No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics

The antislavery proponents Blue profiles include Alvan Stewart, John Greenleaf Whittier, Charles Henry Langston, Owen Lovejoy, Sherman Booth, Jane Grey Swisshelm, George W. Julian, David Wilmot, Benjamin and Edward Wade, and Jessie Benton Frémont. Working through the Liberty, Free Soil, Democratic, Whig, and Republican organizations, they represented the full spectrum of opinions on and approaches to abolition. Blue highlights their motives and actions as they undertook the yeoman’s work of organizing parties, holding conventions, editing newspapers, and generally animating and agitating the discussion of issues related to slavery. Their stories, brought together for the first time in this comparative biographical study, enrich our understanding of the political crisis over slavery that led to the Civil War.