Although there are not as many recorded narratives about escaping slavery four times such as Jacob Green’s, his story still emphasizes how mobile enslaved people truly were in slavery, freedom, and the liminal. This project maps the paths of famous and anonymous people who escaped slavery from narratives and biographies published in Documenting the American South, North American Slave Narratives, runaway slave newspaper advertisements from Freedom on the Move, and black abolition newspapers from University of Michigan’s Black Abolitionist Archive. Piecing together the lives of nine enslaved people through the axis of movement can add further historical insights into the different meanings and effects of slavery and freedom, considerably blurring the lines between the two. Furthermore, visualizing the different paths of freedom, slavery, and escaping also sheds light on the different powered dynamics around forcing, resisting, and manipulating forms of mobility. Enslaved people traveling under an enslavers’ orders could learn not only about surrounding geography but about the expectations and assumptions around gender, transportation, and freedom, which could facilitate later escapes. Though the individual people mapped are not representative of the time period or of all escapees from slavery in the U.S., mapping and comparing their different movements suggests potential areas for further study of movement, transportation, and resistance in slavery and freedom.
People largely escaped slavery in the U.S. by traveling from South to North. The below map demonstrates the general Northward direction of escapees, particularly on the East Coast (see Figure 1). This could have been due to both the number of urban and port cities that existed throughout the East Coast, such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, but slavery was also generally and historically most dominant throughout the Eastern U.S. Notice that most movements of freedom are North with a few mapped across the Atlantic to England. The trans-Atlantic travel mostly accounts for Frederick Douglass’ speaking tours after the Civil War and William and Ellen Craft’s journeys to escape their enslaver after the 1850 Slave Fugitive Law Act was passed. This act empowered former enslavers to re-enslave any former laborer caught in any state. This was significant because the law previously stated that once an enslaved person was located in a free state, no one – including their former enslaver – could re-capture them. Both of these movements across the Atlantic, although both considered “free,” demonstrate the vastly different dimensions and lived experiences of freedom.
Figure 1. This figure maps the total recorded paths of nine individuals who escaped slavery between 1830 to 1850 in the U.S. Each line represents an individual’s journey, except for William and Ellen Craft, who are represented as one line, since they completed the same routes. Each person’s movement is represented by a different color line: red is moving while enslaved, green is moving while escaping, and blue is moving while free. The starting point for each person is shown in the popup labels. Zoom in around Baltimore, Maryland to see the different starting locations of Jacob Green, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman. Or click outside of label for all of them to disappear. Each gray circle represents a stop on an individual’s journey. Click on a point to see the name of the traveler, the year they stopped at the location, and if possible, the transportation they took to the location.
Harriet A. Jacobs, alongside William and Ellen Craft, demonstrates that freedom is not always a stopping point that can be unequivocally “reached.” After escaping slavery, Harriet A. Jacobs traveled from New York City to Boston to relocate her children and then to Rochester, New York to avoid her former enslaver and possible re-capture (see Figure 2). Though she relocated to Rochester in 1849 before the Fugitive Law Act was passed, Jacobs’ movement indicates that capturing and re-enslaving people was happening to some extent before the 1850 law. Similar to the Crafts, although Jacobs’ life was considered free, she still feared re-enslavement, thus suggesting that one’s life in freedom could still be considered a more liminal state between freedom and slavery.
Additionally, people moved while both confined to and escaping from slavery. Though the movement of enslavement via the red line is only represented in Figure 1 minimally, the fact that there are four instances of enslaved movement from nine randomly selected individuals reaffirms the scholarship that depending on the context, enslaved people were forced to move often for their enslaver.8 Figure 1 also demonstrates that the lines of escape are substantially longer than other paths of travel, which suggests enslaved people might have wanted to travel as far North as possible, if they had no other destination in mind.
Figure 2: This figure maps the movements of Harriet A. Jacobs and William and Ellen Craft. The Crafts are represented as one line since their movements are identical. Each person’s movement is represented by a different color line: red is moving while enslaved, green is moving while escaping, and blue is moving while free. The circles with a bigger radius indicate the start and end point in each person’s journey, while the start point additionally has a popup label for each person’s name. Here both journeys have multiple blue lines, representing the multiple travels they made while free, both for fear of re-capture by their former enslaver. Jacobs first re-located with her children to Boston then re-located again to Rochester because she feared running into her former enslaver in Boston. The Crafts also left Boston for fear of re-capture, traveling to England in direct response to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law Act. The Crafts returned to their original starting point in Atlanta, Georgia after the Civil War.
The case of Frederick Douglass, who escaped enslavement from Baltimore, Maryland in 1838, demonstrates that mobility and transportation were integral to his rural enslavement and international freedom. Born and enslaved on a plantation on the Maryland coast, Douglass’ enslaver sent him to Baltimore to work in a shipyard, back to the rural coast to work on another plantation, and finally back to Baltimore to work in a shipyard again. From there, Douglass escaped to Wilmington, then Philadelphia, and then New York. Later in freedom, he relocated to New Bedford, Massachusetts and traveled abroad on speaking tours during the Civil War. Douglass’ early movements point to how mobility can be forced upon an enslaved person for the purposes of the enslaver. Though O’Donovan has recently pointed out enslaved mobility was not confined to urban spaces, Douglass’ story exemplifies that rural enslavement could be mobile, a concept often overlooked in scholarship.
Douglass’ multiple uses of transportation also shows that there are different methods and options for mobility. Douglass interestingly escaped from Baltimore by disguising himself as a free sailor on a train to Wilmington, Delaware. From there, he sailed to Philadelphia, then rode a train from Philadelphia to New York where he was free. This journey gestures to the benefits of combining different modes of transportation and the manipulation of mobility through disguising oneself while traveling. Douglass posing as a free sailor on a train in his first leg of escaping is an interesting example of the different ways enslaved people could use knowledge of transportation to their advantage. Not only was he capitalizing on the fluid constructs between enslaved and free by posing as a free person, but by posing as a sailor, he was also capitalizing on the different meanings and implications associated with transportation.9 For instance, a sailor traveling by train to a city with waterways implies that they are traveling by train in order to reach their boat, validating the disguise. Douglass undoubtedly learned about the persona of sailors when his enslaver sent him to Baltimore by steamboat; hence, former movements in slavery can help future movements of escape and freedom.
Figure 3. This figure maps the different movements of Frederick Douglass, from 1833 to 1878. His different types of movements are represented by different color lines: red is moving while enslaved, green is moving while escaping, and blue is moving while free. The two circles with larger radiuses indicate the start and end points of his journey, while the start point additionally has a popup label of his name. Douglass was first enslaved in Easton, Maryland, sent back and forth to Baltimore by his enslaver, eventually escaped from Baltimore to Wilmington by train, continued to Philadelphia by boat, and finished his final leg of escape by traveling to New York City by train. Later, as a comfortably free man, he traveled to Europe for speaking tours for abolition and eventually settled in Washington, D.C. in 1878.
Comparing the nine individuals’ journeys indicates how important transportation could be for different types of movement in slavery and freedom. Figure 4 shows that most recorded transportations for the nine individuals were boats followed by trains. For the nine individuals, travel by boat, and thus the use of waterways, is the most prominent form of transit for all three types of motions of enslavement, escaping, and free. Boats mostly traversed rivers for either purposes of enslavement or escapement; for example, the alias “Aunt Nancy” escaped to St. Louis from New Orleans traveling up a river via steamboat while Frederick Douglass travelled across rivers by boat while enslaved and escaping. The only case of a lake travel via boat was Jacob Green’s famous example of jumping overboard, and the only instances of ocean travel via boat are Douglass and the Crafts’ travels abroad while free. Comparing the patterns of waterway travels between these people shows the potential for further studies on the differences between bodies of water and boats used in slavery, freedom, and the in between.
Trains are also an important mode of transportation, mostly for people attempting to escape slavery. Figure 4 suggests that trains substantially facilitated the act of disguise while escaping, as the circle markers with a larger radius indicate destinations reached via disguise. Every person in this dataset who took a train did so under disguise. This reaffirms scholarship that in the 1840s and 1850s, the U.S. began to see more runaways escaping simultaneously by train and by disguise.10
Furthermore, everyone who disguised themselves in the dataset, besides Frederick Douglass, actually disguised themselves as the other gender, essentially cross-dressing. This demonstrates how enslaved people understood and capitalized on not only the fluid constructions between enslaved and free, but also the constructed expressions and performances white people expected of gender.11 Additionally, the acts of disguising and cross-dressing reinforce David Waldstreicher’s argument in his article “Reading the Runaways,” that in self-fashioning disguises to escape, enslaved people capitalized on and manipulated enslavers’ assumptions.12 Capitalizing on different assumptions and expectations of transportation, gender, and freedom provides more insight into the different dimensions of enslaved people’s understanding and observations of the world and again points to additional avenues of further study in its relation to resistance, slavery, and freedom.
Figure 4. This map represents every location the nine people in the dataset stopped along their individual journeys. The colors of the circle markers indicate the transportation a person took to arrive at that location; red and blue circle markers are the most prominent in this figure, meaning that the nine people studied took boats and trains the most out of any other form of transportation. The radius of the circle markers indicates if they took a disguise or not to reach the location – the bigger circles represents that they used a disguise while the smaller circles indicates no disguise was used in transit. Note that these circles represent every point for every journey recorded, so some points were reached while they were enslaved, escaping, or free. Click a point to see information about the traveler and why they arrived at that location, which will either be labelled as enslaved, free relocated, enslaved relocated, or escaped to.
As mentioned, Jacob Green’s story encompasses the most complex number of and types of movements, which involves four escapes, two moments of capture and re-enslavement, and using almost every form of transportation possible, including swimming (see Figure 5). He first escaped slavery from Queenstown, Maryland, to Philadelphia, where he was jailed and consequentially re-enslaved, and then forced to travel with his new enslaver to Memphis, Tennessee. Green then escaped by boat from Memphis to New York City and relocated to Utica, New York, only to be caught on the street by his original and former enslaver. This is the point where we met Jacob in the introduction, sailing in Lake Erie near the coast of Ohio, where he jumped overboard, swam ashore, and escaped his second time of enslavement.
Yet, as stated, he was later jailed and re-enslaved in Louisville, Kentucky, then escaped for the fourth and final time by capitalizing on a mobile opportunity ironically provided by his enslaver. Jacob was instructed to take the enslavers’ mistress by horse from Louisville to Centreville. According to Jacob, about a mile outside of Louisville, he stopped the horse, tied the mistress up to a tree, escaped the scene by horse, and successfully arrived in Cincinnati.13 He then experienced a medley of transit by carriage, boat, and train via disguise and the Underground Railroad network and safely arrived in Toronto, Canada. In the end, Green’s freedom is finally successful in part because of his final escape where he capitalizes on being forced to take the enslavers’ mistress to Centreville. Green’s much anticipated freedom hinges on manipulating a mobile task in slavery. Like Douglass’ escape, Green’s fourth and final escape uses prior knowledge of past enslaved movements. He personifies the complex but important significance mobility has on people in slavery, freedom, and the in between.
Figure 5. This figure maps the different movements of Jacob Green, from 1813 to 1848. His different types of movements are represented by different color lines: red is moving while enslaved, green is moving while escaping, and blue is moving while free. The two circles with larger radiuses indicate the start and end points of his journey, while the start point additionally has a popup label of his name. Green first escaped Queenstown, Maryland to Philadelphia, where he was caught, re-enslaved, and forced to travel to Memphis, Tennessee. He escaped again, this time making it to Utica, New York until he was re-captured by his first enslaver. His enslaver forced him on a steamboat towards Cleveland, Ohio, but Green jumped out and swam to Ohio’s shore, where he ended up jailed and re-enslaved in Zanesville, Ohio. He eventually escaped from slavery the fourth and final time by capitalizing on being forced to accompany the enslavers’ mistress by tying her to a tree and fleeing by horse. Thanks to the help of the Underground Railroad network, he ended his journey safely in Toronto, Canada.
Green’s story also uniquely embodies almost every single mode of transportation used between the nine individuals in this project: boat, carriage, train, walking, riding horses, and swimming. His journey even intersects with other methods such as cross-dressing and using the Underground Railroad network. The variety of transit and the different enslaved, free, and liminal uses of transit represented in Green’s story indicates the need for studying transportation’s changing role in enslaved peoples’ lives and escapes in the antebellum era.
Overall, Green’s path, alongside the eight others’ in this study, neatly encompasses Johnson and O’Donovan’s arguments that enslaved people, whether urban or rural, were at times forced to be mobile. But this study also goes beyond this scholarship to contest the concepts and boundaries between slavery, freedom, and the liminal through viewing enslaved and free lives through the lens of mobility. The cases of Frederick Douglass and Jacob Green exemplify how former travels while enslaved could help later travels of escaping. Yet as Jacob Green, William and Ellen Craft, and Harriet A. Jacobs show, freedom is not easily reached or guaranteed, for their mobility while free demonstrates their fears and possibilities for re-capture. Additionally, the fact that six out of the nine individuals disguised themselves, almost all cross-dressing, points to how enslaved people could adapt different performances of gender and knowledge around transportation in order to manipulate white people’s assumptions. Furthermore, viewing the paths of nine people who escaped slavery demonstrates the need for scholars to not only continue studying marginalized communities through mobility and space but also further research the use and effects of transportation and disguises. Altogether, the mobility of these nine individuals displays how integral movement was to people in slavery, freedom, and the liminal.
J.D. Green, Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky, Containing an Account of His Three Escapes, in 1839, 1846, and 1848. (Huddersfield, England: Printed by Henry Fielding, Pack Horse Yard), 1864, 33.↩
Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 598.↩
Though there were significant numbers of enslaved women who ran away that remains fruitful to study, most historians do concur based on runaway newspaper advertisements, that about four out of five runaways were men. See John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger. “The Quest for Freedom: Runaway Slaves and the Plantation South” in Slavery, Resistance, Freedom. ed. Boritt, G. S., Scott. Hancock, and Ira Berlin. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).↩
For the concept of everyday or covert resistance in regard to geography, see Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004); For an example of scholarship that applies Camp’s concept of everyday resistance to enslaved women, see Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).↩
Rashuana Johnson, Slavery’s Metropolis: Unfree Labor in New Orleans during the Age of Revolutions. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 6.↩
Susan Eva O’Donovan, “Thinking about the political lives of slaves,” American Nineteenth Century History (April 7, 2020): 3-4.↩
O’Donovan, “Thinking about the political lives of slaves,” 7.↩
Johnson, Slavery’s Metropolis: Unfree Labor in New Orleans during the Age of Revolutions; O’Donovan “Thinking about the political lives of slaves.”↩
David Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 56 no. 2, African and American Atlantic Worlds (Apr 1999): 245.↩
Franklin and Schweninger, “The Quest for Freedom,” 29.↩
Judith Butler, “Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory.” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519-531.↩
Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways,” 245.↩
Green, Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, 34.↩