Robert Churchill has written an important book, though it might be better subtitled “The Geography of Violence in the Antebellum White North.” His book certainly includes the Black experience along the Underground Railroad, in the 1840s and 1850s, but it has little to say directly about the antebellum South, and the Black experience is not at the center of his analysis. His book is primarily about the geography of while cultures of violence that impacted Black Americans as they made their way through the North from slavery to freedom. It is a book that speaks both to our understanding of the coming of the American Civil War and to our contemporary national debates about race, politics, and the lessons of history.
Churchill's book is part of a wider project of historiographical recovery. On a patch of lawn below my office window there is an Ohio historical marker commemorating the research...
