Frederick Douglass and the Fifth of July
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What to the slave is the Fourth of July? asked Frederick Douglass to a Rochester audience. What indeed?
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Northeast North Carolina Underground Railroad: Sea, Swamp, Solidarity
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Consider the challenge of an escape from slavery via the watery depths.
Read MoreAugusta Browne, 19th-century American female composer
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Have you heard of 19th century composer Augusta Browne? Biographer Bonny Miller sheds some light, and sound, on what Browne achieved amidst a lot of constraints.
Read MoreFreedmen's Bureau in Washington: Need Help? Move.
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The post-Civil War work of the Freedmen’s Bureau was curtailed from the start.
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The "Scribbling Women" at Pfaff's
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In this second post about Pfaff’s, a 19th century Bohemian hang-out in New York City, I look at five women who wrote.
Read MoreThe Women at Pfaff's
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For about five years, in the last 1850s and early 1860s, Pfaff’s was the place to be. Who were the women there?
Read MoreSemi-Intersecting Lives in mid-1840s New York City: Margaret Fuller, Mathew Brady, and Edgar Allen Poe
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The lives of Margaret Fuller, Mathew Brady, and Edgar Allen Poe—in a compressed bit of Manhattan and a compressed bit of time.
Read MoreRenaming Army Bases: Long Overdue, On the Cusp
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Will the 10 remaining Army bases named for Confederates finally be renamed? As of mid-December, the bill awaits the president’s signing or veto.
Read MoreHarriet Jacobs, Teacher
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Harriet Jacobs started a school in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1864. It wasn’t easy.
Read MoreBack to School--in the 1840s and 1850s
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Starting the school year—the 1844-45 school year, that is.
Read MoreFrederick Douglass and the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society
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The Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, the group that sponsored Frederick Douglass’s famous July 4 speech, raised money, held lectures, hid fugitives—and remembered to serve refreshments at their monthly meetings.
Read MoreWomen in the Civil War: Two Books and a Zoom Talk
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When I moderated a History Author talk on Zoom, I spoke with two authors with very different ways to approach the topic of women in the Civil War.
Read MoreHarriet Jacobs in Edenton, North Carolina
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Harriet Jacobs hid in an enclosure 9 feet by 7 feet in Edenton, NC, which we visited last week.
Read MoreWilliam Cooper Nell and Lydia Maria Child: Two Bostonians Who Helped Harriet Jacobs
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Connecting Bostonians William Cooper Nell and Lydia Maria Child with Harriet Jacobs.
Read MoreContraband and Freedmen's Cemetery Memorial
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A presentation by Fran Bromberg about the creation, forgetting, and rededication of the cemetery on South Washington Street
Read MoreSteamboats Across the Potomac
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Fortunately, a much calmer boat ride to Nats Park from the Alexandria waterfront last week than in October 1862.
Read MoreThe Black Military Experience in the Civil War
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A fascinating talk by Leslie Rowland, director of the Freedmen & Southern Society Project, on the Black Military Experience during the Civil War—drawn from National Archives documents.
Read MoreSoldiers' Graffiti (and Julia Wilbur) at Historic Blenheim
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Stories behind Civil War graffiti at Historic Blenheim in Fairfax, VA.
Read MoreSlave Inventory Database in Fairfax County: Crossing the 1870 Gap
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What Maddy McCoy and others learned when they went page by page through more than a century of Fairfax County paperwork.
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