Renaissance Man

IN HIS 33 SHORT YEARS OF LIFE,

Abraham Galloway impacted the course of American history more than men who lived to be twice his age—beginning with his bold escape from slavery. In the span of just a little more than a decade, he risked his life as a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War, helped raise regiments of Black men fighting for the freedom of their race, campaigned for the rights of women and Blacks, and served two terms as a Republican state senator of the state into which he was born into bondage.

Galloway was born to an enslaved woman and White father on February 8, 1837, in Smithville (now Southport), a small coastal town in Brunswick County, N.C. At 11, he was apprenticed to a brick mason, and eventually