I am an abolitionist, I glory in the name,

Though now by slavery's minions hissed and covered or with shame.

It is a spell of light and power, the watchword of the free.

Who spurns it in the trial,

thou, a craven soul is he.

I am an abolitionist, then urge me not to pause,

for joyfully I do enlist in freedom's sacred cause.

A noblemish strike the world there saw, then slain to disenthrall.

I am a soldier for the war, whatever may be fall.

I am an abolitionist, performed by the Duchess Anti-Slavery Singers, part of the Mid-Hudson

anti-slavery history project in Poughkeepsie, New York.

The song was written in 1841 by William Lloyd Garrison printed in his major abolitionist

newspaper, The Liberator.

Just a decade later, the abolitionist movement would be shifting their tactics from a nonviolent resistance to slavery,

to purchasing weapons, funding militias, and sending anti-slavery settlers to the contested state of Kansas,

where a guerrilla war was being waged, in the years leading up to what was the deadliest conflict in American history, the Civil War.

Compared to the bloodshed of the

1860s, the prior fight in Kansas is but a tiny drop, but the massive significance of what

took place and what became known as Bleeding Kansas cannot be overstated and is too often misunderstood.

This episode is a prequel to our recent podcast titled Like Men of War, How Black Troops Whipped the Confederacy.

After that episode, I knew there was so much left to be explored, both in the lead-up to

the Civil War and in the years afterwards. So we polled our listeners and asked what they wanted

...