Schedule
June 20 - July 16, 2010
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Director: Richard Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology
Calendar of Meetings at The Library Company and Readings, June 20st-July 16, 2010'
NB: UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL SEMINAR SESSIONS ARE AT THE CASSATT HOUSE, NEXT TO THE LIBRARY COMPANY @ 1314 LOCUST ST., CENTER CITY PHILADELPHIA.
To provide us all ample time to read, meditate and utilize the Library Company’s wonderful archives, we will generally meet on the following schedule:
*Morning sessions, Mon-Thurs, 9:00am-11:45am
*Afternoon “document” discussions, 1:30-2:30pm.
All readings will be provided in a SEMINAR packets or online.
Week 1:
“The Rise of the Abolitionist Movement in the 18th Century Atlantic World”
Sunday 6/20: 6pm Welcome and Dinner, Cassatt House, next to The Library Company
Monday 6/21: MORNING: Ending Slavery In the Atlantic World: Was Abolition Possible?
Read: Davis, “What the Abolitionists Were Up Against, Slavery in the Age of Revolution; Eric Robert Taylor, “If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Visit The Library Company’s LOGAN ROOM for staff presentations on researching the Afro-Americana collection and other archives.
AFTERNOON: Document Discussion: Germantown Protest (1688); Joseph Parrish, “Notes on Abolition” (draft of antislavery published as “Remarks on the Slavery of the Black People,” published in 1806); Richard Allen, “Eulogy of Washington,” available at:
http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/alleneulogy.htm
6pm: Juneteenth Celebration, The Library Company
“Enslaved People and Washington’s President’s House in Philadelphia: A Discussion”
http://www.librarycompany.org/events/index.htm
Tuesday 6/22: MORNING: Gradual Abolitionism in Post-Revolutionary America: Pennsylvania as a Test Case.
Read Nash and Soderlund, “Slavery’s End in Pennsylvania,” from Freedom By Degrees. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism, ch 1-2
AFTERNOON: Visit Historical Society of Pa. for Pennsylvania Abolition Society Education Project. Preview at:
http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=634
Discussion: Pennsylvania Act for Gradual Abolition, 1780; Philip Seitz, ed., “The Charity Castle Story” (in Penn Magazine of History and Biography, Jan. 2008).
Wednesday 6/23: Gradual Abolitionism in the American South.
MORNING: Read selections from Melvin Patrick Ely, Israel on the Appomattox and Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World
AFTERNOON: St. George Tucker, “Dissertation on Slavery” (1796); French National Assembly Abolition Decree, 1794.
Thursday 6/24: Slave Rebellion and Early American Abolitionism.
MORNING: Read, Douglas Egerton, Gabriel’s Rebellion;
Visit byProfessor Egerton: The impact of slave rebellion on the early antislavery movement.
AFTERNOON: Documents: Newspaper reports on slave restiveness, from St. Domingue to Gabriel’s Rebellion.
Friday 6/25:
Site Visit #1: Pennsylvania’s old state capitol building at Independence National Historical Park, where both the Declaration of Independence and Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 were passed and the first African American petitions to Congress were presented.
Background: James Dexter’s Abolitionist Petition to Congress, circa 1792. See:
http://www.nps.gov/inde/the-life-of-james-dexter.htm
Week 2:
“African Americans and the Abolitionist Movement”
Monday 6/28: Black Founders
MORNING: Read: Newman et al, “Black Founders,” William and Mary Quarterly, January 2007 (Copies sent in the mail before seminar)
AFTERNOON: Documents: Belinda’s “Appeal” (1783, 1787); Adam Carmen, Slave Trade Oration, 1811; Forten, Letters from a Man of Color “ (1813). Documents online at:
http://oieahc.wm.edu/wmq/Jan07/supplement.html
Tuesday 6/20: Building Black Movement Centers: People, Places, Actions.
MORNING: Read: Gary Nash, Forging Freedom, Graham Hodges, David Ruggles, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, In Search of the Promised Land (Sally Thomas).
AFTERNOON: Documents: Richard Allen ”An Address To Those Who Keep Slaves and Approve the Practice” (1794); David Ruggles Report of the “The New York Committee of Vigilance” (1837); “Address” of Troy African Female Benevolent Society (1834).
Wednesday 6/30: Colonization/Anti-Colonization Debates:
MORNING: Read: Patrick Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North; Hugh Davis, Leonard Bacon: New England Reformer and Antislavery Moderate.
AFTERNOON: Document: Richard Allen, Letter on Colonization, Freedom’s Journal 1827; Walker’s Appeal (1829), Mariah Stewart, “Productions” (1835).
6-8pm: “Freedom’s Prophet: Richard Allen at 250.” A Historical Society of Pennsylvania event featuring scholarly discussion and Q and A on Allen.
Thursday 7/1: The Underground Railroad
MORNING: Read selections from Gabor Borritt and Scott Hancock, eds., Slavery, Resistance, Freedom; David Cecleski, “All of Them Abolitionists: Black Watermen and the Maritime Passage to Freedom” (North Carolina waterways and the Underground Railroad)
*Visit by Scott Hancock: The Underground Railroad and Abolitionism.
AFTERNOON: “Narrative of Henry Box Brown,” available online:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brownbox/menu.html
Supplementary material on Fugitive Slave Activity in Pennsylvania is also available at: http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=854
William Still’s Journal: http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=751
Friday 7/2:
Site Visit #2: Mother Bethel AME Church, formed by former slave Richard Allen during the 1790s.
Background: Richard Allen’s autobiography,
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/allen/menu.html
Sun 7/4 **Independence Day Group Activity, TBA**
Week 3:
The Transformation of American Abolitionism Before the Civil War
Monday 7/5:
MORNING: Read selections from Stewart, Holy Warriors; Margaret Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America; John D’Entremont, Southern Emancipator: Moncur Conway.
AFTERNOON: Documents: American Anti-Slavery Society, “Declaration of Sentiments” (1833); Garnet “Address to the Slaves” (1843), 1849 Women’s Antislavery Fair (Pa.) at:
http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=836
And Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” (1852
https://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=2945
Tuesday 7/6: Radical Abolitionism: Transcending Social Limits.
MORNING: Read,John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men; Anthony Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns.
AFTERNOON: Documents: John Brown, “Provisional Constitution”; Platform, Radical Abolitionist Party; and “The Case of Jane Johnson”:
http://www.librarycompany.org/janejohnson/
Wednesday 7/7: The Abolitionist Internationale:
Morning: Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall; Edward Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War
Visit by Professor Blackett on Antislavery Activism in and beyond the United States before the Civil War.
Document: James W.C. Pennington, “The Fugitive Blacksmith”:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/penning/penning.html
Thursday 7/8: Women and Abolitionist Politics:
MORNING: Read: Robertson, Hearts Beating For Liberty, about Antislavery women and politics in the Midwest; Jean Fagin Yellin and John Van Horne, eds., The Abolitionist Sisterhood.
Visit by Professor Robertson on Antislavery Women in American Culture.
AFTERNOON: Child, “Appeal in Favor of… Africans,” Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (extended excerpt).
Friday 7/9:
MORNING: Seminar Alums: The Abolitionist Movement in the Classroom
*Visits by previous participants on using the seminar in class
Afternoon: Research in Library Company Archives.
Saturday 7/10:
Site Visit #3: Gettysburg, including Black Soldiers’ Cemetery.
NB: Tentatively planned for this day but we may have to move it!!
Week 4:
Abolitionists in the Civil War Era…and Beyond.
Monday 7/12: Antislavery Politics and the Coming of the Civil War
MORNING: Read: Jonathan Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil; Stanley Harrold, Subversives; William Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Vol 2.
AFTERNOON: Garrison and Douglass, editorials on Lincoln Election (1860-1); William Freehling, ed.,Showdown in Virginia (Virginia Secession Debates)
Tuesday 7/13: Emancipation and The Civil War, Part 1: The Abolitionist as Hero.
MORNING: Read, Donald Yacovone, A Voice of Thunder; Wendy Hammond Venet, Neither Ballots nor Bullets: Women Abolitionists and Emancipation During the Civil War; Henry Meyer, All on Fire (Garrison)
Document: Lincoln, Countermand of Emancipation Orders in South Carolina and Missouri, 1861-1862; Civil War Correspondence of George Stephens on slavery and emancipation
Wednesday 7/14: Emancipation and The Civil War, Part 2: Lincoln as Abolitionist Icon.
MORNING: Read: Allen Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation; Stauffer, Giants.
AFTERNOON: Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, Second Inaugural.
Thursday 7/15: Abolitionism in Reconstruction.
MORNING: Read, David Quigley, Second Founding: New York City, Reconstruction, and the Making of American Democracy (Jan. 2009); Leslie Schwalm, Emancipation's Diaspora; (on the Midwest in the post-emancipation era); Carl Faulkner, Women’s Radical Reconstruction (The South).
AFTERNOON: DOCUMENT Document: John Warren, Hate in Detroit (1863) and Charlotte Forten Grimke, “Forever Free,” in Yacovone, Freedom's Journey; William Still, The Underground Railroad (1872).
Friday 7/16
Farewell Lunch: Teaching the Abolitionist Movement in the 21st Century?
John Cumbler, From Abolition to Rights for All