Defeating Slavery: Hamilton's American System Showed the Way

Join public historian, Nancy Spannaus, to learn about her just-released book on America's early anti-slavery movement, Defeating Slavery: Hamilton's American System Showed the Way.  

Nancy B. Spannaus says slavery is NOT in America's DNA. In the words of historian Gordon Wood, the American "Revolution created the first antislavery movement in the history of the world." So why did it take a Civil War to finally end chattel slavery, a war whose consequences still shape American politics today? Spannaus argues that the crucial factor was the abandonment of the economic principles of Alexander Hamilton who envisioned creating an agro-industrial nation, which could only be built by eliminating the slave system. When Jefferson, and then Andrew Jackson, undermined and crushed Hamilton's program, they put the nation on the path to war. "Defeating Slavery" challenges today's dominant narrative, providing evidence of early America's extraordinary anti-slavery movement and the economic battle which the early abolitionists lost. By bringing the truth to light, she shows a pathway to resolving our crisis today.   

Nancy Bradeen Spannaus started studying Alexander Hamilton in the mid-1970s. In 1977 she co-edited The Political Economy of the American Revolution, a book of writings on the economics of the American Revolution. After a career in political journalism, Nancy intensified her studies of Hamilton's American System. She is the sole author of Hamilton versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics (2019) and Defeating Slavery: Hamilton's American System Showed the Way (2023). Nancy has deep New England and Revolutionary roots. She was born in Portland, Maine in 1943, of parents who both were descended from American patriots. She is a member of the DAR and of the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society. She and her husband Ed live in northern Virginia, where they both indulge in as much history as possible.  

Co-sponsored by Warren County Historical Society and WarrenNY250 Commission.  Part of a series of events supplementing the exhibition "Breaking the Chains: Lincoln & Douglass Linocuts of Stephen Alcorn" on display in the Folklife Gallery thru August 31, 2024 during regular library hours.