Midnight Rising (Horwitz)

Discussion Questions
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Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Midnight Rising:

1. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called John Brown's raid a "misguided, wild and apparently insane" act. How was the raid viewed, initially, by Northerners and Southerners? How and why did the views of the Northerners' change? How does author Tony Horwitz view the raid?

2. How should we look at John Brown, today—as hero, provocateur, or terrorist? How does Tony Horwitz present him? How do you see him? Was he insane as many historians have claimed? Or was he sane, as many other historians have claimed?

3. Talk about the way in which Brown's parents and Calvinist upbringing shaped his views as an adult.

4. How would you describe Brown's temperament as portrayed in Midnight Rising? How did it affect his role as provider and father? What role did his temperament play during the three phases of the Harpers Ferry raid—planning, conduct, and outcome?

5. William Lloyd Garrison (see Question 1), a pacifist, believed that moral suasion could turn the South away from slavery. What was Brown's belief? What do you think? Was war inevitable, a necessary evil? Or could it (should it) have been avoided?

6. Prior to Harpers Ferry, Brown envisioned conducting raids to free slaves, retreating to the mountains, then conducting more raids to free more slaves. What was his intended goal? Why didn't he carry out those earlier raids?

7. In 1856, after a particularly murderous raid at Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas, Brown rationalized his brutality by exclaiming, "God is my judge." He also said he and his sons "were justified under the circumstance." What do you think?

8. What mistakes were made before and during the Harpers Ferry raid that doomed its outcome? What do you think might have happened had Brown made it to the mountains instead of being captured?

9. After Brown was captured and hanged, Ralph Waldo Emerson called his death "as glorious as the Cross." Louisa May Alcott said that his "dying made death divine." Horwitz wonders whether Brown's intention all along was to die as a martyr. What do you think? If it had been his intention, were the 29 other deaths, during the raid or by hanging afterward, worth the price?

10. Horwitz is concerned that, "through the lens of 9/11," we might be tempted to view John Brown as a "long-bearded fundamentalist" and Harpers Ferry as an "al-Qaeda prequel." Is he right to worry? Can a link be made between the 19th-century actions of John Brown and 21st-century events?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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