Fugitive slaves escaping by boat. (House Divided Project)

An enslaved man in St. Louis, Missouri, William Wells Brown was filled “with the most intense anxiety” as he plotted his escape across the Mississippi River. Late one evening in 1833, Brown and his mother finally executed their plan, and riding a small skiff on a “very swift” current, the mother and son duo were “soon upon the Illinois shore.” Their taste of freedom was brief, however, and they were soon manacled by slave catchers and returned to bondage in Missouri. Yet in January 1834, Brown at last succeeded, smuggling himself on board a steamboat bound for Ohio. [1]

After escaping from slavery in St. Louis, William Wells Brown became a prominent figure in the anti-slavery movement. (House Divided Project)

Brown’s story is one of many profiled in Cheryl LaRoche’s book, The Geography of Resistance (2013). For years prior to his escape, Brown had worked on steamboats that canvassed the Mississippi River, gaining an intimate familiarity with the surrounding region. That he and his mother landed near the abolitionist stronghold of Alton, Illinois, was no accident, maintains LaRoche. Not only was Alton filled with anti-slavery sympathizers, but just miles away was a crucial, although often overlooked free African American settlement, known as Rocky Fork.

Rocky Fork is one of four African American communities along the North-South border that LaRoche profiles in her book. Of these four settlements (Rocky Fork and Miller Grove in southern Illinois, Lick Creek in Indiana, and Poke Patch in southern Ohio), just Rocky Fork survives today. With few written sources available, LaRoche taps into archaeological evidence, oral histories and geographical analysis (“using the land as a type of document”), to produce an account of what she terms “the geography of resistance.” What emerges is a portrait of African Americans, on both sides of the border, acting as central agents in determining their own fates. Most freedom seekers, LaRoche notes, “negotiated either all or the most difficult or dangerous portion of the trip alone or with the help of other Blacks.” Quakers and other white abolitionists, she writes, while playing important roles, also harbored “ambivalent sentiments” towards African Americans, and were not the driving force behind the resistance to bondage. In LaRoche’s view, geography bears this out. Many well-known Underground Railroad sites “operated within a two- to three-mile radius of small Black enclaves.” Documenting these often-overlooked black hamlets, LaRoche maintains, “visually clarifies and exposes the relationships between African American churches, settlements, and historic Underground Railroad routes.” [2] 

Missouri escapes figure prominently in LaRoche’s book, largely due to her first case study, Rocky Fork. A black settlement situated mere miles from the Missouri border, LaRoche notes that Rocky Fork was “ideally located, remote and not easily accessed.” The larger and better-known abolitionist community of Alton lay just three miles away. Difficult to reach by land, Rocky Fork was instead “highly accessible” by water, via the Mississippi River. Missouri fugitives could follow the river north to Piasa Creek, where two islands enabled them to swim or boat across to Rocky Fork Creek. The small settlement (at its peak counting 45 families) provided “a secluded, safe refuge” for Missouri fugitives, who by the 1830s were arriving with increasing regularity. Escaped slaves, LaRoche writes, enjoyed the advantages of rural living, often setting up house in remote, wooded areas, which “helped discourage pursuers,” who feared for their own safety venturing into the unknown wilderness. [3]

An 1857 map showing the abolitionist stronghold of Alton, Illinois (left center), a short distance upriver from St. Louis. Not specified is the free black community of Rocky Fork, located just three miles west of Alton. (House Divided Project)

LaRoche does not use the term slave stampede, but she does identify and discuss multiple “group escapes,” including many from eastern Missouri into Illinois. She posits that “as the slavery crisis deepened, the mechanisms of escape extended from lonely singular escapes to groups and families attempting to free themselves from bondage.” These larger escapes, LaRoche argues, turned increasingly violent and eventually gave way to “armed conflict in the name of freedom.” One of the earliest potential stampedes may have been the work of “Mother” Priscilla Baltimore, a former slave who resided in Brooklyn, Illinois, an historically black enclave located across the river from St. Louis. In 1829, Baltimore reportedly led 11 Missouri families (including both free and enslaved persons) across the Mississippi to freedom. Later, a “series of group escapes in 1845,” LaRoche notes, caused considerable consternation among Missouri slaveholders, who seethed that abolitionists had enticed their slaves to escape. Yet another potential stampede dates from 1854, when a free black coachman from Alton concealed 15 Missouri slaves in his carriage. He helped them cross the Mississippi in skiffs, and then sent them on to Chicago. [4]

As a child, Henry Highland Garnet escaped slavery in a potential slave stampede. (House Divided Project)

Accounts of other potential stampedes abound throughout the book. Josiah Henson escaped from slavery in Kentucky, traveling to Indiana and eventually Canada, but returned to help lead 30 Bourbon County, Kentucky slaves to freedom. Years later, during the Civil War, eight Kentucky slaves followed in Henson’s footsteps, escaping northward into Indiana. One was recaptured, but the remaining seven managed to reach freedom and enlist in the 28th U.S. Colored Troops. LaRoche also discusses potential stampedes from the eastern slaveholding states. One involved the noted black abolitionist and preacher Henry Highland Garnet, who escaped slavery as a child in 1824, along with 10 enslaved relatives. The group left New Market, Maryland, and reached the Delaware home of Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett, and from there moved on to upstate New York. Another potential stampede dates from 1847, when 13 freedom seekers headed north from Williamsport, Maryland, after learning of their impending sale. Just across the border in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the fugitives linked up with a black operative, George Cole, who guided them to the small town of Boiling Springs, where they briefly stayed at the home of white abolitionist Daniel Kaufman. While the fugitives were ushered off to safety, the Pennsylvania abolitionist was later convicted of aiding their escape. [5]

In terms of this project, The Geography of Resistance adds valuable insight to our understanding of slave stampedes. In discussing group escapes, LaRoche highlights the often neglected roles played by free African Americans living along the North-South border. Over the span of several decades, free black residents of Rocky Fork, Illinois, assisted large groups of enslaved Missourians in their attempts to escape bondage. As we continue our research into slave stampedes, LaRoche’s work reminds us that the border’s free black communities were not simply remote or isolated enclaves, but also potential paths to freedom for groups of escaping slaves.

[1] William Wells Brown, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1847), 67-70, [WEB]; Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 36.

[2] LaRoche, 15, 37, 40-41, 70, 85, 87-88, 101-102, 140.

[3] LaRoche, 22-24, 33-34, 37.

[4] LaRoche, 30, 33-36, 157.

[5] LaRoche, 66-68, 97, 128.

Joshua Glover, a fugitive slave from St. Louis, was rescued from Federal custody in 1854. (House Divided Project)

On March 10, 1854, a group of slave catchers burst into a rural Wisconsin home and seized a fugitive slave. Their captive, a man named Joshua Glover, had escaped from St. Louis, Missouri two years prior. Detained overnight in a Milwaukee prison, local abolitionists sounded the alarm and by morning Glover had a sizable crowd of supporters anxiously monitoring his fate. As the hours wore on, the crowd decided to take justice into their own hands, launching an all-out assault on the prison door with “planks, axes, &c.” Plowing through, they placed Glover in a carriage and whisked him away to safety. [1]

Yet the case was far from over. Accused of aiding Glover’s escape, Wisconsin abolitionist Sherman Booth was put on trial for violating the controversial Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, a case that ultimately worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. While Chief Justice Roger Taney upheld Booth’s conviction, it was clear that there were significant chinks in the law’s armor, especially when the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Fugitive Slave Law was unconstitutional, a “crowning, if fleeting achievement” for abolitionists. [2]

Wisconsin abolitionist Sherman Booth was tried for his alleged involvement in Glover’s escape. (House Divided Project)

Glover’s escape and Booth’s subsequent trials are among the many cases profiled by legal historian Steven Lubet in his book, Fugitive Justice (2010). Lubet’s book focuses in on three prominent cases involving the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; the trial following the Christiana Riot in September 1851, the rendition of Anthony Burns in 1854, and finally the Oberlin Rescue of 1858, to show the evolution of abolitionist legal tactics during the 1850s. Over the course of the decade, Northern lawyers moved from pointed, technical arguments to moral appeals to a higher law. This tidal shift in legal resistance, Lubet argues, reflected changing attitudes among the Northern public towards slavery. By the late 1850s, abolitionist lawyers were willing to openly challenge the morality of the Fugitive Slave Law as well as slavery itself, an indication, Lubet tells us, of the Northern public’s growing anti-slavery impulse. In doing so, Lubet challenges the principal argument of Stanley Campbell’s book, The Slave Catchers (1970), which held that the Fugitive Slave Law was faithfully and effectively enforced. Through these cases and they way they were adjudicated, Lubet chronicles the mounting public discord against the law. [3]

On September 11, 1851, African-Americans opened fire on Maryland slave owner Edward Gorsuch and his posse, in what is known as the Christiana Riot. (House Divided Project)

The first trial Lubet profiles came in the aftermath of the Christiana Riot in September 1851. The violent encounter actually stemmed from a group escape of four fugitives from the Maryland plantation of slaveholder Edward Gorsuch. Four of Gorsuch’s slaves, Noah Davis, Noah Buley and George and Joshua Hammond, had run away together in November 1849. This could be considered a slave stampede, though Lubet does not use the term. He does, however, speculate on their motives for escape, positing that the bondsmen had been stealing grain from Gorsuch, and perhaps ran away for fear that their theft had been discovered. [4]

Castner Hanway, the key defendant in the Christiana trial, shown here later in life. (House Divided Project)

Nearly two years later, Gorsuch and a posse traveled to Christiana, in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, expecting to easily seize the fugitives. However, similar to other slave stampedes, the encounter quickly turned violent and took on a revolutionary meaning. Gorsuch’s four fugitives, joined by other local African-Americans, armed themselves and fought back, killing Gorsuch in the fray. Yet the ensuing trial (which is Lubet’s primary focus) did not revolve around who had shot Gorsuch, but rather Castner Hanway, a local miller who had rode to the scene of the conflict shortly before the first blood had been spilt. Among more than 30 others charged with treason for failing to “aid and assist” in recapturing the fugitives, Hanway was the first defendant placed on trial. His chief defense lawyer, Lancaster Congressman and noted abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, made a tight, unprovocative argument for Hanway’s innocence. The strategy worked, and Hanway was acquitted, though his victory was not a repudiation of the law, writes Lubet, but rather a technical argument for the innocence of a specific individual, aided by the shaky credibility of one of the prosecution’s key witnesses. [5]

To considerable fanfare and outrage, fugitive slave Anthony Burns was remanded to slavery from Boston in 1854. (House Divided Project)

Lubet highlights two more cases, though both revolved around individual fugitives rather than group escapes. The first is the rendition of Anthony Burns in 1854, a fugitive slave who was seized in the streets of Boston. In a departure from Stevens’s technical defense, Burns’s defense lawyers argued that U.S. Commissioner Edward G. Loring had “ample room” to “interpret” the law, and rule in Burns’s favor. However, their efforts fell on deaf ears, and Loring declared that Burns was a fugitive and remanded him to slavery. [6]

The next landmark case involved an enslaved man from Kentucky, John Price, who had escaped to Oberlin, Ohio in 1856. He was captured by a slave catcher in 1858, only to be rescued by angry Oberlin residents. Although Price reached safety in Canada, a grand jury subsequently indicted 37 men for violating the Fugitive Slave Law, including 25 students, faculty and alumni of the prominently anti-slavery Oberlin College. In a contrast to both the Christiana and Anthony Burns cases, defense lawyers for the Oberlin activists would present what Lubet calls “the first forthright invocation of higher law in a U.S. Courtroom.” Only two defendants were actually brought to trial, and while both were convicted, their sentences were relatively light, especially that of Charles Langston, a black Oberlin graduate who boldly used his sentencing hearing to give vent to the higher law argument. The judge, Hiram Willson, practically “apologized” to Langston for enforcing the unpopular law, sentencing him to just 20 days in prison and a fine of $100. Lubet terms it “one small victory for the higher law,” asserting that although only partially successful in the courtroom, the higher law argument “helped to create an unbridgeable gap between the free states and the slave power.” [7]

Syracuse abolitionists stormed the second-story office of U.S. Commissioner Joseph Sabine in the first attempt to free Jerry, a Missouri fugitive. (House Divided Project)

Fugitive Justice makes a few references to Missouri escapes, including a brief allusion to John Brown’s December 1858 “raid” into western Missouri that helped free 11 enslaved people. Lubet discusses in considerably more detail the cases of St. Louis fugitive Joshua Glover and an even more famous Missouri runaway, William McHenry, commonly known as “Jerry.” He had escaped from Missouri and made his way to the abolitionist stronghold of Syracuse, New York. There, Jerry seemed to adjust well to freedom, working as a cooper. However, in October 1851 a slave catcher and U.S. marshals seized Jerry and brought him before U.S. Commissioner Joseph Sabine. Syracuse’s abolitionist populace was outraged, and stormed Sabine’s office, and later a jail, in order to free Jerry. While Jerry reached safety in Canada, indictments came down for 26 Syracuse men, resulting in just one conviction. Instead of treason, those involved in the “Jerry Rescue” were only charged with interfering with the law and assault. Lubet speculates that Federal officials were not eager to embark upon another difficult and time-consuming treason case in the “heartland of abolitionism,” where they were unlikely to prevail. [8]

The term slave stampede does not appear in Lubet’s book, nor does the concept of mass escapes. Fugitive Justice primarily covers legal cases that unfolded in Northern courtrooms, documenting the fallout from escapes, rather than the escape effort itself. Still, Lubet offers important insight into how fugitive slaves and their abolitionist allies constructed and evolved their legal defense strategies to align with changing public opinion in the North.

[1]  Milwaukee Sentinel, quoted in, “Great Excitement–Arrest of a Fugitive Slave,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, March 24, 1854; Steven Lubet, Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 305-307.

[2] Lubet, 305-307.

[3] Lubet, 2-3, 5-6.

[4] Lubet, 55.

[5] Lubet, 57-64, 77, 91-131.

[6] Lubet, 190, 221-223.

[7] Lubet, 3, 6, 159, 232-239, 245-247, 250-254, 294-298, 327.

[8] Lubet, 86-90, 254, 305-307, 316.

Freedom seekers fire upon a posse of whites at Christiana, Pennsylvania in September 1851. (House Divided Project)

Armed with “pistols and tomahawks,” a group of 10 freedom seekers refused to surrender to their white pursuers. It was late May 1845, and they had been overtaken by 8 white men near Smithsburg, Maryland. Ordered to halt, the freedom seekers instead “drew themselves up in battle order,” and “immediately commenced an attack upon the whites, felling several of them to the earth.” What followed was a “desperate contest,” in which two enslaved people were recaptured, and three white men were severely wounded. Bloodied but still defiant, the remaining freedom seekers continued northward towards freedom. [1] 

This and numerous other bloody episodes are recounted in Stanley Harrold’s invaluable book, Border War (2010). As its title suggests, Harrold’s work chronicles the struggles over slavery along the North-South border in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Harrold contends that disputes over slavery were magnified in these contentious border regions, where the possibility of escapes was the highest. He recites a long string of armed conflicts between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces that escalated to a fever pitch by the 1850s. Harrold argues that these violent borderland encounters spurred on the secessionist movement much farther away, asserting that “fear in the Lower South of losing the Border South was a major cause of the Civil War.” [2]

For the scope of this project, Harrold’s focus on armed conflict is especially important. Not only does he dismantle the stereotype of passive, non-violent abolitionists, but he applies the same lens to escaping slaves, whom he insists were far from “peaceful.” Freedom seekers, he adds, “often carried weapons and fought masters who pursued them.” [3]

Wartime image depicting a freedom seeker resisting a white slaveholder. (House Divided Project)

In reframing escaping slaves as aggressive actors, Harrold makes an important contribution to our understanding of slave stampedes, even though he generally avoids the term. Still, Harrold documents multiple “mass-escapes,” which he notes “could appear much like [a] revolt,” and often ended in bloodshed. The first case he mentions comprised a group of 70-80 enslaved men from southern Maryland, partially armed, who defiantly headed northward in July 1845. They were eventually overtaken by a large posse of over 300 whites, who quickly shot and wounded nine of the escaped slaves and recaptured the remaining freedom seekers. While only two slaves faced legal consequences (including one freedom seeker who was sentenced to death), most were sold to the Deep South as punishment for their involvement. [4]

Harrold continues by detailing a similar escape in Kentucky in 1848, which involved anywhere from 40-70 enslaved men, fully equipped with “guns, pistols, knives and other warlike weapons.” The freedom seekers “fortified” their overnight encampment near the Ohio River, where they were ultimately attacked in what was described by newspaper reports as a “battle,” that resulted in the death of one enslaved man and one white man. Surrounded, the freedom seekers surrendered, but in this instance Kentucky officials brought over 40 of the escapees to trial. A white college student who had accompanied them was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor at the state penitentiary, while three slaves identified as leaders in the effort were convicted and hanged. Most, however, would be returned to their slaveholders, who could dole out punishment as they saw fit. [5]

Yet what Harrold describes as the “most influential mass-escape attempt” occurred in the shadow of the nation’s capitol in April 1848. Orchestrated by abolitionist newspaperman William L. Chaplin and a free black man named Daniel Bell, the pair arranged for 77 slaves in Washington, D.C. to board a boat which they had chartered and sail down the Potomac River toward freedom. However, the party encountered winds and was soon overtaken by a pursuing ship and easily recaptured. Known as the Pearl escape (after the name of the escapees’ vessel), the incident became an instant political lightning rod, infuriating pro-slavery politicians. [6]

Future congressman Thomas Lilbourne Anderson decried the effects of slave stampedes at an 1853 anti-abolition meeting in Palmyra, MO. (Library of Congress)

Border War‘s coverage of Missouri is relatively light, though Harrold does reference an important pro-slavery meeting held at Palmyra in Marion County, near the Illinois border. The gathering came on the heels of a recent stampede, in which around 11 enslaved people had escaped from Marion County across the border into Illinois. A local Missouri politician, Thomas L. Anderson, accused abolitionists of orchestrating the stampede and others like it.  Using rhetoric that underscored the chilling effect such escapes, Anderson estimated that stampedes cost fellow slaveholders “eight or ten thousand dollars worth” of enslaved property “at a time.” [7]

While mass escapes and their often violent nature are clearly a recurring concept in Border War, the actual term “slave stampede” appears just twice. In one instance, he uses the term to refer to the mass escapes which became increasingly common in the early 1850s, briefly noting examples in Maryland and Kentucky, as well as a group of some 70 freedom seekers who made their way through Illinois in August 1853. Later in the book, Harrold quotes a Baltimore editorialist, writing in the midst of the “Secession Winter” of 1860-1861, who cautioned that Maryland’s border state status made leaving the Union a particularly precarious prospect. If the state seceded, he predicted, “then will commence the stampede” which would effectively end slavery in “less than six months.” [8] As a whole, however, Harrold’s book adds immense value to our understanding of slave stampedes, demonstrating that mass escapes were frequently violent, and often took on a revolutionary meaning. 

[1] “Runaway Negroes–A Battle with the Whites,” Boston Daily Atlas, June 2, 1845.

[2] Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting Over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 1-13.

[3] Harrold, 14.

[4] Harrold, 36, 129-131.

[5] Harrold, 131.

[6] Harrold, 131-133.

[7] Harrold, 161-162; Benjamin G. Merkel, “The Underground Railroad and the Missouri Borders, 1840-1860,” Missouri Historical Review 37:3 (April 1943): 278, [WEB].

[8] Harrold, 145-146, 199.

Fugitive slaves entering Union lines, July 1864. (House Divided Project)

By 1862, white Missourians were deeply unsettled. The state’s enslaved population, a key source of labor, was rapidly disappearing. “All the negroes in this country will run off,” Missouri farmer Willard Mendenhall scribbled in his diary in late October 1862. “They go in droves every night.” [1]

Although Mendenhall uses a different word, he was referring to slave stampedes, or group escapes, which by 1862 were eroding slavery throughout much of the border South. Mendenhall’s account is one of many featured in Diane Mutti Burke’s recent book on Missouri slavery, On Slavery’s Border (2010). In her book, Mutti Burke addresses the perception that border state bondage was somehow “milder” than that experienced in the Deep South. On average, Missouri slaveholders owned smaller farms and fewer enslaved people than enslavers in other slave states. As a result, Missouri slavery assumed a more “intimate” nature, in which slaveholders and enslaved people interacted more frequently. Citing these factors, many Missourians compared themselves favorably to plantation slaveholders further south. However, Mutti Burke dismisses their claims as “more rhetorical” than realistic. The increased interactions between slaveholder and slave, she argues, “more often than not… fostered enmity rather than empathy,” and created more opportunities for physical, mental and verbal abuse. [2]

The actual term slave stampede appears just once in Mutti Burke’s tome, in reference to a “veritable ‘stampede’ of slaves leaving their owners” by the summer of 1863. However, the concept of group escapes, particularly those triggered by the presence of nearby Union forces, appears repeatedly. She notes that “slave men, women, and children flocked to the nearest military encampments seeking their freedom.” She also recounts a number of escaped slaves who returned to their plantations or farms, sometimes with the aid of Union soldiers, to free other family members. Drawing on Mendenhall’s diary, she recounts the story of one enslaved man, named Bob, who returned to a Saline County farm with “a squad of white men… and took his wife and two children away,” along with two of his slaveholder’s horses. [3]

“The Great Slave Stampede in Missouri,” an article referencing the group escape of Lewis County slaves, that ended in bloodshed. (North American and United States Gazette, November 22, 1849)

While she discusses group escapes primarily in the context of the Civil War, Mutti Burke also references one notable antebellum stampede. In November 1849, a group of over 30 Lewis County slaves armed themselves and headed northward, but the escape attempt ended in a clash with slaveholders, leaving one enslaved man dead. However, Mutti Burke treats the incident more as an attempted slave insurrection, and does not use the word stampede, although period newspapers referred to it as such.  She does describe how the 1849 episode led to changes in Missouri state law that were designed to clamp down on the possibility of slave escapes.[4]

She mentions another possible pre-war stampede, a “large group of runaways” who escaped into the Kansas Territory in January 1859, assisted by New York abolitionist Dr. John Doy, who had been influenced by a similar escape undertaken by John Brown. However, Platte County slaveholders tracked down the group and recaptured them, sending Doy to prison for a brief period of time before he was rescued from custody by free soil forces from Kansas. [5] While Mutti Burke’s book is an invaluable resource on Missouri slavery, more work still remains to better understand the frequency, locations and ultimate results of slave stampedes.

[1] Willard Hall Mendenhall Diary entry, October 30, 1862, in Missouri Ordeal 1862-1864: Diaries of Willard Hall Mendenhall, ed. by Margaret Mendenhall Frazier, (Newhall, CA: Carl Boyer, 1985), 84, [WEB].

[2] Diane Mutti Burke, On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2010), 125, 143, 171-172, 196-197, 305-306.

[3] Burke, On Slavery’s Border, 283-284; Mendenhall Diary entry, November 7, 1862, in Missouri Ordeal, 86, [WEB].

[4] Burke, On Slavery’s Border, 186; “The Great Slave Stampede in Missouri,” Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, November 22, 1849.

[5] Burke, On Slavery’s Border, 176-177.  See also Kansas Memory.