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BOOK REVIEW          CLARKE

Ferry (John Brown) and Coat of Many Colors (Joseph in Egypt) . The subjects for these plays had certain things in common.  They were all men who were put on trial for their thoughts and deeds, at a time when these thoughts and deeds were considered to be heresy.  Time and later generations vindicated these men.  Their ideas went into the making of the age in which we now live.
  In the historical work John Brown:  The Sword and the Word and in the play The Man Who Never Died, Barrie Stavis re-examines two of America's great folk heroes.  John Brown:  The Sword and the Word is a companion volume to his play Harper's Ferry about the same subject.
  The historical work is a more extensive study.  In this book, the man John Brown is extracted from the myths that have blurred nearly every interpretation of his life and anti-slavery mission.  Barrie Stavis separates himself from the two prevailing schools of thought about John Brown in order to let the real John Brown stand up historically.
  John Brown has been viewed as a murderer and a madman and a misguided saint.  Barrie Stavis evaluates John Brown as a remarkable military strategist, who did not blunder at Harper's Ferry.  He sees the raid on Harper's Ferry as a brilliant commando tactic that was stopped by superior forces.
  This book is intended for the general reader as well as the historian and the scholar.  It is a straightforward narrative about the life of John Brown and the events in his life and times that led to Harper's Ferry and a confrontation with the system of slavery.
  When John Brown was born in May, 1800, the massive slave revolts had already started.  The first revolt of the slaves in Haiti had already occurred.  The century of his birth and growth, the nineteenth, was a century of revolt and resistance.  This is the kind of atmosphere that set the mind of John Brown in motion and strengthened his determination to destroy all forms of slavery.  By the middle of the century the issue had been joined and the last phase of his remarkable career as an American patriot who was hanged as a traitor was leading him to the moment of truth at Harper's Ferry.  This is clearly what the book John Brown:  The Sword and the Word is about.  
  It could be said, with some justification, that Joe Hill was a latter-day John Brown.  John Brown fought against the enslavement of the blacks and Joe Hill fought against the enslavement of the working class in general.  Joe Hill was a hero in his own lifetime, and was a labor martyr before he was buried. When Joe Hill was put to

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-20 09:32:22 Fixed a spelling error