by Taylor, Alan
When a lone man escaped, he often returned to retrieve his wife and children. In August 1813, Golden fled to a British warship in the Patuxent River. In September, he came back to his master, claiming that the British had treated him poorly. But a few nights later, Golden bolted back to the British, taking away his wife, Cate, and their three children.7
Masters expected an initial runaway to return for his family. After Samuel Roots escaped to a warship, his master “did watch on the Bank of the Potowmack river for nights with his Gun,” for he “expected the said Sam Roots would return from the Brittish for his wife & Cloaths.” Apparently, the master prevailed, for he later sought compensation for a man but not for a woman.8
To retain black men, the British needed to help the initial runaways recover their families. During a raid in southern Maryland, an officer asked William Dare, a runaway who had become a sergeant of marines, “if he was not preparing to march.” Dare replied, “No that he had been promised the priviledge of staying that he might get his wife and that he would have her that night at the risk of his life.” He succeeded. Lieutenant James Scott recalled another “shrewd fellow, who had been extremely ill used by his master,” so he bolted to a warship, leaving behind his wife and children. “The ties of paternal and marital affection, however, rendered the poor fellow restless and unhappy,” so he obtained Cockburn’s leave to rescue them. Expecting such a return, the owner compelled the slave family to sleep with him in his locked bedroom. But the “shrewd fellow” broke in and brought off his wife and children in “the boat which the Admiral had kindly sent to facilitate his object.”9
Often the second stage of an escape assumed a larger scale, as the pioneers returned to recruit entire slave quarters or neighborhoods to follow them back to a warship. The British assisted such large-scale escapes by secretly landing black men at night and arranging to pick them up again, along with their kin and friends, a few nights later at a particular point or beach. A free black, Charles Ball, recalled such a two-stage escape from Calvert County, Maryland, in October 1814:
The slaves of Mrs. Wilson effected their escape in the following manner. Two or three of the men having agreed . . . [to] run away and go to the fleet, they stole a canoe one night, and went off to the ship that lay nearest the shore. When on board, they informed the officer of the ship that their mistress owned more than a hundred other slaves, whom they had left behind them. They were then advised to return home, and remain there until the next night, and then bring with them to the beach, all the slaves on the plantation—the officer promising that he would send a detachment of boats to the shore, to bring them off.
As planned, the pioneers came home the next night “about midnight, and partly by persuasion, partly by compulsion, carried off all the slaves on the plantation” with one exception. When they reached the beach, the runaways kindled a fire as a signal, and the British boats rowed ashore to take them off. In the morning the overseer found nothing but empty cabins and one forlorn slave: probably too old or sick to leave. In his elderly reminiscence, Ball exaggerated the numbers, for legal documents reveal that Martha Wilson lost fourteen slaves: two men, five women, and seven children.10
These group escapes required considerable planning to unite people from disparate farms and to secure enough canoes or a big enough boat. The plotters carefully gathered up prized possessions including clothes and Bibles. In June 1814 in Princess Anne County, William Boush awoke one morning to discover that thirteen of his slaves had stolen his fishing boat and escaped. His neighbor reported that the runaways “had emptied the feathers out of their beds and took the ticks and all their cloaths out of their chests and carried off every thing they could conveniently carry.”11
The escapes could turn perilous when too many slaves crowded into a dugout canoe or small boat. The danger grew as they pulled out into a river with a powerful current or onto the choppy waters of a windy bay. Sometimes the warships had shifted away, requiring the fugitives to row through the night to catch up. One midshipman recalled “the mournful picture they exhibited, as parties of six or eight ascended the ship’s side, stepping from the frail canoe which they sometimes paddled in the night a distance of several miles, whilst the gunnel of their little bark sunk nearly to the surface of the water with the burden it contained.” Near the mouth of the bay, the tide swept some canoes into the even more dangerous waves of the Atlantic. Writing about the spring of 1813, Lieutenant Scott recalled, “Canoes full of the runaways now constantly sought the protection of some of the squadron, and it is to be feared that many perished during the dark nights by drifting out to sea.”12
Sometimes the runaways looked back to see armed white men in a pursuing boat as the fugitives struggled to stay afloat and pull away to the safety of a distant warship. An Eastern Shore man recalled joining a posse in pursuit. Descending a creek and turning a bend, they spotted the refugees, who had landed to rest, but “so soon as the said slaves discovered the deponent and his associates, they immediately launched their craft and put off into the Chesapeake Bay.” Although these runaways consisted of two men, one young woman, and two young children (an infant and a four-year-old), they rowed with a desperation that increased their lead, so the pursuers turned back. Other runaways were less fortunate. Near Hampton in July 1813, armed fishermen pursued, intercepted, and fired on an overloaded dugout canoe. After wounding one man, they captured all twenty-two of the runaways, a mix of men, women, and children.13
The dangers diminished when the British sent ashore armed parties to help retrieve family and friends. Guided by a pioneer runaway, these raids served a dual purpose by enabling more slaves to escape and by taking the food needed in ever larger quantities for the swelling numbers on board the warships. In Calvert County, twenty-year-old Rachael Bannister ran away from her master, who recalled that “a short time afterwards [she] returned home in company with British soldiers in arms & demanded her clothes & went off again with the said British soldiers & several times passed & repassed with other British soldiers & pillaged fruit & other things.”14
In August 1813, Jack and his wife, Jenny escaped from the farm of Caleb Jones in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, to a British brig. The National Intelligencer reported,
But on Sunday night last, to the great surprise and terror of the neighborhood, Mr. Jones received a visit from his fellow, accompanied with about twelve or fifteen British. They took from him every negro he had (six or seven in number) except one, who happened to be from home at the time. They robbed him of many of his sheep and hogs, of his poultry, and much of the contents of his house. They also took several other negroes belonging to different persons in the neighborhood; and his fellow, who was their conductor, was armed with a brace of pistols and a sword and treated his master very insolently.
Jack broke into Jones’s bedroom to retrieve an eight-year-old slave boy hidden there: probably his son. At dawn the raiders withdrew with their plunder and people. The raid suggests a deal had been struck between Jack and the British. He would lead them to a prime supply of foodstuffs in return for the chance to retrieve friends and kin, while taking a delicious revenge on his master with rebuking words and plundering deeds.15
In June 1814 on Maryland’s Patuxent River, four young men escaped from the Sotterley Plantation of John Rousby Plater. The master especially valued Peregrine Young, “a most valuable [house] servant” appraised at $700, and Ignatius Seale, “a black smith” assessed at $800. A month later, all four returned to Plater’s plantation, bearing arms and wearing the red jackets of Colonial Marines. They guided a raid that liberated forty-four more slaves: nine men, twelve women, and twenty-three children. They included eight Youngs, nine Seales, and three Woods, who must have been related to the pioneers. Spotting the initial runaways in uniforms, Plater rebuked the British captain: “It is improper, sir, to take slaves; and to put arms in their hands is more so.” The captain pointedly replied, “Who began the war?”16
British Boats Landing at the Mouth
of Lake Borne, 1815, pen and ink drawing by Rear Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm. Although an image from the Gulf Coast at the end of the war, this drawing represents the sort of boats and temporary encampments that the British also deployed in the Chesapeake. (Courtesy of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)
Kin
The British incursion enabled many Tidewater slaves to reconstitute families that had been divided by sale, inheritance, and rental. In July 1813 a twenty-one-year-old slave named Benjamin escaped from his master in Calvert County. A few days later the runaway guided a British attachment to a different farm, to retrieve his wife, Cecelia, so that they could reunite in freedom. Similarly, Joe Lane fled from his master in Northumberland County, Virginia, and went to the British, who then helped him retrieve his wife, Barbara, and their three children, from another owner in the county. In October 1814 in the same county, Sall escaped with three of her children from the farm of Robert Forester. Then she led a British officer to another farm forcibly to retrieve her two daughters who had been sold to a different owner.17
By traveling at night, slaves had maintained ties with spouses and children on other farms in their neighborhood, constituting a community across multiple white-owned properties. That community suddenly became apparent to white folk when a network of enslaved kin and friends came together one night to flee. In Warwick County, Virginia, in 1813, masters explained the flight of Watt and Maria from Robert Dunn’s farm in terms of their relationship with blacks on another farm: “At the same time [that] the said negros went off, the negros of John Skinner in the same neighbourhood went away . . . and it is believed they all went together. The said Watt had one of the said Skinner’s negro women Nan for his wife and Maria was the wife of negro Bill belonging to Skinner.” Similarly, in December 1814 in Northampton County, Lucy, her husband, Paul, and their children Caleb and Mary lived apart on the farms of three different owners until they reunited by escaping in two stolen canoes with other fugitives. Indeed, it became compelling legal evidence that the runaways had gone to the British if many had left diverse farms during the same night when several watercraft went missing. For example, Levin Winder attested that his father’s three slaves fled, and “many crafts & other slaves were missing on the same night from the same neighborhood.”18
Family ties could keep slaves rooted in familiar neighborhoods, or it could uproot them together to seek the new possibilities of a British warship. In Essex County on the Rappahannock River, Samuel Jackson ran away to join a British raiding party, but he soon reconsidered and returned home to “his wife & children, saying he could not feel comfortable or satisfied without them.” In appeals to runaways to return, masters dwelled on the family left behind as their ace card. Visiting a British warship, Thomas Primrose asked his runaway “Jerry if he did not wish to go home to see his mother and sisters.” Much depended on the initial decision of a family leader, who could persuade others to follow. Jim Bruce got his master’s permission to visit his family on the Virginia shore of the Potomac, but “to his extreme anguish, he found his wife and child or children had gone to the British.” His wife’s owner told Bruce to go back to his master in Maryland. Instead, Bruce followed her down the river to seek a British warship. By escaping first, his wife induced her husband to take her lead.19
At least one same-sex couple ran away to reunite. In Calvert County a witness recalled that a slave woman named Unity had been married to Joe Gurny, but “a short time after their marriage they fell out and parted. She then formed an intimacy with a negro woman the property of David Avis by the name of Philis Caden. They both joined the Methodist Church, claimed a Sisterhood,” and Unity changed her name to Minty Caden. Until they ran away together to the British, each had belonged to a different owner.20
Slaves had an extra incentive to flee when they belonged to estates facing disruption by the master’s death and debts. In 1814 the Charles B. Carter executors rented his slaves to four different farmers in two different counties, yet they all managed to escape together to the British. In early 1814 in Westmoreland County, executors prepared to divvy up the thirty-four slaves of the late John Turberville. Taking matters into their own hands, the slaves frustrated that division by fleeing together to the British. In the morning, the overseer checked on their quarters to find “that every Negroe was gone” and “that all the women took their children with them.”21
An escape was always a gamble, for some relatives might fail to evade masters and patrollers during the confusion of the fateful night. Instead of uniting families, the risky attempt might increase and perpetuate their divisions. Lieutenant Scott recalled, “One negress who came down with an infant in her arms, suddenly recollecting she had forgotten” something, left her child with the British sailors while she ran back to her cabin. When she failed to return in good time, the anxious raiders had to shove off without her. Captain Charles B. H. Ross of HMS Albion adopted her baby, but the mother’s lost bid for freedom had cost her a child.22
While reuniting slave families who had been divided by sale and inheritance, many escapes ruptured relationships with free white relatives left behind. Although rarely acknowledged publicly, many masters and overseers had fathered children by enslaved women. In Richmond County, the county clerk, Bartholomew McCarty, recorded the skin color for most of the local slaves who escaped to the British. A rural county on the Rappahannock River, Richmond County should not be confused with the city of Richmond to the south on the James River. Of the 106 runaways with a specified skin color, McCarty reported that 48 (45 percent) had the “tawny,” “yellow,” or “mulatto” tones of mixed race.23
Masters and overseers lost relatives as well as property when mixed-race slaves escaped. In 1813 in Northampton County, Virginia, fifteen interrelated slaves fled from two different owners, John K. Floyd and John Eyre. An appraiser described nine of them as “black” and six as “yellow.” The runaways included the aptly named Chocolate, “a dark coloured woman,” and her daughters Elisha, Mira, and Betty, all described as “yellow,” which suggests that their father was a white man. John K. Floyd called one of the runaways “Southey,” but the latter claimed the name of “John Floyd.” Given his “yellow” complexion and preferred name, he was probably the master’s son.24
In the same county, Arthur Jacob, an overseer, had inside information of an impending escape, because a slave, Violet, was his mistress. Jacob had quarreled with the master and chose not to tip him off to the escape. He later stated that “he didn’t care if all the negroes in the county went. Other people might as well work for themselves as him.” But maybe Jacob also wanted Violet to become free.25
Mixed-race house servants were especially familiar, important, and valuable to their masters. It pained Richard Ross to concede that his “mulatto” slave Thomas Perks had left “voluntarily” with the British troops. Aged thirty-four, Perks “was a handsome waiter . . . fond of music and played well upon the violin.” Such a genteel slave had great value in elite circles. Ruing his loss, Ross recalled that he “had been frequently offered one thousand dollars by traveling Gentlemen for Thomas Perks.”26
Thomas Archer of Yorktown recalled the anguish expressed by his neighbor Major Thomas Griffin in November 1813, when his five “mulatto slaves,” four of them house servants, fled to the British: “Thomas Griffin having reared these Negroes was strongly attached to them and used every effort in his power (without success) to repossess them.” Unable to recover his cherished mulattoes from the British, Griffin sought enhanced compensation from his own government: “the highest value ought to be set in consequence of their complexion & their being house Servants.”27
Virginians denied their relatives on the other side of an arbitrary racial line. Defined by material interest, the property line between freedom and slavery exaggerated difference and called it race. That tragic polarity drove some enslaved people to seek freedom far from the white relatives who would own them as property but disown them as kin.
; Names
Slaves ran away literally to make names for themselves. During the eighteenth century, the Virginians had renamed newly arrived slaves, rejecting African names in favor of either English or, among the most whimsical masters, classical names like Cato and Caesar. By 1800, the Chesapeake slaves had lost the battle to retain African names, but they had resisted the mocking classical names, which became rare. Instead, in the lists of runaways from the War of 1812, we find almost all bore the same English first names found among their masters but with a diminutive twist: Tom (rather than Thomas), Dick (rather than Richard), Harry (instead of Harold), Sam (instead of Samuel), Nat (instead of Nathaniel), Sally (instead of Sarah), and Polly (instead of Mary).28
Historians have been so keen to find African cultural traits surviving among the enslaved in the Chesapeake that we can miss the bigger story: how they claimed and reworked Euro-American culture for their own ends. The Chesapeake refugees read or heard the Bible and longed to earn and keep wages, own homes, and wear high-quality clothing, especially in church. They emulated the gendered order of the dominant culture, aspiring for men to protect and provide for women and children, who would work in and around the house rather than in the fields or in a master’s house. And slaves wanted surnames as tokens of personal respect and markers of familial ties. Seeking equality, many slaves claimed the dominant culture’s markers of respectability for themselves.29
