As part of the national effort to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Oberlin Heritage Center will host “The Coming of Emancipation,” presented by Oberlin College Professor of History, Gary J. Kornblith.  Professor Kornblith is a highly regarded scholar and teacher on the moral and political issues of slavery and abolition in the early development of our nation.

In this illustrated discussion, Professor Kornblith examines why the United States ended slavery through a massive war rather than by peaceful means.  Among the puzzles considered is the fact that President Lincoln and Congress insisted in 1861 that the North was not fighting for abolition, just for the perpetuation of the Union “as it was.”  Kornblith draws on new research on the role of insurgent Southern slaves in forcing a shift in Northern war aims and on Lincoln’s reluctant transition from colonizationist to “Great Emancipator.”

Professor Kornblith's book, "Slavery and Sectional Strife in the Early American Republic, 1776-1821."

Gary J. Kornblith joined the faculty of Oberlin College in 1981 and has taught many courses in American History, from our nation’s founding through the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Kornblith received a B.A. from Amherst College and a M.A. and PhD from Princeton University.  He has written extensively on topics in American History.  His recent book, Slavery and Sectional Strife in the Early Republic, published by Rowman & Littlefield, inaugurated that press’ American Controversies Series.  A volume of essays titled Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation in Nineteenth-Century America (co-edited with Michael Zakim OC ’81) is scheduled to be published by the University of Chicago Press in January 2012.  He currently is working on Elusive Utopia: A History of Race in Oberlin, Ohio (with his wife, Oberlin College Professor of History, Carol Lasser).  Professor Kornblith, along with Professor Lasser, received the Oberlin Heritage Center’s Community Historian Award in 2008.

Location: Heiser Auditorium, Kendal at Oberlin, 600 Kendal Drive, Oberlin, OH, 44074.

Contact: Mary Anne Cunningham, Assistant to the Director, (440) 774-1700

Details: Free and open to the public

http://www.oberlinheritage.org/