58: The Zealot and the Emancipator with H.W. Brands
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project
4.6 • 9.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2021
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
Host Reed Galen is joined by Dr. H.W. Brands (Professor of History and Bestselling Author) to discuss the vastly different approaches John Brown and Abraham Lincoln took to confront the issue of slavery in their time and what parallels we can draw to the political landscape of today. For more on this topic be sure to check out Dr. H.W. Brands' The Zealot and the Emancipator, and don’t forget to pre-order his upcoming book, Our First Civil War, available on November 9th.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Gaelin. Today, I'm joined by Dr. |
| 0:13.6 | H.W. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds |
| 0:18.2 | the Jack S. Blanton Senior Chair in History. Dr. Brands is authored an impressive range of |
| 0:22.9 | articles, reviews, and books. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street |
| 0:27.0 | Journal and the Washington Post, as well as many other outlets. His many books have received |
| 0:30.9 | critical acclaim, and he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for both the first American, |
| 0:35.2 | the life and times of Benjamin Franklin, and Trader to his class, the privileged life and radical |
| 0:40.8 | presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His most recent book, which you can find in bookstores |
| 0:45.3 | or on Amazon, is The Zealot and the Enmancipator, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and The Struggle for |
| 0:50.9 | American Freedom, which I just recently finished. And Dr. Brands has a new book coming out on November |
| 0:56.0 | 9th called Our First Civil War, Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution, which is |
| 1:01.2 | available now for pre-order. Dr. Brands, thanks for joining me today. |
| 1:04.8 | Don't let me do it with you, Reed. So listen, I've been a fan of your work for a long time. |
| 1:09.5 | Your book on Franklin was incredible, and I want to come back to him in a second. But I want to talk |
| 1:14.1 | about The Zealot and the Enmancipator, this latest book, because in our current political discourse, |
| 1:20.1 | there's a lot of talk about, you know, this is the most dangerous time since 1860 and those sorts |
| 1:26.1 | of things. But after reading this book, it seems like maybe 1860 is a little too late as far as |
| 1:32.3 | a comparison. And I know a lot of times historians are not huge fans of parallel constructions and |
| 1:37.1 | history, which I totally understand, but I will break that rule regardless. You know, you talk about |
| 1:43.2 | John Brown and his early conversion to the Uber abolitionist that ultimately ends with him hanging |
| 1:50.1 | from a scaffold in Harper's Ferry. But you really take the readers through a lot of the pre-civil war |
| 1:56.2 | history around slavery, whether or not it was the various compromises, the Dred Scott decision, |
... |
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