Colloquium
'The Civil War and Slavery' (1850-1870) was the topic of the International Colloquium organised by the David Bruce Centre on 30-31 October 2015
As the commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War draw to a close, the conference took the opportunity to explore some of the more neglected dynamics that link slavery, emancipation, and the end of that tumultuous internecine conflict.
The speakers presented papers which discussed such topics as voluntary enslavement, black indentures, single white women slave owners, slave stealing, class and loyalty to the Confederacy, ethnicity in the slave-holding South, support for Union and Emancipation in England, and the use of the concept of whiteness and Lincoln's early critique of southern lynching in Abolitionist propaganda. The papers helped to understand the perspectives of those whose lives were touched by both slavery and the Civil War but whose stories have, thus far, been obscured.
The speakers included Professor Don Doyle, who delivered the David Bruce Memorial Lecture entitled 'The Cause of All Nations', others from UCL, University of Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, and UEA.
Previous themes included:
- American Evangelicalism and the 1960s (2013)
- Allies and Clients: America's Special Relationships (2007)
- The Moral Republic: Social Regulation, Cultural Politics and the State in the United States (2003)
- Writing Southern Poverty Between the Wars (2000)
- Frederick Douglass in Britain (1995)
- The Future of American Politics: Towards the Third Century (1989)