Narratives of Fugivity & Fidelity

The items in this section include several fugitive slave narratives, anti-slavery fiction (Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin), and the ways that Black loyalty to the nation was encouraged and expressed through participation in the Civil War. Narratives of enslavement were important to the cause of abolitionism because they offered first-hand accounts of the many horrors of the institution. These narratives appealed to the sympathies of white Northern men and women, with the texts that were written by men very much reflecting on honor and manhood. Women’s narratives often delved into sentimentalism and the authors’ affective experiences as a mother and/or wife, which were feelings that women of the time, regardless of their backgrounds, might be emotionally moved by. These narratives also revealed a sense of enslaved communities’ cultures and beliefs, the restrictions that were placed upon enslaved people, the violence that undergirded slavery, as well as some of the artful ways that enslaved people resisted, banded together, and escaped their enslavement.

The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown

At Philadelphia Who Escaped From Richmond Virginia in a Box 3 Feet Long, 2 ½ Feet Deep and 2 Ft. Wide

Lithograph

Samuel Rouse

1850

Henry Box Brown Sub Collection, Print Collection

Photographs and Prints Division. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations