Resistance and flight of the African American slaves

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Escaped slaves in the Great Dismal Swamp marshland of Virginia . Oil painting by David Edward Cronin , 1888

The keyword resistance and flight of African-American slaves encompasses all acts by which African-American slaves in the United States or in the European colonies from which the United States emerged tried to oppose or evade slavery . This includes slave revolts and flight , but also everyday forms of resistance such as squeezing, sabotage or individual violence.

In order to subjugate the slaves, the slave owners separated the families of the slaves, set on "discipline" through long, hard work and religion, created disagreement among the slaves by distinguishing field slaves from more privileged house slaves, and applied immediate severe punishments at signs of resistance. Nonetheless, slave revolts were frequent, but they were never successful in mainland North America. With far more success, African-American slaves escaped from their owners. Everyday forms of resistance therefore play a far greater role in the history of slavery in the United States than organized insurrections, of which the slaveholders nevertheless greatly feared. This fear became almost hysterical after the successful slave revolt in Haiti in 1791.

Slave riots

→ slave revolt

As the historian Herbert Aptheker demonstrated in the 1940s, there were at least 250 slave revolts in the American southern states by 1865, but all of them were suppressed. Some of the largest and most well-known North American slave revolts include the Stono Revolt (1739, South Carolina ) and the Nat Turner Revolt (1831, Virginia ). Many slave revolts, such as Gabriel Prossers (1800) and Denmark Vesey's Rebellion (1822), were uncovered during the preparation so that they did not even get to the point of execution. Occasionally there was also help for the black slaves from the white lower class, e.g. B. by hiding weapons (this later changed when the white workers were appointed as overseers for the black slaves).

Escape

At all times, African American slaves escaped their owners by fleeing. Most of the attempts to escape ended in renewed bondage, because especially in the southern states there was hardly any refuge for runaway slaves. The way to freedom, d. H. to Florida , Canada or Mexico , had to be covered on foot and was not manageable for the majority of the runaway slaves. Maroon camps that fugitive slaves set up in the swamps and mountains were usually discovered and destroyed after a short time. The planters pursued the refugees with the help of dogs and found most of them again.

The conditions for escape were most favorable for African-American slaves in the turmoil of the War of Independence and the War of Secession , in which they could easily find refuge in opposing military associations.

The great majority of Afro-American slaves, whose escape stories have become known through book publications, did not come from the deep south , but from the extreme north of the southern states, from where the route to the free northern states was only comparatively short. This applies e.g. B. for Frederick Douglass ( fled Maryland in 1838 ) and Harriet Tubman (1849, Maryland). The Underground Railroad , the famous network that assisted slaves who had fled to Canada in the late 18th century, was most effective where the path to freedom was shortest and failed to reach the majority of the slaves living in the Deep South.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States , Harper Perennial, 2005, p. 35
  2. ^ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States, Harper Perennial, 2005, pp. 176-77, ISBN 0-06-083865-5
  3. ^ Runaway slaves

See also

literature

  • Herbert Aptheker: American Negro Slave Revolts , International Publishers, 1983, ISBN 0717806057 (first 1943)
  • David W. Blight: A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom: Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation , Adult, 2007, ISBN 0151012326
  • Gabor S. Boritt, Scot Hancock (eds.): Slavery, Resistance, Freedom , Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0195102223
  • John H. Bracey: American slavery: The Question of Resistance , Wadsworth Pub., 1971, ISBN 0534000177
  • Anne Devereaux Jordan, Virginia Schomp: Slavery and Resistance , Benchmark Books, 2006, ISBN 0761421785
  • Daniel E. Walker: No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans , University of Minnesota Press, 2004, ISBN 081664327X
  • T. Stephen Whitman: Challenging Slavery in the Chesapeake: Black and White Resistance to Human Bondage, 1775-1865 , Maryland Historical Society, 2006, ISBN 0938420968