Sons of Providence

Here in trade paperback, Rappleye's fresh and panoramic view of the American founding fathers' era, told through the lives of John and Moses Brown of Providence, one a slaver, the other an abolitionist.

In 1774, as the New World simmered with tensions that would lead to the violent birth of a new nation, two Rhode Island brothers were heading toward their own war over the issue that haunts America to this day: slavery. Set against a racial backdrop teeming with radicals and reactionaries, visionaries, spies, and salty sea captains, Sons of Providence is the biography of John and Moses Brown, two classic American archetypes bound by blood yet divided by the specter of more than half a millions Africans enslaved throughout the colonies. John is a profit-driven robber-baron running slave galleys from his wharf on the Providence waterfront; his younger brother Moses is an idealist, a conscientious Quaker hungry for social reform who--with blood on his own hands--strikes out against the hypocrisy of slavery in a land of liberty.

Their story spans a century, from John's birth in 1736, through the revolution, to Moses' death in 1836. The brothers were partners in business and politics and in founding the university that bears their name, but for the Browns as for the nation, the institution of slavery was the one question that admitted no middle ground. The brothers' dispute takes the reader from the sweltering decks of the slave ships to the taverns and town halls of the colonies and shows just how close America came to ending slavery eighty years before the conflagration of civil war. This dual biography is drawn from voluminous family papers and other primary sources and is a dramatic story of an epic struggle for primacy between two very different brothers. The story of their collaboration and their conflict has a startlingly contemporary feel. And like any good yarn, the story of the Browns tells us something about ourselves.

About the Author
Charles Rappleye grew up in New England, attended school in Wisconsin, and lives in Los Angeles. He spent most of the past decade as news editor at LA Weekly, where he won awards as a columnist and for investigative journalism. This is his second book.