Andrew Delbanco is the Mendelson Family Chair of American Studies and Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Daniel Carpenter is Allie S. Freed Professor of Government at Harvard University and author of the prizewinning books Reputation and Power and The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy. At Harvard, he has led the creation of the Digital Archive of Antislavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions and the Digital Archive of Native American Petitions. John Stauffer is Professor of English, of American Studies, and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University. He is the author of Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Manisha Sinha is Associate Professor of History and Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

A brilliant, risky, provocative account of the changing historical reputation of abolitionists in America. Delbanco offers a timely take on just why this prototypical American reform movement never goes away as a template, as a useable past, as a story that can be appropriated by all ends of the political spectrum.

Andrew Delbanco is the Mendelson Family Chair of American Studies and Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Daniel Carpenter is Allie S. Freed Professor of Government at Harvard University and author of the prizewinning books Reputation and Power and The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy. At Harvard, he has led the creation of the Digital Archive of Antislavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions and the Digital Archive of Native American Petitions. John Stauffer is Professor of English, of American Studies, and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University. He is the author of Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Manisha Sinha is Associate Professor of History and Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

A brilliant, risky, provocative account of the changing historical reputation of abolitionists in America. Delbanco offers a timely take on just why this prototypical American reform movement never goes away as a template, as a useable past, as a story that can be appropriated by all ends of the political spectrum.