Word: abolitionists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...February feature. Carter G. Woodson earned a Ph.D in history from Harvard in 1912—becoming the second black to receive a doctorate from the University. Fourteen years later, he founded Negro History Week, selecting a seven-day span in February that included the Feb. 7 birthday of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the Feb. 12 birthday of Abraham Lincoln. A half-century later, as Woodson’s invention gained popularity, the week evolved into a full month. But last December, Woodson’s brainchild weathered criticism from actor Morgan Freeman, who suggested that Black History Month should...
Douglass was amazed by the idea. He had been a close friend of John Brown's throughout the 1850s and had championed his militant abolitionist efforts. In 1859 Brown had invaded Harpers Ferry, Va., as part of a scheme to free the slaves but was captured and hanged for treason. While Douglass considered Brown a hero and martyr, Lincoln had referred to him as a criminal and madman. Yet now Lincoln was borrowing from Brown by conceiving a similar raid. Douglass had not gone with Brown to Harpers Ferry because he had correctly predicted that Brown would fail...
...uniting blacks and whites. He elaborated on Lincoln's legacy 11 years later, at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Washington, offering a tender verdict from the perspective of someone who had been converted. If you judge him from the point of view of a pure abolitionist, Douglass said, "Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent." But, he went on, "measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined...
...political genius by showing how different aspects of Lincoln's deep emotional intelligence made him a highly effective leader. Lincoln scholar Douglas L. Wilson probes the sources of Lincoln's rhetorical powers; Harvard professor John Stauffer focuses on Lincoln's surprising relationship with another towering figure of that age, abolitionist Frederick Douglass; and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who holds the seat Lincoln tried and failed to gain, explains the man's enduring power to inspire...
...family's history, including the exploits of his grandfather, an irascible firebrand who went west from Maine after having a vision of Christ urging him to help free the slaves. The "old man" encouraged young men of his congregation into the Civil War and, in service to the abolitionist cause, abetted John Brown and quite possibly committed murder. His son, the narrator's father, also fought in the war, and subsequently became an ardent pacifist...