Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation.

Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. By John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xx, 455. $35.00, ISBN 0-19-508449-7.)

John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger's ambitious goal is to produce the first full-length study of runaway slaves. The book focuses on the United States in the years 1790 to 1860 and is divided into eleven chapters covering such issues as what motivated slaves to run, how they escaped, characteristics of typical fugitives, masters' reactions, and rates of success for both escape and recapture. The authors have made extensive use of newspaper advertisements, court records, plantation journals, and letters to create a runaway slave database that includes 8,400 runaways advertised in twenty newspapers in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana. Franklin and Schweninger include a thirty-five-page appendix with examples of their data and tables. From this data they estimate that the annual number of runaways exceeded 50,000. Even more important than actual numbers, however, was the impact the fugitives had on the slave system: runaways, even when personally unsuccessful, still threatened the system of bondage by challenging white claims of slave submissiveness.

The book is ultimately less than satisfying. One fault is that, although obviously well-researched and clearly written, it offers little that is truly original. The examples of runaways are generally new, but the conclusions drawn from them are familiar. Most scholars of slavery are aware, for example, that many slaves fled without a plan and stayed away only temporarily, that young, single men were the most likely to flee, and that masters continued to be confounded by the apparently well-treated slave's desire for freedom. Among the numerous examples, readers may wonder, where are the well-known and often important accounts of fugitives. There seems to be an emphasis on unsuccessful runaways. Perhaps the authors have introduced these new accounts in an effort to avoid further repetition of well-worn stories; but if this work is meant to stand as the comprehensive study of runaway slaves, the omission of famous fugitive narratives is problematic. William Wells Brown and William and Ellen Craft are both absent from this book, and Frederick Douglass is mentioned only briefly. Also, when they discuss the kidnapping of free blacks (who sometimes became fugitives after enslavement), Franklin and Schweninger note that "even the most well-known free blacks were taken" (p. 187); yet they fail to mention the most famous kidnapping victim, AME Bishop Richard Allen.

The authors argue that ads for runaways and court and legislative petitions are less subjective than other sources. Admittedly many narratives were written as propaganda, but, at the very least, they represent an important influence on Americans' perception of slavery. To virtually ignore them seems unjustified. More frustrating is the slight attention given to the Underground Railroad, fugitive slave rescues, and the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, to name a few issues crucial to any study of fugitives. Also neglected is resistance against fugitive recapture by groups, like the one led by fugitive slave William Parker that killed several whites in the famous Christiana Riot of 1851. Little attention is given to areas not already well documented elsewhere. There is only a short section, for example, on the subject of maroon communities.

But one should not get the impression that the book is not useful or that it does not break any new ground. The authors raise some provocative questions. They argue, for example, that newspaper advertisements for runaways are remarkable for their objective descriptions--free of racial stereotypes--of black people. Slaves were frequently identified in the ads as intelligent and attractive. This is a tantalizing suggestion that whites were capable of seeing beyond stereotypes when it suited them, but it is one that demands further examination. Another interesting finding is that the rewards offered by masters were not especially high and declined over time as the system for fugitive recovery grew more "sophisticated" (p. 177). But Franklin and Schweninger only address part of that system--patrols and agents; unfortunately, no mention is made of the Fugitive Slave Acts and the intense northern resistance to them.

Overall, Runaway Slaves falls short of its ambitious goal. Scholars may be interested in the authors' database and the many new cases in it, but they will likely be disappointed at the lack of new interpretation presented here.

CAROL WILSON

Washington College