John Brown

The opera traces Brown's career from the conflict in Kansas in 1855 to his hanging at Harpers Ferry, a martyr's death that he knew would hasten the destruction of slavery. The action begins in Lawrence, Kansas where anti-slavery settlers are besieged by slavery forces from Missouri. Brown's son, Oliver, also a dedicated abolitionist, is engaged to Martha, a girl from a pacifist family; she wants him to leave Kansas. She is then devastated by her brother's murder by the invaders. Partly through her love and partly from what she learns about slavery from Frederick Douglas (the great black leader and Brown's friend), she finally casts her lot with the Browns. The opera ends with an Apotheosis, representing one of the hundreds of vigils in northern churches that marked the moment of Brown's hanging, and foreshadows the shot at Fort Sumter that began the Civil War. - p. iv.