You can argue that the US Civil War was like the explosion of a bomb that the founding fathers planted in our Constitution when they decided to punt on the question of slavery. You can see the bomb’s fuse burning for decades leading up to the final bang, and a lot of the statesmanship of the early nineteenth century consisted of politicians trying to extinguish the fuse, or at least delay it a bit longer.
Other people, though, were eager to see the bomb go off and did everything that they could to hasten an explosion that would force a final resolution of the slavery question. One of those men was John Brown, a troubled man completely dedicated to the holy mission of ending slavery in America. Portrayed after his death as a pious martyr to the cause of freedom, he became something of a patron saint for the Abolitionist movement. But if John Brown was a saint, he was a saint with blood on his hands, and his trial polarized a nation both then and now.
As a side note, I have this sense that ninety minutes is sort of the perfect length for a podcast. I’m just not very good at sticking to it. Whoops.
Testimony from Brown’s trial and after-action report of then-Colonel Robert E. Lee following the raid at Harper’s Ferry, both courtesy of famous-trials.com:
Trials and Errors 
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