Raymond Krohn, assistant professor in the Department of History, recently published his monograph with Fordham University Press. “Abolitionist Twilights: History, Meaning, and the Fate of Racial Egalitarianism, 1865-1909” explores the humanitarian commitments and historical writings of former antislavery agitators in the post-Civil War U.S.
Krohn’s book covers the years and decades following the American Civil War when veteran abolitionists actively thought and wrote about the campaign to end enslavement immediately. He explores the late-in-life reflections of several antislavery memorial and historical writers, evaluating the stable and shifting meanings of antebellum abolitionism amidst dramatic changes in postbellum race relations. By investigating veteran abolitionists as movement chroniclers and commemorators and situating their texts within various contexts, Krohn further assesses the humanitarian commitments of activists who had valued themselves as the enslaved people’s steadfast friends.
“Abolitionist Twilights” focuses on how the status and condition of the freedpeople and their descendants affected book-length representations of antislavery persons and events. In probing veteran-abolitionist engagement in or disengagement from an ongoing African American freedom struggle, Krohn’s volume ultimately problematizes scholarly understandings of abolitionism’s racial justice history and legacy.