Virtual Book Talk | South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War

When:
Thursday, Jan 28, 2021 6:00p -
7:00p

Where:
Online event
10 1/2 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108

EventScheduled OnlineEventAttendanceMode

Admission:
$5

Categories:
History, Lectures & Conferences, Virtual & Streaming

Event website:
https://www.bostonathenaeum.org/events/7299/virtual-event-book-talk-south-freedom-runaway-slaves-mexico-and-road-civil-war

Book Talk: South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
with Alice Baumgartner


The Underground Railroad to the North promised salvation to many American slaves before the Civil War. But thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico, where slavery was abolished in 1837.


In South to Freedom, historian Alice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. Southerners hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop runaways and secure slavery's future. Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo México upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is a revelatory and essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War, showing the crucial role of slaves who escaped to Mexico.

Alice L. Baumgartner is assistant professor of history at the University of Southern California. She received an MPhil in history from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes scholar, and a PhD in history from Yale University. She lives in Los Angeles, California.


To register, visit: https://bbd.bostonathenaeum.org/register

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01/28/2021 18:00:00 01/28/2021 19:00:00 America/New_York Virtual Book Talk | South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War Book Talk: South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War with Alice Baumgartner The Underground Railroad to the North promised salvation to many American slaves be... Boston Athenæum, Boston, Massachusetts 02108 false MM/DD/YYYY

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