only the category of “master” or “mistress” in referring to the aggrieved party. The ambiguity of status in the records challenges us to think more carefully not only about the blurred boundaries between the two but also about the limits of freedom more broadly for both groups. While servant and slave remained distinct legal categories, they were increasingly treated similarly under the law after the Gradual Abolition Act created a new class of African American servants.56 Significant numbers of African Americans would have been servants rather than slaves, as gradual abolition required children of slaves to serve terms of extended servitude to age twenty-eight.57 African American women working as domestics in the 1790s could have been enslaved, servants, or hired. Of the nearly two thousand free blacks in Philadelphia in 1790, half were women who worked in white households.58 Regardless of status, they were all vulnerable to the same treatment. Poor whites, especially bound servants, also faced harrowing treatment at the hands of masters and jailers. In Philadelphia during this period, the sad truth was that the working lives of servants of both European and African descent were remarkably limited and with many parallels to enslavement.59 Neither the spirit of the American Revolution nor post-Revolutionary penal reforms changed any of this.
Though Anglo-Americans controlled the political, legal, and economic systems that shaped the lives of African Americans as well as servants of European descent, they seemed genuinely upset and threatened by expressions of resistance and disobedience. But it is precisely this structural imbalance that requires us to skeptically assess the fairness of any law that criminalized acts of freedom seeking in a time and place that celebrated freedom seeking from British rule, arbitrary authority, and the like. It is difficult to take seriously concerns about the disobedient servants, free blacks, and rebellious workers when the state was aligned with those who claimed ownership over their lives, bodies, and time, and laws were easily bent to this aim. From the earliest years of the Pennsylvania colony, laws punished runaway servants with five extra days in service for each day absent.60 Imprisonment of runaways was one step in a disciplinary process aimed at returning them to their proper place.61
The increase in the number of African Americans running away, fighting with, or otherwise disobeying their masters fueled the growing animosity of elite whites toward free blacks. When a black woman named Patience refused to work, her master had her charged “with being a refractory and disorderly negroe woman who refuses to perform any kind of labour for her subsistence.”62 When an African American servant named Jantie left the service of Joseph Elton, she successfully evaded authorities for over a week. Upon her capture, she spent four days in the vagrancy ward before her enraged master had her “delivered to Mrs. Weed” at the prison for an undeclared charge—and a punishment we can scarcely imagine.63 Patience and Jantie were two of dozens of black women who challenged those who claimed possession of them, and got a brief taste of freedom, however elusive. The prison also served as a holding tank for those suspected of being slaves. One woman named Sall from Little Creek in Delaware was held for eleven months on the unconfirmed assumption that she was a slave.64 Masters had complete discretion over how long to leave slaves or servants locked up and how many lashes to have administered by the jailer.
The prison was not necessarily a totalizing institution of social control but could also serve as an intermediate space that constantly changed in response to challenges from within and without. Freedom was mediated through the prison in two directions. While the prison served as a tool of elites to manage a resistant labor force, workers also used the prison as a way to resist the abuses of servitude and conspire about ways to escape or to survive once released.65 Victorie ran away from John Imbert on July 29, 1795. She was captured and imprisoned under charge of being his slave. Authorities doubted this claim, and Mayor Hilary Baker called for an investigation and imprisonment of Victorie until a judge decided to release her. John Imbert reclaimed her on August 2nd, but she quickly ran away again, only to be re-imprisoned on August 3rd. Such determination to escape despite near certain capture suggests Victorie had a profound claim to freedom. These records of runaways, however, scarcely document the trauma and horrors experienced by those enslaved.66 The official reporting of runaways in the newspapers and court records are one-sided. They do not tell us why Victorie ran away or how she was feeling. But we can discern that for the enslaved Victorie, risking life in prison was better than life with John Imbert. She remained in prison for two months, possibly until he could find someone else to buy her time. While short of freedom, Victorie may have felt relief at the chance to get away from a much-hated abusive master.67 The prison could also serve as a safe haven from slaveholders. When four children ranging in age from four to twelve were discovered in the Washington City Jail, one jailer reported that the children’s aunt placed them there “to keep them out of the hands of a man, who wished to sell them as slaves.” Even though the conditions of the jail were horrid, and one of the children suffered with scant clothing and illness, their beloved relative felt this terrible circumstance gave them a better chance at life and freedom.68
The extent to which servants and slaves tried to shape their own fate in the face of great opposition was remarkable. Some servants ran away repeatedly or refused to leave prison to return to the home of their captor. When twelve-year-old Clarissa Morris ran away from Margaret Tucker of South Fourth Street, Tucker offered a one-dollar reward and reasonable charges for the return of Morris, a woman described as mulatto and objectified in an advertisement as having “frizzled hair, a good set of teeth, and is narrow visaged.”69 Once Tucker recovered Morris, Tucker decided to sell the remainder of her term of indenture to someone else. Tucker may have obscured Morris’s rebellious spirit when negotiating the sale, but it could not be suppressed for long.70 Morris ran away from her new master, George Springer. She again was picked up on vagrancy charges in February 1807 and sentenced to one month for running away.71 This group of women frustrated their owners so much that the latter relented in selling or trading them. Samuel Clarkson offered a five-dollar reward in the Philadelphia Gazette for the delivery of his servant Susanna Ware, whom he described as “an indented Irish servant, aged about 26 years, of a fair complection, her features rather coarse, she took with her several changes of clothes.”72 Ware enjoyed three weeks of freedom before being picked up and held on vagrancy charges in November 1795.73 Clarkson left her in prison for sixty days, signaling that he had lost control of her and resorted to extreme measures to discipline her. The fact that she stole from him extended her punishment and increased the likelihood that he would search for someone to buy or trade the remaining time of her indenture. Elizabeth Folmer ran away from her master Thomas Palmer and “remained absent six or seven weeks.”74 Similar to Morris and Ware were Anna Guster and George Roth, who ran away from a term of bound servitude on the farm of Charles Greguire.75 When captured, they refused to go back to his farm. He left them in prison, waiting for them to change their minds or for someone else to buy out their indentures. Roth eventually gave in and was discharged back to Greguire’s farm in December, but Anna held out for two more months.76 Even though the cards were stacked against them, each of these women got a taste of freedom. This process offered servants and slaves the hope of a different kind of life: a less abusive master, or one step closer to freedom.
Masters and mistresses were more likely to seek the assistance of the state in disciplining servants and slaves of African descent than the vast population of English and Irish servants, signaling their discomfort with controlling the African American members of their households and an expectation that the state would help them regulate its black residents.77 When African American Phebe Bowers allegedly “threaten[ed] the life of her mistress Rebecca Conway” she was punished by imprisonment without trial and denied bread for fourteen days.78 In 1790, over half of the masters and mistresses exercised their discretion to release their prisoners in less than the standard term of thirty days. For example, Mila was discharged after only four days. She was described as “the property of William Lewis, esq” and he ordered her discharge and delivery to a Mr Todd.79 Elizabeth Nen was held for only fifteen days, having run away from “her master” Henry Clanse.80 The conditions in prison were deplorable; inmates were often stripped of their clothing, minimally fed, and left to defecate in their own cells.
