Published records badly undercount slave flight and rebellion

Evidence

Gerald (Michael) Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, Oxford University Press, New York, 1972, pp. 89–103. Mullin’s total is from study of the published advertisements of the period (1736–1801). As such, the figure of 1,500 cannot be taken as any true accounting of the numbers of fugitives during this period. Several historians of slavery, in quite different contexts, have indicated reasons for this: “Not all planters advertised in local newspapers for runaways. An advertisement might set ruthless slave kidnappers on the trail.” Leslie Owens, op. cit., p. 87; “[U]prisings appear to have been attempted or planned repeatedly by slaves. For obvious reasons, published sources are irregular on these matters—the South Carolina Gazette refrained from mentioning the Stono incident, which occurred within twenty miles of Charlestown.” Peter Wood, op. cit., p. 298; and Herbert Aptheker noted, “The South Carolina Gazette, May 31, 1760 remarked: ‘Good Reasons have been suggested to us, for not inserting in this Paper any Account of Insurrections, especially at this time.’” Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, op. cit., p. 197 n. 98. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1980

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the documentary problem behind any historical accounting of slave resistance: even colonial newspapers suppressed reports.