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Freedom on the Move is a database of fugitives from North American slavery. With the advent of newspapers in the American colonies, enslavers posted “runaway ads” to try to locate fugitives. Additionally, jailers posted ads describing people they had apprehended in search of the enslavers who claimed the fugitives as property.

Many of these ads, in their original context, are available to Accessible Archives subscribers in the 18th century newspapers of Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

This ad is particularly moving because it involves what sounds like a family and at least some of the group had lived as free people for a time before being re-enslaved.

Fifty Pounds Reward

The South-Carolina Gazette, April 3, 1775

(The South-Carolina Gazette, April 3, 1775) RUN-AWAY from the Subscriber at Herring’s Bluff, in St. Matthew’s Parish, the Five following NEGROES,viz.

A Negro Fellow named July; a Wench named Kate (Wife of July). July is a slim made Fellow, pitted with the smallpox. Kate is a stout black Wench, with remarkable large Breasts. Sophia, a slim made Girl about thirteen Years of Age. Charles, a Boy about five Years of Age, and one Girl about eighteen Months old.

The above Negroes were purchased by me from the Rev. Mr. Tonge, who lived at or near Dorchester. When I purchased them, they had been out 18 Months, and passed for free Negroes in the back Parts of this Province. July is a sensible artful Fellow, and may again attempt to pass for a free Negro, as he has formerly done. Any Person apprehending the said Negroes, and delivering them up to any of the Country Goals, or to the Warden of the Workhouse in Charles-Town, shall receive a Reward of Fifty Pounds, with all reasonable Charges.

-Feb. 1, 1775. WILLIAM FLUD.

N. B. It is suspected that they will go towards North Carolina. If the said Fellow July should be catched and carried to any of the Country Goals, he must be put in Irons, as he will strive to make his Escape.

(Douglass’ Monthly, June 1859) Years ago a woman held as property by A.H. Evans, of this county, came with his consent to St.Louis and worked here for wages, a stipulated part of which was paid to him. She here formed a marriage connecting with a free negro,and had successively two children, whom she reported to her “master” as having died. She had then another child, whose freedom she subsequently purchased, together with her own.

Her present husband is John Jackson, at Fourteenth and Gratiot streets, and does chores at the Recorder’s Court Room and Calaboose. That the mother so long succeeded in averting the suspicion of their existence, from her two children, is most remarkable.

This appeared in the April 7, 1832 issue of The Liberator. In addition to its own original articles calling for the immediate abolition of slavery in the United States, William Lloyd Garrison, it’s editor and publisher, often included short stories about slavery from all around the country like the one shown here:

An Interesting Case

With cheeks burning with shame for our country, we copy the following paragraph form the Cherokee Phoenix of the 16th inst:

On last Tuesday, a company of the Georgia Guard visited a school in this place under the care of Miss (Sophia) Sawyer, a missionary under the American Board. It had been understood by then that she had been giving instruction to a little black boy, and teaching him to read the Bible.

Miss Sawyer was warned, by a Sergeant who commanded the Guard, to forthwith desist from teaching the black boy. It appears that at the last sitting of the Legislature of Georgia, an act was passed making it unlawful for any person to give instruction to any black person in the State, under the penalty of a fine of not less than $1000 nor exceeding $5000, and imprisonment until the fine is paid, for every such offence.

Whether Miss Sawyer had ever heard of the existence of such a law, before she took the boy into school, we are not able to say; but it is very likely she never had. She was promised to be arraigned at the next Superior Court in the newly formed county called ‘Cherokee,’ on the fourth Monday of this month, provided she persists in teaching the boy.

A young lady is teaching a poor little black boy to read the bible— the word of him who spoke as never man spoke— and she is forthwith visited by a ruffian Guard, with bayonets fixed, and ordered to desist. This, too, in a land of freedom!— in a country where the Guard has no legal right to remain an hour.

This piece on the positions held by abolitionists first appeared in the Hudson Observer & Telegraph and was reprinted to a national audience in William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator, on December 1, 1832.

Garrison was a journalistic crusader who advocated the immediate emancipation of all slaves and gained a national reputation for being one of the most radical of American abolitionists. The Liberator denounced the Compromise of 1850, condemned the Kansas-Nebraska Act, damned the Dred Scott decision and hailed John Brown’s raid as “God’s method of dealing retribution upon the head of the tyrant.”

The slaveholders in the South demanded the end of the incendiary paper and the state of Georgia offered a $5,000 reward for Garrison’s capture. The Liberator was a mighty force from the beginning and became the most influential newspaper in the antebellum antislavery crusade.

After the end of the Civil War in December 1865, Garrison published his last issue of The Liberator, announcing “my vocation as an abolitionist is ended.”

Sentiments of Abolitionists

Abolitionism utters none of that foolishness which its opponents put in its mouth. It does not talk about ‘turning loose,’ ‘intermarrying,’ and all that sort of stuff. It is no such thing that the slaves ask. If they were fond of whitening, they have enough of it now, in all conscience. (more…)

This appeared in the March 11, 1837 issue of The Colored American newspaper.

The following extracts from President Van Buren’s inaugural address, present his views and designs, in regard to the question of Slavery:

“The last, perhaps the greatest, of the prominent sources of discord and disaster supposed to lurk in our political condition, was the institution of domestic slavery.”

“Perceiving, before my election, the deep interest this subject was beginning to excite, I believed it a solemn duty fully to make known my sentiments in regard to it”

“I then declared that, if the desire of those of my countrymen who were favorable to my election, was gratified, I must go into the Presidential Chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt, on the part of Congress, to abolish Slavery in the District of Columbia, against the wishes of the slaveholding States, and also, with a determination equally decided, to resist the slightest interference with it in the States where it exists.”
“It now only remains to add that no bill conflicting with these views, can ever receive my constitutional sanction.”