I just finished viewing an excellent three part series, The Abolitionists, on PBS as part of the American Experience series of historical documentary.

 Generally, the American Experience series does better from perspectives that progressives can respect the further its topics are in the past(its treatment of Theodore Roosevelt, for example, was much more insightful than its treatment of Franklin Roosevelt) and the abolitionists was no exception.  

I already reviewed the first installment for  the Peoples World and plan to do a further review for the PW,  so this is merely an introduction. The series tells the story of the abolitionist movement, a story long obscured in U.S. history, by looking at key figures, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriette Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown, and their inter-relationship with each other and the larger movement as it developed

The second and third episodes carry the movement from the 1840s and the American-Mexican War through to the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th amendment abolishing slavery for all time.  Unfortunately, the struggle to democratize the former slave states, known in U.S. history as "Reconstruction," is touched merely in a postscript, with the comment that after the war "Southerners" and "Northerners" would conspire to restore the former slaves to a condition of servitude.  But the achievements of the movement in both ending slavery against racist mobs, murderous paid agents of the slave power, and state and federal governments which  sought to suppress abolitionism rather than oppose slavery is highlighted brilliantly through the series

Historians' commentaries are mingled nicely with those of the actors.  Richard Brooks, a veteran television actor, is excellent as Frederick Douglass in powerful scenes ranging from his escape from slavery to his emergence as both the most prominent Black abolitionist in the nation and a wanted man, living for a time in England  fleeing to Canada, preparing just as the Civil War broke out to resettle in Haiti, in effect living with a death sentence issued by the slave power against him for more than two decades, as Martin Luther King lived with the threat of murder form the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956 to his assassination in 1968. Douglass's meetings and discussions with John Brown in the third episode are among the series best sequences

The third episode is especially good in its treament of John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry, and the success of the abolitionists in transforming the attempt by slave holders and their allies in the Democratic party to use the raid to launch a national anti-abolitionist "red scare," smear the anti-slavery Republican party, and arrest Douglass and other abolitionist leaders.

 Brown, often portrayed as either a crazed fanatic or a charismatic prophet, is humanized here, although the episode might have done more in explaining Brown's concept of a guerrilla war, in which large numbers of weapons from the arsenal would be used to raid plantations, free and arm slaves, who from mountain retreats and other safe places, free and arm more and more slave, enabling the slaves to overthrow slavery and free themselves.

The second and third episodes also might have done more with the formation of the Republican party, the role of abolitionists in the party and struggling to keep it on an anti-slavery course, the effective political campaign against the Dred Scott decision(wihose  meaning the series develops cogently).  

The third episode also focusses on the worst of Abraham Lincoln, his early gestures seeking to appease the slave states after his election, and his pre emancipation proclamation meeting with Garrison, Douglass, and other abolitionists where he through out the discredited scheme to colonize/aka deport slaves to Africa as a way t o "solve" the "problem" and end the war.

 But Lilncoln, once he entered the presidency, rejected the advice of those around him to appease the the slave states as a solution to secession.  He did issue the Emancipation Proclamation and as the war went on moved toward a more consistent anti-slavery position.

 Karl Marx understood this in London when he wrote against British liberals who were mocking Lincoln as if he were no different than his predecssors.  And Frederick Douglass, even though the episode highlights his understandable outrage at Lincoln's sympathy for "colonization" also understood this when he said that while Lincoln  was "not one of us"(meaning an abolitionist) his role in the final victory over slavery was indespensible because he was able to do as the leader of a center-left coalition to save both the Republic and redefine it through the abolition of slavery what no abolitionist could have done in that time.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, local politicians and the "Sons of the Confederacy" fight on to name a park for General Nathan Bedford Forrest, antebellum slave trader, Confederate General and War Criminal who ordered he troops to murder free black union army prisoners and later founder of the Klu Klux Klan.  And in Texas, those controlling the purchase of textbooks seek to restrict the teaching of evolution and also highlight the positive role played by Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman and even that household name, Leopold Von Hayek, to the story of American Liberty.  They could all learn something from watching The Abolitionists if they are capable of learning anything