John Brown's Transcendentalist Fantasy Camp!

Why did the philosophers of self-reliance throw in with the abolitionist who took up arms?

Dr. Nell Painter and Dr. David Reynolds help Dr. Louis DeCaro Jr. answer.

From Painter: "Transcendentalists and abolitionists like Sojourner Truth and John Brown lived in the same world. We can bring them together."

Nell Irvin Painter is the Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University. In 2026 she received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Society of American Historians' Tony Horwitz Prize. A former Guggenheim fellow and the author of nine books, including "The History of White People" and "Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol," her latest, "I Just Keep Talking," was named one of the best books of 2024 by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Kirkus Reviews. She is at work on a new book on Sojourner Truth.

David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author or editor of seventeen books. "John Brown, Abolitionist," winner of the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Prize, is the major modern biography of Brown. "Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times" won the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Book Prize and was named one of the Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Books of the Year. "Walt Whitman's America" won the Bancroft Prize and the Ambassador Book Award. Other books include "Beneath the American Renaissance" (winner of the Christian Gauss Award), "Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America," and "Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson." His new book, "Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America," appears in June. He is a regular reviewer for the New York Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times Book Review.