New-York Historical Society Will Revisit Slavery

The New-York Historical Society announced that it would mount a $3.5 million exhibition, “New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War,” to open on Nov. 17. The show will present about 300 artifacts, documents, drawings, maps and other images in a sequel to last year’s exhibition “Slavery in New York,” which drew 175,000 visitors. The time frame of the first show ended in 1827, when black New Yorkers celebrated emancipation in New York State. Dr. Louise Mirrer, the society’s president, said the new show would focus on the persistent effects of racism in the state and New York City through the Civil War and Reconstruction, including the draft riots of 1863, as well as the economic and political connections between New York and the system of slavery. The exhibition will document the ways in which “New York was the economic capital of the capital that was financing the South,” said James Oliver Horton, the Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University, the exhibition’s chief historian.