Tue December 27, 2011 John Brown: The Man Who 'Sparked' The
Civil War On an October night in 1859, 21 men staged a takeover
of a national armory in tiny Harpers Ferry, Va. Though
unsuccessful, the raid drew the nation's attention to its
electrifying leader, a man named John Brown — and set the nation
on the path to war. Brown went on to become perhaps one of the
most polarizing figures in American history. The devout
Calvinist and abolitionist is remembered as a traitor and
terrorist by some, and a hero by others. Historian Tony Horwitz
joins NPR's Neal Conan to discuss his book, Midnight Rising:
John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. On Brown's
preoccupation with sin and punishment "He believed strongly in
corporal punishment. This was not unusual for the early 19th
century. But I would say he dispensed the rod with a special
fervor, going on the basis of his children's accounts of being
whipped for sins — not even sins, you know, childhood fibbing,
the sorts of things that we would barely blink