John Quincy Adams, Reluctant Abolitionist
When:
Wednesday, Feb 07, 2024 6:00p -
7:00p
Wednesday, Feb 07, 2024 6:00p -
7:00p
Where:
Boston Public Library
Central Library in Copley Square, Commonwealth Salon
Boston, MA 02117
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Accessible Spots, History, Lectures & Conferences, Seasonal
Event website:
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/657785a7a5dbe03f00759c37
Join author Jeffrey A. Denman as he discusses the life of John Quincy Adams as seen through the lens of slavery.
U.S. President, Harvard alumnus, diplomat, member of Congress, and attorney before the Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams had a unique relationship with slavery. Prickly and curmudgeonly, Adams danced with abolitionists, but never became one himself.
However, Adams did harbor an intense hatred for the arguments of Southern slaveholders, and eventually found himself in the center of America's greatest struggle. Informed by Adams’s revealing and often tormented musings from his vast diary, this sweeping narrative offers a unique and gripping account of John Quincy Adams’s battle with slavery while exploring the many fault lines in American society that led to the Civil War.
Included are the dramatic showdowns in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as Adams's attempts at outsmarting Southern politicians, and Adams's efforts to keep slavery in the forefront of Congressional activities.
Jeffrey A. Denman is co-author of Greene and Cornwallis in the Carolinas: The Pivotal Struggle in the American Revolution, 1780-1781, as well as several magazine and journal articles. Jeff is a graduate of the University of Maine and the University of Connecticut and a retired teacher of American History and World Geography in the Brookline Public Schools in Brookline, Massachusetts. His research focuses primarily on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in American history. To learn more or connect with Jeff, please visit https://www.jeffreyadenman.com...
