Freedom Seekers

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).

• Introduction: 1. The changing geography of slavery and freedom; 2. 'Lurking amongst the free Negroes': spaces of informal freedom in the Urban South; 3. 'As if their own liberty were at stake': spaces of semi-formal freedom in the Northern United States; 4. 'Departure from the house of bondage': spaces of formal freedom in British Canada and Mexico; Conclusion; Bibliography.

'Expertly drawing upon seminal works and recent advances in secondary scholarship, and using a rich array of primary sources, Pargas has crafted an engaging and timely contribution to the historical literature on fugitive slaves. Masterfully unveiling the antebellum landscapes confronting freedom seekers, he captures details and nuances that shaped decisions of courageous men and women navigating the contradiction of slavery in an American republic founded upon the principle of liberty. He adeptly places fugitive slaves at the very center of the American narrative and geopolitics of the North American continent.' Gordon S. Barker, author of Fugitive Slaves and the Unfinished American Revolution