The Captive's Quest for Freedom

Richard J. M. Blackett is the Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is past President of the Association of Caribbean Historians, Associated Editor and Acting Editor of the Journal of American History, and editor of the Indiana Magazine of History. He is the author of several books, including Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (2002), Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (2000), and Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery (2013).

• Part I. The Slave Power Asserts Its Rights: 1. The fugitive slave law; 2. The law does its work; 3. Compromise and colonize; Part II. Freedom's Fires Burn: 4. Missouri and Illinois; 5. Western Kentucky and Indiana; 6. Eastern Kentucky and Ohio; 7. Southeast Pennsylvania; 8. Eastern shore of Maryland and Philadelphia; 9. New York; 10. Massachusetts; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

'Ranging from the halls of Congress to slave and free black communities and from Missouri to New England, Richard J. M. Blackett has produced the most comprehensive account of the workings of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and opposition to it. The individual stories are compelling, the research impressive, and the insights about the variety of forms of resistance make this a major contribution to our understanding of the road to civil war.' Eric Foner, Columbia University, New York and author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery