Renown in Exile

The book’s antislavery bias was evident in its subtitle, “The crimes committed by our government against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina, and other slave states, seeking protection under Spanish laws.” Billed by its publisher as “The Great Expose of the Crimes of Our Government Against the Slaves,” the book was a sensation with antislavery readers. Glowing reviews appeared in northern newspapers and the abolitionist press. Praise tended to focus on the book’s potential in the war of ideas over slavery, as in the testimonial of Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase:

"No one, it seems to me, can arise from perusing [Giddings’] work without deepening convictions of the wrong of slaveholding, and of the necessity of earnest and persistent effort for the deliverance of our National Government from the control of the Slave Power."