A Southern Underground Railroad: Black Georgians and the Promise of Spanish Florida and Indian Country

by Paul M. Pressly Narrated by Bill Andrew Quinn

Overview

Despite its apparent isolation, the Southeast provided a vital connecting link between the Black self-emancipation that occurred during the American Revolution and the growth of the Underground Railroad. From the beginning of the revolutionary war to the eve of the First Seminole War in 1817, several thousand Africans and African Americans in Georgia and South Carolina crossed the borders and boundaries that separated the Lowcountry from the British and Spanish in coastal Florida and from the Seminole and Creek people in the vast interior of the Southeast. Even in times of peace, there remained a steady flow of individuals moving south and southwest.



A Southern Underground Railroad constitutes a powerful counter-narrative in American history, a tale of how enslaved men and women found freedom and human dignity not in Jefferson's "Empire of Liberty" but outside the expanding boundaries of the United States. It is a reminder of the strength of Black resistance in the post-revolutionary South and the ability of this community to influence the balance of power in a contested region. Pressly's research shows that their movement across borders was an integral part of the struggle for dominance in the Southeast not only among the Great Powers but also among the many different racial, ethnic, and religious groups that inhabited the region and contended for control.

Editorial Reviews

coeditor of In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World - Ousmane Power-Greene

A Southern Underground Railroad is a major contribution to the history of the lives of first and second generation of enslaved people within the context of U.S. expansion in the early national period.

author of Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions - Jane G. Landers

A Southern Underground Railroad offers a new Atlantic World perspective and a much-needed corrective to earlier publications. It should appeal to both popular and scholarly readers interested in early North American and African American history and the history of slavery.

author of Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons - Sylviane A. Diouf

Pressly’s research explores how and why the Southeast, especially the Georgia coast, provided a vital connecting link between the Black self-emancipation that occurred during the American Revolution and the emergence of the Underground Railroad in the final years of the antebellum period. . . . Rich and gripping.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192535929
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/01/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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