Runaway Slaves in the Southern Colonies : A Quantitative Analysis of Runaway Slave Advertisements in Newspapers

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  • 南部植民地における逃亡奴隷 : 新聞広告の計量分析
  • ナンブ ショクミンチ ニ オケル トウボウ ドレイ シンブン コウコク ノ ケ

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In the 17th and 18th centuries, among the thirteen colonies of Britith America, the southern colonies especially played an important role in the old colonial system. They were producing staples such as tobacco, rice , etc., utilizing white indentured servants first, then black slaves. Slaves however time after time tried to escape from the yoke of the plantation system, and this paper deals with them or runaway slaves. For examining them as a whole, runaway slave advertisements in newspapers are the most suitable materials in existence. We take a quantitative method to analyze a lot of advertisements collected from colonial newspapers in Maryland and Georgia(Annapolis Maryland Gazette and Savannah Georgia Gazette) from the 1740s through the 1760s. They give us precious information on several aspects of runaways. Based on the information, we can tell the typical, average character of runaway slaves and their flights as follows. They were male and country-born blacks, mulattoes(in Maryland) or foreign-born blacks(in Georgia). Their average age was 26/27. In the busy farming season of spring, summer or fall, they tried to escape alone or in small groups. Some of them were able to speak English, able to cope with skilled works, but some were not. For the capture of these runaways, in about a month after their flights, planters advertised in a newspaper with the statement of reward that is, to some degree, fixed from custom, but also varied in accordance with the time after the flights and the attributes of runaways. Their number however kept growing during the period. One of the most interesting facts found in this analysis is that the character of runaway slaves in Maryland and Georgia was quite similar except thir racial composition. This fact tells us the general robustness of the slave-worked plantation system.

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