LECTURES

FREEDOM AND STATES’ RIGHTS: CONFLICTING VISIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR IN THE NORTH AND SOUTH at the Jackson Homestead and Museum.

At the outset of the Civil War, the Confederacy was consumed by the issue of preserving slavery, while the Union was profoundly ambivalent about emancipation. James DeWolf Perry, executive director of the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery, will explore the historical background which gave rise to these conflicting perspectives on the war. He will also discuss how the war eventually came to be seen, in the South, as a defense of states’ rights and the southern way of life and, for the rest of the nation, as a righteous struggle to abolish slavery. Free.