-----Original Message-----
From: H-South Review Editor Ian Binnington [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 29 October, 2001 2:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: H-South Review: Schwarz Responds


Philip J. Schwarz's reply to James C. Foley's review of Schwarz, _Migrants
Against Slavery: Virginians and the Nation_.

I would like to thank James Foley for his comprehensive and thoughtful
review of my book. Mr. Foley recognizes the hybrid nature of _Migrants
Against Slavery_. It is part Virginia history and part U.S. history (and to
a lesser extent, Canadian history). The reviewer has correctly noticed the
massive movement of Virginians to other states and territories. When David
Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly wrote about this migration in _Away, I'm
Bound Away_ (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1993), their catalog of
a 1993-1994 Virginia Historical Society exhibit on Virginians' movement to
the west, they could not help but notice that an unexpectedly large
proportion -- roughly 50 percent -- of ex-Virginians settled in free rather
than slave states.

As written, however, the reviewer's statement that white "Virginians
typically migrated from east to west or south to north, heading toward free
territory such as the states of Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois" is open to the
mistaken impression that those former Old Dominion residents traveled only
to free states. As James Foley knows, about the same proportion relocated
in slave states, indicating that Old Dominion residents had to decide not
only whether to leave their homes but also if they would to go a free or
slave state.

Mr. Foley notices my concern with missing explanatory evidence about
migrants' motives. It was fortunate that I was able to find the evidence I
did in the stories of several individuals and groups. There is clearly more
evidence that could be mined from numerous manuscript collections -- a
research task that was only partly possible for me. There are also recently
published studies such as Stephen Vincent's _Southern Seed, Northern Soil:
African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765-1900_ (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1999) that are adding to our understanding of
migrants' motives.

I appreciate the reviewer's suggestion that one could investigate the
motives of West Virginian statehood advocates during the Civil War as an
example of antislavery migration -- albeit migration of a different sort
than I studied.

I included no map of Virginia. I relied on a 1998 road atlas as my source
concerning locations and distances involved in people's escapes from
slavery. That seemed good enough for me. But readers would undoubtedly
benefit from maps in the book itself (other than the 19th-century map of
southwestern Ohio that I did include.)

I must point out that the reviewer's statement that "following the Nat
Turner revolt in 1831, [George T.] Gilliam moved to Pennsylvania, and then
to Illinois, and eventually to Missouri" is geographically correct but errs
concerning the timing I suggested for Gilliam's departure from Virginia. As
I indicated on p. 105 and p. 213 n. 6, Gilliam and his family probably
moved out of their native state in spring 1831, perhaps motivated by the
April passage and June implementation of a Virginia law against gatherings
of free and enslaved African Americans to be taught to read or write. This
timing -- several months before Nat Turner's Rebellion -- may therefore
have been quite important.

Fascination with one's subject is an obvious necessity for anyone who
embarks on a long course of research. The many migrants against slavery
never failed to hold my attention for some years. I thank James Foley for
finding some of that fascination in my book.

Philip J. Schwarz
Department of History
Virginia Commonwealth University
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