Margot Minardi explores why the Revolutionary past mattered to 19th century Bostonians and how they used that history to make the case for or against abolition. In 1843, the suspicion that President John Tyler had brought a slave to the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument set Boston abolitionists up in arms. This incident was by no means the only time in the antebellum years when the celebration of American liberty ran up against the messy reality of slavery.
Dr. Margot Minardi is an Assistant Professor of History at Reed College in Oregon . Her work centers around commemorative practices associated with Northern slavery and she has a forthcoming book on the subject, New England Slaves in Myth and Memory.