A Conversation With Historian Frank Cirillo
Thanks to historian Frank Cirillo for taking the time to talk with me about his fabulous new book, The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union. It is one of the best Civil War books that I’ve read this year.
Purchase from Amazon * LSU Press * IndieBound
Dr. Cirillo follows a small sample of some of the most vocal abolitionists to better understand how the war transformed their understanding of the principles and goals they originally set out at the beginning of the movement in the early 1830s. Far from remaining united over the course of the war, this book argues that the conflict splintered the abolitionist movement over what a reunited Union, without slavery, would look like.
Our interview was only able to scratch the surface of this fascinating topic. We had one minor technical hiccup midway through.
Do yourself a favor and read this book.
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I had never heard of immediatism before watching this podcast. I Googled it and found some interesting items. One of them was an academic paper called 'The Limits of Self-Reliance: Emerson, Slavery and Abolition' written by James Read in 2009. It's about 50 pages double-spaced and quite well written. My MA thesis was about another Emerson essay, 'Nature' so I'm familiar enough with 'Self-Reliance' to be able to follow an argument based heavily on concepts of immediatism versus gradualism and eventualism. Apparently it flourished before, during and after the Civil War. It's also enjoyed a recent revival as Google is using these terms for meta-discussions among its administrators for defining its editorial approach to online publication of its countless Wikipedia articles. I did not find immediatism listed in the index of a book published in 2023 I bought last week called 'Mason-Dixon: Crucible of the Nation' by Edward G. Gray. I bought the book because I wanted to compare it with Thomas Pynchon's post-modern historical novel 'Mason & Dixon' which according to some reports he began writing in 1977 shortly after the publication of 'Gravity's Rainbow' in 1974 and didn't finish writing until it was published in 1997. Gray follows the road map laid out by Pynchon without once crediting Pynchon beyond using a reasonable facsimile of the first paperback edition cover of 'Mason & Dixon' as the hardcover jacket for his 'Mason-Dixon: Crucible of the Nation.' Pynchon's book is picaresque and has seventy-eight chapters. Its' style draws heavily on Sterne's 'Tristram Shandy' which used to be taught as the progenitor of Post-Modernism. I also bought William Hogeland's 'The Hamilton Scheme'. I saw the touring production of the Broadway show in Honolulu during the death throes of the pandemic. I felt a need to fact check the libretto once I realized that nearly all of the Federalist Papers were written by Hamilton, with just a little help from Jay and Madison.