Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America by Elena K. Abbott (review)

Reviewed by: Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America by Elena K. Abbott Elliott Drago Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America By Elena K. Abbott (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. vii, 328. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $89.99; paperbound, $29.99.) In Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America, Elena K. Abbott examines the "individual and collective influence" that international free-soil havens had on American antislavery activists between 1813 and 1863 (p. 4). In countries like Mexico, Cuba, and especially Canada, international free-soil havens offered free and self-emancipated Black Americans the opportunity to enjoy equal standing outside of the United States. Abbot argues that Black Americans identified "specific attributes that they believed made free soil 'free,'" thus contributing [End Page 191] to the discourse of emancipation in the United States (p. 8). Tracing this discourse through traditional physical archives and online databases, she recognizes the power and limitation of the latter while making sure not to supplant the former. By the end of her work, she concludes that international free-soil havens gave Black Americans, and therefore the antislavery movement, "physical and conceptual alternatives to the prevailing pro-slavery polities of the United States" (p. 234). Abbott analyzes spaces of freedom across eight chapters. Chapter one spotlights Paul Cuffe and the debates over Black Americans relocating to West Africa and Haiti. The second chapter follows James C. Brown's efforts to find asylum in Canada, though Abbott explains how Canada's protections for runaways did not ensure civic freedom. Chapter three navigates Black Americans' desires to thrive in Canada as well as in Mexico, although the latter proved much less effective in protecting vulnerable Black American emigrés from affronts to legal equality. Black and white activists' "assessment" of abolition is the subject of Abbott's fourth chapter. British emancipation in the West Indies offered Black Americans a glimmer of hope, namely, that the United States might follow suit and abolish slavery. While emancipation in the West Indies proved just as rife with a lack of opportunities for emigrants, Abbott notes that this beacon helped Black Americans better "articulate what constituted meaningful freedom" (p. 128). Chapter five returns to Black Americans' colonization project in Canada. Despite its limited success, the shift from free to runaway Black emigrants over the course of the century emphasized how Black Americans who freed themselves found more security in Canada than in the United States. The next chapter focuses on pro-slavery reactions to Black Americans crossing the border into Canada, while chapter seven describes the effects of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act on the actions and rhetoric of Black activists. The concluding chapter brings Abbott's exploration of international free-soil havens to a crescendo, as Black American emigrants to Canada, influenced by the Haitian Revolution, helped cultivate a "global Black community" that welcomed runaways and hosted militant abolitionists like John Brown (p. 220). Although Abbott overestimates zones of freedom in places like Philadelphia and New York—cities rife with the constant threat of slavecatchers and kidnappers—her analysis of how Black Americans continually redefined meaningful freedom outside of the United States to influence the politics of freedom within the nation reframes the global mindedness of Black Americans. A stunning example of the border-breaking potential [End Page 192] of understanding freedom in multiple locales, Abbott's concept of international free-soil havens will force historians to reckon with how Black Americans understood and implemented transnational abolitionism. Elliott Drago Jack Miller Center Copyright © 2023 Trustees of Indiana University