This is the Cato Daily podcast for Thursday, November 21st, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Ralph Waldo Emerson called him the father of the abolitionist movement.

And until now, there's been no book-length treatment for the life and work of Reverend John Rankin.

Caleb Franz is author of The Conductor, The Story of Reverend John Rankin, Abolitionism's Essential Founding Father.

We spoke earlier this month.

Would you agree with the notion that sort of the greatest political achievement for the United States of America

was ending slavery? I would. I think that there is no greater achievement of human liberty

than what we were able to accomplish in the 19th century.

And I also think that it was a fulfillment of what the founders had enshrined into the Constitution

and the Declaration of Independence.

That original idea was finally fulfilled with the Declaration of Independence, that original idea was finally fulfilled

with the abolition of slavery.

Yeah, of course.

And this was not without controversy, obviously, in the founding era and for decades

that followed.

Right.

And you've written a book that I think, you know, as we were talking before, we started recording, is someone who ought to be remembered and ought to be celebrated for his contribution.

But who was John Rankin?

John Rankin is someone who is not often remembered, as you allude to. He was known

frequently in his day, especially in what we might have considered the West at the time,

states like Kentucky and Ohio and Indiana, as the father of abolitionism.

...