Cory James Young is a Ph. D. student at Georgetown University studying United States history under Dr. Adam Rothman. He is interested in the connections between gradual abolition and second slavery, slavery as a national institution, and has an underdeveloped if nagging interest in the history of the American restaurant. He completed his bachelor’s degree in History under the direction of Dr. Justin Behrend at SUNY Geneseo in 2013. His undergraduate thesis focused on Thomas Jefferson’s flirtation with private manumission during his first retirement in the mid-1790s and the impact this had on his relationship with slavery. At the moment, Cory hopes to pursue a dissertation that examines the fates of northern slaveholding families during the era of gradual abolition.