The secret six: John Brown and the abolitionist movement - Hardcover

Scott, Otto J

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9780812907773: The secret six: John Brown and the abolitionist movement

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812907779 ISBN 13: 9780812907773

Publisher: NYT Times Books, 1979

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The Secret Six John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement Otto Scott 1979 ISBN 0-8129-0777-9

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About the Author:

Otto Scott is a former journalist, editor, columnist, book reviewer, corporate executive, and author of ten books, all on different topics. Four are corporate histories: Ashland Oil, Black & Decker, Raytheon, and the Arch Mineral Corporation. He also wrote the biography of J. B. Saunders, a legendary petroleum marketing tycoon.

His political histories are equally varied. In addition to The Secret Six, he has written a history of the French Revolution up to the death of Robespierre, and a book about James I who sowed the seeds of the English Civil War the forerunner of our own War of Independence.

His major interests, therefore, are industrial and political. As his books most of which have been published by major New York publishers indicate, he is an expert on corporate management and pre-revolutionary periods.

Now in his eighty-first year, he continues as an author, essayist, book and film reviewer, and speaker who writes a monthly cultural journal (Otto Scott's Compass) and records his views twice a month on audio tape (Points of the Compass). In addition, he is an Associate Scholar for the American Council on Economics and Society, and member of the Philadelphia Society, John Randolph Society, Committee for Monetary Research and Education, Society of Professional Journalists, the Author's Guild, and the Overseas Press Club. He is the recipient of the George Washington Medal from the Freedom Foundation (1976) and the John Newman Edwards Media Award (1994).

His articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union, San Diego Tribune, Chronicles, Salisbury Review (London), Conservative Digest, Human Events, Tabletalk,, and Southern Partisan.

He has been a featured speaker at the Stanford Law School, the Sound Money Institute, the San Diego Legal Institute, the Committee for Monetary Research & Education, and many other groups here and abroad.

His Books include:
The Great Christian Revolution, The Reformer Library, 1995.
Robespierre: The Fool as Revolutionary, Mason & Lipscomb, 1974, repr. by The Reformer Library, 1995.
The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement, New York Times Book Co., 1979, repr. by The Foundation for American Education, 1987, repr. by Uncommon Books, November, 1993, paper.
The Powered Hand: The Story of Black & Decker, Uncommon Books, 1994.
Buried Treasure: The Story of Arch Mineral, Braddock, 1991.
James I: The Fool as King, Mason Charter, 1976, repr. Ross House Books, 1986.
The Other End of the Lifeboat, Regnery, 1985.
The Creative Ordeal: The Story of Raytheon, Atheneum, 1976.
The Professional: A Biography of J. B. Saunders, Atheneum, 1976.
The Exception: The History of Ashland Oil, McGraw Hill, 1968.

Review:

"Its vast gallery of characters ranges from Fourier to Julia Ward Howe and includes the Alcotts, Emerson, Thoreau, Whittier, Carlyle, Wordsworth, and Victor Hugo on the belletristic side; Frederick Douglass, Sumner, Garrison, Phillips, Channing, and Greeley among the explicit abolitionists; Polk, Van Buren, Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and J. E. B. Stuart from the world of great affairs. And, of course, there are the six themselves, of whom Emerson's disciple Theodore Parker is best known to modern readers."

"The author ties all these notables together in a skillful narrative that drives home the central thesis: the derangement of John Brown in the realm of political action resulted from a prior derangementof Brown and othersin the realm of theology. The ultimate point is that the same thing is occurring now, only more so. John Brown has his counterparts in the modern-day terroristthe FALN, the PLO, the SLAwho attack the innocent in order to remedy the alleged evils of society. Like Brown, these terrorists fill the void of modern nihilism with the fearful certitudes of violence, and have their deeds explained away as understandable, if extreme, responses to a monstrous evil." -- M. Stanton Evans, Dark Horse

"Scott's portraits of the Six are detailed and realistic; indeed, his book is full of vigorous and accurate detail, forming a panorama of politics and culture in the 1850s. It may be grimly amusing to picture the Proper Bostonians of this successful conspiracy against the laws of the United States, meeting initially at the Boston Institute for the Blind, at their genteel work of fomenting civil war. But it is not equally amusing to contemplate the similar conspiracies of intellectuals and rich and fashionable folk which in this century have reduced half the world to ruin and tyranny." -- Russell Kirk, The Birmingham News

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