Lecture: A Great Dividing Line: Slavery and Freedom in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War, Rachael Nicholas, Gettysburg National Military Park

Lecture: A Great Dividing Line: Slavery and Freedom in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War with Rachael Nicholas, Gettysburg National Military Park, January 2025. This is part of the Gettysburg National Military Park Winter Lecture Series.

A bit of a Civil War buff, I listen to lectures on the war. I did not think that this lecture would touch on borders and migration issues. But Nicholas starts off by talking about borders in the United States in connection with slavery, such as the Mason/Dixon line, free and slave states, and North and South. In the 1800s, Washington D.C. for a time was part of what she calls the "borderlands" and, in her parlance, escaped slaves are refugees.

Here is a description of the lecture:

Freedom began to ring in Washington, D.C. before the end of the war. In 1861 and early 1862, enslaved people from Virginia and Maryland demanded freedom with their feet. They chose Washington as their refuge because it housed Union soldiers and free African Americans sympathetic to their cause. There was just one problem: the Union capital was also a slaveholding region. What followed was a prolonged conflict between enslaved people, soldiers, Congressmen, and enslavers that propelled Washington—and soon the entire nation—toward emancipation.