Published in 1909, it tells the story of John Brown, from his Christian rural upbringing, to his failed business ventures and finally his "blood feud" with the institution of slavery as a whole.

At night the slave lay in the bitter cold and once they beat the wretched thing before John's very eyes with an iron shovel, and again and again struck him with any weapon that chanced.

No, he was active, intelligent and with the great warm sympathy of his race did the stranger "numerous little acts of kindness," so that John readily, in his straightforward candor, acknowledged him "fully if not more than his equal."

Du Bois describes Brown as a biblical character: fanatically devoted to his abolitionist cause but also a man of rigid social and moral rules.

Du Bois simultaneously describes Brown as a revolutionary, prophet and martyr, and declares him to be "a man whose leadership lay not in his office, wealth or influence, but in the white flame of his utter devotion to an ideal" (p. 135).