• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
    • About Current
    • Masthead
  • Podcasts
  • Support

John Brown

When Eugene Debs eulogized John Brown

John Fea   |  August 19, 2022

While he was campaigning for president in 1908, the candidate of the Socialist Party of America stopped in Harper’s Ferry and eulogized John Brown. Jacobin has published Debs’s remarks. Here is a taste: As I stand here on this spot...

Could the battle over abortion in the states result in another “Bleeding Kansas?”

John Fea   |  June 28, 2022

Michael Waldman writes about the recent Supreme Court gun ruling: The Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday striking down a New York gun law isn’t just the most significant ruling on the Second Amendment in a dozen years — it may be the...

Should evangelicals claim John Brown?

John Fea   |  June 20, 2022

Louis De Caro, a church history professor at Alliance Theological Seminary in New York City, thinks so. Here is a taste of his piece at Christianity Today: Despite efforts on the part of some historians to portray him as heterodox,...

What did the congressman know about the insurrection?

John Fea   |  August 2, 2021

What did William Seward (NY) and Henry Wilson (MA) know about the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry? Here is Sidney Blumenthal at The Guardian: The House select committee on the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, according to chairman...

The ever-usable John Brown

John Fea   |  April 28, 2021

Here is Yale graduate student Bennett Parten at History Today: …John Brown became an American sensation, a source of both fear and enchantment. Slaveholders reviled him; abolitionists wept for him, tolled bells in his honour and came to see him...

The Author’s Corner with Louis DeCaro, Jr.

Annie Thorn   |  October 5, 2020

Louis DeCaro, Jr. is Associate Professor of Church History at Alliance Theological Seminary. He has also kept a blog on John Brown since 2005. This interview is based on his new book, The Untold Story of Shields Green: The Life...

Wilfred McClay on Historical Monuments

John Fea   |  June 27, 2020

Whether you agree or disagree with him, Wilfred McClay is always thoughtful. If I see his byline at First Things or another conservative outlet, I will always read the article. As one of America’s best conservative historians (not a historian...

Historian H.W. Brands Paints a Scenario in Which the Battle Over Abortion Might Lead to Civil War

John Fea   |  November 21, 2018

H.W. Brands‘s piece at The Washington Post is worth pondering.  Here is a taste: Suppose Roe is reversed, and the states are allowed to restrict abortion as they see fit. Red states reduce access to abortion, in some cases nearly eliminating...

On Treason

John Fea   |  July 14, 2017

I think it was Virginia Senator Tim Kaine who her first raised the “T” word in the wake of news that senior officials in the Trump presidential campaign, including Donald Trump Jr., met with a Russian lawyer in June 2016....

Reviewing “The Abolitionists”

John Fea   |  January 11, 2013

A couple of days ago I did a post at The Anxious Bench on the new PBS three-part series on abolitionism.  It focuses on the lives of five prominent nineteenth-century opponents of slavery: Frederick Douglass, Angelina Grimke, John Brown, William...

Reynolds Reviews Horwitz’s Midnight Rising

John Fea   |  October 25, 2011

Over at The Wall Street Journal, David Reynolds, the author of a recent book on Harriett Beecher’s Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, reviews Tony Horwitz’s new book on John Brown, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil...

Frederick Douglass and the John Brown Raid at Harper’s Ferry

John Fea   |  July 8, 2011

Over at Past is Present, the blog of the American Antiquarian Society, librarian Tom Knoles tells us about the Society’s acquisition of a new Frederick Douglass letter. The letter was written from Canada on October 28, 1859, to Charles W....

The Legacy of John Brown

John Fea   |  December 2, 2009 7 Comments

Today is the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. By sheer coincidence, I will be teaching the raid today in my U.S. Survey course. The New York Times features two op-ed pieces dealing with the event. In […]

Primary Sidebar

Patron Access

Way of Improvement blog banner

Episode 51: “The Politics of Tinky Winky”

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

He was Florida’s professor of the year in 2006. Today his courses would be illegal.

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

Zakaria: The nation’s policy on classified documents and “secrecy” is “out-of-control”

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

Teaching John Henry Newman’s “What is a University”

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

What is popular this week at Current?

January 27, 2023 By John Fea

More Blog Posts

Subscribe via Email



Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

Footer

Contact Forms

General Inquiries
Pitch Us

Search

Subscribe via Email



Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide
Subscribe via Email


Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide