Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865.

Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865. By Stanley Harrold. Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c. 2003. Pp. [xvi], 280. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-8071-2834-4; cloth, $69.95, ISBN 0-8071-2805-8.)

Washington, D.C., always a magnet for activists, was a crucial locale in the struggle against slavery. In Subversives, Stanley Harrold argues that slavery "was both weak and vicious" in Washington and that, for a limited time, white and black people cooperated in effective antislavery efforts there (p. 11). The book makes an original contribution to our understanding of regional variations in the antislavery movement and highlights the important role of antislavery activism in the national capital.

Harrold's story focuses on a number of white antislavery northerners and their activities in Washington, D.C., and the Chesapeake region from the end of the eighteenth century through the Civil War. The general trajectory of the book is a familiar one. Abolitionist-style activism, at its apex in the 1830s and 1840s, diminished after 1850, when the battle against slavery was joined by armies of activists motivated more by political goals than by moral or emotional revulsion. Within this framework, Harrold--author of two other books on abolitionism in the North/South border region--gives us fascinating stories of figures both renowned and little known. Particularly interesting is his reconstruction of a vibrant Underground Railroad network in Washington that was founded by Charles T. Torrey, a white Massachusetts native, and Thomas Smallwood, a black local, in 1842. In Harrold's view, such white activists as Torrey, Gamaliel Bailey, Myrtilla Miner, and William L. Chaplin were genuinely disturbed by slavery and the slave trade. They empathized with slaves and free blacks and were willing to work against slavery in myriad ways: through political channels, by distributing propaganda, and even more antagonistically, by helping some slaves escape and raising funds to purchase others. Subversives illuminates the fascinating way national issues and local activities intertwined in the capital. For instance, Joshua R. Giddings, a radical congressman from Ohio, received visits in his home from local black people seeking help in freeing relatives from slavery or prison and was at least peripherally involved in the attempted escape of seventy-seven slaves on the schooner Pearl in 1848. Several members of the city's white press corps also worked to undermine slavery and the slave trade locally. All these efforts reverberated in Congress. The Pearl incident, for example, provoked vicious and widely publicized attacks on Giddings, and during debates over what became known as the Compromise of 1850, the achievements of Washington's abolitionists received considerable attention. Harrold argues convincingly that antislavery "subversives" succeeded in placing local slaveholders on the defensive and in shaping the national debate over the future of slavery.

Although Harrold describes Subversives as an analysis of Washington's "biracial antislavery community," his portrayal of black activists is quite thin (p. 39). Other historians have begun using the records of local courts, churches, and schools, as well as the census, to reconstruct how free and enslaved African Americans mitigated the impact of slavery by building institutions and cultivating interpersonal relationships. In contrast, Harrold points out in a useful bibliographic essay that he relies largely on sources "published elsewhere or ... housed in archives distant from [Washington]" (p. 259). Had Harrold made more use of local sources, he might have told a more nuanced story about black institutions in the antislavery movement and about relationships among black and white activists. As it stands, Harrold's conviction that "much can be achieved through interracial cooperation" often seems to trump his evidence (p. 257). Still, Subversives is impressively researched, draws useful attention to regional dynamics in the antislavery movement, and helps demonstrate the national import of local politics in the nation's capital.

KATE MASUR

University of Maryland