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.