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The year is 1850. I am an upper middle class white man living in Pennsylvania.
I am traveling in a slave state, such as South Carolina.
I meet a slave named John who wants to be free.
I say: "I can help."
And John and I simply travel north together. Nothing more complex than that.
If anyone asks along the way, he's my slave. But I'm pretty sure people back then would be used to seeing a white guy in public with a slave with them.
I figure the only place an issue could arise would be if we were spotted by slave catchers in the immediate area I am helping him escape from.
If they know the slave and know his master, they would probably take us to said masters plantation and ask him if he sold John to me.
So maybe til we're out of the immediate area, he simply hides under a tarp in my wagon.
I don't think slave patrollers we're in the habit of stopping and searching random white people.
But after we're out of town, we just travel together openly and I doubt people would think anything of a black guy accompanied by a white guy.
I would guess you might get away with that for a little while, but people would soon get wise to it (i.e. a Yankee would stand out - people would know you're not a local)
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There are such stories in Missouri since it was surrounded by free territory in Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas territory. Some were caught and sent to prison.
George Thompson was sentenced to twelve years at the Missouri State Penitentiary for "slave abduction." in 1841. He and two companions (Alonson Work and James Burr) crossed the Mississippi River into Marion County, Missouri (near Palmyra) from Quincy, Illinois, with the intent of helping slaves escape to freedom in Canada. Thompson (and the others?) petitioned for a pardon and was pardoned in 1846.
His companion, Alonson Work, wrote a letter describing their mission to find and free slaves and the arrest. (https://nelsonhackettproject.uark.ed...rk-transcript/). They apparently just walked up to slaves working in the fields and asked if they wanted to run away. The slaves eventually betrayed them leading to their arrest.
Possibly related to this... I had access to some civil war letters from a member of the Work family (William Wilberforce Work) and researched the family slightly. The soldier's father (James) and uncle are known agents on the Underground railroad near Peoria, Illinois. The fact that the son was named "William Wilberforce" speaks volumes of the family's abolitionist attitudes. I was not able to definitively connect them to the "slave abductor" Allonson Work, but it seems likely that they are related.
Off topic but his letters from Mobile and the account of the assault on Fort Blakely (April 9, 1865) are particularly interesting. He writes about the huge explosion in Mobile in May of 1865 while on Provost duty.
Would they really stand out though? A northerner goes to the south and walks down the street, all the locals see is another white guy, unless the speak to him and an accent or lack thereof gives him away.
And not all Northerners or Southerners have a distinct accent anyway.
Besides I'm sure there were northerners who relocated to the South and went on to own slaves. It wouldn't be that unusual.
Not unusual at all. Natchez, MS, was the wealthiest place in the South and most of the primary plantation owners were educated men from the north. They came south because that's where money could be made.
I don't know the law of 1860, but I am pretty sure a white man who was helping a slave escape would be shot on sight. He was, after all, a thief.
A slave owner possessed a bill of sale for the slave. Free blacks were supposed to have documentation of same...a certificate stating they were born free, a manumission document, or copy of the owner's will stating they were freed at his death.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 not only allowed for the recapture of escaped slaves and their return to their owners, but also for fines for officials who failed to arrest fugitive slaves and imprisonment and fines for anyone aiding a fugitive slave. Northern (free) states were not exempt from this federal law, and attempts at state legislative and jury nullification followed, but the Act remained in effect until the Civil War when military emancipation occurred, and the Act was eventually repealed in 1864.
In the OP's hypothetical situation, without the appropriate documentation, the slave would have been recaptured and returned to his owner, and the abolitionist would have been jailed and/or fined.
Well photographs where in their infancy then, and most slaves weren't photographed anyway. And I never specifically said that his master has met me.
So all he could really do is give a description of his runaway slave, such as black male, about this age, height and weight. And that's a pretty common description.
I suppose he could have a composite sketch drawn up and have it distributed in Northern papers, due to the fugitive slave act, but telegraphs didn't transmit images, just words, so someone has to travel north to bring those sketches to the printing presses, and we'd already be ahead of them.
By the time all that's accomplished we'd probably be North of the Mason Dixon Line if I haven't already gotten him into Canada.
Again, we'd already be ahead of them. Maybe we even travel by railroad ourselves, boarding a train before they can, as I'm a man of relative means, we could travel a lot faster than a runaway slave on foot who needs to conceal himself.
It would be dicey. Not impossible, but dicey.
Not even the railroad was a particularly fast means of travel (relative to today), as the train stopped at every town and even between towns. If the slave had been on the run for any length of time, that telegraph is likely to already be on the wire and 'way ahead of you.
Would you have proper clothes for a slave travelling with a gentleman? Would the slave have the experience to know how to act while travelling with a gentleman--that's a skill different from what a field hand would know.
There are a dozen ways you'd tip your hand that you were a "foreigner"--there were lots of visual references between citizens of various states and regions, not merely voice accents. Rousing suspicion would have been an easy error with all the stops the train would make along the way.
If it had been easy, all the Abolitionists would have been doing it.
You could dress him like a body servant and have him carry your baggage. Put him in chains and tell people you are returning a runaway slave to New Jersey for his bounty. There was also slaves that were hired out. There was also "virtually free slaves," who could travel alone. Papers were often forged and some white "gatekeepers" were illiterate themselves.
Not even the railroad was a particularly fast means of travel (relative to today), as the train stopped at every town and even between towns. If the slave had been on the run for any length of time, that telegraph is likely to already be on the wire and 'way ahead of you.
Would you have proper clothes for a slave travelling with a gentleman? Would the slave have the experience to know how to act while travelling with a gentleman--that's a skill different from what a field hand would know.
There are a dozen ways you'd tip your hand that you were a "foreigner"--there were lots of visual references between citizens of various states and regions, not merely voice accents. Rousing suspicion would have been an easy error with all the stops the train would make along the way.
If it had been easy, all the Abolitionists would have been doing it.
Not to mention that the world local to a given population was a heck of lot smaller then. Random people didn't make their way to the local plantation(s) and have close enough contact to the typical servant to make plans to help them to make a break for it.
Unless a person was visiting a larger Southern city (and even then, people often tended to know or at least be aware of one another and what was normal. Still is that way in many small towns and rural areas), an out-of-towner would have stuck out like a sore thumb whether or not he opened his mouth. Sure, a few here and there might have been able to spirit an enslaved person out of the South and into freedom, but that would have been an exception rather than a rule. I also think that the O.P. is highly underestimating the skills of slave catchers/bounty hunters in the antebellum South.
That and regional accents were far, far more pronounced than they are today. Even when I was a kid, regional accents were more apparent than they now are. A Northerner would have stuck out even before he opened his mouth to speak; speaking would only have confirmed any suspicions that he wasn't a local.
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