In July of 1841, Illinois abolitionist Alanson Work and two of his students, George Thompson and James Burr “attempted to induce slaves of four different masters in Marion County to leave their owners and travel through Quincy and Chicago to freedom.”

George Thompson (House Divided)

These four enslaved people, presumably wary of the white abolitionists, instead alerted their slaveholders of the abolitionists’ presence. Work, Thompson, and Burr were then arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison—the second longest slave stealing sentence in Missouri history. ^[1]. These three men were not the only abolitionists sent to prison in Missouri for “slave stealing,” the term denoted to describe those who are caught assisting the enslaved in their escape attempts. In Missouri courts, slave stealing was an act of grand larceny, and at least 42 “slave stealers” were imprisoned by Missouri circuit courts between 1837 and 1862.^[2]

Legal scholar Harriet Frazier places this “slave stealing” episode within the larger historical context of centuries of escapes and the growth of the Underground Railroad in the decades leading up to the Civil War in her book Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves and Those Who Helped Them (2004). Frazier’s book presents “unique and valuable information” about enslaved and free Blacks living in Missouri in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the agents and processes of the Underground Railroad. Frazier’s background as a law professor at Central Missouri State University and a licensed attorney provides a unique lens to thoroughly analyze the ways that law, culture, and society shaped the nature of slavery and escapes in Missouri from 1763 to 1865.^[3] The author presents a comprehensive overview of the history, legal system, and people in Missouri that shaped the experiences of the enslaved, as well as actions taken by slaves to assert their agency and achieve freedom. Frazier’s book notes numerous individuals and stories from the historical record that shed insight on the nature of slave stampedes.

Frazier claims that slave stampedes and the public panic surrounding them did not become significant in Missouri until the 1850s, following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.^[4] The term “stampede” is used once, in a reference to the Louisiana Journal article entitled “Stampede of Negroes from Lewis County,” which describes the June 1860 escape of 11 enslaved people belonging to seven different slaveholders from Lewis County. Frazier does not comment on the use of the term “stampede,” but she writes that “these accounts of absconding slaves all appeared in Missouri newspapers after the Thirty-First Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in September 1850,” suggesting a direct connection between the Fugitive Slave Act and the recognition of slave stampedes in the media.^[5]

Frazier also provides the names and stories of numerous abolitionists living in Missouri in the years leading up to the Civil War. In the fourth chapter, which describes the lives of numerous notable free blacks in the state, the Reverend John Meachum is mentioned again (learn more here). According to Frazier, Meachum’s abolition work primarily consisted of purchasing slaves to train them in professional skills such as carpentry and then free them. He also allegedly taught enslaved and free people of color to read and write in the basement of his church, and then, when the operation was shut down by the police, on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. However, a more complicated portrait of Meachum is revealed in a freedom suit filed against him by an enslaved woman named Judy. The decision was made to grant Judy her freedom, but Meachum’s opposition to Judy’s case throughout the trial paints a “less attractive side of Meachum than the one usually presented.”^[6] Later in the book, Frazier mentions the 1855 arrest of Mary Meachum, John Meachum’s wife, for attempting to help nine slaves across the Mississippi River in their bid for freedom. In 2001, the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing and Rest Area in St. Louis was dedicated to commemorate this event.^[7]

Freedom’s Crossing, a mural at the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing Site. (Kevin McKague)

Another notable case was that of Dr. John Doy, who was already known for his friendship with John Brown, an infamous abolitionists who in 1858 freed 11 enslaved Missourians in a spontaneous raid.^[8] In January of 1859, Dr. Doy and two other men were caught in Kansas by Missouri slaveholders the company of thirteen freedom seekers. Dr. Doy and one of the men with him, his son, were arrested for slave stealing and taken to Platte County, Missouri.

New York Times, “Dr. Doy of Kansas,” March 18, 1859
Click to enlarge. (House Divided)

His case became so well known through newspapers and word of mouth that Doy and his son were kidnapped by an angry mob of Missouri slaveholders and almost lynched while awaiting trial. After numerous retrials, Doy was sentenced to five years in prison. However, on July 23, 1859, ten of his friends broke into the Buchanan County jail at midnight and successfully rescued Doy and returned him to Kansas. Dr. Doy wrote about this entire experience in his memoir, The Thrilling Narrative of Dr. John Doy of Kansas (1860), and continued to claim for the rest of his life that he had nothing to do with the escape of the thirteen slaves.^[9] Most historians, such as Diane Mutti-Burke, dismiss this claim of Doy’s. Whether he did assist the freedom-seekers or not, however, Doy’s experience, and the experiences of other jailed abolitionists, reveal how much anger the pro-slavery population of Missouri felt towards white abolitionists who “stole” their property and stampeded them to freedom.

Dr. John Doy and his rescue party (Kansas Historical Society)

^[1] Harriet C. Frazier, Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves and Those Who Helped Them, 1763-1865 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc., 2004), 131-134.

^[2] Frazier, 124, 131.

^[3] “Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves and Those Who Helped Them,” Judy Sweets, Kansas History 28:1 (2005), 75.

^[4] Frazier, 101.

^[5] Frazier, 102.

^[6] Frazier, 76-78.

^[7] Frazier, 173.

^[8] Frazier, 145-150.

^[9] Frazier, 154-161.

“Slave Stampede,” Daily Missouri Republican, July 16, 1856, p. 3 Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

On July 16, 1856, the Daily Missouri Republican reported on a large reward being offered to help recapture a group freedom seekers: “Slave Stampede: A reward of $1,500 was offered yesterday for the apprehension of eight negroes-a man and wife, three sons, two daughters and the wife’s sister, who disappeared on Monday night. They are the property of Messrs R. Wash and John O’Fallon Jr. Several other slaves are supposed to be in their company on the underground track.”^[1] This short article, located in the middle of four pages of local and national news, described a group escape of eight or more enslaved blacks as a “stampede.” Yet what does the term mean in this context? Was it meant to sensationalize the news to grab readers’ attention? Or was it designed as a way to dehumanize enslaved people by comparing them to a hoard of wild animals?

Lea VanderVelde, a noted legal historian from the University of Iowa School of Law, attempts to answer these questions and many others in two recent books, Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier (2009) and Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom Before Dred Scott (2014). The former is a biography of Harriet Scott that examines her life as a slave and as an often-overlooked plaintiff behind the infamous Scott v Sandford decision. The latter study is a review of around 300 original court case files for freedom suits from the circuit courts of St. Louis, Missouri. All of these cases, described by the author as “songs of freedom,” can be viewed online here.^[2] Most of these suits involved claims of enslaved people being held illegally in bondage in either free territories or states, often by slaveholders, such as army officers (in the case of the Scott family) who traveled widely. In both studies, VanderVelde reveals valuable information not only about the nature of freedom suits, but also about the dynamics of group slave escapes in 19th century Missouri.

For example, VanderVelde mentions the July 1856 stampede of eight in a footnote to Redemption Songs (2014) as way to help elaborate on her use of the term “stampede.”^[3] In the text, she writes that “As slaves, petitioners are described by witnesses in a passive voice as having the characteristics of objects…They are stolen, even ‘stampeded,’ by third parties.”^[4] In her work, VanderVelde always emphasizes the agency of the enslaved, but here she seems to suggest that the term “stampede” was used by their oppressors as a way to dehumanize them.

The term “stampede” surfaces in Mrs. Dred Scott (2009) as well, during an exploration of the ramifications of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law.  VanderVelde writes, “for the first time [after September 1850], the newspapers noted the new phenomenon of slaves running away in groups. They initially referred to these departures as ‘slave stampedes’ as if the escapees were witless horses.”^[5] Yet such group escapes, or “stampedes,” caused slaveholders great anxiety, because as VanderVelde notes, “this sort of exodus suggests [to them] some prior planning and outside assistance to avoid detection.”^[6]

One exceptional case, the freedom suits of Milton Duty’s 26 slaves, reveals that the concept of “stampedes” might also be applied to the freedom suit process. During his lifetime, Mississippi slaveholder Duty had ensured the manumission of his slaves by moving them to Missouri (with more liberal manumission policies). They lived together for a year in Missouri, where Duty instructed the slaves to rent out their labor in St. Louis in order to start saving money for their new lives free after bondage. When Duty died in 1838, greedy stakeholders, including both creditors and the executor of Duty’s will, immediately went through Duty’s personal items, tearing up and destroying as much evidence of Duty’s intention to free his slaves as possible. Over the following decade, Duty’s slaves were forced to enter a bitter legal battle to seek their freedom.  More than two dozen of them filed for freedom at the same time in St. Louis Circuit Court in 1842. Yet despite the clarity of Duty’s intentions as outlined in his will, and after years of legal struggle, only one of the twenty six slaves was eventually granted freedom. Jesse, the drayman, won his case based in part on his ownership of Duty’s horses. By the time the petition was officially rejected by the Missouri Supreme Court in 1846, several of the original slaves who filed had already died. The story of Duty’s slaves reveals the struggles and obstacles faced by enslaved folks who chose to fight for their freedom legally rather than escaping.^[7]

VanderVelde’s work also suggests that whether escaping or petitioning, an important element of enslaved agency was about gender and family. In Redemption Songs (2014), she writes that far more women than men filed for freedom in court. “Most St. Louis freedom suits were initiated by women,” she observes, “Filing suit kept mothers and children together.”^[8] Legally, the status of slavery was passed through the mother to children. If the mother’s status changed from enslaved to free, then her children would also become free. This meant that enslaved women had much more incentive than men to take the effort to legally change their status rather than risk family separation in escape. This concept that “men run, [and] women sue” reveals a specific way in which gender, race, and conceptions about motherhood intersected to create unique experiences for enslaved women, and explains one reason why some slaves chose to sue for their freedom.^[9]

Freedom suits, much more than escapes, “preserved the status quo.”^[10] Many successful petitioners didn’t move away even after winning their cases.  Winny, an enslaved woman who won her case, spent the rest of her days in freedom as a washerwoman in St. Louis.^[11] Dred and Harriet Scott, who eventually achieved freedom through manumission, also continued their free lives in St. Louis, where Dred worked as a doorman at Barnum’s Hotel.^[12]

A statue of Harriet and Dred Scott outside the St. Louis courthouse where they first filed for freedom in 1846 (Dred Scott Heritage Foundation)

A second likely reason that some eligible slaves chose to sue for freedom over escaping was the simple fact that until the Scott case (Scott v. Emerson in the Missouri Supreme Court in 1852 and then Scott v. Sandford in the US Supreme Court in 1857), slaves had a genuine chance at freedom through legal means. In the years leading up to the final Dred Scott decision, St. Louis courts had set a precedent that often surprisingly favored the petitioner in freedom suits. In 1824, this Missouri statue established that if a court reached a “judgment of liberation,” for a petitioner, then that individual was deemed wholly free, even if that judgment directly opposed the wishes of the slaveholder. Of the 300 original court filings from St. Louis that VanderVelde examined, over 100 litigants were granted their freedom.^[13]

Still, slaves took on great risk to their lives and livelihoods by making any type of bid for freedom in a system that tried to strip them of their humanity. Both freedom suits and escapes were dangerous acts of bravery that undermined the institution of slavery. They were especially so, because as VanderVelde writes, “survival is a much more significant objective in influencing human behavior than attaining freedom.”^[14]  What we hope to uncover, however, is how a family of eight, running away together on a July evening in 1856, might have seen their “stampede” as both an act of personal and political survival.

^[1] “Slave Stampede,” Daily Missouri Republican (St. Louis, MO), July 16, 1856. [WEB]

^[2] Lea VanderVelde, Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom Before Dred Scott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 22.

^[3] VanderVelde, 263n.

^[4] VanderVelde, 203.

^[5] Lea VanderVelde, Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 287.

^[6] VanderVelde, Mrs. Dred Scott, 287.

^[7] VanderVelde, Redemption Songs, 159-176.

^[8] VanderVelde, Redemption Songs, 195.

^[9] VanderVelde, Redemption Songs, 195.

^[10] VanderVelde, Redemption Songs, 195.

^[11] VanderVelde, Redemption Songs, 65.

^[12] VanderVelde, Mrs. Dred Scott, 322.

^[13] VanderVelde, Redemption Songs, 20.

^[14] VanderVelde, Redemption Songs, 194.

Sydney Howard Gay, courtesy of Columbia University Libraries

The Record of Fugitives, a journal kept by abolitionist newspaperman Sydney Howard Gay, was a secret record detailing the escapes of over 200 enslaved people who passed through New York City during their flight to freedom. [1] This remarkable primary source and the fascinating stories it contains remained largely unknown and unexamined by historians until Eric Foner finally analyzed the document in detail for Gateway to Freedom (2015), his recent capstone study of the Underground Railroad.  Gay’s journal reveals a number of insights, including important ones about the frequency of group escapes.  Foner writes that “while the popular image of the Underground Railroad tends to focus more on lone fugitives making their way North on foot, in fact more slaves who passed through New York in the mid-1850s escaped in groups than on their own.” [2]

Eric Foner, the Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Fiery Trial, focuses on the Underground Railroad in New York City in the 1840s and 1850s but his work has national implications. In particular, the Record of Fugitives includes valuable information about slave stampedes that traveled through New York.  In Gateway to Freedom (2015), Foner uses the word “stampede” twice in reference to group escapes. In 1857, he writes, “a newspaper reported a ‘general stampede,’ (as the press called group escapes) from Dover, the state capital, ‘by the underground railroad.’” [3] Here, Foner is explicitly describing the term “stampede” as used by the antebellum press. He also employs the term later on his own when describing a number of stampedes out of Chestertown, Maryland, which was “particularly vulnerable to mass escapes.” [4] Within only two months in 1855, at least three groups of seven or more individuals are reported by the local newspaper to have successfully escaped from Chestertown. Foner writes that “Not surprisingly, these ‘stampedes’ alarmed Chestertown slaveowners,” asserting a direct connection between mass escapes and slaveholders’ anxiety over the fugitive slave crisis, an anxiety heavily reinforced by the press. [5]

Throughout the book, there are at least twelve cases of group escape depicted for the 1840s and 1850s. For example, Foner writes of the well-known 1848 attempted escape of 76 individuals on the schooner Pearl. This escape from Washington, DC was “particularly alarming to slaveholders” in the enormous number of escapees and the level of planning required to execute the escape. [7] Other examples of stampedes, such as the 35 enslaved people who fled from a single county in Maryland on a single day in 1850, are used to emphasize the anxiety that slaveholders felt about stampedes. [8]

However, Foner does spend some time analyzing certain group escapes themselves, and makes some valuable claims for this project. For example, he writes that ”when slaves escaped in groups, these frequently included relatives—husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, even, as in the case of eleven women or married couples and one man in Gay’s records, small children.” [9] Additionally, Foner’s analysis of how group escapes occurred reveals the instrumental role that the Underground Railroad and its agents played in stampedes. Every group escape documented by Foner involved at least one antislavery agent who housed, fed, or directed the group to safety.

Harriet Tubman, courtesy of the National Women’s History Museum

Harriet Tubman directed one of the most dramatic examples of such group escapes pulled from the Record of Fugitives.  In 1856, Tubman and four escapees fled from the Eastern Shore of Maryland by foot. After being forced to hide from the slaveholders in a “potato hole” for a week, Tubman tapped into the Underground Railroad network to help get the four enslaved men to safety in Wilmington, Delaware. Then, with the help of vigilance committee operative William Still, the group took a train from Philadelphia to New York, where they were placed under the protection of Gay. From there the slaves were sent to Syracuse and then Canada. [10] Without the Underground Railroad and its many known and unknown agents willing to take the enormous risk of traveling with large groups of fugitives, slave stampedes would never have been possible.

————————————————————————————————

[1] Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom, The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015), 10.

[2] Foner, 122.

[3] Foner, 229-230.

[4] Foner, 156.

[5] Foner, 206.

[6] Foner, 206.

[7] Foner, 205.

[8] Foner, 116.

[9] Foner, 200.

[10] Foner, 191-192.

In May of 1855, nine enslaved people escaped the city of St. Louis, Missouri in a bid for freedom.

Mary Meachum, Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

The plan was for the slaves to be rowed across the Mississippi River to Illinois and then hidden in a wagon destined for Chicago. This escape was not spontaneous, but carefully arranged by the Knights of Liberty, one of many organizations that helped slaves escape from their slaveholders. The identified agents behind this escape plot were Mary Meachum (pictured right), leader of the organization, and Judah Burrows and Isaac Breckenridge, two other free blacks. Unfortunately, St. Louis police found out about the plot and caught up with the fugitive slaves on the riverbank. Little is known about what happened during this confrontation except that “five of the runaways were taken” by the police. Perhaps the other four found freedom, or perhaps they never made it across the river.[1]

So many similar escape stories exist in the historical record, sometimes with more information available and sometimes less. Large gaps of information remain, but historian Richard Blackett describes many of the most revealing episodes in his seminal work, The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery (2018). Noted historian Eric Foner calls Captive’s Quest, the “most comprehensive account of the workings of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and opposition to it.”[2]

Blackett spent years meticulously researching the history of the antebellum fugitive crisis for The Captive’s Quest for Freedom, even writing in the book’s introduction that “when I began I was a father of four; now I am the proud grandfather of six!”[3]

The sheer volume of Blackett’s research is clear throughout the book, which is organized into chapters based on different border states and the networks of escape that grew from them.

Map of Missouri and Illinois border ca. 1850, courtesy of Cambridge University Press

The chapter that covers escapes from Missouri, “one of the zones of maximum conflict,” mentions dozens of escapes.[4]  Most slaves from Missouri sought freedom in Illinois, crossing the border at least initially into a hostile southern region known as Egypt, and then traveling to more welcoming cities further North such as Chicago.[5] Blackett explains that attempted escapes involving large groups took place much more frequently in border states such as Missouri. He identifies a total of fourteen antebellum cases of group escapes, also known as slave stampedes, from the state of Missouri.[6]

Blackett uses the word “stampede” a total of seven times throughout the book. The term is first introduced in the second chapter, which focused on reactions to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. “Group escapes,” Blackett writes, “or what slaveholders took to calling stampedes…increased substantially, accounting for fully 36 percent of the escapes in the 1850s.”[7] Other than identifying key individuals credited for directing large amounts of slave stampedes, such as Mary Meachum and the Knights of Liberty, Blackett directs more of his focus on the subject towards the public’s reaction to such stampeding efforts. Blackett repeatedly claims throughout the text that it was particularly these mass escapes which caused much of the slaveholders’ discontent in the years before the Civil War, writing that “group escapes also suggested a level of planning and coordination that raised the levels of anxiety among slaveholders.” [8]

Slaveholders’ anxiety was a huge factor in the increasing tensions between North and South, argues Blackett. Because of this, Blackett claims, every single escape, whether successful or not and whether group or individual, had the “potential to create deep political crises in the communities in which it occurred.” [10] Overall, the picture painted by The Captive’s Quest for Freedom reveals a country in deep political and social turmoil, with fugitive slaves and anxiety over slave stampedes at the heart of the crisis.

[1] R.J.M. Blackett. The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 143.

[2] Eric Foner, review of The Captive’s Quest for Freedom, cover, Blackett, Captive’s Quest.

[3] Blackett,  xv.

[4] Blackett, 139.

[5] Blackett, 150.

[6] Blackett, 139.

[7] Blackett, 50.

[8] Blackett, 393.

[9] Blackett, 88-134.

[10] Blackett,  xii.