Escape to the City

“A work of political economy at its best. Müller sets aside the traditional narrative of slavery to freedom and explores the mobility, networking, and labor of the runaway slaves who chose to stay in the South, focusing on how they lived and survived in a complex social environment.”—R. J. M. Blackett, author of The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery

“Through rigorous research, lucid prose, and striking tabulation, Müller plots new spatial approaches toward fugitive slaves' flight to antebellum southern cities that breathe life into these neglected historical actors through lived experiences, context of flight, and arresting comparison with contemporary refugees.”—Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie, author of Rebellious Passage: The Creole Revolt and America’s Coastal Slave Trade

“Müller has provided a valuable resource for scholars of history at every level and should spark further exploration of the topic of unfreedom.”–Journal of American History

“A fascinating exploration of the experiences of fugitives from slavery . . . . Escape to the City is an important contribution to the scholarship on slavery, labor, and urban life. Müller’s work is worthy of a wide audience.”—Warren E. Milteer Jr., Journal of Southern History

“Escape to the City offers a freshly interdisciplinary example of how urban history, labor history, immigration studies, legal history, and the study of slavery together can offer new ways of considering the experience of fugitive enslaved people in the antebellum period. . . . Standing as an interdisciplinary evaluation of the antebellum experience of enslaved people seeking freedom, [Müller’s work] is recommended to any scholar seeking to engage in new ways of considering freedom.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“[Müller’s] book makes an important contribution not only by illuminating the experiences of Southern fugitives, but also by complicating our understanding of the ambiguous legal status of the free Black people in the antebellum South. . . . Müller paints a compelling, nuanced picture of the fugitive experience from fragmentary archival evidence and builds a convincing argument about their integral role in the antebellum urban economy. Escape to the City makes valuable contributions to the history of nineteenth-century slavery in the United States and to the history of the urban South.”—Slavery & Abolition

“Müller’s attunement to labor history and political economy leads her to ask novel questions about how fugitives in southern cities fit in urban labor markets. Her discoveries reveal a great deal about the complex dynamics of slavery, race, status, and capitalism in the antebellum South. . . . [M]any great insights [are] packed into this book. . . . [I]f the field picks up the important work Müller has begun here, we might approach a new, groundbreaking understanding of the complex relationship between slavery, capitalism, labor, and race in the early United States.”—Reviews in American History

“Escape to the City sheds light on the journey of enslaved African Americans who broke their chains to become permanent refugees in cities like Baltimore, Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans . . . [and] reveals the alternative Black geographies that permanently contested slave power and white supremacy at the heart of the nineteenth-century American South. . . . Hopefully, scholars of Latin American and the Caribbean will follow Müller’s steps to reveal other hidden stories of Black resistance across the continent.”—International Review of Social History

“[Müller] makes significant contributions to our understanding of slave resistance and the relationship between slavery and capitalism. . . . [O]ne of the most thought-provoking portraits of the urban South yet published . . . [which] will doubtless prove to be a touchstone in ongoing debates about the compatibility of slavery and urban society.”—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“A fascinating exploration of the experiences of fugitives from slavery. While most readers may think about the northern United States and Canada when considering most likely destinations for enslaved people in search of freedom, Müller convincingly demonstrates that the cities of the South were important sites of refuge for countless enslaved persons.”—Journal of Southern History