1854: Federal troops occupy Boston to send a fugitive slave back to slavery
In September 2025, Milkweed Editions brought out my edited volume, The Essays of Henry David Thoreau. The angriest essay in that collection is “Slavery in Massachusetts,” a cry of protest against the rendition of a fugitive slave and against Thoreau’s fellow citizens who supported it.
In 2026, building on Thoreau, I wrote an essay that sketches the methods and fate of abolitionist resistance to slavery and uses that history to examine present day resistance to the Trump administration’s deportation of undocumented immigrants. Liberties quarterly accepted the essay for its Summer 2026 issue.