Kate Rivington

‘“Our own worst enemy”: Southern Anti-Slavery Networks and Rhetoric in Early Republic and Antebellum America’ (MA in History, 2019).

This thesis examines Southern-born anti-slavery activists. By analysing one hundred anti-slavery Southerners, this thesis illuminates a deeply interconnected network of anti-slavery that was not just limited to the South, but one that intersected with Northern anti-slavery movements. This thesis examines how an individual’s personal networks shifted as a result of their public anti-slavery stance, as well as the rhetoric of the white Southern testimony to the horrors of slavery, and how these individuals were particularly valuable to wider anti-slavery movements.

Supervisors: Professor David Goodman, Associate Professor Kat Ellinghaus.