Book description
A "gripping and poignant" (Wall Street Journal) account of the coming of the American Civil War, showing the crucial role of slaves who escaped to Mexico
The Underground Railroad to the North promised salvation to many American slaves before the Civil War. But thousands of people in the south-central United…
Why read it?
1 author picked South to Freedom as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
South to Freedom tells the relatively unknown story of Americans who moved to Mexico for the most existential of reasons: to flee slavery in the 1840s-1850s.
Although Mexico has its own history of slavery, it abolished that evil earlier than the United States did, and this book provides accounts of Mexican officials and ordinary citizens risking their lives to protect fugitive slaves from pursuing slaveholders.
Southern states believed that annexing Texas and invading Mexico would ensure slavery's continuation, but as Baumgartner shows, those actions were instead among the proximate causes of the Civil War. Baumgartner’s important book enhances the sanitized…
From Ann's list on Americans learning to live in Mexico.
If you love South to Freedom...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Want books like South to Freedom?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like South to Freedom.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,277
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like South to Freedom, you might also like...
The Bridge
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
And Then They Were Gone
Of the 918 Americans who died in the shocking murder-suicides of November 18, 1978, in the tiny South American country of Guyana, a third were under eighteen. More than half were in their twenties or younger.
The authors taught in a small high school in San Francisco where Reverend Jim…
