VIRTUAL TALK: “When It Was Grand” with LeeAnna Keith

In 1862, the ardent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison summarized the events tearing the United States apart: “There is a war because there was a Republican Party. There was a Republican Party because there was an Abolition Party. There was an Abolition Party because there was Slavery.” Garrison’s simple statement expresses the essential truths at the heart of LeeAnna Keith’s When It Was Grand. This is the full story of the Radical Republicans―the champions of abolition–who established a new political party and turned it toward ending slavery. These idealistic Massachusetts preachers and philanthropists, rugged Midwestern politicians, and African American activists collaborated to protect escaped slaves from their captors, to create and defend black military regiments and to win the contest for the soul of their party. People like Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Brown. People like the gruff antislavery general John Fremont and his astute wife, Jessie Benton Fremont. And people like Abraham Lincoln, the radicals’ sometime critic and sometime partner. In the 1850s and 1860s, a powerful faction of the Republican Party stood for a demanding ideal of racial justice―and insisted that their party and nation live up to it. Here is the definitive account of their indelible accomplishment.

Tickets: $10 Nonmembers/ $5 Members
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