Adam Rothman is a professor of history at Georgetown University, where he teaches courses on slavery and abolition in the United States and the Atlantic world. He is the author of Beyond Freedom's Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery (2015) and Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (2005), as well as a coauthor of Major Problems in Atlantic History (2007) and an associate editor of the Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History (2009). He was a member of Georgetown University's Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, and is the principal curator of the online Georgetown Slavery Archive. He has worked extensively with middle school and high school teachers in the Washington, D.C., area to enrich U.S. history curriculum and teaching.
How did slavery shape Thomas Jefferson's world, and how did Thomas Jefferson grapple with the problem of slavery? This lecture explores a complex topic at the core of American history, the relationship between slavery and freedom, through analysis of one of its most controversial figures.