The war before the war

“Andrew Del Bano will join us to talk about his new book The War before the war”

“and now his new book is the War before the war fugitive slaves and the struggle for America soul from the revolution to the Civil War”

“so in in 1850 when the when the crisis over slavery had reached the boiling point for many other reasons the question of the federal territories and a number of other issues the Congress tried to solve the problem once and for all by passing a new law which I describe in the book I think fairly as a merciless”

“and uh that that group of Northerners included Abraham Lincoln who famously said in a letter to a friend of 1855 I think it was I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down and return to their stripes but I bite my lip and keep quiet and a large part of my book is devoted to trying to explain”

“so one of the things I learned I think readers of the book would learn is that black people were really caught between slave owners who wanted them to remain with them as non-persons and and Northerners who really had not much interest in having them in their neighborhood at all”

“but I think that in order to understand the complexity of our history we ought to try to see the world from multiple points of view and I try to do that in this book from the point of view of the fugitives themelves primarily which I think is something we've we've scanted in our in our history to the”

“his most recent book is the war before the war fugitive slaves and the struggle for America's soul from the revolution to the Civil War”