In this riveting, character-driven history, one of our most respected historians traces the diseases in the public mind--the distortions of reality--that destroyed George Washington's vision of a united America and inflicted the tragedy that still divide's the nation's soul.
By the time John Brown hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper's Ferry, Northern abolitionists had made him a "holy martyr" in their campaign against Southern slave owners. This Northern hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. They were convinced...