Fugitive Slaves

Fugitive Slaves, antebellum African Americans who liberated themselves by running away from the slave South to freedom in the North, Canada, or Mexico.

American slavery was a lifelong institution from which the only respites were manumission, death, or running away (see Slavery in the United States). Manumission was rare — most African Americans who were born slaves died as slaves — but a significant number "stole themselves," as they were legally the property of their owners, and escaped. The numbers are unknown, but perhaps as many as 100,000 black men, women, and children escaped during the 19th century.

While much self-liberation was the work of individuals, a secret network called the Underground Railroad provided help through experienced guides, secure routes, and safe houses. Two of the best-known conductors were Harriet Tubman, who, at great personal danger, ventured into the South many times to bring out fugitives; and William Still, the Philadelphia abolitionist whose book The Underground Railroad (1872) was the only daily diary record of a Railroad leader. He emphasized that fugitives were brave people who risked their lives for freedom, not merely recipients of the kindness of white abolitionists (see Abolitionism in the United States).

Escape was a constant, if secret, theme in slave culture. Many spirituals, for example, included double meanings, with shoes and chariots as symbols of movement, and Canaan or the Promised Land as the image of Africa or Canada. Slaveholders' advertisements for runaways represent one of the best sources for physical descriptions of slaves; many bore the scars of the whip or of actual mutilations.

The issue of fugitive slaves became one of national significance when Congress approved the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (see Fugitive Slave Laws: Fugitive Slave Act of 1850), which required Northerners to cooperate in the capture of runaways. Opposition to the act led to civil disobedience and brought the Civil War closer. The war itself saw wholesale self-liberation as thousands of slaves fled the plantations for the freedom of Union Army lines.