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

Forms of Marronage
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Douglass, like Montejo, was a lone deserter, but his life took an entirely
different turn for a number of reasons. In the first place, he was largely an
urban employee with a skilled trade. This enabled him to have greater mobility
and to pass relatively easily among free persons without betraying his true
status. Second, he planned his escapes much more carefully than did
Montejo. Third, he had a specific destination in mind and a network of support
in the abolitionists who constituted the Railroad, working secretly to aid
runaways to freedom. Fourth, he was fleeing not to the solitude of the wilderness
but to the jostle of a cosmopolitan city, where – theoretically, at least –
he could enjoy many of life’s comforts. Fifth, he married and settled into a
stable family life in a place where slavery had been abolished, though it had
not yet ended within the United States as a whole. Montejo emerged from
hiding after slavery was abolished in his country; Douglass enjoyed his freedom
openly while the slavery system was still vibrant in other parts of
his country. Finally, Douglass gained international fame, through both antislavery
and other activities and the books that he wrote, which influenced
many minds against the institution of slavery. 4 He was an adviser to President
Abraham Lincoln. He demonstrated how a single runaway could influence
national discourse on the evils of slavery. Montejo’s biography was published
about three-quarters of a century after the abolition of slavery in Cuba, and
he himself had no discernible impact on the course of abolition.
Because the record of Douglass’s deeds exists in published form, through
his own writings and those of other contemporary and modern writers, we
can appreciate more fully his contribution to that cause. But hundreds of
other lone deserters may also have been influential in chipping away at the
system of slavery by their fierce physical onslaughts against the enslavers in
Suriname, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico and elsewhere. Some of them may
eventually have become leaders of large Maroon communities.
Many other deserters did not make much of a mark on contemporary
society, but their testimonies to the importance of freedom speak loudly to us
today. To look at only a few of them: Marquis escaped alone from a plantation
in St Domingue but was apprehended soon after. The manager voiced
his reluctance to whip him for fear of killing him, because he was very frail.
Nevertheless, he requested either a chain or collar to restrain him (Debien
1979, 122). Frail Marquis, on the periphery of death, was still prepared to risk
what little life was left in him to achieve freedom.
The case of Jasmin Barbe-Blanche, a Congolese by birth and escapee from