Book on Brown bros. and slavery scores $50K prize

Banner Staff

Award-winning journalist and independent scholar Charles Rappleye has received the third annual $50,000 George Washington Book Prize, which honors the most important new book about America’s founding era for his book “Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, The Slave Trade, and The American Revolution.”

Published in 2006 by Simon and Schuster, Rappleye’s book tells the story of John and Moses Brown, brothers who were partners in business, politics and the founding of Brown University, yet who passionately opposed one another on one of the most divisive issues of the day — the slave trade.

“I wanted to do justice to a wonderful story and refresh our understanding of the dilemma posed by slavery in the early days of the Republic,” said Rappleye. “It’s very gratifying to think that, on the strength of this award, that story might reach a wider audience.”

Presented to Rappleye at a black-tie dinner attended by some 200 dignitaries, including descendants of the Brown brothers, the George Washington Book Prize included a medal and $50,000 — one of the most generous book awards in the United States, with a monetary prize greater than the Pulitzer Prize for History ($7,500) and the National Book Award ($10,000).

The finalists were selected by a jury of prominent American historians, including Richard Bushman of Columbia University; Theodore J. Crackel of the University of Virginia; and Pauline Maier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Rappleye, a journalist, spotted the ideological polarity represented by Moses and John Brown and turned the greatest contradiction in the Revolutionary period into the history of two men: one a Baptist-turned-Quaker opponent of slavery and the other a passionate revolutionary who was a major actor in the slave trade,” the jurors wrote in their report on the winning entry.

“Rappleye’s book shows how this contradiction was not a conflict between North and South but a battle waged in the North, within a state thought to be one of the most independent and liberal of any in the Union, and in fact within one family.”