Resistance to slavery

1
Resistance to slavery in the Antebellum period – Runaways
Slaves naturally resisted enslavement as they believed the act of slavery to be fundamentally
unnatural. There were many forms of resistance, but the main objective of all these acts was to
claim freedom against the institutions that defined slaves as their property.1
The majority of the
forms of resistance occurred within the working environment. It shows the extent to which slavery
was a form of coerced labor, with the slaves struggling to accept the terms of work. Throughout the
years of slavery, various customs dictated the nature of work routines and treatment of slaves. If
masters increased workloads or punished severely, for example, the victims had their own ways of
showing displeasure, which included feigning illness, slowing down work or sabotaging production. 2
However, such resistance was not welcomed by slave masters, who took severe actions to stop them
but also risked more widespread resistance. This chapter seeks to critically analyses literature on
resistance to slavery by runaway slaves while making reference to theories of resistance
Reasons behind Slave Resistance
The most pervasive reason for slaves running away was to reunite with families. Some of
them ran to alternative plantations in search of their wives, husbands, parents, and all too for their
children. It means that the mere rumor of being put on sale could trigger the servants to flee.3
The
masters, therefore, planned to make sales confidentially until a bargain was sealed. Most of the
southern states illegalized slave marriages, and the masters often separated slave couples through
sale. According to Windley, slaves were not even allowed to have their sexual partner of choice.4
Slave owners encouraged monogamous relationships as it made it easier to disciplining the slaves.
Other motivations for running away were to escape from harsh treatment and to realize a
life of freedom. Mason reasons out from the advice of his father that a male slave who loved his
family would not be rebellious. However, the frustration of witnessing the sale, whipping and raping
of wives and children introduced the feeling of powerlessness considering that the slave could do
nothing to prevent the forcible mistreatment. Even though every master had his way of treating his
slaves, Lincoln narrating in Federal Writers Volume XVI narratives states that the treatment was
characterized as brutality.5
The slaves were likely to be whipped, executed, beaten, or raped. In his
narrative, Douglass also explains that sexual abuse of female slaves was nothing new and women
were treated as property or chattel.6
Having gone through all these forms of mistreatment, the
slaves were motivated to resist or escape from bondage and become free.
Forms of Resistance in Retaliation to Slavery
Rebellion
Rebellions initiated by slaves included periodic acts of violence in retaliation to the chattel
slavery. Acts of resistance were a sign of continual deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the state of
slavery. However, Dusinberre states that rebellion only led to more stringent mechanisms for
controlling and repressing slaves in some places.7
Douglass narrates that the masters developed
myths depicting their servants as contented, which were used to quell unrests and preserve peculiar
institutions advocating for slavery. In this regard, records of rebellions were clouded censorship and
distortion, therefore, making it difficult to quantify the total number of slave revolts. Geggus states
1
John Hope Franklin and Schweninger Loren. Runaway Slaves : Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999. P. 21
2
Lathan A. Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements : A Documentary History from the 1730's to 1790.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983. p. 240
3
Oxford University Press, 1999. p. 90
4
Lathan A. Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements : A Documentary History from the 1730's to 1790.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983. p. 247
5
Federal Writers. "Volume XVI: South Carolina Narratives." Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the
United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. 1941. p. 17
6
Frederick Douglass, My bondage and my freedom. Oxford University Press, 2019. p. 246
7
William Dusinberre, Strategies for Survival: Recollections of Bondage in Antebellum Virginia. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 2009.

2
that before the American Revolution, there had been over 250 attempted and successful rebellions
in which slaves sought personal freedom.8
However, very few of them were systematically planned,
which explains the reason for them being merely spontaneous and short-lived disturbances.9
While
the majority of revolts were started by male bondsmen, their failure was due to betrayed by house
servants with close relations with their masters. In this regard, not all forms of revolt initiated by the
slaves bore the fruit of freedom; most of them failed.
Runaways
While some slaves formed rebellions, many others internalized their social inferiority and
accepted to be subjected to servitude without any consideration of resistance. However, many of
them resisted violently and tragically. Toatley in Volime XIV of Federal Writers’ slave narratives
states that slaves who fought against their maters risked being sent to slave-markets.10
The narrator
describes such servants as having opted to kill themselves instead of facing the prospect of
enslavement. Furthermore, it is a clear indictment of the frustrations slaves had to go through to
gain freedom. In this regard, Lockley argues that slaves came up with other ways of alleviating the
burdens of slavery.11
Escaping was a preferred option, where the victims simply tried to find safer
refuge. On the other hand, the slave owners devised ways to find runaways, which included the
hiring of professional slave-catchers and posting of advertisements describing the fugitives in public
areas.
Müller conducted an assessment of the problem of runaway slaves towards the end of the
antebellum period and found fragmented ground for estimations.12
In 1800, for example, Baltimore
had a total of 26,900 inhabitants. The population grew to 212,000 in 1860, of which 28,000 were
African Americans.13
Only 2,200 of the people of African descent were still enslaved. On the other
hand, Richmond, in Virginia also had 14,400 African Americans before the civil war, but 11,700 were
enslaved. The statistics show that cities in the Upper South had significantly larger numbers of free
black population than slaves except for Richmond. However, the picture further south was
dramatically different as slavery was firmly entrenched. Charleston, for example, had 17,100 African
Americans, and only 3,200 were legally free and the rest enslaved.
Franklin and Schweninger largely account for truants (temporary runaways) who eloped for
impulsive reasons such as facing the threat of being punished. Some slaves merely took a break from
the harsh realities of forced labor, which was a common occurrence during harvest time.14
On the
contrary, permanent runaways fled to cities in the north. The well-used routes by slaves who ran
away stretched west to Indiana and Iowa. However, the majority of slaves headed north into New
England and Canada.15
The slaves only received help after getting to a free state, which made it
more difficult for runaways from states in the Deep South such as Alabama and Louisiana to gain
freedom. They had a long way to travel on foot. In this regard, most slaves from states such as
Kentucky and Virginia in the upper south managed to escape to bordering the Free States to receive
help from the Underground Railroad.
8
David Geggus, "Slave rebellion during the Age of Revolution." In Curaçao in the Age of Revolutions, 1795-
1800, 23-56. Brill, 2014. p. 25
9
Achenbach, Alexandra, and Foitzik Susanne. "First evidence for slave rebellion: enslaved ant workers
systematically kill the brood of their social parasite Protomognathus americanus." Evolution: International
Journal of Organic Evolution 63, no. 4 (2009): p. 1069.
10
Federal Writers. "Volume XIV: South Carolina Narratives." Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in
the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. 1941. p. 167
11
Timothy James Lockley, Maroon Communities in South Carolina : A Documentary Record. Columbia, S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 2009. p. 22
12
Viola Franziska Müller, "Early undocumented workers: runaway slaves and African Americans in the Urban
South, c. 1830-1860." Labor history 61, no. 2 (2020): p. 94.
13
U. S. 8th Census. Population of the United States in 1860. US Government Printing Office, 1864. p. 14
14
Oxford University Press, 1999. P. 98
15
Viola Franziska Müller, "Early undocumented workers: runaway slaves and African Americans in the Urban
South, c. 1830-1860." Labor history 61, no. 2 (2020): p. 95.

3
While Douglass and Delaney wrote about ending slavery at a personal level, Harriet Tubman
took an active role in leading other slaves to freedom. Having escaped from bondage herself,
Tubman put all her effort into helping others.16
In this case, she facilitated the escape of at least 300
slaves. According to Blue and Naden, she threatened to shoot the slaves she was assisting if they
dared to turn back, as this would endanger herself and others.17
Tubman was one of the major
facilitators of the Underground Railroad. Here, more than half of runaways found their ways into
northern cities. However, Lockley identifies the majority of runaways as relatively privileged slaves
such as river boatmen who had become familiar with the outside world.18
Douglass, for example,
worked as a laborer in a shipyard before making his escape.19
Day-To-Day Resistance
Even though running away had more chances of success than rebellion, some of the slaves
still considered it to be a hazardous enterprise. Slaves on the run faced the danger of being caught
and subjected to savage punishment. Other servants, therefore, never preferred risking their lives by
running away, and instead opted to carry out acts of obstruction that affected their masters at
minimal risk to themselves.20
Such acts included feigning illness, breaking work tools, and acts of
arson. According to Windley, the slaves believed that striking out at the masters’ properties
amounted to striking at the master himself. Feigning illness was a common act amongst both men
and women with the aim of gaining relief from harsh work conditions.21
However, Franklin and Loren
argue that it was easier for women to feign illness than men, as some masters expected them to
provide them with children hence the need to protect their childbearing capacity.22
Whenever
possible, some of the slaves decrease their pace of work as a form of resistance. Franklin and Loren
add that women working doing household chores could undermine their enslavers. To this extent,
Gray narrates of the execution of a woman for poisoning her enslaver.
Geggus documents that the day-to-day forms of resistance appealed to the majority of
slaves. In this case, the slaves frustrated and annoyed their owners at every opportunity.23
According
to him, day-to-day acts of resistance offered the satisfaction that the masters did not have absolute
powers and that even the slaves could empower themselves. On the other hand, owners complained
of lazy and troublesome slaves - who instead of working, pilfered food and other valuables, set fire
to properties, or wandered around public entertainments.24
But, the reality was that the slaves
forcefully expressed opposition to their oppressors. Sporadic acts of resistance resulted in a
permanent undercurrent trend that became deeply embedded in the American society. According to
Franklin and Loren, the slaves did not draw motivation from a sense of class solidarity but rather
from the desire to temporarily relieve them from their subject status.
The Experiences of Runaways
Slaves who managed to escape gave narratives of their experiences of slavery. Brown, for
example, narrated an incredible flight after being packed in a shipping crate.25
Fedric and Charles
16
Rose Blue and Corinne J. Naden. Harriet Tubman: Riding the Freedom Train. Lerner Publications, 2002. p.
23
17
Ibid
18
Timothy James Lockley, Runaway Slave Communities in South Carolina. 2007.
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Slavery/articles/lockley.html (accessed February 15, 2021).
19
20
Michael P. Johnson, "Runaway Slaves and the Slave Communities in South Carolina, 1799 to 1830." The
William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History 38, no. 3 (1981): p. 427
21
22
Ibid
23
David Geggus, "Slave rebellion during the Age of Revolution." In Curaçao in the Age of Revolutions, 1795-
1800, 23-56. Brill, 2014. p. 27
24
25
Henry Brown Box. Narrative of the life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself. Univ of North Carolina
Press, 2008. p. 56

4
also explain how they suffered extreme brutality during slavery and only managed to get away
because of his kindness to his master’s dogs.26
One of the best-known runaway slaves was Douglass,
who expressed the bittersweet experience of finding freedom. Initially, Douglass was happy about
leaving slavery and gaining his freedom.27
However, he still felt insecure and lonely in the free state
and lived with the fear of being recaptured. Despite escaping, he was liable to be returned to his
master and subjected to torture.28
Douglass considers this fear to be enough to damp his enthusiasm
despite being overcome by loneliness.
Stowe provides evidence of a fair picture of the changes in the lives of fugitive slaves from
the experiences of Eliza Harris, who ran away to prevent the sale of her young son to another
slaveholder.29
A similar character is depicted by Jim in Twain’s book as a runaway slave who
manages to make friends and protect another servant, Huck. While Twain portrays Jim as a person
with contrasting characters of being sympathetic and racist, the relationship between the white boy
and the slave was an indication of the possibility of a post-slavery society.30
The accounts of Toni
Morrison also provide the experiences of a fugitive from the voice of a woman. In this narrative,
Sethe, a runaway woman, preferred killing her child to letting her be enslaved.31
Theoretical Perspective
The general strain theory provides a sociological explanation of the reactions of the slaves to
the lack of correspondence between their wants and needs. The theory was developed by Robert
Agnew, who argued that individuals experience strain in their feelings, emotions, and frustrations.32
The strain, therefore, became persistent with the continued mistreatment of the slaves. According
to Agnew, there are three forms of strain.33
The first form occurs when there is a disjunction
between reality and the expectations of an individual. In this case, the feeling of unfair treatment is
likely to result in retaiation with an extreme reaction. Another form of strain occurs when a person
loses something valued. Agnew considers this situation to be more distressing when a second party
is responsible for the loss.34
In the context of this paper, an example of such a loss would be
separation from a family member through the sale of slaves. The final type of strain is the
experiences of negative stimuli in an aversive situation such as assault, which may trigger resistance.
In the event of the occurrence of a strain, Agnew argues that individuals develop coping
strategies in the form of attempting retribution, limiting the strain, accepting responsibility, or
initiating an emotional response.35
The latter case occurs when an individual is not in a position to
change the strain. In the context of slavery, resistance behaviours were initiated as a coping
mechanism. However, Rocque argues that the probability of an individual responding to strain with
resistance is determined by the extent of negative affect elicited.36
Additionally, the slaves desired to
achieve a feeling of equity and contingencies such as social control. In this case, the most application
of the theory is to explain the effect on strains to the state of slavery on the various forms of
resistance. This paper applies the general strain theory to the experiences of African-American
26
Francis Fedric and Lee Charles. Slave life in Virginia and Kentucky; or, fifty years of slavery in the southern
states of America. Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1863. p. 76-77
27
28
Ibid p. 341-354
29
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Or, Life Among the Lowly. Gale, Sabin Americana, 2012. p. 133-
140
30
Mark Twain, Adventures of huckleberry finn. Univ of California Press, 2003. p. 56, 73
31
Toni Morrison, Beloved. 1987. New York: Vintage , 2004. Chapter 8
32
Michael Rocque, "Strain, coping mechanisms, and slavery: a general strain theory application." Crime, law
and social change 49, no. 4 (2008): p. 247
33
Robert Agnew, "Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and delinquency." Criminology 30, no. 1
(1992): 52.
34
Ibid p. 54
35
Ibid p. 61
36
Michael Rocque, "Strain, coping mechanisms, and slavery: a general strain theory application." Crime, law
and social change 49, no. 4 (2008): p. 251

5
slaves during confinement. The theory, therefore, offers significant insights to the motivations for
rebellion, running away and day to day resistance.

6
Bibliography
Achenbach, Alexandra, and Foitzik Susanne. "First evidence for slave rebellion: enslaved ant workers
systematically kill the brood of their social parasite Protomognathus americanus." Evolution:
International Journal of Organic Evolution 63, no. 4 (2009): 1068-1075.
Agnew, Robert. "Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and delinquency." Criminology 30,
no. 1 (1992): 47-88.
Bibb, Henry. Narrative of the life and adventures of Henry Bibb, an American slave. Macdonald
&'Lee, 2008.
Blue, Rose, and Corinne J. Naden. Harriet Tubman: Riding the Freedom Train. Lerner Publications,
2002.
Brown, Henry Box. Narrative of the life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself. Univ of North
Carolina Press, 2008.
Brown, John. Slave life in Georgia: A narrative of the life, sufferings, and escape of John Brown, a
fugitive slave, now in England. Xerox University Microfilms, 1855.
Douglass, Frederick. My bondage and my freedom. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Dusinberre, William. Strategies for Survival: Recollections of Bondage in Antebellum Virginia.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009.
Federal Writers. "Volume XIV: South Carolina Narratives." Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery
in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. 1941.
https://memory.loc.gov/mss/mesn/144/144.pdf (accessed February 15, 2021).
—. "Volume XVI: Texas Narratives." Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States
From Interviews with Former Slaves. 1941. https://memory.loc.gov/mss/mesn/163/163.pdf
(accessed February 15, 2021).
Fedric, Francis, and Lee Charles. Slave life in Virginia and Kentucky; or, fifty years of slavery in the
southern states of America. Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1863.
Franklin, John Hope, and Schweninger Loren. Runaway Slaves : Rebels on the Plantation. New York:
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Geggus, David. "Slave rebellion during the Age of Revolution." In Curaçao in the Age of Revolutions,
1795-1800, 23-56. Brill, 2014.
Johnson, Michael P. "Runaway Slaves and the Slave Communities in South Carolina, 1799 to 1830."
The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History 38, no. 3 (1981):
418-41.
Lockley, Timothy James. Maroon Communities in South Carolina : A Documentary Record. Columbia,
S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2009.
—. Runaway Slave Communities in South Carolina. 2007.
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Slavery/articles/lockley.html (accessed February 15,
2021).
Mason, Isaac. Life of Isaac Mason as a Slave. Good Press, 2020.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987. New York: Vintage , 2004.
Müller, Viola Franziska. "Early undocumented workers: runaway slaves and African Americans in the
Urban South, c. 1830-1860." Labor history 61, no. 2 (2020): 90-106.
Rocque, Michael. "Strain, coping mechanisms, and slavery: a general strain theory application."
Crime, law and social change 49, no. 4 (2008): 245-269.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Or, Life Among the Lowly. Gale, Sabin Americana, 2012.
Twain, Mark. Adventures of huckleberry finn. Univ of California Press, 2003.
U. S. 8th Census. Population of the United States in 1860. US Government Printing Office, 1864.
Windley, Lathan A. Runaway Slave Advertisements : A Documentary History from the 1730's to 1790.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.

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