Category: Freedom Seeker Page 6 of 10

George Latimer (1819-1897) was a freedom seeker whose escape and subsequent arrest prompted the passage of a groundbreaking new personal liberty law in Massachusetts. In 1842, Latimer and his pregnant wife, Rebecca, escaped from Norfolk, Virginia by boat. The couple reached Boston, where slave catchers quickly caught up with him. Antislavery activists purchased Latimer’s freedom, but popular outrage over his arrest led Massachusetts lawmakers to adopt a new personal liberty law in March 1843 barring state officials from cooperating with slaveholders, popularly known as the Latimer Law. Other Northern states followed suit, passing similar non-cooperation laws.

ESSAYS:  Baker // Grover // Sinha

ROLES: Freedom Seeker

Matilda Lawrence was a freedom seeker remanded to slavery from Ohio in 1837. Antislavery attorney Salmon P. Chase represented Lawrence and lost her case, but his argument advanced an antislavery reading of the US Constitution which became influential in antislavery circles.

ESSAYS: Sinha

ROLES: Freedom Seeker

Eliza and John Little were freedom seekers interviewed by abolitionist Benjamin Drew in Canada during the 1850s.

ESSAYS: Cohen

ROLES: Freedom Seeker

Dan Josiah Lockhart was a freedom seeker who escaped from Frederick County, Virginia in 1847 and resettled in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

ESSAYS: Newby-Alexander

ROLES: Freedom Seeker

Charles Peyton Lucas was a freedom seeker interviewed by abolitionist Benjamin Drew in Canada during the 1850s.

ESSAYS: Cohen

ROLES: Freedom Seeker

Shadrach Minkins was a freedom seeker at the center of a controversial fugitive slave rescue in 1851. Minkins escaped from Norfolk, Virginia to Boston, where abolitionists rescued him from a federal rendition hearing in February 1851.

ESSAYS: Grover // Sinha

ROLES: Freedom Seeker

Ralph Montgomery was an enslaved man working in Iowa whose seizure prompted the Iowa Territorial Supreme Court to rule that “no man in this territory can be reduced to slavery.”

ESSAYS: Johnson

ROLES: Freedom Seeker

Margaret Morgan was a Maryland freedom seeker seized by Maryland slave catcher Edward Prigg in 1837. Prigg’s conviction under Pennsylvania’s 1826 personal liberty law for kidnapping Morgan led to the US Supreme Court’s decision in Prigg. v. Pennsylvania (1842), which not only overturned Prigg’s conviction but also ruled that Northern states’ many personal liberty laws (like Pennsylvania’s) were unconstitutional.

ESSAYS: Baker // Finkelman

ROLES: Freedom Seeker

Hannah Morrison was an enslaved women held along with her mother as indentured servants in Illinois by Andrew Borders. Hannah escaped in 1842, was recaptured, but secured her freedom in court.

ESSAYS: Johnson

ROLES: Freedom Seeker