From the very beginning of slavery in America, enslaved people yearned to escape from their owners and flee to safety. S.J. Celestine Edwards, who told the story of fugitive slave Walter Hawkins in From Slavery to a Bishopric (1891), described the yearning as “an irrepressible desire for freedom which no danger or power could restrain, no hardship deter.” The danger and difficulty in escaping from slavery are hard to imagine. Most slaves were illiterate and had no money and few, if any, possessions. The colour of their skin made them easy targets during the daylight for those who would hunt them down—often with the help of bloodhounds—and return them to their owners.
Many runaways had long distances to travel on foot before they were able to reach safety in a free state or in Canada. Not surprisingly, then, the vast majority of slaves who escaped from bondage were captured. Most of those who were returned to their owners were severely punished in an effort to deter others from attempting to leave. Despite the dangers, however, many runaways managed to find their way north, into states that had outlawed slavery.
Because of the incredible physical challenge of the journey to freedom, most of the slaves who ran away were young men. One study that examined advertisements in newspapers in the early 1800s calling for the return of fugitive slaves noted that 76 percent of all fugitive slaves were younger than age 35, and 89 percent were male.Escape became easier for a time with the establishment of the Underground Railroad, a network of individuals and safe houses that evolved over many years to help fugitive slaves on their journeys north. The network was operated by “conductors,” or guides—such as the well-known escaped slave Harriet Tubman—who risked their own lives by returning to the South many times to help others escape. The “railroad” is thought to have helped as many as 70,000 individuals (though estimations vary from 40,000 to 100,000) escape from slavery in the years between 1800 and 1865. Even with help, the journey was grueling. Small groups of runaways would travel at night, sometimes a distance of 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 km) from station to station, always at risk of recapture.
Once they had escaped, many found the freedom they had dreamed of illusory. Often their new lives in the so-called free states were not much better than they had been back on the plantation. Segregation and discrimination were pervasive in many parts of the North, and, having limited access to skilled professions, many found it difficult to earn a living.
The situation in the North was made still worse by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed heavy fines to be levied on anyone who interfered with a slaveowner in the process of recapturing fugitive slaves and forced law-enforcement officials to aid in the recapture of runaways. The upshot was that distant Canada became the only truly safe destination for fugitive slaves.
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