Aiken Lecture: Tom Chaffin, Giant’S Causeway: Frederick Douglass’S Irish Odyssey And The Making Of An American Visionary

In 1845, seven years after fleeing bondage in Maryland, Frederick Douglass was in his late twenties and already a celebrated lecturer across the northern United States. The recent publication of his groundbreaking Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave had incited threats to his life, however, and to place himself out of harm's way he embarked on a lecture tour of the British Isles, a journey that would span seventeen months and change him as a man and a leader in the struggle for equality. In the first major narrative account of a transformational episode in the life of this extraordinary American, Tom Chaffin chronicles Douglass’s 1845-47 lecture tour of Ireland, Scotland, and England. Drawn from hundreds of letters, diaries, and other primary-source documents – many heretofore unpublished – this far-reaching tale includes vivid portraits of personages who shaped Douglass and his world. Tom Chaffin is Research Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for which he directs the multi-volume series Correspondence of James K. Polk. He lives in Atlanta and is the author of, among other books, Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah and Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire. Admission for all lectures is $5 members, $10 nonmembers, and free to AHC Insiders unless otherwise noted. Reservations are required, please call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Lectures. Support: The Aiken Lecture Series is supported by the Lucy Rucker Aiken Foundation.