Black, White, and Freedom: Seeing the Color of Slavery Through Advertisements
"The yearning for freedom came with the first realization of the finality, of the fact, of slavery."1
Courtesy of Local History Department at the Columbus-Lowndes County Public Library in Mississippi.
12 December 1840
Columbus Democrat (December 12, 1840)
[Columbus, Miss.]
$30 Reward.WILL be paid for the arrest of the negro boy BILL, who absented himself from the subscriber’s plantation, in Hancock county, Miss., in the month of July last. The said boy is five feet one or two inches high, thick set, stutters when speaks English only; has rather a feminine voice, and is in the habit of drinking.The above reward will be paid to any person who will lodge him in any jail in this State; or one half for any information that will lead to his detection
.W.E. & R. MURPHY.
N. Orleans, 182 Old Basin.
Dec. 12, 1840. 23-3w.
The Mississippi and Alabama papers will give the above three insertions. [N.O. Bee.]
What kinds of information do the slave ads provide?
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Age
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Physical description of the body
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Physical description of the clothes
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Items slaves had with them(for example, a woolen blanket, gloves, etc.)
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Suspected aliases
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Previous homes and owners, potential for family in any area
What were runaway slave advertisements? During the antebellum era (1830-1860), readers of newspapers frequently would see runaway slave advertisements and committed to jail advertisements. Simply put, slave ads were placed by slave holders looking for their "property," their slaves. Committed to jail advertisements announced that a slave was captured by the sheriff's department and informed the owner of where to claim their slave. Advertisements played an important role in slave holding society by alerting the public about runaways and committed slaves and helping in their return to slavery.
Slave advertisements are important for several reasons. First, they tell us that slaves, despite being kept in ignorance without an education, desired freedom. Secondly, they tell us that slaves desired to be connected to family. Thirdly, they demonstrate resistance to the slave system.
These advertisements held more weight than society realized at the time. The runaway and committed slave advertisements revealed issues related to slavery that owners preferred to ignore, issues like the violence inherent in slavery and that slaves desired freedom.
The roughly 100 advertisements included in this study have much to tell readers about what slavery was like and how slavery worked.
Footnote:
1. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, p. 104.