Brown alum Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic, Blue Latitudes, and A Voyage Long and Strange, will speak Friday about his latest work.
Tony Horwitz joins us to talk about his new book Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War. John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in US history, yet few know the full story of this desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Brown saw slavery as a sin against America’s founding principles and was willing to take up arms. In 1859 Brown led a catastrophic raid on Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation; Robert E. Lee led the counterattack. After Brown’s capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which thought Brown a terrorist. The raid helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown’s dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called “a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale.”
You can click here for the New York Times review or just take my word for it that everything this guy writes is superb and wildly entertaining. Copies of Midnight Rising will be available for sale and signing. (There appears to be a bodice-ripper of the same title — accept no substitutes.)
Free and open to the public, 5pm to 7pm, Friday, November 4, Providence Athenaeum, 251 Benefit Street