Apostles of Equality

Apostles of Equality uses James Birney’s personal life and political career as a southern abolitionist to expose the deepening national crisis over American slavery. Birney’s story highlights an ever-changing nation and explains how Americans hoped to reconcile the issue of slavery before the Civil War. Rogers’s exhaustive research and careful prose recreates Birney’s complex life?one that started as a slave owner and ended as an abolitionist.

—John F. Kvach, University of Alabama in Huntsville

What a slap of reality. Here are the last years of American slavery. From the point James Birney, a rediscovered hero, purchases an African woman and her mulatto child to free them from the brutality of an innkeeper’s wife, this book takes us into the heart of a darkness from which escape was doubtful. It’s an inspirational reminder that political bravery mattered then, and surely matters now.

—Howard Kohn, author of Who Killed Karen Silkwood?

It was so enlightening to read of the many accomplishments my ancestors went through to bring equality and justice to our great country. They have always been heroes in my eyes but this book raised them to even higher levels.

—Herman H. “Topper” Birney III, great-great-grandson of James Gillespie Birney