The Friday Morning Lecture Series presents:

"Making Sense of the Civil War"
presented by Richard Howe
Friday, January 13, 2012, at 10 a.m.
in the McCarthy Meeting Room

Mr. Howe will take a long-term view of the coming of the war as it played out in Lowell and vicinity. Because the city's economy was so dependent on cotton, there was a great deal of sympathy for the south and a hands-off attitude when it came to slavery. But simultaneously in Lowell, there was a very strong Abolitionist movement and the city served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The presence of these two very different attitudes towards slavery within the same community created friction that manifested itself in a number of incidents. This "big picture" view allows an examination of the causes of the war through these incidents in a single community.

Richard P. Howe Jr. is the Register of Deeds of the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds. He is a graduate of Providence College and Suffolk University Law School and holds an MA in History from Salem State University. In the early 1980s, he served as a US Army Intelligence Officer in Germany.

Mr. Howe is the creator of richardhowe.com, a widely read blog about Lowell history and politics. Three years ago, he succeeded the late Catherine Goodwin as the official tour guide of Lowell Cemetery. He has lectured frequently on the American Civil War and it's impact on the city of Lowell and surrounding communities.

This lecture is also part of a project by the University of Mass/Lowell and is funded by a grant from the American Library Association (ALA: http://www.ala.org/) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH: http://www.neh.gov/)

If you are interested in thie topic of the Civil War you might like to know about a reading and discussion series sponsored by UMass Lowell.
See http://libguides.uml.edu/LTAI for more information

This is a ONE BOOK Chelmsford program