Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

By Tony Horwitz

Plotted in secret, few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Midnight Rising portrays Brown’s uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict.

Joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band, on October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation. After Brown’s capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown’s dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called “a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale.”

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (August 2012)