ABSTRACT
John Brown's prison letters were ostensibly private, addressed to his family, friends and acquaintances, with details of his family life as well as Biblical themes and his wider political philosophies. But within the context of a thriving antislavery print culture, and aided by the daily and extensive press coverage of his raid, trial and execution, most of the letters were published in Northern newspapers. His raid had been a radical interpretation of the Bible and his letters belong within an abolitionist culture of dissent that wielded the Bible as a weapon. Even more importantly for the prophetic tradition of protest literature, after interpreting the Bible with his raid and in his letters, Brown made his own actions a text to be interpreted and his letters a call to action after interpretation: 'God makes him the text', observed Wendell Phillips, who recognized Brown's strategy-adding that 'all asks of our comparatively cowardly lips is to preach the sermon'.
