Description: "This book reveals how abolitionists harnessed the power of the written word to further their political aims, arguing that letter writing enabled a disparate and politically marginal assortment of people to take shape as a coherent and powerful movement"--Publisher's description.
Brief description: Mary Tibbetts Freeman is an Assistant Professor of New England History at the University of Maine.
Review Quotes: "American abolitionism--the greatest social movement of the nineteenth century--relied on networks of activists. And until now no one has studied how those activists wrote the letters that made these networks possible. Mary T. Freeman's Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence will be the definitive study of the epistolatory practices of American abolitionists. In this elegantly written and exhaustively researched book, Freeman shows how abolitionists--both famous and unknown--used the written letter to make connections, argue doctrine, sustain each other's morale, and coordinate the movement."-- "Peter Wirzbicki, Princeton University"