Freedom Seekers

In this fascinating book, Damian Alan Pargas introduces a new conceptualization of 'spaces of freedom' for fugitive slaves in North America between 1800 and 1860, and answers the questions: How and why did enslaved people flee to – and navigate – different destinations throughout the continent, and to what extent did they succeed in evading recapture and re-enslavement? Taking a continental approach, this study highlights the diversity of slave fight by conceptually dividing the continent into three distinct – and continuously evolving – spaces of freedom. Namely, spaces of informal freedom in the US South, where enslaved people attempted to flee by passing as free blacks; spaces of semi-formal freedom in the US North, where slavery was abolished but the precise status of fugitive slaves was contested; and spaces of formal freedom in Canada and Mexico, where slavery was abolished and runaways were considered legally free and safe from re-enslavement.

Mississippi Valley, 1862

Union victories at Island No. 10 and Forts Jackson and St. Philip in April 1862 allowed the United States to quickly capture New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Natchez, and Memphis. Their advances prompted the U.S. government to initiate Reconstruction policies that included the enlistment of White, Unionist Southerners. The government also worked with free Blacks, freedmen, and military commanders to start enlisting African American volunteers drawn from throughout the Mississippi Valley by passing the Second Confiscation Act. The Confederate government was badly shaken by its military defeats, especially because its troops suffered from widespread apathy, desertions, and mutinies throughout the Mississippi Valley in 1862. A Confederate conscription law was necessary to bolster its sagging army. The Confederate offensive at Baton Rouge in August was fueled in part by the conscription law and was aimed to interrupt Black enlistments and shore up slavery.

Slave Streets, Free Streets: Visualizing the Landscape of Early Baltimore

This article explores some of the possibilities and challenges of reconstructing the physical world of Early Republic Baltimore. Drawing on *Visualizing Early Baltimore*, a detailed visualization of Baltimore city following the war of 1812, "Slave Streets, Free Streets" asks readers to think about where the city's free blacks and enslaved workers lived and worked, and how space could be both integrated and segregated. Our research shows that blacks and whites lived in close proximity, but not necessarily in the same kinds of housing or on the same streets. Mapping also shows that the actual buying and selling of individuals, in the absence of a centralized market, took place all over the city, making it literally impossible for residents, both black and white, to avoid. This article illuminates the lives of ordinary people even as it acknowledges the limits of our ability to recreate the past.

“The Servants … Could Not Be Conveniently Stored Away”

This chapter focuses on 1862, with a particular emphasis on how Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign impacted enslaved people and free blacks. Throughout the spring of 1862, enslaved people, estimated in the thousands, sought refuge with Union forces. However, as this chapter illustrates, taking sanctuary with Union troops did not mean that the Valley’s African Americans were passive participants. This chapter highlights the various ways freedom seekers supported Union operations in the Valley throughout 1862. Simultaneously, the chapter also illustrates that the desire for survival at times trumped the desire for freedom and prompted some freedom seekers to return to enslavers. Although incidents such as these have been used by advocates of the Lost Cause to perpetuate the “happy slave” myth, this chapter discusses the complexities of life for African Americans and how what some interpreted as loyalty to enslavers was in fact an enslaved person’s loyalty to themselves. Finally, this chapter examines how some Union soldiers, due to interactions with enslaved people in 1862, became more open to transforming the war to preserve the Union into one that also eradicated slavery.

“The Effect Was Immediate”

This chapter focuses on how the Shenandoah Valley’s African Americans reacted to John Brown’s raid and how enslavers in the region responded. Although throngs of enslaved people and free blacks from the Shenandoah Valley did not join Brown’s army of liberation in large numbers as Brown had hoped, this chapter illustrates that once the Valley’s enslaved learned of Brown’s attempt to strike a blow against slavery they employed various methods of resistance including arson and killing livestock to show their support for Brown’s actions, unnerving enslavers. This chapter examines the efforts of not only whites in the Valley to prevent Brown’s attack from sparking a broader insurrection through an increase in slave patrols but also enslavers’ attempts to downplay the events of Brown’s raid, advancing the notion that enslaved people in the Shenandoah Valley did not support Brown and remained loyal to their enslavers. At the epicenter of this particular discussion is the story of Heyward Shepherd, a free black man who became the raid’s first casualty.

“Freedom to Slaves!”

This chapter’s central focus is how the Valley’s African Americans responded to the Emancipation Proclamation and Union general Robert H. Milroy’s enforcement of it in the northern Shenandoah Valley during the first six months of 1863. Additionally, this chapter focuses on the important roles filled by African Americans, such as Lee Jenkins, in General Milroy’s espionage operations. Furthermore, the chapter examines the fate of African Americans following General Milroy’s defeat at the Second Battle of Winchester. While untold numbers of African Americans escaped north into Pennsylvania, some of whom were seized by Confederates as they moved into the Keystone State, several hundred African Americans were captured by Confederate general Richard Ewell’s command near Stephenson’s Depot, north of Winchester, among them Lee Jenkins, who ultimately committed suicide to avoid enslavement. Through Jenkins’ story this chapter also explores the difficult decisions free blacks such as Jenkins confronted when seized by Confederates and impressed.

“We Chilluns, Long wid Her, Wuz Lak de Udder Slaves”: Free Black Families and Quasi-slavery in the Late Antebellum Era

This article shows how and why some free black families ended up living among the enslaved in the late antebellum era. Enslavers brought free people of colour into forms of informal quasi-slavery that differed little from enslavement despite their free legal status. Despite a lack of evidence, piecing together free blacks’ experiences through surviving sources reveals much about the porous boundary between slavery and freedom where enslavers manipulated marginality for financial gain. There was no sharp delineation between slavery and freedom but instead a continuum of oppression characterized by varying degrees of persecution and fragile freedoms.

A Theatre of a History: Major Themes in Early African-American Theater and their Relations with the History

Although it is not the first literary type that comes to mind related to African-American literature, the drama has become an important form of black self-expression. The black theater, modernized with time and adapted to the popular formats of the era, has achieved rapid development in the after-slavery period. The Harlem Renaissance was especially a booming era in this respect. This genre sometimes appears as a reinterpretation of the classics like Shakespeare's works with a black point of view, but most often it appears as exclusive works, belonging to, and produced for black people. Black Nationalism, mentioned in this case, is a theme frequently used in theatrical works. Besides, subjects such as slavery, which blacks have suffered from for many years; their search for rights due to the unfair practices they have endured; the utopia of a new beginning as free blacks in another country; and the lives of historical personalities that have marked the blacks' struggle for freedom, are also among the themes that the black theater has used most frequently. In this study, the relationship between the history and the theater of blacks in America will be analyzed by exemplifying and discussing major themes used in the early African-American Theatre.