Reviewed by:

• Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War by Jonathan Daniel Wells
• Robert Churchill

Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War is a revised and expanded essay based on the Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar Lectures delivered by Jonathan Daniel Wells at Mercer University in 2017. Wells places fugitives from enslavement at the center of an emerging re-exploration of causes of the secession crisis and the outbreak of the Civil War. Drawing on the work of Stanley Harrold, Manisha Sinha, Richard J. M. Blackett, and others, Wells argues that fugitives from enslavement exacerbated the sectional conflict by demonstrating the impossibility of creating a clear division between a slaveholding South and a free North. Decades of escapes and subsequent fugitive resistance to kidnapping and rendition undermined the compromises over slavery embedded in the Constitution. Continual violence in northern communities and the moral example of Black [End Page 125] resistance forced increasing numbers of white northerners to confront their complicity in the slave system, which led to the growth of a free-soil identity, a new political consciousness that perceived southern attempts to enforce slavery on northern soil as aggressive and threatening. Stiffening interracial resistance to renditions and kidnappings led to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which merely poured oil on the growing fire. A cycle of aggressive enforcement of the law and broad and violent resistance pounded away at sectional divisions and broke the Unionist consensus that governed the country under the second party system. A growing dedication to states’ rights ideology among northern defenders of free soil emboldened southern fire-eaters. By 1860, sectional alienation had reached a point where the South proved unwilling to live under a government led by the Republican Party, and the North proved unwilling to let the South go.

Wells’s explanation of the growth of free-soil identity in the North and the centrality of fugitives in that process is accurate, important, and clearer than a number of recent attempts by other scholars. That is a praiseworthy accomplishment. His narrative would, however, benefit from greater attention to geography and to the details of the violent incidents he describes. Wells asserts that kidnapping was widespread throughout the North, but all of his examples come from the northern borderland and even from slave states. He describes an attempt to rescue Thomas Sims in 1851 and a violent fugitive rescue in Detroit as responses to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. There were plans to rescue Sims, but no attempt took place, and the rescue in Detroit he refers to dates from 1833.

More important, Wells conflates higher law ideology with states’ rights. Though both are strains of nullification sentiment, they are distinct ideas. There is little evidence that states’ rights had become the dominant strain of antislavery nullification even by the late 1850s. Furthermore, articulation of the higher law did not signal a repudiation of the Constitution. It was largely compatible with the various strains of antislavery constitutionalism emerging in the 1840s.

Finally, Wells argues that the growth of free-soil identity explains the North’s decision for war. In fact, it explains disunion. The burden of Wells and other scholars advancing this narrative is that they must now offer a new and better explanation of the North’s decision for war.

审核人：

• 不再盲目：非裔美国人的抵抗，自由土壤的政治和内战的到来乔纳森·丹尼尔·威尔斯（Jonathan Daniel Wells）
• 罗伯特·丘吉尔

不再盲目：非洲裔美国人的抵抗，自由土壤的政治和内战的来临是根据梅瑟大学乔纳森·丹尼尔·韦尔斯（Jonathan Daniel Wells）在2017年发表的Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar演讲而修订和扩大的文章。韦尔斯将奴役中的逃犯置于新兴的重新探究分裂国家危机和爆发原因的中心。内战。威尔斯利用斯坦利·哈罗德（Stanley Harrold），曼尼莎·辛哈（Manisha Sinha），理查德·杰克·布莱克特（Richard JM Blackett）等人的著作，认为奴隶制的逃犯加剧了局部冲突，因为这表明不可能在控制奴隶制的南方与自由的北方之间建立明确的分工。数十年的逃逸以及随后对绑架和引渡的逃亡抵抗破坏了宪法中关于奴隶制的妥协。北部社区的持续暴力行为和黑人的道德榜样[完页125]抵抗运动迫使越来越多的白人北方人面对他们在奴隶制度中的同谋，这导致了自由土壤身份的增长，这是一种新的政治意识，使南方人认为在北方土壤上实行奴隶制的企图是侵略性和威胁性的。种族间对移交和绑架的强烈抵制导致1850年《逃亡奴隶法》的通过，该法案只是在不断燃烧的大火上倒了油。激烈的执法循环和广泛的暴力抵抗的循环冲击了各部门之间的分歧，并打破了在第二党制下统治该国的联盟主义者共识。北方捍卫自由土壤的国家对国家权利意识形态的奉献日益增强，激怒了南方的食火者。到1860年，

威尔斯对北方自由土壤身份的增长以及逃犯在这一过程中的中心地位的解释比其他学者最近的许多尝试更为准确，重要和清晰。这是一个值得称赞的成就。但是，他的叙述将受益于对地理和他所描述的暴力事件的更多关注。威尔斯断言，绑架在整个北部都很普遍，但他的所有例子都来自北部边境地区，甚至来自奴隶制国家。他描述了1851年试图营救Thomas Sims的企图和底特律的一次暴力逃犯营救，作为对1850年《逃亡奴隶法》的回应。有计划营救Sims，但未进行任何尝试，他提到的底特律营救始于1833年。

更重要的是，威尔斯将高级法律思想与国家的权利相结合。尽管两者都是无效情绪的源头，但它们是截然不同的想法。几乎没有证据表明，即使到1850年代后期，国家的权利也已成为反奴隶制无效的主要动力。此外，高等法律的明确表达并不意味着对宪法的否定。它在很大程度上与1840年代出现的各种反奴隶制立宪主义相吻合。

最后，威尔斯认为，自由土壤身份的增长解释了朝鲜的战争决定。实际上，它解释了分裂。威尔斯和其他学者推动这种说法的负担在于，他们现在必须对朝鲜的战争决定提供一个新的更好的解释。