Description: 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.
Brief description: Damian Alan Pargas is professor of North American history and culture at Leiden University. He is the author of The Quarters and the Fields: Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South and Slavery and Forced Migration in the Antebellum South.
Review Quotes:
"An original and complex rendering of the phenomenon of slave flight. ... Makes an important contribution to the expanding conversation on American slavery."--Journal of American History
"Moves the discussion of fugitive slaves forward by recognizing that their experiences were as varied as American slavery and should be consulted by scholars of North American slavery at all levels."--Choice
"The well-researched and wide-ranging essays complicate our understanding of how, when, and where fugitive slaves throughout North America risked life and limb in search of freedom."--H-Net
"A new primer for scholars searching to complicate the consistently dominant narrative of the Underground Railroad as a singular and secure pathway to racial liberation."--Journal of Southern History
"Reveals compelling accounts of how freedom changed over time and space. ... Encourages us to reconsider what advertisements reveal about the past. ... Offer[s] the next generation of scholars a strong foundation upon which to stand."--Historian
"Sophisticates our understanding of the geography of freedom in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ... A great contribution to the field, as it not only gathers the different directions that slaves took but also brings to light new ones."--Civil War History
"A stimulating collection. ... The essays in this volume range from reevaluations of the historical literature about runaways to presentations of exciting new research."--North Carolina Historical Review
"Impressive. ... A stellar volume that contains several important historiographic interventions and will spur additional research."--Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research