Reviewed by:

• South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War by Alice L. Baumgartner
• Mark Smith (bio)

Fugitive slaves from the United States who ran to Mexico during the antebellum period “reorient our understanding of the Civil War, showing that one of the most distinctively ‘American’ events in US history was in part ignited” by these freedom seekers (4). Such is the central thesis of Alice L. Baumgartner’s brilliantly written but sometimes interpretively frustrating book. The stories of the fugitives are utterly compelling, but the extent to which runaways to Mexico “contributed to the outbreak of a major sectional controversy over the future of human bondage in the United States” remains murky (7).

Those who made it to Mexico did so without the help of anything resembling an underground railroad. Their escapes were assisted by the occasional ally, not facilitated by a system or formal network. These fugitives escaped and made it to Mexico by their own wits, and it is these stories, the tales of courageous men and women, that Baumgartner captures brilliantly.

Runaways were greeted with one of two options. Some joined the military outposts that the Mexican government had established to defend their nation’s northeastern frontier. Others traded their enslaved status for indentured servitude and worked as servants or on haciendas. In this respect, fugitives in Mexico were not unlike those who made it to the US North. After all, courtesy of the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, runaways who managed to get above the Mason-Dixon line found themselves in a condition of what Frederick Douglass called “doubtful liberty.”

Still, differences abounded, and Baumgartner sagely reminds us of the powerful antislavery inflections at work in the Mexican national government. After the Texas Revolution, for example, the Mexican Congress abolished slavery; in 1849, it passed legislation making free any enslaved person from another country who stepped foot in Mexico. Nor did Mexico agree to any extradition treaties. Plainly, these antislavery currents perturbed Southern slaveholders not least because these policies threatened their expansion and held the real potential to disrupt slavery in the US borderlands.

The backbone—interpretively and stylistically—of Baumgartner’s study is in the poignant, endearing, and inspiring stories of enslaved men and women who escaped to Mexico. Baumgartner has a superb eye for the revealing detail and evinces a deep tenacity when it comes to ferreting out stories long buried in far-flung archives. She is also extremely adept at unpacking the complicated legal [End Page 428] histories of slavery in the US and Mexico and does a superb job toggling between the two without losing sight of why slavery was and was not permitted in different places at different times.

But historians interested in evidence beyond beautifully crafted stories will be disappointed. For example, Baumgartner cannot tell us how many enslaved people from the United States made it to Mexico. “My estimate,” she ventures, “based on scattered and incomplete Mexican sources, puts the number somewhere between three and five thousand” (4). While she is right to suggest this is far less than the tens of thousands who escaped to the US North, it is nonetheless frustrating that she offers nothing to document this guess.

Yet for Baumgartner, the numbers do not matter, because while the “number of slaves who reached Mexico was undeniably small,” she believes that “each escape was important in its own right” (4). Critically, “their collective story had strategic and political significance out of all proportion to the numbers involved” (4). This may well be true. But while it is surely the case that fugitive slaves to Mexico “contributed” to the sectional tensions that led to the US Civil War, many things “contributed” to the coming of that war and to varying extents. Historians of the sectional conflict are under some obligation to stake their case about causality with more precision than Baumgartner’s interpretive framework can muster.

MARK SMITH is...

审核人：

• 南向自由：逃亡的墨西哥奴隶和内战之路Alice L. Baumgartner
• 马克·史密斯（生物）

在战前时期逃往墨西哥的美国逃亡奴隶“重新调整了我们对内战的理解，表明美国历史上最独特的‘美国’事件之一部分地被这些寻求自由的人点燃了”(4)。这就是 Alice L. Baumgartner 的中心论点，这本书写得非常出色，但有时在解释上却令人沮丧。逃犯的故事非常引人入胜，但逃往墨西哥的逃亡者在多大程度上“促成了一场关于美国未来人类奴役的重大局部争议的爆发”仍然不明朗（7）。

那些到达墨西哥的人没有借助任何类似地下铁路的东西。他们的逃跑得到了偶尔的盟友的协助，没有系统或正式网络的协助。这些逃犯凭着自己的智慧逃到了墨西哥，而正是这些故事，勇敢的男人和女人的故事，鲍姆加特纳精彩地捕捉到了。

逃跑者受到了两种选择之一的欢迎。一些人加入了墨西哥政府为保卫他们国家的东北边境而建立的军事前哨。其他人则将他们的奴隶身份换成契约奴役，并作为仆人或在庄园工作。在这方面，墨西哥的逃犯与到达美国北部的逃犯没有什么不同。毕竟，由于 1793 年和 1850 年的逃亡奴隶法案，成功越过梅森-迪克森线的逃亡者发现自己处于弗雷德里克·道格拉斯所说的“可疑自由”状态。

尽管如此，分歧还是比比皆是，鲍姆加特纳明智地提醒我们墨西哥国家政府正在发挥强大的反奴隶制影响力。例如，德克萨斯革命后，墨西哥国会废除了奴隶制；1849 年，它通过了一项立法，使任何踏入墨西哥的来自另一个国家的被奴役者获得自由。墨西哥也不同意任何引渡条约。显然，这些反奴隶制的潮流让南方奴隶主感到不安，尤其是因为这些政策威胁到他们的扩张，并具有破坏美国边境地区奴隶制的真正潜力。

鲍姆加特纳研究的核心——解释和风格——是逃到墨西哥的被奴役男女的凄美、可爱和鼓舞人心的故事。鲍姆加特纳对揭示的细节有着敏锐的洞察力，并且在挖掘长期埋藏在遥远档案中的故事时表现出深厚的毅力。她还非常擅长解开美国和墨西哥复杂的法律[End Page 428]奴隶制历史，并且在两者之间切换时做得非常出色，而不会忽视为什么在不同的地方在不同的时间允许和不允许奴隶制。

但历史学家对精心制作的故事之外的证据感兴趣，他们会失望的。例如，鲍姆加特纳无法告诉我们有多少从美国被奴役的人来到了墨西哥。“我的估计，”她冒昧地说，“根据分散和不完整的墨西哥资料，这个数字在三到五千之间”（4）。虽然她认为这远远少于逃到美国北部的数万人是正确的，但令人沮丧的是，她没有提供任何证据来证明这一猜测。

然而，对于鲍姆加特纳来说，这些数字并不重要，因为虽然“到达墨西哥的奴隶数量无疑很少”，但她认为“每次逃跑本身都很重要”（4）。至关重要的是，“他们的集体故事具有与所涉及的人数完全不成比例的战略和政治意义”（4）。这很可能是真的。但是，尽管逃往墨西哥的奴隶确实“促成”了导致美国内战的局部紧张局势，但许多事情在不同程度上促成了这场战争的到来。部分冲突的历史学家有义务以比鲍姆加特纳的解释框架所能达到的更精确的方式来论证他们关于因果关系的案例。

马克史密斯是...