slave catchers
Bounty-seeking pursuers
Slave catchers were people who pursued and captured escaped slaves, returning them to their owners for bounty.
In the antebellous United States, they operated with legal sanction under fugitive slave laws, tracking runaways across state lines into free territory.
The term carries the weight of that history: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 empowered slave catchers to hunt escapees even in Northern states.
- fugitiveOne fleeing authorities
- runawayOne who flees
- freedom seekerOne pursuing liberation
- bountyReward for capture
- hunterPursuer of prey
pursuit · bloodhound · chains · shackles · iron collar · patrol · plantation · overseer · manhunt · night riders · reward · wanted poster · reward money · tracking · hunting dogs · escape · Underground Railroad · safe house
- Antebellum Americaantebellum era, Compromise of 1850, sectionalism, states' rights, Kansas-Nebraska Act
- Slavery EscapeUnderground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, runaways, fugitives
- slaversslaveholders, enslavers, traffickers, overseers, plantation owners
- Abolitionismabolitionists, abolitionist movement, antislavery, abolitionism, Frederick Douglass
- slaverybondage, chattel, thrall, Middle Passage, slaveholders
- Abolitionabolitionists, Frederick Douglass, abolitionist movement, Underground Railroad, Emancipation Proclamation
slave catchersabolitionists
Those opposing human bondage
emancipators · freedom fighters · liberators · Harriet Tubman · stationmasters
slave, slaves, slaved, slaving, slavery, slavish, slavishly, enslave, enslaved