On Tuesday, April 2, Sean Wilentz, the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History and 2018-19 Old Dominion Research Professor gave the final talk in the Old Dominion Public Lecture Series on how antislavery politics originated in America in the aftermath of the American Revolution and how American abolitionists pioneered the techniques as well as the ideas that would inform the later activities of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln.
In the lecture entitled “The Politics of Early American Abolitionism,” Wilentz explored this largely untold history which helps us appreciate how the struggle over slavery began with the nation itself, and how that struggle was entwined with the early expansion of American democracy.
Watch the full video here.
