This week, The Extraordinary Times caught up with renowned historian H. W. Brands author of The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom. Holder of the Jack S. Blanton, Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas, Austin, Dr. Brands has written some 30 acclaimed books on American history and politics, including two bestselling titles which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. On Thursday, September 7 at 7pm, Brands will speak at Miami University Hamilton’s Parrish Auditorium on the epic struggle embodied by Brown and Lincoln—two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin. This free public event is sponsored by the Michael J. Colligan History Project, with generous support from Hamilton Community Foundation.
* With such a prolific career, how do you balance research, writing, public appearances, and regular life? Because I enjoy what I do, it doesn't seem like work, and I don't begrudge the time I spend on it. My writing and teaching complement and inform each other: I write about the same things I teach about. Public speaking is teaching to a larger classroom. * What inspired you to write The Zealot and the Emancipator? I want to know what makes people do what they do. In this book I ask how people respond to evil. Brown and Lincoln provided opposite answers to the question of how to confront the evil of slavery. Brown embraced violence, Lincoln chose politics. Why? And what were the consequences? * Did studying Brown and Lincoln in tandem change your understanding of either or both men? I came to appreciate the unsatisfactory nature of each of their approaches to slavery. Which was why the problem proved so vexing. * Of all the quotations about Brown after his death, which is your favorite and why? On his way to the gallows, Brown left a note. "The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood," he said. This was both a rationalization of his own actions and a chillingly true forecast for America. * What is your next project? Since The Zealot and the Emancipator, I've published Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution and The Last Campaign: Sherman Geronimo and the War for America. Next is Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and the Brawling Birth of American Politics, out this fall.
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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