Abstract
Contrary to common assumptions that self-emancipation by flight was only possible to regions outside the southern states, this article argues that many slaves actively took and preserved their freedom by hiding amongst free African American populations in urban areas. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, free black communities within the slaveholding southern states emerged or were bolstered as a result of an increase in manumissions. For many African-American slaves, it was an age of emancipation. Yet for most enslaved people living in the US South it was a period of intensification and expansion of human bondage. The developments of the time provided more slaves with new opportunities to escape slavery by fleeing to free black communities. The concept of illegal freedom will be applied, which stands in contrast to the legal freedom that could be obtained on free soil. Few scholars have examined the various strategies employed by self-emancipators to remain concealed from the authorities. This article concentrates on runaway slaves in Baltimore and Richmond, two cities which had large African-American populations. The case will be made that enslaved African Americans carved new spaces of freedom within southern cities, with the assistance of free black communities. It will demonstrate that urban centers within the Upper South were important spaces of illegal freedom for slave refugees, largely because of their numerous free black populations, and that the two group’s experiences were deeply interwoven.
Highlights
Tens of thousands [of slaves] ran away to towns and cities seeking safe haven and anonymity. [...] Cities offered opportunities for runaways to hide their identities, create new ones, to live with relatives—slave and free—and mingle with others. [...] [C]ontrol was less intrusive than in the country [and it] was little wonder that the streets of southern cities [...] lured runaways. 3 The practice of running away to a nearby slaveholding city and « passing for free », rather than bolt for free territory, was especially common in the relatively densely populated Upper South with cities like Alexandria, the District of Columbia, Baltimore, and Annapolis serving as beacons of freedom to slaves from the surrounding counties, as Franklin and Schweninger found4
Based on runaway slave advertisements, jail and police records, it is estimated that the number of fugitive slaves in both Richmond and Baltimore reached into the thousands—at least in the later decades of the Antebellum period
Richmond and Baltimore, both growing at an unstoppable pace in the nineteenth century, became beacons of freedom for self-emancipators in the southern states
Summary
ISSN : 1951-6789 Éditeur Université de Poitiers. Müller, « Illegal Self-Emancipation in the Urban Upper South, 1800-1860 », Mémoire(s), identité (s), marginalité(s) dans le monde occidental contemporain [En ligne], 19 | 2018, mis en ligne le 12 décembre 2018, consulté le 03 mai 2019. Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 3 mai 2019. Mémoire(s), identité(s), marginalité(s) dans le monde occidental contemporain – Cahiers du MIMMOC est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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