Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860 (Cambridge Studies on the American South)

Book info: Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860 (Cambridge Studies on the American South) (Hardcover, 288 pages) – Cambridge University Press, 2021. Language: English.

In this fascinating book, Damian Alan Pargas introduces a new conceptualization of 'spaces of freedom' for fugitive slaves in North America between 1800 and 1860, and answers the questions: How and why did enslaved people flee to – and navigate – different destinations throughout the continent, and to what extent did they succeed in evading recapture and re-enslavement? Taking a continental approach, this study highlights the diversity of slave fight by conceptually dividing the continent into three distinct – and continuously evolving – spaces of freedom. Namely, spaces of informal freedom in the US South, where enslaved people attempted to flee by passing as free blacks; spaces of semi-formal freedom in the US North, where slavery was abolished but the precise status of fugitive slaves was contested; and spaces of formal freedom in Canada and Mexico, where slavery was abolished and runaways were considered legally free and safe from re-enslavement. About the Author Damian Alan Pargas is Professor of North American History and Culture at Leiden University and director of the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies in Middelburg, the Netherlands. He is the author of two books, The Quarters and the Fields (2010) and Forced Migration in the Antebellum South (Cambridge, 2014).