Why is Connecticut called the Nutmeg State, when no nutmeg has ever grown here? Our nickname points to a more than three-hundred-year-long relationship with slavery, and most particularly to our close connections to the spice—and sugar cane—islands of the Caribbean. Robert Pierce Forbes, author of The Missouri Compromise and its Aftermath and editor of the forthcoming Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia: An Annotated Edition talked about Connecticut’s deep connection to slavery: as a slaveholding colony and state, and more centrally, as a provisioner to the slave plantations in the West Indies and the American South. The landscape of slave-era Connecticut is still visible today, and nowhere more dramatically than in the salt marshes of Guilford. But Connecticut and Guilford also played a crucial role in the struggle to end the cruel institution—a legacy we can and should build on today.