Join us as Ipswich Town Historian Gordon Harris takes us through a timeline of events on the national and local scale that culminated in the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation.

"In 1765, Jenny Slew, who had been enslaved in Ipswich, was the first person to successfully sue for her freedom. In the 19th Century, divisions arose in Ipswich between ardent abolitionists and those who avoided the discussion, dividing families, churches and the Town. Men's and Women's Anti-Slavery Societies were formed, and the Meeting House Green neighborhood became a hotbed of anti-slavery sentiment. A network of the Underground Railroad ran north along the coast from Boston to Salem, where it split into three trails, one continuing through Ipswich and Newburyport into New Hampshire."

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