The story of the fraught alliance among Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman and how its breakup led to the success of America's most important social movement.
What The Reviewers Say
Lydia Moland,
The Boston Globe
... as Hirshman deftly documents, purity of principle can generate its own intolerance.
William G. Thomas III,
The New York Times Book Review
... fresh, provocative and engrossing.
Marc M. Arkin,
The Wall Street Journal
... by dwelling on the rivalrous, often petty, personalities of all the participants, Ms. Hirshman effectively reduces the abolitionist movement to little more than a group of squabbling egotists. Surely, abolitionism had a moral force greater than the sum of its flawed parts..
Kate Stewart,
Library Journal
Hirshman brings much-needed attention to the little-known triangulation between Garrison, Douglass, and Chapman, opening a new realm of inquiry for readers of the history of slavery and abolition..