On December 2, 1859, a tall, gaunt, fifty-nine-year-old man was executed in Virginia before 1500 armed guards. Just a month earlier, few had heard of John Brown, a red-faced, thread-bare, scare-crow of a man with wild reddish brown hair whose sky-blue eyes held a look that bespoke madness, who one terrible night in Kansas committed cold-blooded murder as he embarked on a violent crusade to end slavery. Now his name divided North from South. Was he...