America's Greatest Grifter? The Odd Story of Appleton Oaksmith: Presumed Slave Trader, Confederate Spy, and Voting Rights Activist - Our American Stories

On this episode of Our American Stories, they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree— but Appleton Oaksmith landed on another planet. His mother was a feminist who knew top abolitionists; his father, a cartoonist admired across party lines. Appleton? He was hunted internationally for presumed slave trading and a failed kidnapping in Cuba that may have threatened Lincoln’s reelection. Yet he later fought for Black voting rights. Jonathan W. White, author of Shipwrecked, shares the story—courtesy of the U.S. National Archives.

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