the time and place in which i was living in the early 1960s in a border state city like baltimore epngulfed by thee events in the deeper south. the parallels between that and what had happened exactly 100 years earlier, in the early 1860s. confrontation between the federal government and southern political leaders who were vowing massive resistance to national laws, violence in the conflict. of course, violence on the far greater scale in the 1860s than the 1960s, but violence nevertheless. martin luther king trying to get president kennedy to issue a new emancipation proclamation on the 100th anniversary of the first one. the march on washington in 1963. all of these things were crowding together in the early 1960s. and that's when i made a decision which was not at first a very popular decision with professor woodward to shift my focus from looking at the first reconstruction in a city like alabama to looking at the role of the abolitionists after the beginning of the civil war and after the abolition of slavery, which was a preoccupation of my scholarship for the next 15 years with a dis