Military success in early 1862 leads to substantive Federal presence in the lower Mississippi valley. By mid-1862, Federal forces hold Helena, Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans. The Federal presence sparks large numbers of fugitive slaves to seek freedom, forcing Federal military officials to deal with the slavery issue. The lower Mississippi valley witnesses the first instance of extensive Federal territorial control and large numbers of fugitive slaves. It also experiences the first substantive efforts toward “Reconstruction,” though the failure of southern Unionists – in Louisiana especially – to seize the initiative influences Lincoln in issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The emancipatory provisions of the 1862 Confiscation Act partly in response to developments in the lower Mississippi valley, but contrasting responses of slaves and slaveholders to the Federal presence in the region, also reveal the difficulties of implementing the act.

The conclusion revisits the book's conceptualization of the geography of freedom in North America. It argues that the main differences between spaces of informal, semi-formal, and formal freedom for fugitive slaves come down to differences in freedom seekers' motivaitons, networks, visibility, and vulnerability. It is clear that runaways’ motivations and expectations of freedom from slavery tended to differ by degrees, and these informed their escape attempts. The networks that facilitated slave flight to all three spaces of freedom also differed by degrees, from family networks in spaces of informal freedom to more organized antislavery networks in spaces of semi-formal and formal freedom. Visibility was an important factor in slave flight. Freedom seekers in the urban South were the most dependent upon developing and cultivating false identities in order to prevent recapture; those who fled beyond the borders did not need to hide their identities at all. Finally, freedom seekers' vulnerability to recapture and reenslavement differed across the continent. Runaways in the urban South were the most vulnerable, whereas those who fled the United States were the least vulnerable.

How was slave flight in North America characterized? 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 reenslavement? The Introduction lays out overarching questions and purpose. Freedom Seekers examines the experiences of runaways from southern slavery between 1800 and 1860. Taking a continental approach, this study highlights the diversity of slave flight in North America by conceptually dividing the continent into three distinct (and continuously evolving) spaces of freedom for runaway slaves, namely: spaces of informal freedom in the US South, where enslaved people attempted to flee slavery by trying to pass for free; spaces of semi-formal freedom in the Northern United States, where slavery was abolished but where the status of fugitive slaves was contested; and spaces of formal freedom in Canada and Mexico, where slavery was abolished where runaways were considered legally free and safe from reenslavement. The Introduction to this study also positions it within the scholarship on fugitive slaves, explaining its innovative continental perspective and new conceptual approach.

The second chapter delves into slave flight to spaces of informal freedom in the urban South, the most immediate and easily reached destinations for runaways trapped in the second slavery. It considers why enslaved people chose to go to the trouble of fleeing bondage yet remain within the slaveholding states; the networks that helped them do so; the strategies they employed to hide their identities, sustain themselves, and remain at large indefinitely; and the risk they ran of recapture. The actions of these runaways went far beyond mere truancy, as is often suggested in the literature. Many fugitives to urban areas clearly attempted to live their lives there indefinitely. The chapter devotes considerable attention to the importance of family in informing freedom seekers' decisions to remain within the South, even if it meant foregoing more formal freedom in other parts of the continent. It also examines the importance of visibility in runaways' strategies of escape, exploring how they "passed for free" by looking and acting free, procuring false freedom papers and other documentation, and integrating themselves into urban free black communities so as to avoid detection.

The third chapter explores slave flight to spaces of semi-formal freedom in the antebellum North. It analyzes why freedom seekers sought to risk their lives to escape the South rather than flee to nearby spaces of informal freedom; how they did so; their settlement processes; and how they fared in the legal quagmire of rendition and reenslavement. It begins with an examination of enslaved people's perilous northbound journeys, emphasizing the particular reasons some freedom seekers sought free soil and some semblance of legal freedom from slavery. It then delves into refugees' experiences settling in and sustaining themselves in the northern states, with an emphasis on their integration into northern free black communities. The chapter concludes with an extensive discussion of the ambiguous legal status of fugitive slaves in the Northern United States and how conflicts over legal rights and the conditions for rendition developed over time, often stimulating mass civil disobedience to federal fugitive slave laws and de facto protection from reenslavement.

The fourth chapter examines slave flight to spaces of formal freedom in British Canada and Mexico from the 1830s through the 1850s. These two destinations for refugees from American slavery shared important similarities but also differed by degrees. The chapter explores why some enslaved people sought to flee the United States altogether; how they settled into new communities; and the risk of both extradition and illegal recapture by slave catchers and agents from the antebellum South. The chapter is structured thematically, beginning with a comparative examination of the journeys of freedom seekers to both international jurisdictions. The chapter then delves into the settlement experiences of refugees in Canada and Mexico, underscoring the stubborn prejudice with which especially refugees in Canada were confronted, as well as their economic opportunities. The chapter ends with an extensive discussion of the threat of extradition. Both countries refused to sign extradition treaties for fugitive slaves with the United States. In Mexico, however, the threat of reenslavement was higher due to illegal raids and incursions by southern slaveholders into Mexican territory.

Thousands of free and self-emancipated African Americans crossed the international border in Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) in the 1830s and 1840s. But did they actually experience the legal equality and freedom from oppression they hoped to find? This chapter explores the reflections of migrants and observers on what life was actually like for African American emigrants under the British flag. It shows that while racism and educational inequity were pervasive enough in Upper Canada to slow the rate of free African American emigration to the province, the government’s ongoing commitment to protecting self-emancipated individuals and to ensuring the legal equality of black subjects ensured that Upper Canada’s reputation as a beacon of liberty steadily increased in the years preceding the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

This chapter explores highly publicized episodes of international free-soil border crossing by land and by sea in the 1830s and 1840s. It was during these decades that the so-called Underground Railroad to Canada became a recognizable feature of the American anti-slavery landscape. Anti-slavery advocates publicly and volubly celebrated each instance of former slaves escaping the reach of slave-holders, and the publicity generated by border-crossing slaves inspired abolitionists to see Canada as a beacon of black freedom. Cumulatively, the successful escape of fugitive slaves to Canada, Mexico, and the British West Indies also catalyzed international diplomatic crises that permanently altered the geopolitical map of slavery and freedom. While millions remained enslaved during the antebellum era, the efforts of fugitive slaves to claim their freedom transformed international free-soil havens into powerful symbols of freedom and escape.

In the wake of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, free African Americans felt they had as much to lose as fugitive slaves. Many felt that they would never be recognized as citizens and that they would never be granted legal equality or social acceptance in the predominantly white United States. This chapter shows that, against this backdrop, free-soil havens abroad resonated more than ever as potent symbols of liberty, equality, uplift, and independence. They offered a stark contrast to the United States’ ongoing commitment to slavery at its very highest levels. Building on decades of practice, American anti-slavery advocates in the 1850s leveraged the practical and symbolic value of international free-soil havens to bolster the fight of freedom and equality at home and abroad. From national anti-slavery conventions to burgeoning black nationalist political thought, this chapter shows that free-soil spaces became dominant focal points of escape, resistance, and collective action until the outbreak of civil war in 1861.

Tensions over American slavery came to a head with the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. It drove many African Americans – free and fugitive alike – away from their homes in the North for fear that the law’s strict new policies on fugitive slave recovery would increase the likelihood of being captured or kidnapped into southern slavery. Using the wildly popular anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a guide, this chapter explores how the Fugitive Slave Act affected anti-slavery views regarding fugitive slaves, international free soil, and the Underground Railroad. It introduces readers to differing viewpoints and heated controversies surrounding the novel’s influence on the anti-slavery movement and it shows how the northward migration of tens of thousands of fugitive slaves contributed to a full-blown “Canada Culture” within the anti-slavery movement of the early 1850s.

While always hostile to white demands that they expatriate, free black northerners considered emigrating on their own terms, as an affirmation of their dual identity as black and American. Even as stalwart integrationists such as Frederick Douglass criticized his peers for betraying their enslaved kin, emigrationists such as Martin Delany, Mary Ann Shadd, and James Theodore Holly debated the true purpose of black exodus, as well as the most desirable destination, concurring only in their dislike for the ACS and Liberia. Where to go? Canada, for its proximity to the United States? The Niger Valley, for its connection to their African ancestry? Or Haiti, the one black-run state in the Western Hemisphere, and a bastion of black militancy? As emigrationists duly divided, exploring and settling distant lands, they were shocked to realize just how American, even “Anglo-Saxon” their assumptions really were – and how much they had to call on much-resented white assistance. And so, like white colonizationists, they entered the 1860s praying that some more powerful entity would assume the onerous task of fostering African American emigration.

William H. Williams’ slave jail, the Yellow House, garnered a great deal of controversy as the abolitionist movement gained momentum. Abolitionists decried the slave coffles that marched through the District of Columbia, yet from the mid–1830s to mid–1840s, the "gag rule" stymied debate over the antislavery petitions submitted to Congress. Shortly before the presidential election of 1844, Thomas Williams flew a flag of the Democratic Polk/Dallas ticket above the Yellow House. The banner ignited a newspaper war in the nation’s capital, as the Democratic organ, the Washington Globe, claimed the move a clever Whig ruse to smear the Democratic Party with the odium of slavery. Washington’s Whig mouthpiece, the National Intelligencer, made the much simpler argument that Thomas Williams flew the Polk/Dallas flag because the slave dealer was, in fact, a Democrat.

The chapter argues that if human rights are to be considered proper rights there must be a human right to resistance. It begins with defending the political conception of human rights, as it underpins the minimalist conception of transnational justice found in Chapter 1, and if the argument works for this conception then it will also work for more elaborate conceptions of human rights.

It argues that if the political conception of human rights are rights, then there must be a remedy to their violation. Resistance is the ultimate remedy when other means fail. If this was not the case then human rights would be rhetorical. The right to resistance can also be found in major documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various UN resolutions on decolonisation and apartheid.

The structure of the right to resistance is examined by looking at three test cases: the Haitian Revolution, fugitive slaves, and day-to-day resistance. This shows that resistance can have justice-seeking and injustice-evading elements that need to be considered. More formally, it is a compound right with liberty and claim elements.

This chapter breaks from standard views on the right of free movement to argue that illegal migration is a form of impure infrapolitical resistance to global poverty. The argument hinges on a comparison with fugitive slaves. If these people did nothing wrong by escaping from slavery, then illegal socioeconomic migrants cannot be said to be acting wrongly. Both cases are characterised by individuals being subjected to extreme domination that they have no reasonable chance of overturning.

It then considers objections: that this is a case of someone acting on the right of necessity, but this is not convincing because it fails to consider the relationship between poverty and unjust social institutions; this does not describe the actual thought process of migrants, but this is not an ethnography of illegal immigrants so the objection is irrelevant and, moreover, it does describe the thoughts of some illegal immigrants; finally, there is an objection that the state must have the right to exclude illegal migrants otherwise institutions that people have reason to value would be jeopardised. This privileges the desires of the perpetrators and beneficiaries of injustice over the victims.

Chapter 2 focuses on the international slave trade clause and the fugitive slave clause. The Constitution permitted Americans to ply that “infamous traffic” for two decades, but the Founders hoped that American slavery would end after the slave trade ceased to supply new chattels. Instead, the American slave population expanded. In the 1850s, a small band of fire-eaters tried to overturn the federal ban on the slave trade. In a couple of notorious cases, Southern juries refused to convict slave traders despite overwhelming evidence of their guilt. At the same time that these slave traders brought the slave trade clause to the fore, enslaved persons did the same for the fugitive slave clause, making it the most contentious of the Constitution’s compromises over slavery. While all Southerners and many Northerners agreed that the return of fugitive slaves was a constitutional duty, some abolitionists shirked this obligation and a tiny minority actively flouted the law. Northern juries declined to convict slave rescuers. The actions of the slave rescuers and the slave traders called into question the commitment of the North and the South to the rule of constitutional law.