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Voices in Time: Epistolary Activism

An early nineteenth-century feminist fights back against a narrow view of woman’s place in society.
by Louise W. Knight via Lapham’s Quarterly on February 22, 2018

One of History's Foremost Anti-Slavery Organizers Is Often Left Out of Black History Month

The Reverend Dr. Henry Highland Garnet may be the most famous African American you never learned about.
by Paul Ortiz via TIME on January 31, 2018
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The Tireless Abolitionist Nobody Ever Heard of

He was a well-known figure in early America, but the name of Warner Mifflin has all but faded from the nation's memory.
by Gary B. Nash via HNN on October 24, 2017

The "Quaker Comet" Was the Greatest Abolitionist You've Never Heard Of

Overlooked by historians, Benjamin Lay was one of the nation's first radicals to argue for an end to slavery.
by Marcus Rediker via Smithsonian on September 1, 2017

The Making of an Antislavery President

Fred Kaplan's new book asks why it took Abraham Lincoln so long to embrace emancipation.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on June 23, 2017

Who Freed the Slaves?

For some time now, the answer has not been the abolitionists.
by Stephanie McCurry via The Nation on September 13, 2016

What Gun Control Advocates Can Learn From Abolitionists

Slave ownership was once as entrenched in American life as gun ownership.
by Rebecca Onion, Manisha Sinha via Slate on June 14, 2016

The Truth About Abolition

The movement finally gets the big, bold history it deserves.
by Adam Rothman via The Atlantic on April 1, 2016
Frederick Douglass.
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"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech is widely known as one of the greatest abolitionist speeches ever.
via BackStory on July 7, 2014
Illustration of a proslavery mob raiding a post office in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1835.
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How Much Is Too Much?

The dramatic story of the abolitionist mail crisis of 1835.
via BackStory on December 7, 2012
John Brown

Three Interviews With Old John Brown

Atlantic writer William Phillips conducted three interviews with Brown before Brown's fateful raid on Harper's Ferry.
by William A. Phillips via The Atlantic on November 30, 1879
US National Guard troops block off Beale Street as Civil Rights marchers wearing placards reading, "I AM A MAN"

The Classical Liberal Foundation of Civil Rights

The progress we have seen toward civil rights for all Americans is inseparable from the history of classical liberalism.
by David Lewis Schaefer via Law & Liberty on June 24, 2025
A row of California National Guardsmen stand atop a top step in riot gear.

Trump’s Deportation Frenzy Echoes the Fugitive Slave Hunts of the 1850s

Trump's crackdown on immigrants bears alarming parallels to the fugitive slave obsessions of the pre-Civil War South.
by Garrett Epps via Washington Monthly on June 11, 2025
Charles Sumner

What We Can Learn From the Senator Who Nearly Died for Democracy

The brutal caning of Sen. Charles Sumner in 1856 shows the difference between courage and concession.
by Zaakir Tameez via Washington Post on June 1, 2025
A newspaper drawing of St. Louis from above.
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German Radicals vs. the Slave Power

In "Memoirs of a Nobody," Henry Boernstein chronicles the militant immigrant organizing that helped keep St. Louis out of the hands of the Confederacy.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via HNN on May 21, 2025
Broadside about the Fugitive Slave law.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: Annotated

The Fugitive Slave Act erased the most basic of constitutional rights for enslaved people and incentivized US Commissioners to support kidnappers.
by Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on May 19, 2025
Abraham Lincoln

Was the Civil War Inevitable?

Before Lincoln turned the idea of “the Union” into a cause worth dying for, he tried other means of ending slavery in America.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on April 21, 2025
Grave of John Quincy Adams.

From Son of the Revolution to Old Man Eloquent

A new Library of America edition of John Quincy Adams’s writings demonstrates the enduring appeal—and real shortcomings—of his revolutionary conservatism.
by Michael Lucchese via Law & Liberty on April 11, 2025
Detail of landscape painting Villa Menaggio, Lago di Como by Sophia Peabody Hawthorne.

Transcending the Glass Ceiling

Five women who made important contributions to 19th-century American philosophy finally get their due.
by Lydia Moland via The American Scholar on March 27, 2025
Rufus Anderson

Christ vs. Culture, Religion vs. Politics

Religious leaders hid behind the separation of church and state to uphold the institution of slavery and the forcible removal of Native Americans.
by Emily Conroy-Krutz via Panorama on March 26, 2025
Painting by Earle Richardson titled "Employment of Negroes in Agriculture," 1934.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the Great American Novel

Most countries take their popular novelists more seriously than America has. The term “Great American Novel” was literally invented to describe this book
by Naomi Kanakia via Woman of Letters on March 11, 2025
Oil painting of Margaret Fuller by Thomas Hicks, 1848 (National Portrait Gallery) and frontispiece from first edition of Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

The Mind and Heart of Margaret Fuller

Margaret Fuller was a polymathic intellect and writer, simultaneously ahead of her time and deeply enmeshed in the social and political fabric of her era.
by Megan Marshall, Brigitte Bailey, Noelle A. Baker via Library of America on February 27, 2025
Senator John Conness.

This Dead California Senator Can Save Birthright Citizenship

In the 19th century, John Conness defended the 14th Amendment and shut down proto-Trumpians.
by Joe Mathews via Zócalo Public Square on February 11, 2025
A crib drawn with Stars and Stripes symbolism.

Birthright Citizenship Is a Sacred Guarantee

The attack on it is a violation of the nation’s post–Civil War rebirth.
by David W. Blight via The Atlantic on January 27, 2025
A mural depicting John Brown amid Bleeding Kansas.

John Brown, Christian Nationalist

To understand discourse around “Christian nationalism,” look no further than the abolitionist hailed by many on the left.
by Shiv Parihar via Providence on December 13, 2024
Church with graveyard.

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War.
by Robert Wilson via The American Scholar on December 2, 2024
Nicholas Said, an African American Muslim in his Union Army uniform.

Fighting for Freedom: The Little-Known Story of Muslims and the Civil War

The stories of two Muslim immigrants who fought for the Union show that the American Civil War was an international fight.
via PBS on November 21, 2024

The Second Abolition

Robin Blackburn’s sweeping history of slavery and freedom in the 19th century.
by Manisha Sinha via The Nation on November 19, 2024
John Quincy Adams posing for a photograph.

Now Is Not the Time for Moral Flexibility: The Example of John Quincy Adams

We must stand by the principles of the open society, pluralism, freedom, and mutual toleration.
by Alan Elrod via Liberal Currents on November 13, 2024
"The Underground Railroad" (1893) by Charles T. Webber depicts a fugitive slave reaching the North.

The Abolitionist Titan You’ve Never Heard Of

John Rankin, minister and fierce abolitionist, is a man worth remembering in our moment.
by Isaac Willour via Law & Liberty on November 8, 2024
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