The Abolitionists Go to War: Part 3

January 24, 2013 By Jonathan Wilson in Film Tags: Abolitionism, Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Frederick Douglass, Harpers Ferry, John Brown, pacifism, violence, William Lloyd Garrison 2 Comments

The final episode of The Abolitionists aired this week on PBS. The entire three-hour documentary is now available online here (Part 3 begins at the 1:40 mark). A full transcript is also available. Kenneth Owen and Jonathan Wilson previously discussed the first two episodes for The Junto. Today, we discuss the final hour.

Jonathan Wilson:

We’ve been fairly hard on The Abolitionists thus far, so I’m happy to say I thought the final chapter of the film is the strongest, both historiographically and dramatically. This episode reflects recent scholarship on slave rebellions, and on John Brown in particular, by meditating in a fairly sophisticated way on the uses and languages of violence.

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A Stack of Bibles

January 23, 2013 By Seth in From the Archives Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Inauguration, The Bible 4 Comments

As has been widely reported, on Monday President Obama swore on a stack of bibles to uphold the Constitution. On one hand, maybe doubling-up on the sacred iconography will reassure those on the right who doubt the President’s sincerity, but the primary purpose was to honor two periods of American history simultaneously. This year marks the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington, and the bibles were direct material links to those eras: one was the bible on which Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office in 1861, and the other belonged to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

United in this one event, they are very different books. The Lincoln bible has, for all intents and purposes, never been used. Continue reading →

The Week in Early American History

January 13, 2013 By Joseph M. Adelman in Film Tags: Abraham Lincoln, academia, AHA, antislavery, Django Unchained, George Washington, Paul Revere, Popular History, religion, Slavery Leave a comment

TWEAH2 Happy New Year! We took last week off while so many of us were in New Orleans for AHA, so the set of links covers just a bit more than the past seven days. From here on we should be back to our regular schedule every Sunday morning.

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Then, Thenceforward, and Forever Free

January 1, 2013 By Jonathan Wilson in Commentary Tags: Abraham Lincoln, antislavery, Civil War, emancipation, Emancipation Proclamation, memory, museums, Slavery Leave a comment

emancipationproclamation We can’t let 2013 begin without marking the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which Abraham Lincoln issued on January 1, 1863.