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South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
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About This Book
A brilliant and surprising account of the coming of the American Civil War, showing the crucial role of slaves who escaped to MexicoThe Underground Railroad to the North promised salvation to many American slaves before the Civil War. But thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico, where slavery was abolished in 1837.In South to Freedom, historian Alice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. Southerners hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop runaways and secure slavery's future. Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo México upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is a revelatory and essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War.
Reviews
"Most of all, their accounts serve as a stark reminder of the severely circumscribed nature of liberty in the antebellum United States and its tragic costs not only for the enslaved but also the republic itself."
"A lucid exploration of a little-known aspect of the history of slavery in the U.S."
"This vivid history of 'slavery's other border' delivers a valuable new perspective on the Civil War."
"Baumgartner brings to life the stories of slaves who escaped to Mexico and how they made it to freedom ..."
"The fact that the commander in Nacogdoches wrestled with whether to grant them freedom, despite the legal precedent for doing so, shows how slavery, emancipation and empire were constantly renegotiated based on enslaved people's movements across geographical and political boundaries."
"Her book shows that 'enslaved people who escaped to Mexico ."
"But this research could have been elevated had it included more engagement with works written by experts on the histories of Black resistance ..."
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