Upstate New York was a hotbed in the 19th century for the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad. Names like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Gerrit Smith are familiar.

The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1835 at Oberlin College by Theodore Dwight Weld, Arthur Tappan, and others. In 1839, the Society published “American Slavery As It Is: Testimony ...

New England abolitionist Theodore Weld seized upon the idea of writing a book that would use firsthand testimony to introduce naive white Americans to the horrors of slavery.