South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to Civil War

The Nineteenth Century in the Americas Reading Group, from the Center for the Humanities, is honored to host Alice Baumgartner for a virtual talk on her groundbreaking book, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to Civil War (2020). South to Freedom focuses on Mexico’s abolition of slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. For Baumgartner, the US invasion to Mexico was an attempt to stop runaways and secure the institution of slavery. However, this actually upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is a revelatory and essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War.

Please join us Thursday, April 21 to learn more about Baumgartner’s work and engage in conversation with her.  

Alice Baumgartner earned a BA 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 a PhD from Yale University in 2018. She now teaches history at the University of Southern California. 

This talk is sponsored by the Center for the Humanities.