The Midtown Scholar is thrilled to welcome Andrew Delbanco to our stage to discuss his book, The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul From the Revolution to the Civil War. This event is free and open to the public.
About the Book:
The devastating story of how fugitive slaves drove the nation to Civil War.
For decades after its founding, America was really two nations–one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this composite nation ultimately broke apart, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the “united” states was actually a lie. Fugitive slaves exposed the contradiction between the myth that slavery was a benign institution and the reality that a nation based on the principle of human equality was in fact a prison-house in which millions of Americans had no rights at all. By awakening northerners to the true nature of slavery, and by enraging southerners who demanded the return of their human “property,” fugitive slaves forced the nation to confront the truth about itself.
The fugitive slave story illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still.
About the Author:
