Programs

THE CROWNING CRIME: THE INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

"The Crowning Crime of Christendom" was the title of a poem that was circulated on handbills by abolitionist groups in the antebellum period. A lecture by Glenn Williams explores the origins of the slave trade, its Baltimore connections, Federal legislative efforts to curtail it, and the United States Navy's mission to interdict the trade on the eve of the Civil War. The lecture also focuses on the USS Constellation and its central role in these efforts from 1858 to 1861. Requires overhead projector and screen. Adult and high school audiences.

Glenn F. Williams is Historian of the National Museum of the US Army at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He has also worked at the US Army Center of Military History, the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service, the USS Constellation Museum, and the Baltimore Civil War Museum-President Street Station. He is the author of Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois, USS Constellation: A Short History of the Last All Sail Warship Built by the U.S. Navy, and numerous journal, magazine, and web page articles on military and naval history topics. He served in the United States Army for twenty-one years. He received an M.A. in history from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and is currently a candidate (ABD) for a doctoral degree in history at University of Maryland, College Park.