Beacons of Liberty: Free-Soil Havens and the American Anti-Slavery Movement, 1813-1863.

摘要

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, diverse anti-slavery efforts transformed the geography of slavery and freedom in the Atlantic world. Haiti, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Upper Canada, Mexico, the newly independent South American nations, and the British West Indies all became havens of free soil, where emancipation laws either immediately or gradually freed enslaved populations. This dissertation argues that these "free-soil havens" had a powerful influence on American anti-slavery culture between 1813 and 1863. As abolitionists battled slaveholders to sway public opinion toward the anti-slavery cause, free-soil havens provided concrete geopolitical spaces through which American slaves, free people, and anti-slavery advocates could imagine alternative possibilities to slavery and racism in the United States.;Reading across the rich print culture produced by nineteenth-century politicians, activists, migrants, missionaries, travelers, and newspaper editors, this study illuminates the myriad ways that free-soil havens inspired anti-slavery thought and activism in the United States. Free-soil havens offered destinations for fugitive slaves and free black emigrants, modeled various political and socio-economic outcomes of emancipation, and became familiar symbols of liberty and equality. They produced diplomatic crises challenging the power of American slaveholders and encouraged anti-slavery advocates to fight against American slavery on an international scale.;Each free-soil haven developed its own reputation among slaves, free black activists, and white anti-slavery advocates for its potential to help in the struggle against American slavery. By tracing the geopolitical shifts affecting the reputations and relevance of different free-soil havens to the American anti-slavery movement over a fifty-year period, this study offers a new perspective on the important and familiar narrative of the Underground Railroad. It argues that the Underground Railroad to Canada emerged over time as an identifiable and powerful anti-slavery entity because the British province gained an unshakable (if not always accurate) reputation for being more able to provide security and legal equality than other free-soil havens.;Narrating the story of American anti-slavery advocates looking abroad for hope and inspiration as they worked to dismantle slavery in the United States, this dissertation offers the first evaluation of how free-soil havens across the Atlantic world collectively affected a national anti-slavery movement.