Cross to Freedom

When he wrote his history of the Black Seminoles in 1858, the antislavery congressman Joshua Giddings knew few details of their fate in Mexico. Nonetheless, he celebrated their victory over American slavery in characteristically ringing prose:

"Forcibly torn from their native land, oppressed, wronged, and degraded, they became voluntary Exiles from South Carolina and Georgia. More recently exiled from Florida and from the territory of the United States -- they are yet free! After the struggles and persecutions of a hundred and fifty years, they repose in comparative quiet under a government which repudiates slavery. To the pen of some future historian we consign their subsequent history."