In Pursuit of Freedom: Fugitive Slaves and Advertised Escape in the Early Republic

In Pursuit of Freedom is a pioneering study of advertisements for fugitive slaves published in the early American South. Recovering, reconstructing, and reimagining stories that fugitive slaves compelled enslavers to advertise in print when they fled, the book unearths articulations of agency and expressions of resistance by enslaved persons. Drawing on a database of nearly six thousand advertisements, Wallace challenges the historiographical tendency to interpret escape as a rebellious response to the conditions of enslavement by emphasizing the agency behind freedom-seekers' decision to escape. In Pursuit of Freedom explores the complexities of fugitivity--a phenomenon that Wallace defines as a "transitionary moment" in a wider freedom struggle as fugitive slaves distanced themselves, physically and psychologically, from bondage--in the Upper South (Maryland) and Lower South (Georgia). In so doing, Wallace illuminates what fugitive slave advertisements can tell us about slavery in those regions, the lives of those who fled, and the actions of the enslaved in the early American republic.