Kenneth S. Sacks is Professor of History and Classics at Brown University. This interview is based on his new book, Emerson’s Civil Wars: Spirit and Society in the Age of Abolition (Cambridge University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]
abolitionism
When two early South Carolinians changed their minds about slavery
The South Carolina State Museum recently acquired the personal Bible of enslaver turned abolitionist William Turpin. Historians David Dangerfield (University of South Carolina-Salkehatchie) and Ramon Jackson (South Carolina State Museum) tell us more at Christianity Today: At first glance, William […]
The Author’s Corner with Stephen D. Engle
Stephen D. Engle is Professor of History and Associate Provost for Academic Personnel at Florida Atlantic University. This interview is based on his new book, In Pursuit of Justice: The Life of John Albion Andrew (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023). […]
Wheaton College study on race: “We cannot be healed and cannot be reconciled unless and until we repent”
A Wheaton College task force has released a 122-page historical report on race relations at the evangelical institution. Read it here. Here is Daniel Silliman and Kate Shellnut at Christianity Today: Though the flagship evangelical institution was founded by abolitionists, […]
Ann Sprigg’s boarding house and the end of slavery
Here is historian Bennett Parten at Zocalo Public Square: In the early 1840s, where the steps of the Library of Congress now stand, a group of American abolitionists gathered in a modest boardinghouse to plot the destruction of slavery. The […]
Josh Hawley’s conservative populism was on full display at Road to Majority 2023
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley made a visit on Friday to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority 2023” conference. Watch: If you watched the speech you can see that Hawley wasted no time identifying with the crowd: I’m proud […]
The Author’s Corner with Matthew J. Clavin
Matthew J. Clavin is Professor of American and Atlantic History at the University of Houston. This interview is based on his new book, Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War (NYU Press, 2023). JF: What led you to […]
The Author’s Corner with Giuliana Perrone
Giuliana Perrone is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This interview is based on her new book, Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law (Cambridge University Press, 2023). JF: What led […]
The Author’s Corner with Kevin Kenny
Kevin Kenny is Professor of History and Glucksman Professor in Irish Studies at New York University. This interview is based on his new book, The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Oxford […]
The Author’s Corner with Kathleen M. Brown
Kathleen M. Brown is David Boies Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. This interview is based on her new book, Undoing Slavery: Bodies, Race, and Rights in the Age of Abolition (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). JF: What […]
The Author’s Corner with Elliott Drago
Elliott Drago is Editorial Officer of the Jack Miller Center. This interview is based on his new book, Street Diplomacy: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom in Philadelphia, 1820-1850 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Street […]
The Author’s Corner with Jesse Olsavsky
Jesse Olsavsky is Assistant Professor of History at Duke Kunshan University. This interview is based on his new book, The Most Absolute Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835ā1861 (LSU Press, 2022). JF: What led you to […]
Should evangelicals claim John Brown?
Louis De Caro, a church history professor at Alliance Theological Seminary in New York City, thinks so. Here is a taste of his piece at Christianity Today: Despite efforts on the part of some historians to portray him as heterodox, […]
The Author’s Corner with Paul Escott
Paul Escott is Reynolds Professor of History Emeritus at Wake Forest University. This interview is based on his new book, Black Suffrage: Lincoln’s Last Goal (University of Virginia Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Black Suffrage? PE: My two […]
There is not a “hard distinction” between the gospel and the pursuit of social justice
Mark Glanville of Regent College (Vancouver, B.C.) explains: The recent Guidepost SolutionsĀ reportĀ on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention revealed that August Boto, a key leader on the SBC Executive Committee, labeled the work of advocates on behalf of survivors […]
The Buffalo shooting in historical context
Historian Chad Williams places the shooting in the larger context of Buffalo history. Here is a taste of his piece at The Washington Post: Historical context is necessary to fully grasp the significance of the Buffalo shooting. White-supremacist terrorism targeting […]
The Author’s Corner with Eric Herschthal
Eric Herschthal is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah.Ā This interview is based on his new bookĀ The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of ProgressĀ (Yale University Press 2021). JF: What led you to write The Science […]
The ever-usable John Brown
Here is Yale graduate student Bennett Parten at History Today: …John Brown became an American sensation, a source of both fear and enchantment. Slaveholders reviled him; abolitionists wept for him, tolled bells in his honour and came to see him […]