Fugitive Slaves

In all the colonies thus grouped together, the system of slavery had already become well established, and with its institution the question of the escape and return of the slaves had necessarily arisen. The conditions of the country, both physical and social, gave unusual facilities for flight. The wild woods, the Indian settlements, or the next colony, peopled by a foreign race, and perhaps as yet without firmly established government, offered to the slave a refuge and possibly protection. Escape, therefore, as a peculiar danger, demanded peculiar remedies. Though it is the purpose of this monograph not so much to study the detail of legislation or escape in the colonies as to deal with the period from 1789 to 1865, a slight sketch of the intercolonial laws and provisions which preceded and in part suggested later legislation will first be necessary.