OAH Magazine of History
Volume 23, No 2
April 2009

Copyright ©
Organization of American Historians

TEACHING STRATEGY

Reconstructing Resistance through Fugitive Slave Ads

Gretchen Catron

Slavery is an integral part of the American story. It is essential that students understand the complexities of this institution and the ways in which it shaped the social, economic, and political landscape of the nation. It is also important that students understand that slavery was shaped by the activities and aspirations of the enslaved. Though they were subject to the often overwhelming and arbitrary power of their owners, enslaved women and men were not powerless. In countless creative and contingent ways, the nation's bound workers struggled to carve out spaces for themselves within the system of slavery, and in some cases, to escape slavery entirely.

The following teaching strategy is designed to introduce students to the everyday lives of slaves in the antebellum American South, and especially to the ways in which they articulated their own aspirations through flight from their owners. These objectives will be achieved through the analysis of primary sources using a Museum Walk activity, in which students develop visual "exhibits" based on runaway slave advertisements. Working with both secondary and primary sources, students will learn how and for what purpose enslaved people used flight to advance their own interests. By inviting the students to assume the role of teacher, the Museum Walk creates a learner-centered environment focused on developing insight into the lives and activities of antebellum American slaves. By working with primary sources, students also gain insight into the process of historical thinking.

National Standards
Era 4: Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
Standard 2C: Demonstrate understanding of the rapid growth of slavery after 1800 and how African Americans coped with the "peculiar institution" by:

1. Describing the plantation system and the roles of their owners, their families, hired white workers, and enslaved African Americans.
2. Identifying the various ways in which African Americans resisted the conditions of their enslavement and analyzing the consequences of violent uprisings.

Time
Two sixty-minute class periods.

1. Poster board, markers, and colored pencils
   
2. Calvin Schermerhorn's essay, "The Everyday Life of Enslaved People in the Antebellum South," (located on pages 31 to 36).
   
3. Thavolia Glymph's essay, "Fighting Slavery on Slaveholder's Terrain" (located on pages 37 to 41).
   
4. Optional: State maps of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee
   
5. Handouts, 1-6, Runaway Slave Advertisements:
1. Milledgeville, Georgia, Federal Union [PDF]
2. Huntsville, Alabama, Southern Advocate. [PDF]
3. Charleston, South Carolina, City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser [PDF]
4. Vicksburg, Mississippi, Daily Whig [PDF]
5. Austin, Texas, Texas State Gazette [PDF]
6. Nashville, Tennessee, National Banner and Daily Advertiser [PDF]

Objectives
Students will:

1. Demonstrate an understanding about the everyday lives of slaves in the antebellum period.
   
2. Make connections between two scholarly essays and primary source documents.
   
3. Analyze primary sources to gain insight into the daily experiences of slaves and the ways in which they struggled to escape and reshape slavery.

Background and Preparation
This lesson is appropriate for a high school U.S. history class and is specifically designed to best meet the needs of a student enrolled in an Advanced Placement or honors course. The ideas and content of the lesson might also be incorporated into an English class in which students read and analyze slave narratives, such as the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Charles Ball, among others. The lesson should be taught after students have had an introduction to the origins of slavery and the way it became an integral institution in the United States, specifically in the antebellum South.

Anticipatory Activity
In order to provide students with the necessary background information, have them read the essays by Calvin Schermerhorn and Thavolia Glymph as a homework assignment. These essays provide overviews of slave life and some of the ways in which enslaved people acted for themselves. The students should answer the following questions after completing their reading:

1. According to the authors, what were some of the challenges enslaved Americans faced in the antebellum South?
2. Approximately how many enslaved people were transported across state lines between 1800 and the Civil War?
3. Describe the threat that slaves faced regarding the sale of other slaves. What effect did sale have on familial relationships? How did slaves resist it?
4. According to Schermerhorn, enslaved people could sometimes be "masters of their own small worlds." What does he mean?
5. What type of health care was available to slaves? What effect did this have on their day-to-day lives?
6. What methods or tactics did slaveowners use to ensure a stable, obedient, and hardworking labor force?
7. The authors suggest that enslaved women faced additional dangers compared to their male counterparts. Describe these dangers.
8. Did enslaved people enjoy any time off? What activities did they participate in during these periods?
9. According to Glymph, why did slaveholders wield so much power and influence in antebellum America?
10. How did slaves resist slaveholders' power over them? How did they carve out their own lives?

Procedures
Day 1: Primary Source Analysis
A. Divide the class into six groups and discuss student answers to Schermerhorn and Glymph's essays. Then, assign each group a set of runaway ads from an antebellum newspapers (Handouts 1-6). Conduct a discussion with students and inform them that each runaway ad details the life of a particular individual. Their task is to gather as much information from the ads as they can about that person in order to gain insight into their life as a slave, possible reasons for running away, plans for relocation away from their home, and plans for life after slavery. Instruct students to read the runaway ads, making notes and highlighting important information as they read.

B. As they read the runaway ads, students should record answers, as they are able, to the following questions:

1. Family and Friends: Who runs away? How many run away together? Who (if anyone) do they leave behind? Who (if anyone) are they running toward? What kind of help (if any) do they receive on their journeys, and from whom? What can your answers to these two questions tell us about how antebellum slavery affected enslaved people's families? What can your answers tell us about their friendships?
   
2. Travel: How do the enslaved people listed in the ads get from place to place? How far do they travel? Are they taking familiar routes? What kind of dangers do they face on their journeys? What do your answers to these questions tell us about slaves and travel in antebellum America?
   
3. Knowledge: What kind of information might an enslaved person need in order to run away? What kind of information might they learn on their journey? How does flight change their access to information? How does what slaves know (both at home and while running away) vary based on where they were enslaved? (in a city, on a plantation, on a small farm, etc.)
   
4. Geography: Do the ads mention where the fugitives came from and where they are headed? Do some routes appear more popular than others? What do your answers tell us about slaves' "geographic knowledge"? Using what you learned from the two essays, explain some of the ways slaves might learn about the physical world around them.

It is understood that students will not be able to answer all of these questions based on the information in the ads alone. In some cases, they can infer the answer to questions based on the broader context provided in the essays by Schermerhorn and Glymph. Remind students that historians constantly confront the problem of incomplete evidence. Inferring conclusions from evidence by contextualizing that evidence is an essential skill that all historians use.

C. Optional Mapping Activity: Provide students with detailed maps of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee. Have them use information gleaned from their sets of runaway ads to plot the fugitives' movements. Have them think about the kind of sights the slaves might have seen, and the kind of people they might have encountered. (Excellent historical maps are available at the Library of Congress website. See, for example, "Lloyd's map of the southern states showing all the railroads, their stations & distances, also the counties, towns, villages, harbors, rivers, and forts" at <http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3860.rr001380>.)

D. Instruct students to use their answers to the questions above to create a visual aid (using poster board, markers, and colored pencils) to tell the story of the enslaved persons represented in their runaway ads. Instruct students to place the runaway ads on their poster along with the information detailing the "story" of the people described in them.

Day 2: Conduct Museum Walk and class discussion
A. If necessary, give students a short time to complete their storyboards. Then post the storyboards on the walls in the classroom. (Be sure to leave enough space between each so that students may move easily around the room.) Assign each student in the original groupings a set of numbers (ex: 1-5). Divide the students in the original six groups into heterogeneous groups based on their numbers so that the new groups are comprised of one student from each original group. Assign one of the storyboards to each group and direct the students to it. Instruct students to move around the classroom in their new group, viewing all storyboards. At each storyboard, the original group member teaches the other members of their larger group the information about their runaway slave ads. Each group will visit all the storyboards, or "exhibits," with the original group member serving as the "docent" for their storyboard. After all groups have viewed all of the storyboards, the students should return to their desks and complete the concluding activity.

B. Conclude the Museum Walk activity with a class discussion about the issues raised by the runaway ads. Have students discuss their findings concerning each of the four categories addressed in the ads (family and friendships, travel, knowledge, and geography). Use the discussion to help students make connections between the everyday life of enslaved women and men and their efforts to improve their situations through flight. Question prompts might include:

1. What are the fugitives trying to achieve through flight?
2. What do we learn about the experiences of women in slavery as opposed to the experiences of men?
3. What effect does point of origin have on flight?
4. What effect does the timing of departure have on flight?
5. How does a slave's occupation or family situation affect flight?
6. What effect does flight have on slaves' relationships with slaveholders?

C. The Museum Walk activity also raises a number of questions about the nature of historical investigation that teachers will want to discuss with students. These might include the following:

1. How do historians use primary and secondary sources?
2. What problems could arise in the interpretation of history?
3. In your group, did you all agree on the details while constructing the story of the person discussed in the runaway advertisement? Why or why not?

D. Optional extension assignments:
1. Assign students the following essay prompt: Describe the everyday life of enslaved people in the antebellum South. In what ways did enslaved people resist their bondage? Be sure to include attempts by enslaved people to run away from their owners and discuss the following issues concerning runaways: effects on family and friendships, travel, knowledge and geography.

2. Instruct students to complete a series of diary entries detailing the life of an enslaved person and their attempts at escape. Students may write from the perspective of an enslaved woman or man, adult or child.