Beacons of Liberty

International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America

A history of the American anti-slavery movement told through stories of harrowing escape, political grandstanding, and mass migration. 

Beacons of Liberty shows how debates over citizenship, equality, and national character in the 19th-century U.S. unfolded on an international stage. Tracing stories of escape, capture, resettlement, and life abroad, Beacons of Liberty illuminates the profound influence that free soil abroad had on ideas about emancipation, freedom, and national identity in the 19th-century United States.

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Cover image of Beacons of Liberty by Elena K. Abbott, featuring scene of confrontation between slave catchers and armed fugitive slaves protecting themselves and their freedom

Featured in Ms. Magazine

(June 2021)

Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot, The Arrival in Canada, engraved for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Features a family kneeling on the ground on the shore of Canada, looking to the heavens in thanks.
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Beacons of Liberty introduces readers to the world of the nineteenth-century anti-slavery movement as its participants would have experienced it: as a struggle for freedom unfolding on an international stage.

Before the Civil War, free African Americans and fugitive slaves crossed international borders to places like Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean in search of freedom and equality. Beacons of Liberty tells the story of how these bold migrants catalyzed contentious debates over citizenship, racial justice, and national character in the United States.

Blending fresh historical analysis with incredible stories of escape and rebellion, Beacons of Liberty illuminates how the shifting geography of slavery and freedom beyond U.S. borders helped shape the hopes and expectations of black radicals, white politicians, and fiery reformers engaged in the American anti-slavery movement. Featuring perspectives from activists and risk-takers like Mary Ann Shadd, Martin Delany, and James C. Brown, Beacons of Liberty highlights the critical role that international free soil played in the long and arduous fight for emancipation and racial justice in the United States.

Cartoon depiction from the Anti-Slavery Almanac of 1839 titled "John Bull's Monarchy a Refuge from Brother Jonathan's Slavery." It depicts a British John Bull standing at the border of Canada, with a raised arm to stop an enslaver from crossing.
Historical engraving for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, titled "The Fugitives Are Safe in a Free Land." It features a family kneeling on the ground on the shore of Canada, looking to the heavens in thanks.

  • A first-rate study of international freedom struggles in the nineteenth century, Beacons of Liberty is a terrific book that deepens our understanding of trans-national abolitionism. As Abbott shows in rich and compelling detail, African Americans and their abolitionist allies built vibrant Free Soil communities across the Atlantic world.

    ~ Richard Blackett, author of The Captives Quest for Freedom and Andrew Jackson Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

  • This encyclopedic study of international free-soil geopolitics, from intellectual debates to creating actual 'free-soil havens, ' illuminates the manifold contributions of fugitive slaves, free black nation seekers and builders, and antislavery thinkers, black and white, to a vast enterprise: conceiving alternate models of a truly free and equitable society. I can't imagine a more comprehensive or instructive examination of this immense subject than Beacons of Liberty.

    ~ William L. Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • A stunning example of the border-breaking potential of understanding freedom in multiple locales, Abbott's concept of international free-soil havens will force historians to reckon with how Black Americans understood and implemented transnational abolitionism.

    ~ Elliott Drago, Indiana Magazine of History

  • Elena K. Abbott's Beacons of Liberty is one of the most original contributions to the history of the American antislavery movement, and antislavery thought more broadly, in the last decade.

    ~ Kate Rivington, Civil War Book Review

  • Elena Abbott's careful interrogation of the parallel movement of fugitive slaves and black emigrants to free spaces surrounding the slaveholding American republic unearths a significant facet of the abolition movement. Building on recent historical work, she reveals the political as well as ideological significance of international free soil for antislavery activism. This book makes an important intervention in the history of abolition and African Americans.

    ~ Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition and Draper Chair in American History, University of Connecticut

  • ... a deeply researched and well-crafted narrative of how international antislavery movements shaped the thinking of American activists.

    ~ Jonathan Daniel Wells, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

  • A valuable contribution to the study of African Americans and the Atlantic world.

    ~ Stephanie J. Richmond, The Journal of the Civil War Era