Beyond Garrison

Why was Massachusetts one of the few Northern states in which African-American males enjoyed the right to vote? Why did it pass personal liberty laws, which helped protect fugitive slaves from federal authorities in the two decades immediately preceding the Civil War? Why did the Bay State at the time integrate its public facilities and public schools as well? Beyond Garrison, first published in 2005, finds answers to these important questions in unfamiliar and surprising places. Its protagonists are not the leading lights of American abolitionism grouped around William Lloyd Garrison, but lesser men and women in country towns and villages, encouraged by African-American activists throughout the state. Laurie's fresh approach trains the spotlight on the politics of such antislavery advocates. He demonstrates their penchant for third-party politics with a view toward explaining the relationship between social movements based on race, class, and nationality, on the one hand, and political insurgency, on the other.

"This carefully researched study includes extensive footnotes, eight appendixes on Massachusetts voting patterns, a 20-page bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and 29 illustrations that enliven the text. Highly recommended." Choice, "Beyond Garrison is one of the best and most innovative studies of the abolition movement yet published. Laurie's discovery of important links between the antebellum labor movement and the anti-slavery crusade will force historians to reconsider their preconceived notions concerning the abolitionists' constituency. The book's insights into the means by which opponents of slavery translated their movement into grass-roots political action are also invaluable." Tyler Anbinder, George Washington University, "Beyond Garrison is a tremendous contribution to the history of abolitionism, anti-slavery, and antebellum politics. Through his careful biographical studies and reconstruction of electoral coalitions and campaigns, Bruce Laurie casts light on significant numbers of important but neglected anti-slavery activists and leaders and the crusades they waged at the ballot box and state house. Equally important, he takes seriously the passion that African American and white Bay Staters brought to their campaigns, forcing us to reevaluate our dominant understandings of Garrisonianism. Archivally grounded and historiographically engaged, Beyond Garrison is an important and original book." Eric Arnesen, author of Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality, "Written with clarity and passion and researched with unfailing energy, Bruce Laurie's Beyond Garrison puts politics back at the center of the story of American abolitionism. In Massachusetts, Laurie shows, coalitions of antislavery political activists won the day at the local and state level over the moral suasion of Garrisonians and the white supremacy of Democrats. Guided by a sure-handed scholar, this book is an illuminating and original journey through the thickets of political antislavery among the voters of the most important abolitionist state. New Englanders, Laurie brilliantly shows, voted slavery's death long before the Union armies destroyed it in war. This is scholarship in the form of a compelling cautionary tale about the importance of grassroots politics in great historical change." David W. Blight, Yale University, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, "Beyond Garrison is a major contribution to the history of the antislavery movement. Bruce Laurie demonstrates persuasively the social significance and wide-ranging outlook of those who worked within the political system to oppose slavery." Eric Foner, Columbia University

Bruce Laurie was born in Linden, NJ, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971. He did post-doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, and has held teaching positions at Mount Holyoke College and the University of Warwick. Professor Laurie has been honored with fellowships from the Carnegie Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Antiquarian Society. He has travelled to Western Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. A member of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Asociation, his articles and reviews have appeared in numerous collections of essays, as well as Labor History, Journal of Social History, and Journal of American History. He is a member of the editorial committee of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, and is the co-editor of Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker (1979). He is also the author of Working People of Philadelphia, 1800–1850 (1980), and Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (1989).