To Purge This Land with Blood

To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown
	Second edition
Author	Stephen B. Oates
Subject	Biography
Publisher	Harper & Row
Publication date	1970
Pages	434
ISBN	978-0-06-131655-5

To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown is a 1970 biography of abolitionist John Brown by American historian Stephen B. Oates. The biography triggered a reappraisal of Brown, who was subsequently less likely to be dismissed by historians as irrational.^[1]

References

Notes

^ Hancock 2015

Sources

Hancock, Scott (2015). "Review of To Raise Up a Nation: John Brown, Frederick Douglass, and the Making of a Free Country". The Journal of Southern History. 81 (2): 460–462. ISSN 0022-4642.

Commentary and reviews

"Reservations". The Antioch Review. 30 (2): 266. 1970. ISSN 0003-5769.
Cardoso, Jack J. (1971). "Review of To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown". The Journal of American History. 57 (4): 922–923. doi:10.2307/1917809. ISSN 0021-8723.
Dillon, Merton L. (February 1971). "To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown". The Journal of Southern History. 37 (1): 111. doi:10.2307/2205937.
Eby, Cecil D. (1971). "Review of To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 79 (2): 213–214. ISSN 0042-6636.
Edelstein, Tilden (March 1971). "John Brown: The Sword and the Word, and: To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (review)". Civil War History. 17 (1): 60–62. doi:10.1353/cwh.1971.0024.
Hancock, Scott (2015). "Review of To Raise Up a Nation: John Brown, Frederick Douglass, and the Making of a Free Country". The Journal of Southern History. 81 (2): 460–462. ISSN 0022-4642.
"Twelve Books Of 1970 (Published 1970)". The New York Times. 6 December 1970. Retrieved 21 April 2025.
Otto, Paul (November 1992). "History as a Humanity: Reading and Literacy in the History Classroom". The History Teacher. 26 (1): 51. doi:10.2307/494085.
Owsley, F. Lawrence (1970). "Review of To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 29 (4): 410–411. ISSN 0040-3261.
Rose, Willie Lee (3 December 1970). "Killing for Freedom". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 21 April 2025.
Sewell, Richard H. (1971). "Review of George Bourne and The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable; To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown". The American Historical Review. 76 (2): 549–550. doi:10.2307/1858807. ISSN 0002-8762.
Smylie, James H. (1972). "Review of To Purge This Land With Blood, A Biography of John Brown". Journal of Presbyterian History. 50 (1): 57–59. ISSN 0022-3883.
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram (1971). "Review of To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown". The Historian. 33 (4): 694–696. ISSN 0018-2370.

[1] Hancock 2015

[1]

v t e John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown's raiders	Osborne Perry Anderson John Brown body Oliver Brown Owen Brown (son) Watson Brown John Anthony Copeland Jr. Barclay Coppock Edwin Coppock Shields Green Albert Hazlett John Henry Kagi Lewis Sheridan Leary Francis Jackson Meriam Dangerfield Newby Aaron Dwight Stevens
Secret Six	Thomas Wentworth Higginson Samuel Gridley Howe Theodore Parker Franklin Benjamin Sanborn Gerrit Smith George Luther Stearns
Other individuals	John Wilkes Booth Mary Ann Day Brown (wife) Owen Brown (father) John Brown, Jr. James Buchanan Samuel Chilton John E.P. Daingerfield Israel Greene George Henry Hoyt Andrew Hunter Stonewall Jackson Robert E. Lee James M. Mason Richard Parker Wendell Phillips Richard Realf James Redpath George Sennott Heyward Shepherd Lysander Spooner George H. Steuart J. E. B. Stuart Lewis Washington Walt Whitman Henry A. Wise
Locations	Allstadt House and Ordinary B & O Railroad Potomac River Crossing Beall-Air Charles Town, West Virginia Gibson-Todd House Harpers Ferry Armory Harpers Ferry, West Virginia Historic District John Brown's Fort Kennedy Farm Sandy Hook, Maryland Winchester, Virginia
Afterwards	Battle Hymn of the Republic Burning of Winchester Medical College Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Heyward Shepherd monument John Brown (biography) John Brown Farm State Historic Site John Brown Farm, Tannery & Museum John Brown House (Akron, Ohio) John Brown Museum (Osawatomie, Kansas) John Brown's body John Brown's Body (poem) John Brown's Body (song) John Brown's last speech John Brown's Provisional Constitution "The Last Days of John Brown" The Last Moments of John Brown "A Plea for Captain John Brown" "Remarks After the Hanging of John Brown" Tragic Prelude Virginia v. John Brown
Related	Abolitionism in the United States La Amistad Battle of Black Jack Battle of the Spurs James Madison Bell Bleeding Kansas Cloudsplitter John Brown's War Against Slavery John Stuart Curry George DeBaptiste Frederick Douglass Ralph Waldo Emerson Fire on the Mountain Wm. Lloyd Garrison The Good Lord Bird (book, miniseries) Haitian Revolution Victor Hugo Elijah P. Lovejoy Marching Song (play) James Montgomery Origins of the American Civil War Battle of Osawatomie Quindaro Townsite Allan Pinkerton Pottawatomie massacre Santa Fe Trail (film) Seven Angry Men Storer College Henry David Thoreau To Purge This Land with Blood Harriet Tubman Nat Turner Denmark Vesey Wakarusa War Walt Whitman Winchester and Potomac Railroad