Reviewed by:

• The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America by Robert H. Churchill
• W. Thomas Mainwaring

Robert H. Churchill’s The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America analyzes the connection between the Underground Railroad and the violence that fugitives encountered in various regions of the North. “The story of fugitives from enslavement and of the assistance that they received from the antislavery activists who would come to style themselves the Underground Railroad,” Churchill asserts, “is a story of violence” (p. 3).

To understand the Underground Railroad, Churchill argues, one must understand the “culture of violence” that prevailed in four regions ranging from the border South to New England and much of the northern United States (p. 4). The cultural norms that sanctioned the use of violence in the border South were quite clear: whippings, beatings, and even harsher punishments were justified in the name of maintaining the slave system and white supremacy. The second region Churchill identifies is the tier of northern counties just above the Mason-Dixon Line and the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River. These borderland communities seldom contested the operations of slave catchers and the violence that they employed to capture freedom seekers. The reception of slave catchers was distinctly different in the third region, what Churchill calls the “Contested Region”—the northern two-thirds of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey (p. 7). Here, community sentiments [End Page 121] insisted that slave catchers follow legal procedures and avoid violent methods of capturing fugitives. Slave catchers who violated these norms encountered resistance from these communities that opposed the flagrant use of violence. Finally, the fourth region, which Churchill designates as the “Free Soil Region,” encompassing New England, much of New York, Michigan, the environs of Chicago, and Wisconsin, rejected the culture of southern violence and offered open assistance to freedom seekers (p. 10).

Churchill offers a sophisticated analysis of how these cultures of violence changed as the Underground Railroad evolved between the 1830s and 1860s, particularly in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The collision of regional cultures happened most dramatically in instances of fugitive renditions and rescues. Churchill has developed an extensive database that attempts to record every rendition and rescue during these decades. In this effort he has gone beyond the work of Stanley W. Campbell, whose book The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860 (Chapel Hill, 1970) has been the standard work in the field for fifty years. Churchill argues convincingly that Campbell’s interpretation that the North was either supportive or indifferent to the Fugitive Slave Act is misleading. Churchill’s evidence shows that there was much more resistance to the act than Campbell found. Only in the border region of the free states do Campbell’s findings hold true. But elsewhere after 1850, northern communities increasingly rallied to the cause of the fugitive and violently opposed renditions.

Churchill contends that the Fugitive Slave Act was ultimately a failure in that it could not be enforced throughout much of the North (the number of rescues almost tripled after 1857). The reason for this failure was the change in attitudes in the Contested Region, which had once tolerated fugitive renditions as long as they were carried out according to legal procedures. By 1860, however, communities in this region had become alarmed by the proslavery violence that accompanied slave catchers. They had been exposed to “the brutality and arrogance of the violence of mastery” (p. 230). They came to change their cultural values to align with their Free Soil neighbors to the North in assisting freedom seekers and resisting slave catchers.

Churchill’s fine study will be of interest to students of the Underground Railroad and more generally of the sectional crisis. He offers a wealth of examples and case studies to buttress his analysis of changing cultural attitudes about violence...

审核人：

• 罗伯特·丘吉尔（Robert H.Churchill）的《地下铁路与美国战前的暴力地理》
• W.托马斯·梅因华林

罗伯特·H·丘吉尔（Robert H.Churchill）的《地下铁路与美国战前的暴力地理》分析了地下铁路与北部各地区逃犯所遭受的暴力之间的联系。丘吉尔断言：“奴隶制逃犯的故事，以及他们从反奴隶主义活动家那里得到的帮助，他们将自己称为地下铁路，这是一个暴力故事”（第3页）。

丘吉尔认为，要理解地下铁路，就必须了解在南部边境，新英格兰和美国北部大部分地区四个地区普遍存在的“暴力文化”（第4页）。批准在南部边界使用暴力的文化规范非常明确：以维持奴隶制度和白人至上的名义鞭打，殴打甚至更严厉的惩罚是合理的。丘吉尔确定的第二个区域是位于梅森-迪克森线和俄亥俄河上方以及密西西比河以东的北部县县。这些边疆社区很少与奴隶捕手的行动以及他们为俘获自由寻求者所采取的暴力作斗争。在第三地区，奴隶捕手的接受方式明显不同，丘吉尔称之为“有争议的地区”的地区-爱荷华州，伊利诺伊州，印第安纳州，俄亥俄州，宾夕法尼亚州和新泽西州的北部三分之二（第7页）。在这里，社区情绪[结束第121页]坚持认为奴隶捕手必须遵守法律程序，并避免采取暴力手段俘虏逃犯。违反这些准则的奴隶捕手遭到了这些社区的反对，反对公然使用暴力。最后，丘吉尔指定为“自由土壤地区”的第四地区，包括新英格兰，纽约州，密歇根州，芝加哥周边地区和威斯康星州，拒绝了南方暴力文化，并向寻求自由的人提供了公开援助（第10页）。

丘吉尔（Churchill）对地下铁路在1830年代和1860年代之间演变时如何改变这些暴力文化进行了详尽的分析，尤其是对1850年《逃亡奴隶法》的回应。在逃犯的逃犯和营救中，地区文化的冲突发生得最为剧烈。丘吉尔建立了一个广泛的数据库，试图记录这几十年来的每一次移交和营救。在这项工作中，他超越了斯坦利·坎贝尔（Stanley W. Campbell）的著作，他的著作《奴隶捕手：逃犯奴隶法的执行，1850-1860年》（Chapel Hill，1970年）是该领域的标准工作已有五十年了。丘吉尔令人信服地指出，坎贝尔关于北方对逃犯法的支持或冷漠的解释具有误导性。丘吉尔的证据表明，对该行为的抵制要比坎贝尔发现的要多得多。坎贝尔的发现仅在自由州的边境地区才成立。但是在1850年之后的其他地方，北部社区逐渐集结为逃犯和暴力对立的移交活动的起因。

丘吉尔认为，《逃亡奴隶法》最终是失败的，因为它无法在整个北部地区实施（1857年之后的营救数量几乎翻了三倍）。失败的原因是受争议地区的态度变化，该地区曾经容忍过逃犯，只要他们按照法律程序进行逃犯即可。但是，到1860年，该地区的社区对伴随奴隶捕手的奴役暴力感到震惊。他们曾遭受“精通暴力的残暴和自大”（第230页）。他们来改变自己的文化价值观，以与北方的自由土壤邻居保持一致，以协助寻求自由者和抵抗奴隶捕手。

丘吉尔（Churchill）的出色学习将吸引地下铁路的学生，更普遍的是分段危机的学生。他提供了大量示例和案例研究，以支持他对暴力的文化态度变化的分析。