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Slave flight in the antebellum South did not always coincide with the political geography of freedom. Indeed, spaces and places within the South attracted the largest number of fugitive slaves, especially southern cities, where runaway slaves attempted to pass for free blacks. Disguising themselves within the slaveholding states rather than risk long-distance flight attempts to formally free territories such as the northern us, Canada, and Mexico, fugitive slaves in southern cities attempted to escape slavery by crafting clandestine lives for themselves in what I am calling “informal” freedom—a freedom that did not exist on paper and had no legal underpinnings, but that existed in practice, in the shadows. This article briefly examines the experiences of fugitive slaves who fled to southern cities in the antebellum period (roughly 1800–1860). It touches upon themes such as the motivations for fleeing to urban areas, the networks that facilitated such flight attempts, and, most importantly, the lot of runaway slaves after arrival in urban areas.
Between the American Revolution and the outbreak of the Civil War almost a million American-born slaves were relocated from the Upper South and eastern seaboard to the ever-expanding southern interior. An outpouring of historical research has greatly contributed to our understanding of the political, economic, demographic, and business aspects of interregional slave migration in the antebellum period, but as yet relatively few studies have examined the ways in which early-nineteenth-century slaves anticipated and reacted to the prospect of interstate migration, the ways in which they attempted to resist or negotiate the terms of their migration, or their motivations for doing so. Drawing from slave narratives and interviews, travel accounts, southern newspapers, and plantation records, this study briefly explores the ways in which slave migrants (and their loved ones) experienced and dealt with the news of forcible removal across state lines in early-nineteenth-century America, with a particular emphasis on the theme of family separation as a motivating factor behind their actions and reactions.
The results of this experiment are promising. In the Introduction, Jeff Fynn-Paul points out over a dozen ways in which the contributors have added to the concept of ‘Slaving Zones’, helping to make it one of the more dynamic theories of global slavery since the advent of Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death.
The results of this experiment are promising. In the Introduction, Jeff Fynn-Paul points out over a dozen ways in which the contributors have added to the concept of ‘Slaving Zones’, helping to make it one of the more dynamic theories of global slavery since the advent of Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death.