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This week’s readings (especially the runaway ads) were quite entertaining. Seeing the numerous ways people tried to reclaim their “property” and seeing to what lengths that individuals would go getting their slaves back came across as ridiculous in some instances. What made this especially entertaining to me was seeing the differences and varying descriptions found in some of these runaway ads. By stating the descriptions of slaves in detail or perhaps stating that if someone finds a runaway slave they could kill them if they deemed necessary makes the role of a runaway very complicated, are they valued or expendable? This idea of killing a runaway slave if deemed necessary really struck me as interesting compared to the other ads as the narrative the ad tells goes much deeper than the script of the advertisement. This runaway in particular could have been a poor worker (meaning he was not valued on the plantation he worked on), by stating the runaway is expendable a message is sent to the slave community that you are only as good to the owner as what you have done for them recently, and that runaways are the scapegoats for the problems slave-owners have (the owner of the slave really has no idea if the slave is responsible for the numerous crimes that have been committed since he ran away). Another aspect of the ads that struck me was some of the ambiguity some of the ads had. I believe this ambiguity was intentional as it allowed any black person that was brought to a slave owner to be claimed as “their runaway.” This creates I believe a huge problem regarding the concept of runaways which was the enslavement of free blacks who were essentially kidnapped, a situation I believe that happened more than is reported.
These ads for runaways play into a statement made by Ian a couple weeks back regarding the importance of newspapers in American society. These ads (according to what Professor Shrout told us in class) appeared on the front page of newspapers making them perhaps the first thing an individual read when they picked up a newspaper. Taking this fact and making a bit of a stretch with this information I feel like the question “does seeing numerous ads regarding runaways shape the way that many view African Americans/slaves?” I think that it absolutely plays a role in the perception of slaves (especially for the uneducated or those who lack critical thinking skills) as it paints them as almost “evil” individuals who simply will do whatever they can to escape their role despite the “hospitality” they have been offered while working on a plantation. Furthermore it reaffirms a thought of domination over their property that many slaveholders or those who sympathized with slaveholders had.
Waldstreicher in his work “Reading the Runaways” brings up a valid point in his work regarding the changing “possibilities for black resistance in late-colonial America” (Waldstreicher 245). Blacks were gaining roles in northern society that threatened the way of life many in the mid-Atlantic and southern colonies enjoyed. If blacks were to realize what they could accomplish in the north after escaping slavery, or even realize what they could attain if they revolted against their slave owners, many plantation owners would not see the degree of profits of which they enjoyed or might be put out of business. More importantly without slave labor the argument can be made that the backbone of southern economy would no longer be present, essentially crippling financially an entire region of the colonies.