Kentucky politician and slaveholder Cassius Clay (House Divided Project)

In 1847, an enslaved Kentuckian named Jack accompanied his enslaver, Kentucky politician-turned-soldier Cassius M. Clay, to the frontlines of the US-Mexican War. During his time in Mexico laboring as Clay’s personal body servant, Jack may well have heard the term “stampede” tossed around in conversation. As Jack would have learned, the unfamiliar, Spanish-language word was frequently invoked in the southwestern borderlands to describe the uncontrollable movement of cattle and horses.

A year later, after Clay and Jack returned home from Mexico, Jack became involved in a different sort of “stampede”: a “slave stampede” that rocked Lexington, Kentucky, as more than 40 enslaved men, heavily armed, departed Lexington in “military file” and exchanged gunfire with pursuing whites. In the aftermath of the stampede, witnesses and prosecution harped on the connection between Jack’s Mexican War experience and his role as an alleged “ringleader” of the August 1848 stampede. [1] Jack’s story encapsulates how the term “stampede” entered the American vocabulary during the US-Mexican War, and then how Americans on both sides of the slavery issue appropriated the term to describe a revolutionary new form of enslaved resistance that seemed eerily similar to war.

Use of the word “stampede” spiked dramatically during the US-Mexican War from 1846-1848, as indicated by a search of US papers at the Newspapers.com database (Newspapers.com)

The US-Mexican War was largely responsible for popularizing the term “stampede” to American audiences and readers. It was no coincidence that the usage of “stampede” in American newspapers spiked dramatically in 1847, as the war escalated and letters and dispatches from the frontlines conveyed the term back to American readers. For instance, during the spring of 1847, a letter from a US Army surgeon in Mexico describing “how the Indians effect stampedes among their horses” appeared widely in papers across the United States. [2] Just a year later in 1848, John Russell Bartlett included the increasingly popular word in his Dictionary of Americanisms, defining stampede (or “stampado”) as “a general scamper of animals on the Western prairies, generally caused by a fright.” Notably, Bartlett also included an entry that suggests just how influential the US-Mexican War was in popularizing the term with American audiences. Bartlett defined “to stampede” as “to cause to scamper off in a fright,” and provided an example of a US Army colonel whose pursuit of Mexican soldiers was frustrated by “a war party of Indians, who succeeded in stampeding a large band of the army horses.” [3]

It did not take long for newspaper editors and journalists to apply the term “stampede” to the mass escapes launched by enslaved people. As early as April 1847, newspaper editors in Cincinnati ran the first known headline describing a “Grand Stampede” of enslaved people from Kentucky. It is likely no coincidence that the “slave stampede” metaphor was born in the Kentucky-Ohio borderlands, given Kentuckians’ strong support for the war and the frequent frontline reports that made it back into Kentucky newspapers. As Jack’s story indicates, some of the enslaved people who participated in stampedes had been in Mexico with their enslavers and may have heard the term there themselves. Moreover, many of the white Kentuckians who were involved in the pursuit and capture stampede participants like Jack were themselves veterans of the Mexican War. [4]

[1] Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. Henry Slaughter, et. al, John A. McClung’s Trial Notes, September 1848

[2] For just a few of many examples, see “Stampedes,” Washington DC National Intelligencer, April 21, 1847; “Stampedes,” Bangor (ME) Courier, June 1, 1847; Charleston (SC) Daily Courier, April 22, 1847.

[3] John Russell Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States (New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1848), 330-1, [WEB].

[4] See the trial transcript of the 1848 Lexington Stampede for numerous references ot participants’ Mexican War connections. Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. Henry Slaughter, et. al, John A. McClung’s Trial Notes, September 1848. One of the white pursuers wounded by freedom seekers, Charles H. Fowler, jr., was a Mexican War veteran.

Overview

There were only two federal fugitive slave laws in American history –1793 and 1850– but they were both enormously controversial.  Each one derived from what is now known as the Fugitive Slave Clause of the original 1787 U.S. constitution (Article IV, Section 2).  However, that clause proved to be too vague and uncertain for easy enforcement, especially after Northern states began abolishing slavery within their own boundaries.  Over the years between 1788 and 1861, these states imposed obstacles against federal enforcement of the fugitive code on their “free soil,” usually dubbed “personal liberty” statutes.  Ultimately, these state laws compelled the Supreme Court to rule on the conflict in a series of landmark cases (especially 1842 and 1859).  Yet even with all of that national debate over runaway slaves, the actual operations of the federal system on fugitive recapture and rendition was notably sporadic.  Black resistance proved fierce.  Even in northern states where color prejudice was strong and abolitionist sentiment was weak, there seemed to be greater white sympathy for the plight of freedom seekers and a significant wellspring of northern state rights sentiment that made enforcing the federal code quite difficult.  Thus, it was also true that for slave states such as Missouri, their own “slave stealing” statutes often proved more important to the return of runaways and the prosecution of those “Underground Railroad” operatives who assisted them than any federal code.  Yet obviously that meant that if any individuals or groups of freedom seekers could actually succeed in crossing into free soil, there chances of liberation were strong.  Southern complaints about this reality escalated throughout the 1850s and proved to be a central component of the movement toward secession in 1860-61.

Video Resources

Primary Sources

• US Constitution: Fugitive Slave Clause (1787) with debate August 28, 1787
• Fugitive Slave Act (1793)
• Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) with law review article and full Peters report
• Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
• Missouri slavery laws (Hurd) with slave-stealing prisoners
• Moore v. Illinois (1852)
• Ableman v. Booth (1859)
• Secession Declarations (1860-61)
• Repeal of Fugitive Slave Act (June 1864) with Senate debate (April 1864)

Secondary Sources

• Matthew Pinsker, “Interpreting the Upper-Ground Railroad,” in Max van Balgooy, ed., Interpreting African American History and Culture (2014)
• Matthew Pinsker, “After 1850: Reassessing the Impact of the Fugitive Slave Law,” in D.A. Pargas, ed., Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America (2018)
• Cooper Wingert, 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, Dickinson College, honors project, 2020

This online research journal represents a joint effort by the National Park Service (NPS) Network to Freedom and the House Divided Project at Dickinson College to address the phenomenon of group escapes from slavery.  Our initial regional focus has been on the Missouri borderlands during the antebellum and wartime period. We are now also beginning a second phase looking at the Kentucky borderlands. Contemporaries almost always called these group escapes, “slave stampedes.”  Yet that term rarely appears in modern-day studies of the Underground Railroad or resistance to slavery.  Even the idea of large groups of freedom seekers moving defiantly together toward attempted self-liberation seems almost impossible for many teachers and students to accept.  Yet stampedes happened –sometimes quite frequently– and we need to try to understand what these revolutionary episodes meant to Americans in that era.

To begin this journey, we suggest watching this short 2-minute video interview with Dr. Deanda Johnson of the National Park Service Network to Freedom.  She offers a concise history of the term’s origins and explains how the reality of group attempts at liberation can complicate our understanding of the Underground Railroad.  Then you might want to read the attached 2019 essay by Professor Matthew Pinsker from Dickinson College.  His 23-page introductory survey of the topic also helps explains why the Missouri borderlands should rightly be considered at the front lines of the stampedes phenomenon and how both antebellum and wartime slave stampedes helped tip the balance toward the final destruction of slavery.

• Pinsker Essay on Slave Stampedes

At this online research journal, we will continue to post examples of the historical material that we are turning up in our digital and archival searches about the phenomenon.  This is truly a team effort, involving faculty and students, with significant input from our outside academic experts. Eventually, our findings will form the basis of an online report with various multi-media maps and tools, and a freely accessible database designed to provide an array of resources for anyone who wants to learn more about this important subject.  For now, however, please consider this site as a kind of open historical laboratory.  We are trying to share our progress as it develops, seeking your input and assistance whenever it might be helpful.