Books & Publications > Excerpt from Runaway Slaves 1
Chapter 6: They Seek a City
"Jane was yesterday afternoon about six o'clock arrested by Jones, a constable of this city," Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., began a letter to his father from Savannah, on the first day of October 1856, "and is now in confinement in Wright the broker's yard." Owned by cotton planter Charles C. Jones, Sr., of Liberty County, Georgia, Jane had been in the city more than a month before she had been discovered. She had passed herself off as a slave from the upcountry who was permitted to hire her own time; and she had found employment at $6.50 a week doing housework.
This was not the first time Jane had been arrested as a runaway. Indeed, at age eighteen, wearing "fine ear- and finger-rings," the corpulent, garrulous, self-confident black woman had traversed the thirty miles from Jones's plantation to the city on many occasions, so many that she knew the route by heart: north to the Great Ogeechee River, stealing a boat and crossing the river, then weaving her way around ponds, creeks, and drainage canals, to the forests of live oaks and cypress swamps, and on to the Savannah road. On previous trips she had found passage on coastal vessels, making part of the journey in a fish-hook fashion to the mouth of the Savannah River, and thence to the city. Late summer was not a good time to run, as the summer heat lingered and the nights remained stiflingly hot, but to Jane the weather seemed to make little difference. 1
What should the father and son do? Prosecute the woman who hired Jane? Sell the rebel away from her mother, father, brothers, and sister? With regard to prosecution, the son explained: "There are, you may say, hundreds of Negroes in this city who go about from house to house--some carpenters, some house servants, etc.--who never see their masters except at pay day, live out of their yards, hire themselves without written permit, etc." This was of course "very wrong," but "the less said and done in cases of this kind the better." To the second question the father was adamant: "We have had trouble enough, and I wish to have no more." A deeply religious and pious man, devoted to improving the spiritual well-being of his slaves, Jones felt that he could not sell Jane separately. Unlike many slaveholders, he instructed his son to sell as one group Jane, her mother, age forty-seven, father, age forty-five, and Jane's four siblings. Another field hand would also be disposed of at the same time and the eight placed on the market in Savannah should bring $6,700, including $900 for Jane who was advertised as a "House servant, good seamstress, and field hand. 2
Weeks passed, however, and the slaves remained unsold. An offer of $4,200 was made by George Harrison, "a gentleman of high respectability" who would "make a good master," but it was rejected as being too low. Meanwhile, it was costing Jones $10.50 a week to maintain the slaves in Savannah, and as costs mounted Jones and his son grew apprehensive. Finally, about two months after Jane had been arrested, the now nearly desperate son sold the slaves for $4,500, far less than anticipated. The consolation was that the man who purchased them was a planter from near Macon, and promised to treat the family well and keep them together. "They have been sold as we desired," the father said with relief; more money might have been made but they were kept together. "Conscience is better than money."
The sale ended a painful episode for the Jones family, or so they believed. It was a process that had occurred thousands of times, albeit with a different cast of characters, as slavery spread across the South during the nineteenth century. Tens of thousands ran away to towns and cities seeking safe haven and anonymity. As with runaways who remained near the plantation many were caught and returned, although they probably remained at large for longer periods than blacks lying out. Even in the colonial period towns and cities had offered slaves unique opportunities. Slave hiring and self-hire were common in the eighteenth century. By the early 1800s, the practice had grow to such an extent that there were few towns or cities in the South where there were not hundreds, and in some instances, thousands of hired bondsmen and bondswomen.
Cities offered opportunities for runaways to hide their identities, create new ones, live with relatives--slave and free, and mingle with others. They could be accosted and questioned but control was less intrusive than in the country where black strangers were scrutinized and often arrested. It was little wonder that the streets of southern cities--teeming with carts, buggies, wagons, drays, livestock, mules, horses, and pedestrians--lured runaways slaves....
Chapter 7: The Fate of Jane
"I have learned that Lyons at the Boro received a friendly letter from Old Cassius this evening in which he speaks of not yet being at home--dated New Orleans," Charles C. Jones, Sr., wrote from Montevideo Plantation in March 1857. Old Cassius was Jane's father who had been sold with the family a few months before. The letter related the tragedy that had befallen the slaves. They were sold to a slave trader, carried to the Crescent City, and put up for sale. The man who had said he was a planter from near Macon and promised to keep the family together was in fact a New Orleans slave trader. "Here seems to be deception--a wheel within a wheel!" In addition, he had now received word about the "death of poor Jane! How soon and unexpectedly has she been cut off--the cause of all that has been done! Would that she had lived and died at home in peace with God and with the world! I have long prayed for those people many, many, very many times. I wish them well."
Neither Jones's prayers nor his best wishes meant much to those slaves who were awaiting sale, nor to the intransigent Jane, who simply could not remain enslaved.
1Schweninger, Loren and John Hope Franklin. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).