Abolitionists Remember: Antislavery Autobiographies and the Unfinished Work of Emancipation (review)

Building on work on post-Civil War cultural memory by David W. Blight, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and Nina Silber, Jeffrey shows how, through both published personal narratives and collective commemorative acts, abolitionists "struggled against the creation of what they saw as a false and dangerous...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Civil War History 2010-06, Vol.56 (2), p.223-225
Main Author: DeLombard, Jeannine Marie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abolition of slavery
Abolitionists
Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848)
Autobiographies
Blight, David W
Brown, William Wells (1814?-1884)
Collective memory
Cultural heritage
Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)
Emancipation
Narratives
Reconstruction period-US
Slavery
War
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Summary:Building on work on post-Civil War cultural memory by David W. Blight, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and Nina Silber, Jeffrey shows how, through both published personal narratives and collective commemorative acts, abolitionists "struggled against the creation of what they saw as a false and dangerous understanding of the past" and thus "challenged every important point of the reconciliation narrative" outlined by these scholars (3). In Acts of the Antislavery Apostles (1883), Parker Pillsbury, having led a pilgrimage to abolitionist Nathaniel Rogers's unmarked grave, answers the inevitable queries about the absent headstone by insisting that such men "need no monuments reared by other hands than their own" (195).
ISSN:0009-8078
1533-6271
1533-6271
DOI:10.1353/cwh.0.0146