The U.S. Coastal Passageand Caribbean Spaces of Freedom

In November 1841, the U.S. slaver Creole transporting 135 slaves from Richmond to New Orleans was seized by nineteen slave rebels who steered the ship to the British Bahamas, where all secured their liberation. Drawing from this well-known story as a point of departure, this chapter examines the understudied maritime dimensions of British free soil policies in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on how such policies affected the U.S. domestic slave trade and slave revolts at sea. In contrast to the more familiar narrative of south-to-north fugitive slave migration, this chapter sheds light on international south-to-south migration routes from the U.S. South to the circum-Caribbean.

“Design His Course to Mexico”

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.

Freedom Interrupted

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.

Illegal but Tolerated

As antebellum Virginia became the main point of departure for the domestic slave trade and enslaved people increasingly ran the risk of being sold and deported to the Deep South, the free black population of Richmond, Virginia, was substantially augmented by an influx of fugitive slaves from the surrounding countryside who attempted to escape slavery by illegally passing themselves off as free. At the same time, the city became an important industrial site, stimulating an incessant demand for factory workers (both men and women) and domestic servants in the households of the growing white merchant class, thereby significantly expanding employment opportunities for black residents. These developments provided opportunities for slave refugees to hide amongst the free black population, pass for free, and find work in the booming labor markets of the city. Following up on the previous chapter, this chapter zooms in on a specific case study and focuses on the residential and economic integration of slave refugees in the Antebellum South, the interdependence of free blacks and fugitive slaves, and the intermingling of the lower classes within the bustling urban environment of Virginia’s capital city. Drawing from police registers, runaway slave ads, and court documents—all of which reveal illuminating details about the lives of runaway slaves and their interactions with the free black population—it reveals how fugitive slaves navigated an informal freedom in ways similar to the migration experiences of today’s illegal immigrants.

Seeking Freedom in the Midst of Slavery

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.

Borderland Maroons

Unlike their African forebears, most American maroons in the antebellum period did not look for freedom in remote hinterland locations. Instead, they settled in the borderlands of farms or plantations—and they went to the woods to stay. If not caught by men or dogs, and depending on their health, survival skills, and their families’ and friends’ level of involvement, runaway slaves could live there for years. These “borderland maroons” have become the most invisible refugees from slavery, although their (white and black) contemporaries were well aware of their existence. As is true for most American maroons, their lives have remained partially unknown, but several individuals who later got out of the South, or had loved ones who went to the woods, described that experience in slave narratives such as autobiographies and memoirs. In addition, detailed and intimate information about their existence can be found in the recollections of the formerly enslaved men and women gathered by the Works Progress Administration. This chapter builds upon the previous two contributions by exploring the lives of “borderland maroons” in the antebellum South with a particular emphasis on the (slave family) networks that sustained them indefinitely as refugees from slavery.

Revisiting “British Principle Talk”

This chapter explores the meaning of fugitive slave freedom in Canada West during the antebellum and Civil War era by examining the legal framework relating to slavery and race that emerged in what is now modern-day Ontario. Changes in statutory law, jurisprudence, and British free soil diplomacy will be addressed, revealing the evolution of Canada West as a safe haven from which few fugitive slaves were taken by slave catchers or state-sanctioned extradition. The chapter discusses what freedom on the ground meant for early black Canadians in terms of political rights, access to courts, education, landownership, employment, religious worship, participation in the militia, and the enjoyment of public places and services. Particular attention is given to the agency exercised by fugitive slave refugees and other black Canadians in shaping their own freedom and building new lives for themselves and their children, in sustaining Canada West as a beacon of freedom for others still enslaved in the American South, and in combatting race prejudice, which at times differed little from that prevailing south of the border.

Black Self-Emancipation, Gradual Emancipation, and the Underground Railroad in the Northern Colonies and States, 1763–1804

This chapter explores the extent, meaning, and impact of enslaved African-American flight during the era of the American Revolution. Its temporal boundaries range roughly from 1763, the onset of Revolutionary activities and discourses, to state-level “First Emancipation,” to the last act of Gradual Emancipation in New Jersey in 1804. Geographically, the article covers the Atlantic seaboard colonies and later states. The chapter argues that black self-emancipation via flight—including individual actions but also the mass movements of the Revolutionary Black Loyalists—was the single greatest method for enslaved people to gain freedom in this rapidly changing political landscape. Slave flight indeed had a profound impact on that landscape and affected American construction of slave laws during the Revolutionary Era.

Introduction

The introduction explains the changing geography of slavery and freedom in North America in the Age of Revolutions, specifically the development of various “spaces of freedom” throughout the continent, and how this affected patterns of slave flight. It further provides a brief overview of the purpose and contents of the book and positions this volume within the academic literature on runaway slaves. It also looks at issues related to what Dale Tomich calls “the second slavery,” manumission, and the abolition of slavery.

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Drawing from the exceptional stories of hundreds of Texas fugitive slaves, this chapter examines how runaways navigated the geography of slavery and freedom in that state in the antebellum period. It places Texas in the growing Atlantic historiography of runaway slaves, and considers the unique circumstances under which enslaved people fled in the southern borderlands. A new available digital resource, the Texas Runaway Slave Project, which features more than 1,800 documented escape attempts by Texas slaves, is the basis for this study. The chapter delves into the wealth of information available in newspaper metadata, analyzing the minutiae of runaway slave advertisements, including publication decisions, word choice, content repetition, and variation, in order to supplement traditional demographic analyses of fugitive slaves.