Forgotten Firebrand

John R. McKivigan is Mary O'Brien Gibson Professor of History at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He is the author of Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830-1865, also from Cornell, and the coeditor of several books.

• 1. The Roving Editor2. The Crusader of Freedom3. Echoes of Harpers Ferry4. Commissioner Plenipotentiary for Haiti5. The Radical Publisher6. Abolitionizing the South7. The Redpath Lyceum Bureau8. Entertainment Innovator9. The Adopted Irishman10. Jefferson Davis's GhostwriterNotesIndex

In this first modern study of the outspoken abolitionist and journalist James Redpath, John McKivigan resurrects the reputation of a well-traveled agitator who faded from public memory after he died in 1898.... McKivigan has heroically ferreted out scattered letters and newspaper articles as well as details about Redpath's disorganized personal life. The result is a careful and fluidly written chronicle that sets Redpath's varied and controversial activities in their historical context.... Whatever angle they adopt, historians of reform and journalism will appreciate McKivigan's work in uncovering the role that Redpath played in vital movements of his era.- Carl J. Guarneri (Journal of American History) McKivigan has provided a well-written and researched account of an important and fascinating life. Brief and succinct, the biography fills a surprising gap in our understanding of nineteenth-century reform.... Redpath's broad areas of reform interest and somewhat erratic career clearly deserve the fine biography that McKivigan has written.- Frederick J. Blue (American Historical Review) McKivigan offers a measured biography of the too-little-remembered James Redpath, who was at the cutting edge of a series of mid- and late-nineteenth-century reform movements.... Two of the book's more intriguing sections discuss Redpath's association with the assault on Harpers Ferry designed to spark a mass slave revolt, and his ties to the former president of the Confederacy. McKivigan notes the uniqueness of Redpath's close ties to both slaves and slaveholders while underscoring that the reformer remained dedicated to equality for blacks and whites.(Choice) The author makes a convincing case that Redpath has been 'one of the nation's most colorful and unjustly forgotten characters.'... What secondary scholarship about Redpath has failed to appreciate, according to McKivigan, was that he was unlike most political journalists, both before and in most cases since, who aspired to patronage or even elected office by finding ways to profit from literary support for unpopular causes. In McKivigan's words, a study of his life 'contributes to the scholarly appreciation of change and continuity in nineteenth-century American reform,' a reform movement that, thanks to the extensive work in this book, will not be forgotten.(Journalism History)