Abolitionist Twilights

Abolitionist Twilights is a must read for intellectual historians of the Civil War era. Krohn provides an in depth analysis of the conceptual limitations that made white abolitionists problematic allies in the years following the war. His book also provides context in the longer narrative of allyship and its shortcomings in the quest for African-American civil rights.---John A. Casey, author of New Men: Reconstructing the Image of the Veteran in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture

. . .Abolitionist Twilights addresses a multidimensional area of scholarship encompassing history, cultural studies, and diversity academia. Krohn's research should help other scholars continue to explore the enduring impacts and transformations of these historical narratives within modern US society.---H-Net Reviews

In the later decades of the nineteenth century, men and women who had spent their antebellum years as part of the abolitionist movement began to devote significant time reflecting on those critical years of the antislavery struggle. . . penning book-length memoirs, sometimes in multiple volumes. In his fascinating new book, Raymond James Krohn examines an array of such publications, providing a meticulous reading of the work of a collection of mostly white abolitionists and helping us to see what this memory work meant for the continuing struggle for Black rights in postbellum America.---Journal of the Civil War Era

Krohn’s Abolitionist Twilights stands as a stark reminder to scholars to consider how the treacherous intersections of memory, nostalgia, and implicit bias often go unquestioned in well-traveled archives. It provides an impressive overview of the literary, autobiographical, and historical legacy of the antislavery movement, and highlights the necessity of further complicating the legacy of abolitionism.---Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era