| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 189 words from this article are provided below; about 376 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Fugitive's Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts. By Kathryn Grover. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001. xvi, 350 pp. $39.95, ISBN 1-55849-271-2.)

Why did the small New England city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, become the leading refuge for runaway slaves in the immediate pre–Civil War decades? Kathryn Grover contends that New Bedford attracted fugitive slaves because it had a history of racial diversity, welcomed black workers into its primarily maritime economy, and retained strong vestiges of its Quaker founders' antislavery traditions. 1

Grover writes that Native Americans, Cape Verdeans, and Polynesians, as well as African Americans, were well represented in New Bedford from the start of the nineteenth century. This diverse population of color offered welcomed anonymity to escaping slaves. Grover estimates that by the 1840s as many as 40 percent of New Bedford's blacks were runaway slaves. She concludes that southern suspicions were correct that trading ships from New Bedford often spirited runaways from their ports to freedom. Through painstaking research in public records, contemporary newspapers, and correspondence archives, Grover constructs fascinating biographical sketches of over one hundred refugees from slavery. . . .

There are about 376 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.