Public Programs and Special Events

In March 1861, when Lincoln delivered his First Inaugural, neither he nor many in the audience envisioned that four years later, at his Second, the eradication of slavery would be imminent. What events led to the Emancipation Proclamation? And what would follow as Lincoln led the nation toward his “king’s cure for all the evils,” the Thirteenth Amendment? On the eve of Lincoln’s birthday, William Martin will explore Lincoln’s passage from the careful Constitutional lawyer of the First Inaugural to the almost messianic figure of the Second. An MHS Fellow,  Mr. Martin has written novels that appear on the New York Times bestsellers list, as well as scripts for television and film.

Reservations requested. Please click on the RSVP link above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0560 / education@masshist.org.

Librarian Peter Drummey will discuss materials in the new exhibition that illustrate the life and career of William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the Liberator, and a central figure in the antislavery movement in Boston.

In Cape Cod, Henry David Thoreau describes using an early MHS publication as a sort of antiquarian travel guide -- a way of looking back on the landscape he traversed as it had been described almost 50 years earlier. What did the founders of the MHS set out to print and what have later generations made of our early publications?

The Object of History
A series of chats with MHS Librarian Peter Drummey about what documents and artifacts from the collections can tell us about the characters, events, and issues of the past, as well as the role of MHS in documenting the rich history of our state and nation.

Registration Required. Fee $25/$15 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Giving Circle members. Please click on the ticket icon above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0557 / education@masshist.org.

Register for all three programs in “The Object of History” series and receive a registration discount! Series fee: $60/30 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Circle members.

Prize-winning author and MHS Fellow Megan Marshall will read from Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, her biography of the 19th-century heroine who spent her last years in Rome and Florence as a war correspondent covering the early stages of Italy’s Risorgimento. How should we remember this period in Fuller’s life, particularly given the scandal of her love affair with Giovanni Ossoli? Folk ensemble Newpoli will conjure the vibrant music that Fuller came to love as emblematic of Italy. Ms. Marshall is the author of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Newpoli performs southern Italian folk music from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

Reservations requested. Please click on the ticket icon above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0560 / education@masshist.org.

Curator of Art Anne Bentley will examine the nature and use of our set of William Lloyd Garrison’s banners, displayed circa 1840s to 1850s in local fairs and demonstrations sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

Men and women 150 years ago grappled with information overload by making scrapbooks—the ancestors of Google and blogging. Mark Twain and Susan B. Anthony, abolitionists and Confederates, African American janitors and farmwomen cut out and pasted down their reading. Professor Garvey will discuss these various perspectives, covered in her recent book Writing with Scissors, including the findings she uncovered while doing research at the MHS. All scrapbook makers passed along their understanding that the press was not a simple record, but a set of voices and conversations.

Reservations requested. Please click on the ticket icon above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0560 / education@masshist.org.

Prof. Stauffer is a member of Harvard’s English Department and the chair of the university’s graduate program on the History of American Civilization. He will speak on the contribution of the Bay State’s black and white abolitionists and political leaders to secession, freedom, and equality under the law. He will also discuss briefly how the state responded to the "counter-Revolution" that stripped away these new rights after Reconstruction. This lecture and the reception that will follow will be free and open to the public. This program is also the keynote address for the MHS conference Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion.