Public Law 105-203, the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act of 1988, directs the National Park Service (NPS) to commemorate, honor, and interpret the history of the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad – the resistance to slavery through escape and flight, until the end of the Civil War – refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping slavery. The slave was the property of the owner and by fleeing he or she committed a crime, robbing himself or herself, as it were.
Escape and runaway resistance in Arkansas was not very different from that east of the Mississippi River, but it was influenced by the geography in which it occurred. Buchanan's Black Life on the Mississippi River, which convincingly demonstrates the importance of the river to both slaves and free blacks. Given that the average age of workers was 26, indicating a relatively high turnover rate, he estimates that perhaps 20,000 African Americans gained riverboat experience in the ten years before the Civil War.
Chapter one of what follows begins with a discussion of the Underground Railroad as a concept, showing how historians differ about the institution's meaning and even its significance. It also chronicles the efforts of the significant number of former Arkansas slaves who joined the military and fought to end slavery.
The Underground Railroad and Runaway Slaves
Siebert spoke little about the role of slaves in emancipation or the contribution of free blacks to the success of the Underground Railroad. Instead, he focused on white subway operators who were mostly “of Anglo-American descent. President of the Underground Railroad,” see Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (New York: Arno Press, 1968).
Of the escapees, only "some managed to seek help from the subway conductors. Blaine Hudson's Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland, published in 2002, nevertheless made a strong case for the institution's existence and effectiveness. During the mid-nineteenth century, Underground Railroad agents reached deeper into the slave states, and the network of co-conspirators thickened.
The percentage of mulattoes was always higher among the Kentucky slaves, but unlike that of the RSDB it fell in the period after 1850. Runaways from Louisiana made up 13.2 percent of the total, presumably seeking freedom somewhere in the North.
Seeking Freedom on the Arkansas Frontier
2 Population figures are based on Amos Stoddard to the Secretary of War, April 7, 1804, Clarence Edwin Carter, Territorial Papers of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office on conditions in Upper Louisiana in general, see William E. They lived mainly in the western part of the Arkansas River valley and received title to the western part of Arkansas north of the Arkansas River in 1817. While they lost their lands in the east, many members of the Five Civilized Tribes were able to bring slaves with them to the West .
4 On the Native American population of Arkansas at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, see Kathleen DuVal, “Choosing Enemies: Prospects for an Anti-American Alliance in Louisiana,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 42, no. Many slave owners who advertised their runaways in the Arkansas Gazette in the early years of the territory had no evidence that the runaways were headed there, but they must have thought there was something in the area that would attract them. In July he was captured in Greenock, across the Mississippi River, but he escaped from the Crittenden County Jail, apparently in a stolen speedboat.
Russell of Lexington, Kentucky, who used the services of the Arkansas Gazette in January 1827, was unsure whether his missing slaves had fled, been stolen, or had been helped to get north. How he was captured by a justice of the peace in Arkansas County and taken to Arkansas Post was not the case. Watson thought Austin would go back to the Cherokees, “in Tennessee or on the Arkansas River.”35 In October 1823, Celia, “a great probable woman, inclined to be fat,” escaped from the Pulaski County Jail, along with two other blacks.
They all belonged to Walter Webber, a member of the Western Cherokee Nation, and the sheriff thought they would return there.36. He believed that Shadrack and Isham, both in their thirties, had been stolen and taken to the Choctaw Nation in Mississippi, where they were sold and possibly taken to Arkansas "with the displaced Indians."37 Ben, who escaped from St. Blair of the Western Creek Agency placed an advertisement for a slave who had run away from Creek Chief Spook-eke Harya in April 1834.
Like many of the fugitives wanted or captured in the Arkansas Territory, Bird had recently been bought out and removed from his original place of residence. Most of the Louisiana slaves advertised in Arkansas were supposed to be headed to the Mississippi River, either by land or water, and many of them wound up in the Chicot County Jail in Columbia. One of the most impressive group escapes ended on April 18, 1831, when an unidentified individual or individuals brought five freedom-seeking slaves to the sheriff of St.
Arkansas Slaves Seeking Freedom
Most of the early political leaders in Arkansas came to the area with Eastern connections and experience in the War of 1812. Conway was one of the latter, and after his death the other, Ambrose Sevier, son of the latter. The slave would be placed in the custody of the county sheriff, who would advertise for his owner immediately and again in two months if necessary.
The severity of the Arkansas slave code and the impact it could have on escape and flight is illustrated in the case of Spencer v. The concern of the Arkansas planter class about seeking freedom from their enslaved property is illustrated, and probably exaggerated, in an essay published in the Arkansas Gazette in 1853. He left one man named Miles Johnson in the woods late, so he put him on the block and sold him.”15 Kittie Stanford, also interviewed in Pine Bluff, recalled that “some of the hands run away.
Callie Washington was a young girl on a plantation in Desha County, where she lived “in the big house” with Ann Terry, the childless wife of the owner, Sam Terry. It was the patrols who had to catch the runaways and they did most of the whipping.”24. Master Henry called to him to get into one of the wagons and drive to Texas.
If some slaves try to escape, they are hunted with dogs. Some of the slaves ran away, but they would be caught and brought back, you know. WPA narratives also demonstrate the importance of the family as a factor in the emergence of refugees.
William Woodruff, the editor of the Arkansas Gazette, reported at least four serfs missing between 1841 and 1857. It was said that the negroes were to be contracted to the wild Indians.” However, he thought they were to be taken to the “upper navigation of the Arkansas River.” One day the bride's father came to Monticello and told Pease he had bought it.
Now beyond the reach of the federal Fugitive Slave Act, Hacket stopped in the small community of Sandwich, about fifty miles west of Detroit. Slavery in Arkansas was much like that in the Southern states east of the Mississippi River, and in the plantation provinces of the Delta and the Southern Frontier it resembled the cotton belt of the Deep South.
The Civil War
However, the effect of the act was largely dependent on the actions of military commanders. General Curtis, commander of the Army of the Southwest, was a leader in the movement to turn contraband into free men. Before the Second Confiscation Act was passed, Curtis took matters into his own hands.
The presence of the Southwestern army sounded the death knell of slavery in the prime agricultural region of Arkansas. Stanton sent General Lorenzo Thomas, the adjutant general of the army, to organize African-American regiments in the Mississippi Valley. While still organized, the first troops of the 2nd Arkansas (of African descent) participated in the defense of Helena against a Confederate attack led by General Holmes in July 1863.
In March 1864, the 2nd Arkansas lost its volunteer status and became part of the permanent US. It then became part of the second brigade of the VII Border Division. of the Arkansas Department of the Corps and was transferred to Fort Smith, where she arrived in mid-May. For the rest of the year, he helped protect the 200 miles of the Arkansas River between there and Little Rock.
In January 1865, the regiment returned to Little Rock, where it remained until the end of the war without seeing more action. 17 The full account of the First Kansas Colored Regiment is in Dudley Taylor Cornish, "Kansas Negro Regiments in the Civil War," Kansas Historical Quarterly, June 21. The command included 438 members of the First Kansas Colored and was led by its commanding officer. Col.
Not surprisingly, there were few runaway slave advertisements in the Arkansas Gazette during the war years, and those that did appear reflected the circumstances of the time. Some of them hoped to find freedom in the wilderness environment that was available in many parts of the state until the Civil War. Let My People Go: The History of the Underground Railroad and the Growth of the Abolitionist Movement.
Military history of Kansas regiments during the War for the Suppression of the Great Rebellion. The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Arkansas: Perseverance in the Midst of Destruction.
