Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America (Southern Dissent)

This volume introduces a new way to study the experiences of runaway slaves by defining different "spaces of freedom" they inhabited. It also provides a groundbreaking continental view of fugitive slave migration, moving beyond the usual regional or national approaches to explore locations in Canada, the U.S. North and South, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Using newspapers, advertisements, and new demographic data, contributors show how events like the Revolutionary War and westward expansion shaped the slave experience. Contributors investigate sites of formal freedom, where slavery was abolished and refugees were legally free, to determine the extent to which fugitive slaves experienced freedom in places like Canada while still being subject to racism. In sites of semiformal freedom, as in the northern United States, fugitives' claims to freedom were precarious because state abolition laws conflicted with federal fugitive slave laws. Contributors show how local committees strategized to interfere with the work of slave catchers to protect refugees. Sites of informal freedom were created within the slaveholding South, where runaways who felt relocating to distant destinations was too risky formed maroon communities or attempted to blend in with free black populations. These individuals procured false documents or changed their names to avoid detection and pass as free. The essays discuss slaves' motivations for choosing these destinations, the social networks that supported their plans, what it was like to settle in their new societies, and how slave flight impacted broader debates about slavery. This volume redraws the map of escape and emancipation during this period, emphasizing the importance of place in defining the meaning and extent of freedom.**Contributors:**Kyle Ainsworth - Mekala Audain - Gordon S. Barker - Sylviane A. Diouf - Roy E. Finkenbine - Graham Russell Gao Hodges - Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie - Viola Franziska M�ller - James David Nichols - Damian Alan Pargas - Matthew Pinsker A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller This volume introduces a new way to study the experiences of runaway slaves by defining different "spaces of freedom" they inhabited. It also provides a groundbreaking continental view of fugitive slave migration, moving beyond the usual regional or national approaches to explore locations in Canada, the U.S. North and South, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Using newspapers, advertisements, and new demographic data, contributors show how events like the Revolutionary War and westward expansion shaped the slave experience. Contributors investigate sites of formal freedom, where slavery was abolished and refugees were legally free, to determine the extent to which fugitive slaves experienced freedom in places like Canada while still being subject to racism. In sites of semiformal freedom, as in the northern United States, fugitives' claims to freedom were precarious because state abolition laws conflicted with federal fugitive slave laws. Contributors show how local committees strategized to interfere with the work of slave catchers to protect refugees. Sites of informal freedom were created within the slaveholding South, where runaways who felt relocating to distant destinations was too risky formed maroon communities or attempted to blend in with free black populations. These individuals procured false documents or changed their names to avoid detection and pass as free. The essays discuss slaves' motivations for choosing these destinations, the social networks that supported their plans, what it was like to settle in their new societies, and how slave flight impacted broader debates about slavery. This volume redraws the map of escape and emancipation during this period, emphasizing the importance of place in defining the meaning and extent of freedom. Contributors: Kyle Ainsworth - Mekala Audain - Gordon S. Barker - Sylviane A. Diouf - Roy E. Finkenbine - Graham Russell Gao Hodges - Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie - Viola Franziska M�ller - James David Nichols - Damian Alan Pargas - Matthew Pinsker A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller This volume introduces a new way to study the experiences of runaway slaves by defining different “spaces of freedom” that fugitive slaves inhabited. It also provides a groundbreaking continental view of fugitive slave migration, moving beyond the usual regional or national approaches to explore locations in Canada, the U.S. South, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Contributors use three main categories of freedom to compare and contrast various aspects of slave escape in the period between the revolutionary era and the U.S. Civil War. They investigate sites of formal freedom, regions in which slavery was abolished and refugees were legally free; sites of semiformal freedom, areas in which abolition laws conflicted with federal fugitive slave laws; and sites of informal freedom, places within the slaveholding South where runaways formed maroon communities or attempted to blend in with free black populations. The essays discuss slaves'motivations for choosing these destinations, the social networks that supported their plans, what it was like to settle in their new societies, and how slave flight impacted broader debates about slavery. This volume redraws the map of escape and emancipation during this period, emphasizing the importance of place in defining the meaning and extent of freedom. Contributors: Graham Russell Hodges | Gordon S. Barker | Roy E. Finkenbine | Matthew Pinsker | Damian Alan Pargas | Viola Franziska Müller | Sylviane A. Diouf | Kyle Ainsworth | Mekala Audain | James David Nichols | Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller Approaching the period of 1880-1930 in American literature as one in which the processes of rethinking the past were as prevalent as wholly "new" works of art, this collection treats the century's long turn as a site that overtly staged the tension among conflicting sets of values ... those of past, present, and the imagined future. As the authors of this collection demonstrate, the literature from the century's turn is irreducible to the characteristics either of the nineteenth or the twentieth centuries; rather, it is literature of dual practices and multiple values that embodies elastic qualities of historical plurality ... a true literature in transition Introduces a new way to study the experiences of runaway slaves by defining different 'spaces of freedom' that fugitive slaves inhabited, this volume also provides a groundbreaking continental view of fugitive slave migration, moving beyond the usual regional or national approaches to explore locations in Canada, the US South, Mexico and the Caribbean