Seeking Freedom in the Midst of Slavery

2018 ◽  
pp. 116-136
Author(s):  
Damian Alan Pargas
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
The U.S

Slave flight in the antebellum South did not always coincide with the political geography of freedom. Indeed, spaces and places within the U.S. South attracted the largest number of fugitive slaves. From the forests that bordered plantation districts (where slaves remained hidden and maintained by local slave communities) to southern cities (where slaves attempted to pass for free blacks), a majority of fugitive slaves strove for freedom by disguising themselves within the slaveholding states rather than risk long-distance flight attempts to formally free territories such as the northern U.S., Canada, and Mexico. This chapter examines the experiences of fugitive slaves who fled to southern cities between 1800 and 1860. It touches upon themes such as the motivations for fleeing to urban areas (e.g., slave families dodging forced migration), the networks that facilitated such flight attempts, and the ways in which runaway slaves navigated sites of “informal freedom” after arrival in urban areas. Whereas some scholars have approached this group of runaways mainly as “absentees” or “truants” (temporary runaways), this chapter argues that throughout the South, many fugitive slaves who hid out in towns and cities were in fact permanent refugees from slavery—at least by intent, and often by outcome.

scholarly journals “Urban Refugees: Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Informal Freedom in the American South”

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-284
Author(s):  
Damian Alan Pargas
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
American South ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Antebellum South ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Urban Refugees ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
The American South

Slave flight in the antebellum South did not always coincide with the political geography of freedom. Indeed, spaces and places within the South attracted the largest number of fugitive slaves, especially southern cities, where runaway slaves attempted to pass for free blacks. Disguising themselves within the slaveholding states rather than risk long-distance flight attempts to formally free territories such as the northern us, Canada, and Mexico, fugitive slaves in southern cities attempted to escape slavery by crafting clandestine lives for themselves in what I am calling “informal” freedom—a freedom that did not exist on paper and had no legal underpinnings, but that existed in practice, in the shadows. This article briefly examines the experiences of fugitive slaves who fled to southern cities in the antebellum period (roughly 1800–1860). It touches upon themes such as the motivations for fleeing to urban areas, the networks that facilitated such flight attempts, and, most importantly, the lot of runaway slaves after arrival in urban areas.

“Design His Course to Mexico”

2018 ◽  
pp. 232-250
Author(s):  
Mekala Audain
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Contested Spaces ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fugitive Slave ◽  
The U.S

In the mid-1850s, Texas slaveholders estimated that some 4,000 fugitive slaves had escaped south to Mexico. This chapter broadly examines the process in which runaway slaves from Texas escaped to Mexico. Specifically, it explores how they learned about freedom south of the border, the types of supplies they gathered for their escape attempts, and the ways in which Texas’s vast landscape shaped their experiences. It argues that the routes that led fugitive slaves to freedom in Mexico were a part of a precarious southern Underground Railroad, but one that operated in the absence of formal networks or a well-organized abolitionist movement. The chapter centers on fugitive slaves’ efforts toward self-emancipation and navigate contested spaces of slavery and freedom with little assistance and under difficult conditions. It sheds new light on the history of runaway slaves by examining the ways in which American westward expansion and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands shaped the fugitive slave experience in the nineteenth century.

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
The North ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
Fugitive Slave ◽  
The Law ◽  
Upper South

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, although in effect less than two decades, was one of the nation’s most controversial federal laws. Designed to provide southern slaveholders with greater assistance in the return of runaway slaves, it angered northern whites and blacks, divided communities, and yet still failed to assuage slaveholders’ concerns. Designed to calm sectional tensions as part of the Compromise of 1850, the law propelled the nation closer to war. Both the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 affirmed the rights of slaveholders to claim enslaved people who escaped into free states or territories. But enslaved people continued to seek freedom, and over time the number of those willing to aid them grew, eventually developing into the loosely organized network known as the Underground Railroad. Slaveholders, especially in the Upper South, annually lost an untold number of slaves to escape. Not all freedom-seekers were successful, but the costs were great nonetheless. To slaveholders, every escaped slave who made it North represented a loss of hundreds of dollars, and perhaps more importantly, spurred others to follow in his or her footsteps. Often associated with states’ rights ideology, white southerners demanded and eventually got what some scholars have called the greatest exercise of federal power before the Civil War. The enhanced federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 expanded on the earlier law in several important ways. It created a new position of commissioner who was appointed, not elected, and was paid ten dollars each time he sent an accused fugitive into slavery, only five dollars if he found the claim to be insufficient and ordered the accused released. The act also strengthened the penalties for helping fugitives escape or interfering with rendition; it explicitly stripped all rights from the accused; and stated that bystanders could be called upon to assist in slave recapture. Response to the law varied. Enslaved people continued to escape bondage. Fugitives living in the North and even free blacks felt threatened and organized for self-defense; thousands left for Canada. Abolitionists, black and white, protested in writing and speeches; some engaged in bold rescues of individuals claimed as fugitives. Many white northerners abided by the law, although for others the idea of being turned into de facto slave catchers pushed them toward opposition. Rather than settle the issue of fugitive slaves, the Law served to divide the nation further.

Freedom Interrupted

2018 ◽  
pp. 251-274
Author(s):  
James David Nichols
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

Scholars have long suggested that nineteenth-century runaway slaves turned the U.S.-Mexico border into a line of freedom. However, as this chapter argues, such an interpretation of the border is somewhat problematic. A closer examination of the history of northern Tamaulipas explains why. From 1820 onward, African Americans began to arrive to that region in search of freedom and a changed racial milieu, but this process was deeply fraught. U.S. American jurisprudence could continue to affect Mexican space formally and informally from the outside, greatly troubling Mexican sovereignty and its foreign relations in the process. Hence, the freedom found by African Americans in Mexico—guaranteed by Mexican law—was never particularly secure in practice. This chapter builds upon the previous chapter and provides an in-depth analysis of a specific case study of fugitive slaves’ struggles for freedom in the Texas-Mexico borderlands.

The Political Geography of Long-Distance Exchange in the Elevated Interior Region of the Yucatán Peninsula

2020 ◽  
pp. 352-367
Author(s):  
BENIAMINO VOLTA ◽  
JOEL D. GUNN ◽  
LYNDA FLOREY FOLAN ◽  
WILLIAM J. FOLAN ◽  
GEOFFREY E. BRASWELL
Keyword(s):  
Political Geography ◽  
Yucatan Peninsula ◽  
The Political ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Interior Region ◽  
Yucatán Peninsula

#LetThemStay#BringThemHere: Embodied politics, asylum seeking, and performativities of protest opposing Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hodge
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Protection Policy ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Transformative Potential

The body is the object of border protection. Yet the body remains largely outside reigning notions of the political in debates on bordering practices and challenges to it. Exploring what bodies do in their performativity as they negotiate and resist the securitisation of forced migration can open up new ways of understanding the disruptive potential of the body. In this paper, I draw on Judith Butler’s seminal work on contingency and norms of existence, along with her musings on forms of assembly, and recent feminist scholarship on social movements, to think through what the #LetThemStay and #BringThemHere protests in Australia might signal as advocates for those seeking asylum put their bodies on the line to disrupt the federal government’s border protection policy – Operation Sovereign Borders. While people seeking asylum themselves are at the bodily forefront of opposition and resistance – their bodies and bodily tactics negotiating border enforcement technologies – it is the bodily performativities of advocates for those seeking asylum that are the focus of this paper. The paper describes the way linguistic and bodily performativity coalesce in these performativities of protest as advocates embody the sociality being asserted. By making explicit the embodied politics at play in these forms of assembly, I explore the transformative potential of the body in its myriad capacities adding to long-standing feminist calls for a ‘corporeal geopolitics’ in political geography, one that centres the already existing politics of bodies.

The Political Geography of Long-Distance Exchange in the Elevated Interior Region of the Yucatán Peninsula

2020 ◽  
pp. 352-367
Author(s):  
Beniamino Volta ◽  
Joel D. Gunn ◽  
Lynda Florey Folan ◽  
William J. Folan ◽  
Geoffrey E. Braswell
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Path Analysis ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Least Cost Path ◽  
Maya Lowlands ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Interior Region ◽  
Exchange Networks

Understanding how exchange networks vary through time can provide important insights into the nature and extent of political control. In the Maya Lowlands, the political and economic spheres of ancient polities tend to overlap because elites sought to administer the movement of goods within their territories. We use data on the distribution of obsidian, jade, ceramics, and other commodities to reconstruct patterns of long-distance trade in the Elevated Interior Region. We suggest possible routes based on least-cost path analysis and integrate them into our analysis of the political economy. Finally, we discuss the relevance of data on long-distance exchange for studying the shifting political organization of the region. 

Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
North America ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
Fugitive Slave ◽  
Black Populations ◽  
The U.S

Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America examines and contrasts the experiences of various groups of African-American slaves who tried to escape bondage between the revolutionary era and the U.S. Civil War. Whereas much of the existing scholarship tends to focus on fugitive slaves in very localized settings (especially in communities and regions north of the Mason-Dixon line), the eleven contributions in this volume bring together the latest scholarship on runaway slaves in a diverse range of geographic settings throughout North America—from Canada to Virginia and from Mexico to the British Bahamas—providing a broader and more continental perspective on slave refugee migration. The volume innovatively distinguishes between various “spaces of freedom” to which runaway slaves fled, specifically sites of formal freedom (free-soil regions where slavery had been abolished and refugees were legally free, even if the meanings of freedom in these places were heavily contested); semi-formal freedom (free-soil regions where slavery had been abolished but asylum for runaway slaves was either denied or contested, such as the northern U.S., where state abolition laws were curtailed by federal fugitive slave laws); and informal freedom (places within the slaveholding South where runaways formed maroon communities or attempted to blend in with free black populations and pass for free). This edited volume encourages scholars to reroute and reconceptualize the geography of slavery and freedom in antebellum North America.

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