Summary Of Before The Railroad By Gregory Wigmore

Everyone who has taken an American History class should be familiar with the southern slaves of the nineteenth escaping to freedom in the north, but often do not realize they were not the first ones with the idea of running away. Gregory Wigmore is a doctoral candidate for Department of History at the Univerity of California. In his article, “Before the Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland,” he explained how Canadian slaves escaped to North America in the Great Lake region before the times of the Underground Railroad. During this time the gradual emancipation of slaves was in effect in Canada since 1793, meaning that child slaves were still acknowledged as human property until they were twenty-five years of

For example, Wigmore writes, “It also led authorities on the ground to finally recognize the boundary’s political significance” (Wigmore, 438). Also, the author’s use of a map effectively shows Canadian-American Borderland and allows the reader to have a visual of the closeness of the two cities with river dividing them (Wigmore 440).
The author makes it difficult to determine whether or not this article is organized topically or chronologically because of its use of multiple examples throughout a specific time period. Over the course of the essay, the writing did bounce around from topic to topic, but at the same time it did follow an order of events that demonstrate, “how native’s peoples used porous borderlands to project power in ways that preserved their independence and limited the influence of encroaching empires” (Wigmore,

Within the text, he used certain sources more that others. The source used the most by Wigmore was the “Sibley Papers” both Sibley to Woods as well as Woods to Sibley. The repetition of these sources makes it obvious that they are valuable primary sources used by Wigmore. Wigmore also cited additional sources more than once in his article such as the source titled, “Black Slavery in Detroit” which is applied as a secondary source. “Slave in Canada” is another source which he used frequently that attests to the political and social developments of the Old Northwest and Upper Canada border. These sources are used to provide the reader with evidence to verify that the contents of, “Before the Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland” is factual. Both primary and secondary sources are also used to acknowledge the findings of previous historians and to give them credit. Wigmore does not necessarily challenge the work of other historians, but agrees and contributes to their already established