James Oakes 'The Political Significance Of Slave Resistance'

During the 18th century, Southern slaves commonly practiced ways of everyday resistance towards slavery. From stealing their owner’s property, faking illness, or just complete arson, slaves’ actions of resistance were geared mainly towards hurting their masters and challenging his authority. One act of resistance that began increasingly common in the 1830s was slave flight. Running away became so popular for slaves during this time because slave revolts were pointless, and slaves began to escape to places like the Northern U.S., Canada, and Mexico, so they could receive their freedom. “The Political Significance of Slave Resistance” by James Oakes is a detailed examination of the political influences of the slave resistance in the American

In the piece, Oakes points out that there were unintended consequences of slaves running away to the North, consequences that would later lead to the abolishment of slavery. During this time thousands of fugitive slaves came to the Northern state. Favor to the new fugitive’s union legislature make new laws which apparently created conflict with the southern law. As Oakes stated, “Where northern law presumed that black people were free and so granted them certain basic civil rights, southern law presumed them, slaves. To protect northern free blacks from kidnapping by fugitive slave catchers, northern states established legal procedures for determining whether a slaveholders’ claim of ownership was valid” (Oakes, 95). These laws became known as the ‘Personal Liberty Laws’ which was established to regulate the captured fugitives from the North. Throughout the essay, Oakes explains that the major conflict between the North and South started because of the new laws passed in the North which completely contradicted the southern law. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 gave slaveholders the right to recapture their slaves if they ran away, within the law the free African American in north faced a massive threat and was in danger to capture by the slaveholder from the

Congress was forced to pass the second Confiscation Act in 1862 to deal with the large arrival of fugitives to the North, where the law granted all runaway slaves freedom in the Union territory. “Thus, as a bill passed by Congress on the same day as the second Confiscation Act promised freedom to slaves who served in the militia” (Oakes, 102). With that bill passed the Union saw an even greater number of fugitives coming to the North and willing to fight for the Union cause. “Within a year 50,000 blacks had served and by war’s end 179,000 had enlisted, nearly three-fourths of them from the South” (Oakes, 104). Oakes proves that with the huge increase of fugitives coming to the North and President Lincoln’s eventual passing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the Confederate South had seen a complete collapse of their social structure which made it easier for the Union to win the Civil War and achieve their goal of ending