Publisher's Weekly Review
"My feelings have been greatly moved by Peter's having a Fugitive Slave woman sent to his care, & one of the most interesting people I ever saw," Susan Lesley confided to a friend in 1850. In this rigorously scholarly but totally absorbing narrative, Nathans unfolds a history as spellbinding as a novel, chockfull of fascinating people engaged in a venture both risky and affecting. When the fugitive slave Mary Walker finds refuge with the Lesleys in Pennsylvania, their lives, their families, and their circle of friends become deeply involved in the general cause and the specific mission-to secure the freedom of Walker's mother and her children. Nathans's account is full of twists and turns, as efforts to free the family are thwarted and Mary's son makes his own escape. The intimacy achieved through the use of letters between friends and family is remarkable; here is history lived in an ordinary household. The center, however, is held by Mary Walker's crusade, accompanied as it is by the Lesleys' own evolution; Susan finds "her work in the world," and Peter moves from antislavery to abolition. Nathans has transformed the paraphernalia of academia (ploughing through archives, thorough documentation, guarded speculation) into a book that will entrance the general reader, inform the scholar, and engage both. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Choice Review
Nathans (emer., Duke) provides a compelling account of one mixed-race slave woman and her quest for freedom, as well as her long struggle to reunite her family in the North. Mary Walker was a domestic servant of a North Carolinian slave owner who used one of her owner's visits to Philadelphia in the 1840s to gain her freedom. Nathans follows her travails, using letters of the Lesley family, who took Mary Walker in, and the Cameron family in North Carolina, who owned her and tried to recapture her during the 1850s and the Civil War period and who refused any and all entreaties by Mary Walker and the Lesleys for her family's freedom. In addition to his extensive readings of the personal correspondences of these two families and the one letter by Mary Walker that has survived, Nathans has worked extensively in archives in North Carolina, Philadelphia, and Boston and surroundings, where Walker lived with the assistance of the Lesley family. Nathan's effort to reconstruct long-overlooked historical events through the close readings of correspondence and public records is commendable and comprises an educational, informative contribution to the US narrative. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. C. Warren Empire State College
Library Journal Review
Prior to the Civil War, thousands of African Americans escaped from slavery, but because few recorded their experiences little is known about their efforts to forge new lives in freedom. Mary Walker, the focus of this study, was a light-skinned fugitive who escaped from a North Carolina planter couple when she accompanied them to Philadelphia in 1848. Her history, though unique in many ways, is illustrative of the hardships and challenges such migrants faced and the support they sometimes received from abolitionist networks. Her efforts to preserve her freedom, gain economic independence, and locate and purchase the freedom of her children still held as slaves is pieced together here by Nathans (history, emeritus, Duke Univ.; Quest for Progress: The Way We Lived in North Carolina, 1870-1920) from the papers of Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders. VERDICT The result is an engrossing and readable study, thoroughly researched and well documented, that fills a significant gap in the history of the period. It is recommended for all readers seriously interested in the experience of fugitive slaves in ante-bellum America.-Theresa Mc-Devitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.