Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Damian Pargas

What did Black freedom mean for the development of citizenship and democracy in the early United States?

In this lecture, Damian Pargas (Leiden University) traces how the free Black population expanded continually in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War, as northern states abolished slavery while southern states redoubled their commitment to it. He examines how the resulting disputes over the citizenship rights and legal personhood of free and formerly enslaved African Americans, over movement across state lines, access to justice, and participation in democracy, became a driving force behind the sectional conflicts that ultimately led the United States down the path to civil war.