Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 18, 1993 TAG: 9307180033
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Brown's 26-hour trip almost killed him. He reported that at one point he was tossed into a boxcar upside down and nearly suffocated.
When the box arrived, four abolitionists pried off the lid. The man, thereafter nicknamed "Box" Brown, struggled to his feet and said, "How do you do, gentlemen?"
Brown's story was one of the best-documented tales of escape from bondage and he became a leading anti-slavery speaker in the North and abroad.
Brown's escape was notable partly because successful flight was so rare.
A replica of the box in which Brown traveled and a cartoon and anti-slavery material featuring his story are on display at a Virginia Historical Society exhibit, which opened in June and runs until January.
The exhibit chronicles the nearly always futile attempts to flee slavery. There are letters and family histories detailing escape attempts, bounty advertisements placed by slaveholders and passes that owners gave slaves so that they could travel on plantation business.
Brown escaped slavery in Virginia, but he had to flee overseas to get beyond the reach of fugitive slave laws that placed bounties on escapees' heads.
The nation's first such law was passed 200 years ago. With it, Congress established procedures for the return of escaped slaves and criminals.
"It was basically an extradition treaty. The fugitive slave law represents the attempts by whites to keep slaves in place" as abolitionist sentiment grew in the North, said Lee Shepard, curator of the exhibit.
Article IV of the Constitution, ratified in 1788, obligated the states to return fugitives and criminals to their rightful jurisdictions but included no legal mechanism to make such transfers.
For a time, Southern states relied on local laws and the good faith of Northerners to help return slaves south. But a dispute between the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia over the kidnapping and return to slavery of a free black prompted Congress to act.
"The fugitive slave law signified as nothing else did the conception of property in persons," said Russell Adams, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at Howard University. "Self-liberation was seen by these laws as an illegal action. In other words, freedom was illegal however achieved."
And for the first time, the 1793 law spelled out Northerners' legal duties if they encountered escaped slaves.
"These laws were binding on the free and unfree alike," Adams said. "That makes it completely clear the role of human bondage in a system paradoxically established on a premise of freedom."
By 1793, the split between the slaveholding South and the relative freedom afforded in Northern states and Western territories was becoming clear.
A tougher law passed in 1850 raised the stakes for escaped slaves and signified the growing regional tension over the slavery question.
Shepard draws a distinction between fugitives and runaways, who typically fled for a few days but had no intention of trying to go north.
"Often runaways would steal away for short periods, perhaps to visit relatives somewhere else or to go into towns," Shepard said.
Approximately 1,000 slaves successfully fled each year in the half-century leading to the Civil War, said Armstead L. Robinson, director of the Carter Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia.
"In 1860 there were an estimated four million slaves, so it's a minuscule amount" who escaped, Robinson said.
Most were young men from border states. Few women attempted flight because of family concerns, and because a black woman traveling alone immediately raised suspicions.
Many of those who fled sought refuge in Canada, beyond the reach of the fugitive law. The exhibit tells the stories of several slaves who made that journey, as well as some who successfully blended into large Northern cities.
"Slaves made the best life they could for themselves, knowing that they had very little choice," Robinson said.
by CNB