fugitive slave
Fled from captivity
A fugitive slave was an enslaved person who escaped or attempted to escape bondage.
The term appears throughout American historical and legal documents, particularly in the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, which required the return of escaped slaves to their enslavers even from free states.
The fugitive slave made her way north along the Underground Railroad.
The phrase carries the perspective of slaveholders and the legal system that enforced slavery—the "fugitive" was someone fleeing what the law considered lawful property relations.
- runawayOne who flees
- freedom seekerOne pursuing liberation
- undergroundBelow ground or countercultural
- Underground RailroadCovert abolitionist escape network
- railroadPermanent track for trains
freedom · escape · night journey · chains · shackles · leg irons · bounty · hunter · north · Mason-Dixon line · free state · plantation · safe · house · conductor · safe house · liberty · bondage
- oppressedserf, captive, prisoner, hostage, thrall
- Uncle Tom's CabinUncle Tom, Topsy, Eliza, Eva, Chloe
- slaverybondage, chattel, thrall, Middle Passage, slaveholders
- Slavery Historyabolitionism, abolitionist, antislavery, Frederick Douglass, Emancipation Proclamation
- unfree laborersbondsman, bondswoman, bondservant, bondman, bondwoman
- Antebellum Southplantation, cotton kingdom, overseer, big house, plantation owner
fugitive slavefreedman
Released former slave
freeman · slaveholder · slave owner · master · abolitionist
fugitive slaveslaveholder
Owner of enslaved persons
slave owner · slave catcher · plantation owner · slave patrol · bounty hunter
fugitive, slave, fugitives, slaves, slaved, slaving, slavery, slavish, slavishly