When John Brown Came To Westport: American Abolitionism and American Slavery Before the Civil War
A lecture with American historian, Connor Williams
Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, 5:30 PM
“The past is a foreign country,” the novelist L.P. Hartley once wrote. “They do things differently there.”
Perhaps nothing about American history is more foreign to us today than our history as a slave society. Yet that is our national truth, and our original sin. By the 1861 outbreak of the Civil War, the United States was the world’s greatest slave power. For almost 250 years Americans and their ancestors had created, maintained, and spread systems of enslavement throughout much of our nation. Indeed, it will take another 88 years before the lands of the United States will have known freedom for longer than they have known enslavement. » Continue Reading.
Timbuctoo Institute would build opportunity in the Adirondacks
By Aaron Mair
The Adirondack Park is a national treasure because our ancestors had the foresight in the 1880s and 1890s to protect its forests and waters as a legacy for future generations to inherit and enjoy. Creating the Forest Preserve and the “forever wild” clause of the state constitution were bold, new ideas.
Now, more than 120 years later, we can see how smart our ancestors were. The Adirondack Park was transformed in less than a century from a smoldering mess of wildfires, clear-cut forests and muddy rivers into the world’s largest intact, temperate deciduous forest. Today, it hosts most of the rare forest wildlife, wilderness and old-growth forest remaining in the Northeast.
What caused people as far away as New York City to act?
» Continue Reading.