McCauley Lecture: Cosmopolitan Man: The Militant Life of Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Throughout his long life, Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, politician, and soldier. He was active in the Anti-Slavery movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. He was also a member of the Secret Six who supported John Brown with money and weapons for Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. During the Civil War, Higginson served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized all-black regiment. Following the war, he devoted the rest of his life to fighting for the rights of freed people, women, and other disfranchised peoples.

Speaker Richard Smith has lectured on and written about antebellum United States history and nineteenth-Century American literature for the last thirty years. He has worked in Concord, Massachusetts, as a public historian since 1999, has written 10 books for Applewood Books, and is a regular contributor to Discover Concord Magazine.