William Lloyd Garrison founds The Liberator which becomes a leading abolitionist newspaper and an influential voice for immediate abolition and moral suasion for the next three decades.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Abolitionist David Ruggles founds the New York Committee of Vigilance, a self-protection society for Black New Yorkers aimed at preventing kidnapping. The group soon expands its mission to include aiding and sheltering freedom seekers. Similar vigilance committees organize across the North, creating a series of interconnected local networks to assist freedom seekers.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Date(s): recaptured June 1830, published narrative in 1837
Location(s): Maryland; South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia
Outcome: Freedom
Summary:
Charles Ball (National Park Service)
Born into slavery in Maryland around 1781, Charles Ball was sold to a series of different slaveholders and separated from his family. Still, Ball found some independence through being hired out (or rented) as a cook for the US Navy. Ball escaped with the aid of a free Black sailor, only to be recaptured and sold to South Carolina. Ball managed to flee South Carolina and return to Maryland and his family. When the War of 1812 erupted, Ball chose to enlist in the US Navy rather than flee to British lines. But more than a decade later in 1830, slave catchers tracked down the War of 1812 veteran and took him to Georgia. Ball escaped one final time and relocated to Philadelphia, where he dictated his life story to white abolitionist Isaac Fisher, published as Slavery in the United States (1837), which was widely reprinted. But Fisher heavily edited Ball’s story, and some scholars suspect that an abridged version published in 1859 came closer to conveying Ball’s own voice.
Philadelphia abolitionists organize their own vigilance committee in August modeled after Ruggles’s New York organization. Initially led by Black activist Robert Purvis, the group goes underground for much of the 1840s before returning to the public eye under the leadership of Black abolitionist William Still in 1852.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Date(s): escaped 1838
Location(s): Eastern Shore, Maryland; Baltimore, Maryland; New York, New York; New Bedford, Massachusetts
Outcome: Freedom
Summary:
Frederick Douglass (House Divided Project)
Frederick Bailey’s (later Douglass) enslaver allowed him to hire his time out in Baltimore. That meant Douglass could find his own work, but had to hand over his wages to enslaver Hugh Auld. Douglass did not relish handing over most or all of his hard-earned pay, but hiring out had its advantages. Mainly, it afforded enslaved people like Douglass opportunities to make connections with free African Americans, and even plot their escapes. After Douglass had had a dispute with Auld over the arrangement, Douglass did exactly that. Many enslaved people borrowed free papers from free African American allies, but Douglass did not fit any of his free friends’ physical descriptions. Instead, Douglass borrowed his friend’s sailors’ protection papers, even though the physical description was not a perfect match to Douglass’s appearance. He also had help from a free Black woman, Anna Murray, whom Douglass would later marry. Douglass escaped by train and sought to minimize the amount of times the sailor’s protection document was closely examined. A train conductor briefly scanned the false document, but did not notice that the physical description did not match Douglass. When Douglass arrived in New York City in early September, he met David Ruggles, the Black abolitionist who spearheaded the city’s vigilance committee. Ruggles advised him not to stay in New York and encouraged him to travel to New Bedford, Massachusetts. There, Douglass took work as a physical laborer, became a regular reader of the antislavery newspaper The Liberator, and a fixture at antislavery gatherings. In New Bedford, Douglass formally changed his name from Frederick Bailey to Frederick Douglass. As Douglass, the freedom seeker went on to publish his Narrative (1845), the first of three autobiographies, become one of the most famous orators in the country, and arguably the most famous freedom seeker in American history.
Harriet Jacobs escapes slavery in North Carolina and reaches New York City by boat. On the eve of the Civil War, Jacobs publishes her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, detailing the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her enslaver.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Vigilance activists rescue two freedom seekers and fatally injure Maryland slave catcher James Kennedy in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on June 2. A jury acquits Dickinson College professor John McClintock on charges of inciting a riot, but sentences 11 Black residents to the state penitentiary for their role in the rescue, before the state’s supreme court ultimately overturns their convictions.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Date(s): 1849
Location(s): Richmond, Virginia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Outcome: Freedom
Summary:
Henry “Box” Brown (House Divided Project)
Henry Brown made up his mind to escape after another slaveholder sold his wife and children away to North Carolina. The freedom seeker determined to mail himself via the new Adams Express service all the way from Richmond to Philadelphia. Brown’s daring escape plan involved help from antislavery activists in both Virginia and Pennsylvania. In Richmond, Samuel Smith mailed Brown and advised Philadelphia vigilance leaders James Miller McKim and William Still to be on the lookout for the crate in Philadelphia. It took Brown 26 hours inside the box to reach Philadelphia, and he traveled with only a bladder filled with water and a few biscuits to eat. Afterwards, Brown became a highly demanded speaker on the antislavery lecture circuit, before eventually relocating to England, where he presented lectures and performed magic and hypnotism to his audiences. Importantly, Brown’s escape underscored that Underground Railroad activists in Northern states faced far fewer risks than activists in the South, where state-level slave stealing statutes proved far more punitive. None of the Philadelphia-based activists who assisted Brown were ever charged with violating the federal 1793 Fugitive Slave Act. But Virginia authorities arrested Smith and sentenced him to six years in the state penitentiary.
Philadelphia’s vigilance committee opens the box containing freedom seeker Henry Brown (House Divided Project)
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén