"During the pitched battle over slavery in the United States, Black writers-enslaved and free-allied themselves with the cause of abolition and used their art to advocate for emancipation and to envision the end of slavery as a world-historical moment of possibility. They borrowed from the European tradition of Romanticism-its lyric poetry, prophetic visions-to write, speak, and sing their hopes for what freedom might mean. Authors like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, George Moses Horton, Albery Allson Whitman, and Joshua McCarter Simpson conceived the Civil War as a revolutionary upheaval on par with Europe's stormy Age of Revolutions"--

Matt Sandler is director of the M.A. program in American Studies at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He was previously an adjunct professor at Louisiana State University, Gettysburg College, and the University of Oregon. His writing has appeared in a number of journals, anthologies, and online publications. He is from Miami, Florida.

Dock Power Hour is The Dock Bookshop program dedicated to discussing and analyzing social, political, economic and international topics.

"The Black Romantic Revolution..." A Conversation with Matt Sandler