How We Learned That Slavery is Wrong – Professor Alec Ryrie

It seems obvious now, but it hasn’t always. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the old consensus that slavery was a mere fact of life, a tolerable evil, broke down, as Protestant activists opposed slavery ever more forcefully – and as other Protestants defended it ever more idealistically. As this lecture will explore, the result was not only the end of legal slavery but profound changes in Protestant Christianity which resonate to the present.

Abolitionist Cassius Clay Was One Of The Toughest Politicians Ever

So who was the original Cassius Clay? The simple answer is that he was a prominent abolitionist politician in the mid-1800s. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives and was appointed ambassador to Russia by Abraham Lincoln.

But that’s not the whole story. Known as the Lion of White Hall – Cassius Clay was named after the estate and plantation he owned and grew up on – he was also one of the toughest politicians ever to walk the halls of Congress. He won duel after duel, and his physical exploits are legendary. Not only that, but he was also an open and vocal advocate for the abolition of slavery in the 1840s, in Kentucky of all places.