Join us to discuss South to Freedom by Alice L. Baumgartner

About the Book:

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 States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico, where slavery was abolished in 1837. 

In South to Freedom, prize-winning historian Alice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. Southerners hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop runaways and secure slavery’s future. Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo México upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is an essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War. 

You can order a copy of the book from Kepler’s here.

What is the Non-Fiction Book Club?

Kepler’s Non-Fiction Book Club has been meeting since 2010. We cover all non-fiction genres from soup to nuts. Our meetings are monthly and we meet at 7:30pm every first Tuesday of the month via google meets. We welcome new attendees, and book suggestions and we vote every three months on the books suggested. I hope you feel free to join in whenever the spirit moves you.- Sina Herkelrath book club coordinator.

If you would like to attend any Book Club events please reach out to Heather Birchall at events@keplers.org to receive the Google Meet link.