Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery by R. J. M. Blackett (review)

BOOK REVIEWS SPRING 2014 89 to obtain a pardon, but his notoriety rendered this impossible and he died in prison at the age of thirty-two. In the wake of his death, Torrey’s legacy as an abolitionist martyr seemed secure, with throngs of abolitionists across the North honoring the man. The author also sees his influence in subsequent activists’ direct action against slavery. The book makes for an enjoyable read, especially for non-experts, but its contributions and Torrey’s significance remain unclear. First, while lucidly written and interesting, this narrative history lacks a clear statement of its argument. As a result, the book often lacks focus and offers excessive detail about antislavery history without establishing the information’s relevance. For example, the author discusses William Lloyd Garrison, his views, and the mutual dislike between Garrison and Torrey, but this information remains inexplicable until chapter ten when the author argues that this animosity explainsTorrey’s descent into relative obscurity. Here Martyrdom offers an intriguing historiographical insight: historians have overlooked Torrey because the Garrisonians wrote many of the earliest histories of the period. Most of Torrey’s allies and admirers died shortly after he did, and many of those who survived, like Gerrit Smith, feared publicizing their illegal activities even after the fact. The author makes a persuasive case about why historians overlooked Torrey’s importance, including his glaring absence from Garrisonian William Still’s 1871 The Underground Railroad. The biography would have benefited from more such original analysis about Torrey and his milieu. Second, while chapter ten reveals the significance of the author’s arguments, his claims for Torrey’s importance echo those of historian Stanley Harrold. The author credits Harrold’s “initial research on Torrey” (xiii) for having inspired the book, but that understates the earlier historian’s contribution. As far back as 1993, Harrold noted the significance of Torrey’s activism , as well as his prominence in “aggressive abolitionism” (see, for example, Harrold, “John Brown’s Forerunners: Slave Rescue Attempts and the Abolitionists, 1841-51,” Radical History Review 55 [Winter 1993], 89-110). While this biography offers careful attention to the details of Torrey’s life, the author leaves unclear how his work enhances public understanding or scholarship. Nevertheless, Fuller Torrey weaves together well-selected primary and secondary sources to highlight a man willing to break the law and even court death for his convictions. Dana Elizabeth Weiner Wilfrid Laurier University Making Freedom The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery R. J. M. Blackett Few historical subjects stir the popular imagination like the Underground Railroad. This interest has yielded countless interpretive sites, books, websites, and public programs that celebrate the exceptional heroism of the fugitives who successfully escaped slavery and settled in the North. In Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and Politics of Slavery, based upon the annual Brose Lectures given at the George and Ann Richards Civil War Center at Penn State University, R. J. M. Blackett goes beyond the stories about local sites and extraordinary BOOK REVIEWS 90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY individuals to explore its operations in the border states after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. In the process, Blackett shows how broadly the UGRR involved communities at points of origin in the South and destinations in the North, reveals the tactics of newly emboldened slaveholders, and establishes the significance of these conflicts to the broader push for emancipation. Blackett initiates his discussion of the ways that slaves communicated with the outside world by presenting a letter written by a fugitive Henry Banks to his owner. After escaping from Front Royal in the Shenadoah Valley in April 1853, Banks wrote letters to his owner to let him know of his whereabouts first in New York City and then on route to California. Designed to taunt his owner and divert slave catchers from finding his eventual destination in Canada, Banks’s letters were indeed unusual. Yet fugitives commonly used their literary skills to determine routes, forge freedom papers, and communicate to loved ones left behind. Slaves also routinely covered a lot of ground visiting between plantations and neighboring towns, a movement that owners could not contain. As a result, news traveled among...