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Bezig met laden... South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War (2020)door Alice L Baumgartner
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"The Underground Railroad to the North was salvation for many US slaves before the Civil War. But during the same decades, thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico. In South to Freedom historian Alice Baumgartner tells the story of Mexico's rise as an antislavery republic and a promised land for enslaved people in North America. She describes how Mexico's abolition of slavery challenged US institutions and helped to set the international stage for the US Civil War. In 1837, shortly after Texas rebelled against Mexican rule, Mexico's Congress formally abolished slavery, and enslaved people began to head south. Some were helped by free blacks, ship captains, Mexicans, Germans, gamblers, preachers, mail riders, and other "lurking scoundrels," but most escaped by their own ingenuity -- with stolen rifles, forged slave passes, and, in one instance, a wig made from horsehair and pitch. As they fled across the Rio Grande, and the US government failed to secure their return, their owners began to suspect an international conspiracy against the "peculiar institution." Meanwhile, Northern Congressmen balked at reestablishing slavery in the Southwestern territories taken from Mexico after the Mexican-American War. Feeling increasingly embattled, slavers in Texas and Louisiana came to believe that their interests would best be protected outside the union. With the Southern slave regime under pressure from both the north and south, the conditions were in place for the coming of the US Civil War. Today, our attention is fixed on people seeking opportunity by moving north across our southern border, but South to Freedom reveals what happened when the reverse was true: when American slaves fled "the land of the free" for freedom in Mexico"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)306.362Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Culture and Institutions Economic institutions Systems of labor, industrial sociology SlaveryLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4.14)
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Baumgartner's thesis--which I don't think she spells out in full--is that the Mexican-American War was the result of Mexico's outlawing slavery AND giving instant freedom to any enslaved person who set foot on Mexican territory. American southerners had moved into Tejas--with their slaves--looking for good cotton-growing land. They wanted Tejas for the US, where they could be certain of keeping their "property". As Mexico's laws became more specific regarding freedoms and they refused to pass any kind of fugitive slave law, norteamericanos in Tejas became more and more antsy about being able to recruit more slave-owning immigrants. Slave owners in Louisiana become more antsy as more slaves ran for Mexico.
Even after the Mexican-American War results in major territory loss for Texas, American slaves were still able to run for Mexico, and they did. The numbers do not seem particularly large--but they are still very relevant. And they were very relevant to American politics.
This is not a region (Texas/Louisiana/Mexico) that is covered in many American history classes in high school or college (unless you are in Texas--but I do not know what/how they teach this time period). This book fills yet another gap in my American and world history knowledge.
Random fact: the only Emperor of Mexico was the uncle of Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination started WWI. He got played by one of the Napoleons and Mexican conservatives. (