Freedom's Frontier : California and the Struggle Over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction

Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier , Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semibound labor systems: African American slavery, American Indian indenture, Latino and Chinese contract labor, and a brutal sex traffic in bound Indian and Chinese women. Using untapped legislative and court records, Smith reconstructs the lives of California's unfree workers and documents the political and legal struggles over their destiny as the nation moved through the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Smith reveals that the state's anti-Chinese movement, forged in its struggle over unfree labor, reached eastward to transform federal Reconstruction policy and national race relations for decades to come. Throughout, she illuminates the startling ways in which the contest over slavery's fate included a western struggle that encompassed diverse labor systems and workers not easily classified as free or slave, black or white. Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semi-bound labor systems: African American slavery, American Indian indenture, Latino and Chinese contract labor, and brutal sex traffic in bound Indian and Chinese women. Using untapped legistlative and court records, Smith recounts the lives of California's unfree workers and documents the political and legal struggles over their destiny as the nation moved through the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Smith reveals that the state's anti-Chinese movement, forged in its struggle over unfree labor, reached eastward to transform federal Reconstruction policy and national race relations for decades to come. Throughout, she illuminates the startling ways in which the contest over slavery's fate included a western struggle that encompassed diverse labor systems and workers not easily classified as free or slave, black or white. Introduction: California, free and unfree California bound Planting slavery on free soil Hired serfs and contract slaves : peonage, coolieism, and the struggle over "foreign miners" Enslaved wards and captive apprentices : controlling and contesting children's labor in 1850s California For purposes of labor and of lust : California's traffics in women Emancipating California : California's unfree labor systems in the crucible of the Civil War Reconstructing California, reconstructing the nation Conclusion: Beyond north and south. Freedom's Frontier: California And The Struggle Over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, And Reconstruction