South to Freedom

So much more than the jacket blurb suggests. This was a sobering high-level look at regional, national, and international factors that shaped today’s world. Both discouraging and inspiring; complex and nuanced. I have a much greater understanding for the difficulties involved in balancing morality, law, and governance. (Spoiler alert: morality does not always win).

Most fascinating to me was the delicacy with which good leaders need to tread: slaveholders and defenders of slavery are obviously subhuman vermin, but there were a lot of them and they were powerful; policymakers were forced to make horrible tradeoffs in order to avoid riots and ouster. Depressingly reminiscent of the suffering today in Palestine, Ukraine, and the U.S. South, none of which can be fixed (right now) because of the preponderance of subhumans in positions of power.

Almost as fascinating is the snowballing consequences of even minor policy actions: even though the absolute number of enslaved Blacks who fled to Mexican territory was a small fraction of those who fled North, the Mexican government’s freedom principle — slavery shall not be recognized within their borders — had enormous repercussions on U.S. territorial expansion and ultimately on the U.S. Civil War.

Impeccably researched and referenced. Elegantly written, and with compassion. Baumgartner is a phenomenal writer, historian, and legal scholar. I can’t recommend this book enough.