A small town in the center of Massachusetts seems an unlikely place for altering the tide of war and public opinion, but the town of Northborough played just such a role. Slavery had already sparked the War Between the States, but abolition was not the majority view. Abolitionists on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line gave their lives for change, perhaps nowhere more passionately than in Northborough. More than half of the town s best and brightest joined the fray, and this vigorous anti-slavery activity demands attention: were towns like Northborough welcoming of abolitionists and strongly involved in the fight instrumental in changing the outcome via an emancipation that had to be proclaimed mid-war?

Robert P. Ellis is the town historian in Northborough, Massachusetts. He is former professor at Boston College and author of To Celebrate Our Town: The First One Hundred Years of the Northborough Historical Society. He has contributed dozens of articles to literary and historical reference works throughout the course of the last 20 years.