There is no evidence that there was any direct connection between the
publication of the Liberator and the servile insurrection which occurred
during the following August. It was, however, but natural that the South
should associate the two events. A few utterances of the paper were
fitted, if not intended, to incite insurrection. One passage reads: ...
"Rather than see men wearing their chains in a cowardly and servile
spirit, I would, as an advocate of peace, much rather see them breaking
the heads of the tyrant with their chains." -from "The Turning Point"
It's the rare history book that offers first-person knowledge combined
with an understanding of the grander context in which the events
depicted too place, but we have such a unique confluence in this 1919
book. Jesse May, born into a family of Midwest abolitionists and a
Quaker noncombatant during the Civil War, grew up to become a respected
historian and political scientist, and he brings his unusual perspective
on slavery and abolition in America to this concise, clear-headed
survey. From an expurgated tidbit condemning slavery in an early draft
of the Declaration of Independence to the particular power of women in
the antislavery movement, Macy's work is a brief but devastating
argument about hypocrisy, democracy, and freedom in America in the
mid-19th century. American political scientist JESSE MACY (1842-1919)
was a professor at Grinnell College. He wrote extensively on political,
social, and civic matters.
