Handbill Offering a Reward for a Runaway Slave

Photograph

By: Louie Psihoyos

Date: October 21, 1835

Source: © Louie Psihoyos/Corbis.

About the Photographer: Louie Psihoyos was a staff photographer for National Geographic magazine and the recipient of numerous awards. His work includes a wide array of nature photography, as well as Hollywood campaigns and stock photography, including pictures of historical documents.

INTRODUCTION

America's first federal fugitive slave law was enacted in 1793, stating that no person "shall entertain, or give countenance to, the enemies of the other, or protect, in their respective states, criminal fugitives, servants, or slaves, but the same to apprehend and secure, and deliver to the state or states, to such enemies, criminals, servants or slaves." Although the issues of slavery and escaped slaves had been addressed in the Constitution, conflict still remained; the 1793 law was sparked by a clash between residents of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Most successful escapes were made from slave states that bordered free states; the further south a slave lived, the less likely his or her chances of reaching freedom. In addition, slaves were usually required to produce documentation from their master permitting them to travel off the plantation; any slave caught without these papers was apprehended, returned to his master, and usually subjected to harsh punishment. Because so few slaves could read or write, forging such documents was nearly impossible. In his 1845 autobiography, Frederick Douglass, a former slave who could both read and write, detailed an event in which he forged papers for himself and fellow slaves as they prepared to escape from Maryland. When their plot was discovered, the slaves burned or ate the papers in an effort to hide the evidence; literacy was illegal for slaves, and the combination of an escape attempt and known literacy could have cost them their lives.

The Underground Railroad, a series of safe houses and havens for escaped slaves, was a loose system of abolitionists and others who helped escapees find their way to freedom in the northern United States or Canada. From 1810 to 1850 the Underground Railroad helped more than 6,000 slaves escape, aided by former slaves such as Harriet Tubman, religious groups such as the Quakers, and abolitionist sympathizers. Fugitive slaves numbered more than 30,000 in Canada by the end of the Civil War.

In the 1830s, abolitionist sentiment grew, and tension between the North and South increased. Lecture circuits were filled with antislavery speakers, publications spoke of the institution's evils. This handbill, dated 1835, was printed and posted more than twenty-five years before the start of the Civil War. Similar items were printed by slave owners seeking their escaped slaves and offering rewards to those who helped return them.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Handbill Offering a Reward for a Runaway Slave

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

The description of Frank Mullen's clothing suggests that he was a household slave rather than a field hand; household slaves escaped less frequently than other slaves, in part because their treatment was generally better, and in part because they were under greater direct supervision. Slaves who drove carriages, cleaned the main house, worked as cooks, or cared for children were on more intimate terms with their owners and often received better clothing and rations than other slaves.

The bounty for Frank Mullen was set at $100-200; such rewards spawned an entire industry of slave hunters. In some instances, bounty hunters captured any black person without documentation they could find and turned the assumed slave over to authorities for a reward. Though rare, this practice led to the re-enslavement of some free blacks.

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 compelled citizens to hand over fugitive slaves, but many northerners refused to do so, and those in the Underground Railroad and other slave assistance organizations actively flouted the law. An 1842 Supreme Court decision, Prigg v. Pennsylvania, declared that states did not have to aid in the capture and delivery of an escaped slave, in effect nullifying portions of the 1793 law.

In 1850, Congress passed an updated Fugitive Slave Law; this new version required law enforcement officials to turn over any fugitive slave, with harsh penalties for those who did not. In addition, the law provided a direct "finder's fee" for those who captured slaves, taking the informal system on handbills and making it part of the law.

By 1850, abolitionist sentiment in the North was reaching fever pitch. William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper The Liberator published stories of fugitive slaves, their living conditions in the South, and powerful editorials fulminating against the slave system. Over the next decade, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law became a source of escalating tension and aggression as the United States headed toward the Civil War.