Closer to Freedom

Amalgamationist is a term used in proslavery rhetoric to ridicule abolitionists. Amalgamation refers to interracial sexual intercourse and the genetic “amalgamation” that would be the result. This rhetoric portrays abolitionism as a movement of primarily sexual, rather than moral, energy. In a letter, Mr. Young refers to the abolitionist imagery with which California covered her walls as “amalgamationist,” revealing his own proslavery alliances rather than the actual content of the imagery.

A fugitive was an enslaved person who was either seeking escape to the North or who had arrived in the North but had not yet secured manumission. Many more men became fugitives than women, due to gendered mobilities that privileged enslaved men’s mobility over women’s. During the Civil War, fugitives often sought permanent refuge not in the North, but in Union camps located in the South.

Hiring out was a common practice of enslavers, who would contractually “rent” an enslaved person to someone for a specified time. Traditionally, hiring out contracts began on “hiring day,” January 1, and lasted until Christmas. Hiring out was often done if an enslaver had to move but planned to eventually return, as in the case of California’s enslaver, or if there was a “surplus” of enslaved people. The practice of hiring out increased the precariousness of enslaved people, who also lived under the threat of being sold, both of which could remove them from friends and family.

Passes and tickets were provided to enslaved people (almost always men) by enslavers to authorize movement beyond the plantation complex. Passes were usually given for labor that required travel off the plantation, but sometimes passes were provided to enable mobility aimed at pleasure, such as visiting friends or family. While passes provided a layer of protection, they could be lost or confiscated by slave patrollers, who profited off every truant or fugitive they found and returned.

Rival geography is Stephanie M. H. Camp’s theory of an enslaved geography that creates a limited mobility in the context of the Plantation South’s “geography of containment.” The geography of containment seeks to control Black people’s behavior in general and specifically to control their movements and restrict their mobility. The rival geography is inhabited for a wide range of reasons, including the illegal movements of truancy and fugitivism. The rival geography, however, is also inhabited and moved through for pleasure, as in the case of illegal parties, where enslaved people patrolled the slave patrollers with stationed lookouts. Barriers, too, were placed in the paths of patrollers so that their white mobility would be limited.

Slave patrols were first formed in the early 1700s to monitor the mobility of enslaved people and prevent insurrections; they were an essential part of the Plantation South’s geography of containment. These patrols became more organized with the early 1800s’ shift into paternalistic enslavement, when enslavers’ “management” of enslaved people was uneven, with some enslavers seeking “approval” from enslaved people and others enacting constant and direct physical violence on enslaved people. The slave patrol, then, ensured a layer of consistency amidst the inconsistencies of “management systems” across different plantations.

Slave patrols anticipate both the 20th-century violence of the Ku Klux Klan, which replaced the patrols, and the 21st century brutality of police, which disproportionately affects African Americans.