Till the Dark Angel Comes: Abolitionism and the Road to the Second American Revolution

In this vivid monograph, King (To Raise Up a Nation), an independent historian and commercial driver, narrates the American abolitionist movement’s rise from its emergence as a popular crusade in the 1830s to the outbreak of the Civil War. Focusing on leading figures, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison, and John Brown, as well as lesser-known participants such as Presbyterian minister Henry Highland Garnet, King examines the efforts to bring about the end of enslavement in America by any means possible. Readers who are new to the history of American abolitionism will find King’s work lucid and engaging, but others more familiar with the historical material are unlikely to come across major new insights. King’s interpretation of this period and its leaders breaks no real ground, and his research neither draws upon previously untapped primary sources nor presents significant challenges to the insights of the many scholars who have written on this topic. Moreover, the lack of an introduction to explain the book’s argument and intellectual goals, and the abrupt ending, leave the detailed narrative devoid of a broader framework that might have made it a more forceful entry in the historiography of the struggle against slavery. Illus. (Jan.)