“Employed at the Works of the City”

Abstract

Despite the successful maneuvers of many runaways to escape slavery in the slaveholding South, considerable numbers did not make it and were apprehended by slave patrols, civilians, or watchmen. What happened to those among them who were subsequently not reclaimed by their legal owners? To answer this question, this paper focuses on the punishment and forced employment of runaway slaves by city and state authorities rather than by individual slaveholders. It follows enslaved southerners into workhouses, chain gains, and penitentiaries, thereby connecting different institutions within the nineteenth-century penal system. Exploring collaboration and clashes between slaveholders and the authorities, it will discuss how the forced employment of runaways fitted in with the broader understanding of Black labor and the restructuring of labor demands in the antebellum US South.