown. 1995.
Reynolds, David S. (2005): John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (2005) a favorable biography; says (p. 8): "My stand on some key issues is: (a) Brown was not insane; instead, he was a deeply religious, flawed, yet ultimately noble reformer; (b) the Pottawatomie affair was indeed a crime, but it was a war crime committed against proslavery settlers by a man who saw slavery as an unprovoked war of one race against another; and (c) neither Brown's provisional constitution nor the Harpers Ferry raid were wild-eyed, erratic schemes doomed to failure; instead, they reflect Brown's overconfidence in whites' ability to rise above racism and in blacks' willingness to rise up in armed insurrection against their masters."
Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006.
Otto Scott, The Secret Six: John Brown and The Abolitionist Movement (1979).
Andrew Johnson (1859): What John Brown Did in Kansas (December 12, 1859): a speech to the United States House of Representatives, December 12, 1859. Originally published in The Congressional Globe, The Official Proceedings of Congress, Published by John C. Rives, Washington, D. C. Thirty-Sixth Congress, 1st Session, New Series...No. 7, Tuesday, December 13, 1859, pages 105-106. Retrieved May 16, 2005.
David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 356-384 - Potter said the emotional effect of Brown's raid was greater than the philosophical effect of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and that his raid revealed a deep division between North and South.