Book Review: Runaway Slaves By John Franklin

Slaves constituted about one-third of the southern population in the United States during the 1790s to 1860s and most slaves are bought to work on large plantations to help their masters on the sugar and cotton plantation which requires a lot of manual work and hard labor. Slave owners made their slaves completely dependent on them, they were usually not allowed to formal education that is learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement were restricted. Many masters would take sexual advantage of slave women, and rewarded obedient slave behavior with favors, while rebellious slaves were brutally punishment.

In the book “Runaway Slaves”, John Franklin is exploring the history that studies slavery in America. The book focuses on the historical events in the United States that covered the years 1790 to 1860, and it is divided into chapters that discussed issues such as things inspiring slaves to escape from their masters, examples of typical fugitives, master/slaves reactions to escapes, and the rates of success for escape/ recapture of these runaway slaves. It covers late 18th and early 19th centuries when slave revolts grew bigger. Many enslaved people who rebelled were killed but, despite this, resistance to slavery, the slave revolts, and resistance to slavery was the basis of slave’s fugitives.

John Franklin is arguing the facts that slave masters and overseers find it a challenging task to manage slaves on the plantations because they were resistant to slavery in various forms. They resisted as an individual and also collectively. They resisted by slowing down the pace of work, resisted capture, punishment, and imprisonment. These slaves would not stop trying to escape despite the huge consequences. Slaves engaged in various remarkable ways to show their dissatisfaction and in page 23 of the book that state “The tensions, conflicts, and often violent confrontations between master and servant, or overseer and slave, have received less attention.” The White southerners refused to concede to the fact that slaves could not be broken. John Franklin argues that slave owners found it difficult to understand why so many slaves are running away, while the slave masters acknowledged that some slaves want to be with their loved one, take holiday, and avoid hard work.

He outlines that a conspiracy theory was developed while trying to know the reasons for slave’s escapes which was an article in De Bow’s by Dr. Samuel Cartwright, a prominent New Orleans physician that stated the curse as, “mental alienation.” and “fits of insanity”. He explained that many slaves suffered from “drapetomania”, or a disease causing negroes to run away. Cartwright then suggests that these diseases can be cured if slave’s owners provide their slaves with adequate food, housing, and fuel. The theory only provides an excuse to why slaves would flee because the owners did not want to acknowledge slaves were resisting slavery. The book also discusses that because most times, the slave masters were not always on the plantation, it was the overseers who have much contact with the slaves and they always struggle to control them and make sure they were not planning to escape. These slave’s overseers were daily faced with pressure to keep slaves them under control and were released from their positions whenever they are unsuccessful.

The scope of the book “Runaway Slaves” covers the motives surrounding the escapes of slaves from plantations which causes great trouble for their overseers. It covers how these slaves would try to escape, and the main reasons why they were not submissive to the master and why they were not contented with their condition of living as a slave. Slaves escape were not good for the slave-owners business; it means a loss of profit for the slave master if they were never returned.

The sources used in this book were the newspaper advertisement, plantation journals, petitions to State Legislatures and County Courts, RSDB Database (Runaway Slaves Database) and letters. These sources contributed to the historian argument because the advisement of runaways in the newspaper displays that slaves are fighting for resistance by escaping, and the reward that is attached to the advertisement made it clear that the escape of the slaves depicts great losses for their master. Franklin also used these sources of RSDB database to provide a statistics of the slaves that helped on plantations. It provides for the data used to estimate the numbers of runaway slaves annually which was over 50,000. Also, it helped to reflect the impact that fugitives had on the slavery system, for example, there was a newspaper publication of the North Carolina newspaper in 1856 that said that a gang of runaways had so intimidated local negro.

One of the limitations of these sources was that though the advertisements of runaway slaves provide all of the information about the physical feature of each runaway slaves, it never provides any information that might have triggered it. For example, some fugitives escape because they were overworked, given severe punishment or possibly witnessed the death of fellow slaves as a result of the hardship faced. The publications only advertised with reward but never gave an insight into the likely motivation of escape. Another limitation would be that the sources focuses more on the unsuccessful runaways and paid little attention to those that escaped successfully. The writer also did not provide any detail on the Obedient slave, i.e. the ones that were totally submissive. Also, decisions drawn from these sources are not original, though it provides new instances of runaways, conclusions based on the findings are not what scholars are unfamiliar with.

In my own opinion, I think the author achieved his aim of trying to show that runaway slaves were not submissive and their master was having a difficult time in managing some of them. There were several illustrations in the book to show that some slaves made attempt to escape multiple times. If they were unsuccessful the first time, they try another time. Franklin also achieved his goal of demonstrating with illustrations the reasons why some slaves would still plan to escape no matter how well they were treated by their masters. For example, in the book some runaways found freedom after fleeing to the North or Canada wrote letters expressing the kind of freedom they felt and how they have no fear of anyone “bothering” them. He was also able to achieve his goal to prove how the slave owners were losing money because of fugitives, how they had spent money to advertising of runaways, provide money as the reward for anyone found, lost money to the court, and experience decline in production on the plantation farm.

I would focus on Chapter 3 (“Whither Thou Goest”). This chapter focusses on the effect of family separation on slaves and how this forms a basic reason for some fugitives. The slave system created family breakups, lots of slave owners were blind to this fact because of their own economic needs. Slave left behind their parents as well as the place of their early life and the agony they felt for this is long lasting. Therefore, some slaves would do whatever it takes to escape and find a way to unite with their loved ones. For example, runaways on Louisiana’s grand Cote Island, where most of these slaves were separated by sale or transfer usually never saw members of their families again and they live on with the trauma for life. This family separation ruined marriages, an example in the book was in the Upper South where forcible separation destroyed “one out of three first marriages and one out of three slave children under fifteen years of age was separated from one or both parents”.

The early weeks of slaves arriving at new location were most difficult, slaves they are not ready to accept separation would begin to strategies on how they can return to their loved ones. For the unsuccessful ones, they are forced into accepting to form a new bond with other slaves and learn to adjust to the new environment. An illustration in the book was the instance of a twenty-five-year-old runaway in Tennessee named Anthony. He began to plan for his escape back to his family the same day he was sold, he only made it to 135 miles before he was captured, jailed and sent back to his new owner. Two months later he made another attempt to escape and his owner was sure this time that he had attempted to return home. All of the slaves longed to return to their home and families.

Husbands or wife separation also accounted for a number of runaways. When a husband his separated from his wife as a result of sale or transfer, they would likely plan to escape to the neighborhood where their wife is. For instance, some of the runaways were seen at plantations and cities were their wives lived. Men went great extent and took great risk to be reunited with their spouses. In the book, a twenty-two-year runway named “January” stole some money vanished from his owner in New Orleans but was captured, according to his Master, “January” was probably on his way to Vicksburg, Mississippi to be with his wife.

In conclusion, some slave masters allowed wives/children to visit their husband/father on the plantation as a safety guard against dissatisfaction and reduced the likely hood of fugitives but in most cases, slaves would still try to escape and would prefer to be free. The author of this book has been able to prove his points by providing and citing relevant instances to support his points.