Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River by Matthew Salafia

Abstract

Reviewed by: Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River by Matthew Salafia Vernon L. Volpe Matthew Salafia, Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 330 pp. $24.95. Harriet Beecher Stowe penned the most memorable image of an Ohio River boundary between slavery and freedom in her tale of Eliza braving the ice floes of the frozen river with little Harry in her arms. Other writers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Frederick Law Olmsted helped to create the stark contrast between enterprising free states such as Ohio and “indolent” slave states such as Kentucky. Yet in Slavery’s Borderland, Matthew Salafia (North Dakota State University) presents an intriguing alternative image of the Ohio River country and its unique status within a dividing Union. Not precisely a definitive border between “freedom” and slavery, the Ohio River did differentiate a region while shaping an ongoing debate concerning the legal status of blacks on both sides of the river. The strength of Salafia’s analysis lies in its localist orientation. He largely avoids generalizations and stereotypes to examine actual evidence, often in the form of circumstances and testimony contained in various legal disputes and rulings (some well-known, others quite obscure). These first-person accounts reveal a great deal about how white and black residents interpreted free status or bondage in the Ohio River region. He also compares vital statistics (free black or slave population, land values and production, etc.) in showing a surprising amount of “overlap” between “cross-river” communities, or counties situated on opposing sides of the river. The result is an original (and somewhat surprising) presentation of the Ohio River region that deserves attention from regional scholars and students of the sectional conflict alike. Conceding that the Ohio River remained a border between rather distinct states (if not societies), Salafia highlights the contradictions and ambiguity white and black, free and slave faced in the Ohio country. (He includes Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky in this portrait while setting Illinois mostly aside.) Surely tensions, and potential conflicts, remained but instead Salafia illustrates how (in the end) accommodation among the white residents largely held sway. Even Kentucky adhered to its favored self-image as a “moderate” slave state where the peculiar institution remained “mild” on its path to a natural if gradual death. As war emerged, Kentucky’s predictable (but doomed) efforts at neutrality failed as the state resisted emancipation while only “joining” the Confederacy once the war ended. Residents of the region would not know this result as they strove, literally [End Page 57] for decades, to resolve the inherent conflicts in a river system divided by competing laws and loyalties. The author is quite sensitive to the demands of geography (given the powerful presence of the Ohio), the role played by emerging markets and new technology (chiefly the steamboat), as well as developments owing to the passage of time. The result, he proposes, was a regional outlook (chiefly among the white residents to be sure) that rejected extreme positions, preferred compromise within the Union, and did not much benefit the black population, free or slave. In the end, the region contributed little to the rise of sectional discord. Neither did it resolve the national crisis over slavery and racial inequality. Thanks to Salafia’s diligent research and careful analysis we now have a better understanding of how the Ohio River created a “borderland” with rather distinctive characteristics and contributions. But his work also demonstrates how complex such a regional history can be. On the one hand the Ohio River counties often displayed similar qualities and supported a familiar outlook. Yet conditions and attitudes in southern Ohio or Indiana (not to mention Cincinnati or Louisville) could vary quite remarkably from those in the northern region of these states. But neither was the “mid-West” New England or the Deep South. The Ohio River did indeed mean different things to different people. Vernon L. Volpe University of Nebraska at Kearney Kearney, Nebraska Copyright © 2018 Paul Mokrzycki Renfro