Adam Rothman, Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015).
Adam Rothman’s very recent work, Beyond Freedom’s Reach, uses a micro historical approach to articulate the complexities of the Emancipation Proclamation’s effectiveness, the toll of slavery on interpersonal relationships in the American South, and the struggle over child custody experienced by enslaved people and their owners. Beyond Freedom’s Reach explores the kidnapping of Rose Herera’s three children to Cuba during the Civil War by their stand-in mistress, Mary DeHart. As Rothman explains, micro histories are like “viewing a hurricane through a pinhole,” but serve as indicators of wider circumstances.[1] In Herera’s case, the historian can learn much about the kidnapping endemic to the Atlantic slave trade. According to Rothman, enslaved people perceived even their sale and movement across state or regional lines as “a form of organized kidnapping.”[2] Rothman’s work internationalizes American slavery with the Cuban connection, reveals the particularly vulnerable character of enslaved children, the weakness of freedom after emancipation, and the intense political processes necessary for black Americans to obtain their rights (or even their children).
A historian of gender in the American South may find Rothman’s work to be void of gender analysis. The question to ask before criticizing the absence of gender analysis in Beyond Freedom’s Reach is whether or not the story would be different, or reveal different conclusions, if subjected to such a category. Herera and DeHart, the main actors in Beyond Freedom’s Reach, are women engaged in a custody battle over three children biologically belonging to Herera, but enslaved by the DeHart family. The struggle over the Herera children is one that exemplifies an enslaved woman’s struggle to attain her identity as a mother in light of her mistress’s ability to manipulate enslaved children. Historians might question, then, Rothman’s choice to treat Herera and DeHart as gender-neutral in many ways. By including George Herera, Rose’s free black husband and father of her children, in the story, Rothman explains how gender conventions broke down in American slavery. The story doesn’t necessarily focus on Rose’s limitations as an enslaved woman per say, but rather on the system’s effect on parental authority and identity. In this way, George suffers under the system as well. Even as a free black man, he couldn’t claim any right to custody, as his children were being taken to Cuba and up to his subsequent death. Rothman reveals how the system had a horrific effect on parents in general when one or more of their family members were enslaved. This finding speaks to the pervasiveness of the racial system, even after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
The treatment of Rose and George as victims of slavery follows Rothman’s pattern of discussing enslaved people and free people of color with lives conditioned by slavery, rather than reduced to enslavement. It is the interaction of an enslaved woman with free people in her community that solidifies this perception of lives circumscribed by the system but not simplified by it. The evidence of that interaction is also telling of New Orleans during the antebellum and Civil War years, when an intricately connected community of free people of color and enslaved people presented anything but a class dichotomy.
Overall, Rothman’s work is extremely useful as not only a popular micro history, but as an indicator of the complexities of American slavery, the Atlantic trade, and the elements of those entities unique to New Orleans. Beyond Freedom’s Reach is a great teaching tool for helping students understand the breakdown of slavery, along with the melding racial, class, and gender systems during the Civil War.