Abolition from the South: Freedom Seekers, Mexico, and the Road to the U.S. Civil War

Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, 4pm-6pm

Register for the Zoom Meeting: bit.ly/abolitionfromthesouth

Alice Baumgartner, Department of History, University of Southern California

This talk will explore why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. In the wake of Mexico's war of independence, state legislatures abolished slavery or passed gradual emancipation laws that promised to end human bondage within a generation or two. But it was only in 1837, a year after the end of the Texas Revolution, that Mexico's Congress abolished slavery. This decision would have profound consequences for the United States. As freedom seekers escaped in increasing numbers to Mexico, southern politicians hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop freedom seekers and secure slavery's future. Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo México upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states.

Alice Baumgartner is the author of South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to Civil War.  Baumgartner received a B.A. in History from Yale University and an M.Phil in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University in 2018. She now teaches history at the University of Southern California.

Moderated by Jorge Delgadillo, Chancellor Advance Postdoctoral Fellow in the UCI History Department.

This event is co-sponsored by UCI Department of History, UCI Humanities Center, and UCI Latin American Studies Center.

Please contact Alex Borucki at aborucki@uci.edu if you have any questions regarding the event.