★ 09/28/2020
Baumgartner, a history professor at the University of Southern California, debuts with an eye-opening and immersive account of how Mexico’s antislavery laws helped push America to civil war. After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, the country’s leaders enacted a series of reforms to bring slavery to a gradual end and in 1837 abolished slavery altogether. (Baumgartner notes that in parts of Mexico, “indentured servitude sometimes amounted to slavery in all but name.”) Though far fewer American slaves escaped to freedom across the southern border than on the Underground Railroad to the North, Baumgartner writes, Mexico’s laws contributed to the drive to annex Texas in 1845, which in turn gave rise to the free-soil movement and led to the founding of the Republican Party and its antislavery agenda. Baumgartner draws incisive parallels between U.S. and Mexican history on issues of race, nationalism, and imperialism, and recounts surprising stories of escapees, including a group of Black Seminoles welcomed as colonists in the border state of Coahuila, as well as 28 African Americans who fought with an artillery company in Tampico in the Mexican-American War and received their naturalization certificates from the Mexican president himself. This vivid history of “slavery’s other border” delivers a valuable new perspective on the Civil War. (Nov.)
The story of how Black people in a slaveholding society affected federal policy by their movements, by their defiance and by their very existence has been told before. But rarely has this story been told as compassionately, or rendered as beautifully….Masterfully researched….Baumgartner’s important conclusion is that we must reconceive the impact of the supposedly powerless on the economically and politically powerful.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Scholars of the Underground Railroad have long known that a small stream of runaways escaped to Mexico, but Alice Baumgartner’s South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War offers its first full accounting….It is primarily concerned with understanding why the U.S. failed to stop slavery’s expansion, why Mexico did, and using that knowledge to cast the coming of the Civil War in a new light….Baumgartner has achieved a rare thing: She has made an important academic contribution, while also writing in beautiful, accessible prose.”—The New Republic
“A meticulously researched monograph that examines the political and diplomatic relations between Mexico and the United States to explain how Black movement south paved the road to conflicts such as the Texas Revolution, the Mexican-American War, and ultimately the Civil War....South to Freedom makes a significant contribution to borderlands history.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Gripping and poignant….Unlike many experts who study the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, [Ms. Baumgartner] has crafted her book from Mexican as well as American archival collections, and she is deeply versed in the secondary historical literature of both countries….Ms. Baumgartner describes, with skill and great sensitivity, the experiences of those enslaved men and women who, in resisting their oppression, bravely quit the United States altogether. Their stories challenge the glib assumption held by many Americans—those of the 19th century as well as the 21st—who have long taken for granted the idea of Mexican national inferiority. 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.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Baumgartner’s book explores an underrecognized period when the US couldn’t so easily claim a position of moral leadership.”—Literary Hub
“Baumgartner’s debut book deftly traces parallels between Mexico and the U.S., examining why both permitted and later abolished slavery while offering insights on how the past continues to shape the two countries’ relationship.”—Smithsonian
“Baumgartner is a rising star in an emerging generation of historians who focus on the social forces underlying political conflict….She reverses the contemporary narrative that assumes U.S. norms and institutions are superior: in the mid-nineteenth century, Mexico was a safe haven for fugitives fleeing oppression, and the Mexican constitution was more consistent in defending universal rights than were U.S. laws.”—Foreign Affairs
“Baumgartner presents a convincing case that Mexico shaped the freedom dreams of enslaved people in states like Texas and Louisiana while invoking nightmares of emancipation and slave revolt in the minds of white Southern enslavers....South to Freedom is a valuable contribution. It provides us with a fuller understanding of slave flight in this area and offers much needed insight on how enslaved peoples’ escape to Mexico shaped the multiple meanings of freedom for the enslaved. Most importantly, it suggests a revised narrative of the significance of the flight of enslaved people to Mexico in shaping the political events leading up to the Civil War.”—Black Perspectives
“Baumgartner brilliantly enhances our understanding of the antebellum period and the Civil War by turning toward ‘slavery’s other border.’”—National Book Review
“Baumgartner tells heartrending personal stories of runaway slaves who tried to cross the southern border, but she also aims to adjust pre-Civil War history to include the effect of these Underground Railroad routes on national policies. Baumgartner is a terrific storyteller.”—Austin American-Statesman
“This revelatory look at the enslaved people who did not follow the north star sheds new light on Mexican influence on U.S. history.”—Shelf Awareness
“Deeply researched and eloquently argued....Baumgartner's fast-paced yet detailed exploration is consistently illuminating and offers a new way to understand the past....A must read.”—BookPage
“Baumgartner brings to life the stories of slaves who escaped to Mexico and how they made it to freedom….Well-written and well-researched.”—Library Journal
“Baumgartner debuts with an eye-opening and immersive account of how Mexico’s antislavery laws helped push America to civil war....This vivid history of 'slavery’s other border' delivers a valuable new perspective on the Civil War.”—Publishers Weekly
"A lucid exploration of a little-known aspect of the history of slavery in the US."—Kirkus
"South to Freedom reorders the way we should think and teach about the slavery expansion crisis in the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it reorders how to think about the huge question of the coming of the American Civil War. Not many books these days can make that claim. With astonishing research and graceful writing, this one can."—David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
"Enslaved freedom-seekers in the antebellum United States looked not only to the North Star, but also to the southern border with Mexico. In a fast-paced narrative that moves deftly between the histories of both countries, Alice Baumgartner demonstrates the far-reaching impact of Mexico's free-soil policies. She shows, with eloquence and insight, how enslaved people themselves ignited the fuse that led to a civil war — and the final abolition of slavery on the North American continent."—W. Caleb McDaniel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
"In this deeply researched and pathbreaking study of southern slaves who escaped to Mexico and carved out new lives in the decades prior to the Civil War, Alice Baumgartner has succeeded in explaining a mystery that historians had been unable to unravel. How many slaves ran South to freedom, rather than North, and how did their assertiveness influence the coming of the Civil War? Baumgartner explores not only the familiar sectional controversy that led the southern states to secede from the union, but more importantly, South to Freedom examines the rich and complicated lives and the multifaceted roles that enslaved people played in Mexico. This book will contribute immensely to our understanding of sectional politics, as well as the manner in which Mexico asserted its 'moral power' to reject an inhumane institution and to assist fugitive slaves in recreating their lives as free men and women."—Albert S. Broussard, author of Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900-54
"Taken for granted, borders between two nations have the power to constrain curiosity and limit the self-understanding of both nations. But when the research of a gifted historian defies a border, as Alice L. Baumgartner's South to Freedom demonstrates, the result is the revelation of a story of great consequence. When Texas slaves seized the opportunities presented by Mexico's precedent-setting initiatives in emancipation, the actions of a comparatively small group of people shaped a historical event of enormous scale: the American Civil War."—Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West
11/01/2020
Inspired by a research trip, Baumgartner (history, Univ. of Southern California) examines the long-overlooked story of American slaves who escaped to Mexico in the years before the American Civil War. This southern route to freedom was not as large or as organized as the Underground Railroad. Enslaved persons who escaped to Mexico had to do so entirely on their own, and often, in creative ways, for example, by forging slave passes or by impersonating white men. Once they made it to Mexico, former slaves served in the Mexican military, worked as laborers, and became part of the community. Baumgartner also explores the closely related histories of Mexico and the United States in the 19th century. The issue of slavery led to enormous tension between the two countries and to conflicts such as the Texas Revolution, the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican-American War. These events also fueled the division within the United States, a division that eventually led to the American Civil War. Baumgartner brings to life the stories of slaves who escaped to Mexico and how they made it to freedom. VERDICT Well-written and well-researched, this work is recommended for those interested in causes of the Civil War, Mexican-American history, and human rights.—Dave Pugl, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL
2020-09-16
Capable study of the escaped slaves who fled from the U.S. to the Republic of Mexico before the Civil War.
Mexican law both “abolished slavery and freed all slaves who set foot on its soil,” making it an attractive if not widely used place of refuge. This proved a threat to bordering and nearby slave states, especially Texas and Louisiana. The former, as history professor Baumgartner writes at length, broke away from Mexico so that newcomers from the South could keep their slaves. While runaways to Mexico enjoyed freedom in the legal sense, notes the author, they had limited choices: They could enlist in the military to defend “a series of outposts that the Mexican government established to defend its northeastern frontier against foreign invaders and ‘barbarous’ Indians,” or they could become day laborers and indentured servants, which “sometimes amounted to slavery in all but name.” By Baumgartner’s estimate, only some 3,000 to 5,000 enslaved people crossed the Mexican border, joining a small remnant population of Blacks, whose ancestors had been brought to Mexico as slaves in the 16th and 17th centuries, before the practice was formally outlawed. While some Mexicans, adhering to political ideals of liberty and property, resisted emancipation, it was finally made law in 1837, just after Texas’ independence. So threatening was this liberty that, Baumgartner writes, it provided the rationale for the U.S. annexation of Texas in 1845, which led to war with Mexico. Similarly, she attributes the earlier conquest of Spanish Florida to the fear that slaves would flee there as well. Baumgartner focuses on these big-picture developments while also telling the stories of some of those who found freedom in Mexico—e.g., a runaway who returned to Texas not because, as a newspaper put it, he “has a poor opinion of the country and laws,” but instead to guide his enslaved brothers across the border.
A lucid exploration of a little-known aspect of the history of slavery in the U.S.
