This icon was often placed beside runaway slave ads in 19th-century American newspapers
"A MOST DARING ACT" Robert "stole" his own wife, son, daughter and baby from Charles F. Neyle's plantation in South Carolina on the night of March 27, 1853

Fugitive slave advertisements in the United States, or runaway slave ads, were paid classified advertisements describing a missing person and usually offering a monetary reward for the recovery of the valuable chattel. Fugitive slave ads were a unique vernacular genre of non-fiction specific to the antebellum United States. These ads often include detailed biographical information about individual enslaved Americans including "physical and distinctive features, literacy level, specialized skills,"[1] and "if they might have been headed for another plantation where they had family, or if they took their children with them when they ran."[2]

Runaway slave ads sometimes mentioned local slave traders who had sold the slave to their owner,[3] and were occasionally placed by slave traders who had suffered a jailbreak.[4] Some ads had implied or explicit threats against "slave stealers," be they altruistic abolitionists like the "nest of infernal Quakers"[5] in Pennsylvania, or criminal kidnappers.

Harriet Beecher Stowe devoted a chapter of A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin to examining fugitive slave ads, writing "Every one of these slaves has a history, a history of woe and crime, degradation, endurance, and wrong."[6] She noted that such ads typically include descriptions of color and complexion, perceived intelligence of the slave, and scars or a clause to the effect of "no scars recollected."[6] Stowe also observed the irony of these ads appearing in newspapers with mottos like Sic semper tyrannis and "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to god."[6]

American Baptist, Dec. 20, 1852: TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD FOR A PREACHER. The following paragraph, headed "Twenty Dollars Reward," appeared in a recent number of the New Orleans Picayune: "Runaway from the plantation of the undersigned the negro man Shedrick, a preacher, 5 feet 9 inches high, about 40 years old, but looking not over 23, stumped N. E. on the breast, and having both small toes cut of. He is of a very dark complexion, with eyes small but bright, and a look quite insolent. He dresses good, and was arrested as a runaway at Donaldsonville, some three years ago. The above reward will be paid for his arrest, by addressing Messrs. Armant Brothers, St. James parish, or A. Miltenberger & Co., 30 Carondelet street." Here is a preacher who is branded on the breast and has both toes cut off—and will look insolent yet! There's depravity for you!

— Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1853

Ads describing self-emancipated slaves are a valuable primary source on the history of slavery in the United States and have been used to study the material life,[7] multilinguality,[8] and demographics of enslaved people.[9] Books by 19th-century abolitionist Theodore Weld had a "polemical effect" that was "achieved by his documentary style: a deceptively straightforward litany of fugitive slave advertisements, many of them gruesome in the details of physical abuse and mutilation."[10] Freedom on the Move is a crowdsourced archive of runaway slave ads published in the United States.[11]

Three U.S. Presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson are known to have placed runaway slave ads, seeking to recapture fugitives Oney Judge, Sandy,[12] and in the case of Jackson, both "a mulatto Man Slave" in 1804, and Gilbert in 1822.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Thomas, Heather. "Research Guides: Fugitive Slave Ads: Topics in Chronicling America: Introduction". guides.loc.gov. Retrieved 2023-07-21.
  2. ↑ Lewis, Danny. "An Archive of Fugitive Slave Ads Sheds New Light on Lost Histories". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2023-07-21.
  3. ↑ "$25 Reward". The Weekly Advertiser. 1856-06-18. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
  4. ↑ "$30 Reward". The Tennessean. 1855-05-15. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
  5. ↑ "The Last of His Kind: Talk with an Old Slave-Seller Who Lags Superfluous on the Stage". St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 1884-05-24. p. 12. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
  6. 1 2 3 Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1853). "Chapter IX: Slaves as They Are, on Testimony of Owners". A key to Uncle Tom's cabin: presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded. Boston: J. P. Jewett & Co. LCCN 02004230. OCLC 317690900. OL 21879838M.
  7. ↑ Hunt-Hurst, Patricia (1999). ""Round Homespun Coat & Pantaloons of the Same": Slave Clothing as Reflected in Fugitive Slave Advertisements in Antebellum Georgia". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 83 (4): 727–740. ISSN 0016-8297.
  8. ↑ Foy, Charles R. (2006). "Seeking Freedom in the Atlantic World, 1713—1783". Early American Studies. 4 (1): 46–77. ISSN 1543-4273.
  9. ↑ Jones, Kelly Houston (2012). ""A Rough, Saucy Set of Hands to Manage": Slave Resistance in Arkansas". The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 71 (1): 1–21. ISSN 0004-1823.
  10. ↑ Oakes, James (1986). "The Political Significance of Slave Resistance". History Workshop (22): 89–107. ISSN 0309-2984.
  11. ↑ "Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People". Zinn Education Project. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
  12. ↑ Costa, Tom (2001). "What Can We Learn from a Digital Database of Runaway Slave Advertisements?". International Social Science Review. 76 (1/2): 36–43. ISSN 0278-2308.
  13. ↑ Hay, Robert P. (1977). ""And Ten Dollars Extra, for Every Hundred Lashes Any Person Will Give Him, to the Amount of Three Hundred": A Note on Andrew Jackson's Runaway Slave Ad of 1804 and on the Historian's Use of Evidence". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 36 (4): 468–478. ISSN 0040-3261.

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