In recognition of Black History Month, BoRIA and our partner at the Redwood Library & Athenæum at 50 Bellevue Ave. in Newport, present author and historian Christian McBurney and his lecture: The Second American Revolution: Rhode Island’s Role in the Abolition Movement in the North, 1763 to 1784.

The American Revolution gave rise to the Western world’s first organized abolition movement, which emerged in the North. In 1774, Rhode Island enacted what may have been the first law in the late eighteenth-century Western world aimed at curbing the slave trade—an especially striking development given that Newport was then the leading slave-trading port among the thirteen mainland colonies.

About the Author:

Christian McBurney is an independent historian who has authored nine Rhode Island history books, four of them on the American Revolutionary War. His books include The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation in the Revolutionary War and Dark Voyage: An American Privateer’s War on Great Britain’s African Slave Trade. He is also the founder and publisher of a leading Rhode Island history blog at smallstatebighistory.com and is President of the George Washington American Revolution Round Table of Washington, D.C. Christian resides with his wife near Bethesda, Maryland, and they have a second home in West Kingston, Rhode Island.

About the venue:

The Redwood Library & Athenæum is America’s first purpose-built library (1747) and the oldest continuously operating at its original location. Visit them online here: https://redwoodlibrary.org/.