Yale historian Jonathan Holloway continues his American History: From Emancipation to the Present course with a lecture tracing the road to the Civil War, covering the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry. He reads Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's poem "Bury Me in a Free Land" before turning to Lincoln's evolving position on slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 1863 Conscription Acts. Most of the lecture centers on the New York City draft riots, unpacking the labor and racial tensions between Irish immigrants and freed Black New Yorkers that erupted into mob violence. Holloway argues the Civil War crucible clarifies competing definitions of citizenship and American identity, showing how freedom became entangled with race and how that entanglement produced extreme bloodshed in the city's streets. Recorded in Spring 2010 as part of Yale's open course AFAM 162.