Dunn offers readers not only a well-chosen collection of Ezekiel Birdseye’s provocative letters to New York Abolitionist Gerrit Smith, but also a richly insightful, solidly grounded essay on antebellum Tennessee. Birdseye, a businessman and abolitionist, possessed a coherent social and moral philosophy—and his letters take up such topics as the degrading moral effects of slavery, its harmful influence on the southern economy, farming practices, the progress of temperance and abolitionism, and church affairs.