DAVID G. SMITH received his Ph.D. in American History from the Pennsylvania State University in 2006. He is a social historian of the Civil War period whose research centers on the intersection of war, societal conflict, and race. He currently works as a consultant to the Department of Defense.

In a provocative, well-researched study of race and freedom in south central Pennsylvania, David G. Smith, reveals how African Americans in Adams, Cumberland, and Franklin counties truly lives 'on the edge of freedom' during the half century from 1820 to 1870.

“Smith shows how antislavery activists in Pennsylvania engaged in a number of activities to assist fugitive slaves who entered Pennsylvania from Maryland and Virginia on their quest for freedom. . . Highly recommended.”

—Orville Vernon Burton:
In this well wrought and powerful narrative, Smith examines the vital borderland of south central Pennsylvania. Challenging scholars to re-think our understanding of the fugitive slave law, Smith examines that issue through white and black perspectives over nearly fifty years of sectional conflict, war, and reconstruction. This is an important contribution to our understanding of how war itself intensified the fugitive slave issue and redirected it. Smith’s thorough appendices demonstrate remarkable and comprehensive research reflected in this important narrative.

—Fergus M. Bordewich:
David G. Smith has delivered a revelatory portrait of one of the most important political battlegrounds of antebellum America, where networks of fugitive slaves, slave-catchers, informers, and Underground Railroad activists lived side by side in a tangled web. He sheds much new light on the struggle of the abolitionism to take route in southern Pennsylvania’s difficult soil, and challenges cherished preconceptions of the North as solidly anti-slavery and friendly to fugitive slaves. In the process, he has given us a deeper understanding of the daunting moral complexities of life in the pre-Civil War borderland. This is a book to be reckoned with.

“On the Edge of Freedom is a thoroughly researched, informative, and engaging piece of scholarship.”

David Smith's 'On the Edge of Freedom' is an important addition to the literature on antislavery in the North. By linking the antebellum and postbellum trajectories of slavery and freedom, readers can understand and appreciate the complexity of antislavery sentiment in a border region influenced by starkly opposed ideologies.

David Smith has produced a fascinating study of 19th-century race relations in the border area of Pennsylvania, which is not usually thought of as a border state.

—Matthew Pinsker:
“David Smith’s On the Edge of Freedom is the most nuanced, detailed, and sophisticated study of the Underground Railroad in rural Pennsylvania that I have ever read. Based on a wide variety of primary sources, this study offers a series of fresh insights about how the fugitive crisis along the Mason-Dixon Line directly affected the wider national struggle over slavery and union.”