The Other Underground Railroad : Hidden Histories Of Slavery And Freedom Across The Porous Frontiers Of Nineteenth-Century United States, Mexico, And The Caribbean

Abstract

This thesis unveils a hidden part of nineteenth-century Atlantic World History: the transnational exchanges in African slaves that occurred along the Mexico-US border, and across the territorial and coastal boundaries of the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. I will specifically highlight the vicissitudes of an era ridden with unfamiliar, yet constant, movements across transnational boundaries forced by two official abolitionist actions; the abolition of the international slave trade in 1808 into the United States, the abolition of slavery in the Republic of Mexico in 1829, efforts by the British to abolish the African slave trade in the Caribbean and Atlantic. African slaves were continuously smuggled into the United States from the Caribbean through the porous US-Mexico borders up until and through 1861. Simultaneously, many runaway slaves from the antebellum south found safe havens across the southern frontier into Mexico especially after the country officially abolished the institution in 1829. African Americans were often helped by Native Americans, who themselves were also subjected to slavery on both sides of US/Mexican border and also in the Caribbean. This work presents Mexico's role as a sanctuary for African American slaves during the nineteenth century, a field that has seldom been explored. The complexities of these movements and exchanges shaped a pivotal era in Atlantic World history; one that must be carefully studied as an intrinsic part of the history that includes not only the abolition of slavery in the United States, but nineteenth century abolitionist efforts outside of the United States, the struggles, coalitions, and connections of African slaves and Native Americans in Antebellum South, and the Underground Railroad beyond the roads that led north or east, across the Atlantic. My research is based on primary sources, abolitionists' papers, travel accounts, Mexican, United States' government documents, runaway slaves ads, official correspondence and other documents pertaining to slavery in Texas, as well as records and correspondence from the British Parliamentary papers.