This original collection gathers a remarkably diverse body of literature about John Brown, the strident anti-slavery leader. Besides a selection of letters by the abolitionist himself, the book includes a significant excerpt from W. E. B. Du Bois’s biography, John Brown, addresses by Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, poetry by Louisa May Alcott and Herman Melville, and much more. AUTHOR: John Brown (1800 1859) was an American abolitionist. Brown advocated the use of armed insurrection to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. He first gained national attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis of 1856.