A Volcano beneath the Snow: John Brown’s War against Slavery by Albert Marrin (review)

By the time young adults reach for this lengthy, double-columned text on John Brown, they will likely be familiar with the 1859 debacle at Harpers Ferry, in which Brown and fellow zealots attempted to seize a Federal arsenal, arm slaves who would rise up in revolt, and strike such terror into the South that the “peculiar institution” of slavery would eventually meet a bloody demise. Here Marrin goes far beyond the standard treatment that concludes with failure, executions, and a brief hiatus before the Civil War, confronting instead the larger and more complex issues of what made John Brown tick, and whether his code of “righteous violence” is ever justifiable. It’s a courageous approach, and Marrin carefully lays the groundwork in several chapters covering Brown’s early life and the global development of slavery. By the time readers get to Harpers Ferry, they’ve already met the unstoppable force, Brown, who participated in a massacre in “Bleeding Kansas” and lied about that participation to his more pacifistic financial backers, and the immovable obstacle, slavery, which hunkered down under the protection of politics and legislation. Marrin refuses to take an easy way out by writing Brown off as a religious fanatic or a madman or even a common criminal, and in so doing forces readers into the maelstrom of mid-nineteenth century debate, to determine the most expeditious road to justice, unaided by twenty-first century hindsight. This is a rewarding work for serious adolescent readers, and educators who are equally serious about nurturing informed social criticism within their students will welcome this challenging title. Index, notes bibliography, and black and white reproductions of historical photographs and illustrations are included.