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The Imperative of Freedom
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ferried runaways across the Ohio River; Josiah Henson, who escaped to
Canada with his wife and two children and later devoted his life to helping
fellow fugitives; and Elijah Anderson, a tireless worker, credited with helping
more than a thousand people gain freedom before he lost his own, dying in
prison for the cause. There was also John Mason, himself a runaway, who was
once caught while working as a “conductor” and re-enslaved but managed to
escape. He is credited with helping to free some thirteen hundred enslaved
persons (Franklin 1980, 191–94; Quarles 1969, 78–80).
When the US Civil War broke out in 1861, the Railroad lost its importance,
since enslaved persons found numerous opportunities to flee en masse
to the Union side. More than one hundred thousand of them, according to
William Freehling (2002, 2–3, 11–15), joined the Union Army and played an
important role in the victory over the South. People of all ages and sizes fled
to the nearest point of refuge.
Debien (1979, 125–26) asserts that in the French Caribbean, marronage was
more common among urban Creoles (perhaps proportionately) than among
plantation hands, since the former had much greater mobility and skills that
were needed. They fled from one town to another and sometimes lived close
to the ports, which afforded a great measure of anonymity to many transient
labourers congregated there. He stresses the complicity of those port employers
who did not inquire too closely into the legal status of their new employees
and provided them with more secure hiding places than the thickets and
hills, or embarkation to another destination. Given the widespread practice
of enslavers failing to report those who had absconded, it is difficult to confirm
the accuracy of Debien’s statement. His perception of the relative safety
of the urban Maroon compared with his rural or maritime counterpart is not
persuasive, unless we adopt his perspective that the typical rural Maroon lived
a vagabond life, preying on the small free Black and Coloured farmlands (a
view put forward by enslavers who lost their servile charges in this way).
Contrary to Debien’s idea, most writers suggest that flight into the deep
recesses of the hinterland or to an overseas political jurisdiction beyond the
skyline afforded Maroons a greater and more meaningful freedom than hiding
in urban tenements. In fact, arguably, the most common form of desertion
for urban enslaved persons was what some writers call maritime
marronage – that is, taking jobs on board ships leaving the islands, paying
ship captains to spirit them away to foreign lands, forcing owners of small
vessels to do so, or stealing small vessels found anywhere along the coast and