BY FAYE DASEN

Features Editor

David S. Cecelski, an independent historian and writer, will be at The Country Bookshop, Sunday, Oct. 7, at 2 p.m. to discuss his new book, "The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves' Civil War."

Abraham H. Galloway (1837-70) was a fiery young slave rebel, radical abolitionist and Union spy who rose out of bondage to become one of the most significant and stirring black leaders in the South during the Civil War.

Throughout his life, Galloway fought against slavery and injustice. He risked his life behind enemy lines, recruited black soldiers for the North, and fought racism in the Union Army's ranks.

He also stood at the forefront of an African-American political movement that flourished in the Union-occupied parts of North Carolina, even leading a historic delegation of black Southerners to the White House to meet with President Lincoln and to demand the full rights of citizenship. He later became one of the first black men elected to the North Carolina legislature.

"Galloway's Civil War was a slave insurgency, a war of liberation that was the culmination of generations of perseverance and faith," Cecelski says.

Cecelski has taught at Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and East Carolina University, and is affiliated with UNC's Southern Oral History Program. He earned his doctorate at Harvard.

A native of Craven County, he edits the popular oral history series "Listening to History," for The News & Observer, and is the author of "The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina"; "Along Freedom Road: Hyde County, North Carolina and the Fate of Black Schools in the South"; "Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898"; "A Historian's Coast: Adventures into the Tidewater Past"; and "Recollections of My Slavery Days."

For information, call (910) 692-3211.

Contact Faye Dasen at fdasen@thepilot.com or (910) 693-2475.