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Wheeee posted:What's the best book on John Brown? On the historiography of the Harper's Ferry raid: most accounts of what exactly went down at Harper's Ferry derive from a particular eyewitness account. The commanding officer of the contingent of US marines sent to crush the raid after the Virginia militia surrounded the town but failed to retake it from Brown and his raiders was none other than Robert E. Lee, the supreme slaver champion in the war to come. As commanding federal officer on the scene, Lee wrote the official report on the event, and many writers on the raid use it as a primary source on that basis. Here is a different eyewitness account: A Voice from Harper's Ferry, by Osbourne P. Anderson, one of only two raiders who survived the Virginia chuds and the feds. Anderson and the only other survivor were in an out-building isolated by the Virginians before the final storming of the Harper's Ferry fire engine house, where Brown, most of the raiders, the liberated slaves and the slaver prisoners were holed up. They managed to ford the river and escaped north into Pennsylvania. Anderson's is the only eyewitness account of the raid and its preliminaries from a participant on Brown's side in the fight. It's a quick, informative, evocative little book, highly recommended.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:27
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 23:14 |
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