60199616-flight-to-freedom-african-runaways-and-maroons-in-the-americas

Totalitarianism and Slavery
41
Robert Fogel (1989, 197) states that historians have produced solid evidence
to verify that there was a deep passion for freedom among enslaved
persons. It was reflected in the heart-cry of Douglass, 6 who wrote extensively
about the trammels of slavery. In lines known as much for their passion as
their pathos he wrote: “O, that I were free . . . O, why was I born a man, of
whom to make a brute. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O,
God save me! God deliver me! Let me be free!” (Blassingame 1979, 192). In
more subdued language but with no less depth of feeling, an enslaved girl in
Berbice, Guyana, when asked whether she wanted to be free, replied “[T]o be
sure I do Massa, every body like free[dom]” (Thompson 2002a, 268). But the
cry for freedom often extended beyond self to include family and friends who
laboured under the duress of slavery. We have on record the plea of William
F.A. Gilbert, who managed to escape from slavery in the Danish West Indies
and find his way to Boston, Massachusetts, from where he wrote in 1847 to
the king of Denmark, in “broken” English that bespoke his broken spirit:
Sir: I taken my pen in hand a runaway slave, to inform your exelcy of the evil of
slavery. Sir slavery is a bad thing and if any man will make a slave of a man after
he is born free, i should think it an outrage becose i was born free of my mother
wom and after i was born the monster, in the shape of a man, made a slave of me
in your dominion now Sir i ask your excelcy in the name of God & his kingdom
is it wright for God created man kind equal and free so i have a writ to my freedom
I have my freedom now but that is not all Sir, i want to see my sisters & my
brothers and i now ask your excelcy if your
excelcy will grant me a free pass to go and
come when ever i fail dispose to go and
come to Ile of St. Croix or Santacruce the
west indies Sir i ask in arnist for that pass
for the tears is now gushing from mine
eyes as if someone had poar water on my
head and it running down my cheak. . . .
(Hall 1992, 137–38)
Solomon Northup (1853, 260), an
enslaved person in the United States,
explained that enslaved persons understood
the privileges that the Whites
enjoyed as free persons, and longed for the
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/images/frederick_douglas.jpg
Figure 4. Frederick Douglass