Karen Cook Bell, Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
R.J.M. Blackett, The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998).
Antonio Bly, “Indubitable Signs: Reading Silence as Text in New England Runaway Slave Advertisements,’ Slavery and Abolition, 2020, 1-29.
Antonio T. Bly, Escaping Bondage: A documentary history of runaway slaves in eighteenth-century New England, 1700-1789 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012).
Antonio T. Bly, Escaping Slavery: A Documentary History of Native American Runaways in British North America (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2022).
Antonio T. Bly, “Pretty, Sassy, Cool: Slave Resistance, Agency, and Culture in Eighteenth-Century New England,” The New England Quarterly 89, no. 3 (2016): 457–92.
Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise, The Long Walk to Freedom: Runaway Slave Narratives (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012).
Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982).
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (New York: Atria, 2017).
Paul Finkelman, Fugitive Slaves (New York: Garland, 1989).
John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Gad J. Heuman, Out of the House of Bondage: Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in Africa and the New World (London: Frank Cass, 1986).
Graham Russell Hodges and Alan Edward Brown, eds. “Pretends to Be Free”: Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey (New York, 1994)
Daniel Meaders, Advertisements for Runaway Slaves in Virginia, 1801-1820 (New York: Garland, 1997).
Philip Morgan, ‘Colonial South Carolina Runaways: Their Significance for Slave Culture,’ Slavery and Abolition 6, 3 (1985), 57-78.
Gerlad W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).
Simon P. Newman, “Freedom-seeking slaves in England and Scotland, 1700-1780,” English Historical Review, 134, 570 (October 2019), 1136-1168
Simon P. Newman, Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London (London: University of London Press, 2022).
Simon P. Newman, “Hidden in Plain Sight: escaped slaves in late-18^th and early-19^th century Jamaica.” The William and Mary Quarterly (OI Digital Reader), June 2018.
Simon P. Newman, “Rethinking Runaways in the British Atlantic World: Britain, the Caribbean, West Africa and North America.” Slavery & Abolition, 38, 1 (2017), 49-75.
Damian Alan Pargas, Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800-1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Freddie L. Parker, Running for Freedom: Slave Runaways in North Carolina, 1775-1840 (New York: Garland, 1993).
Richard Price, ed., Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore and London, 1979).
Jonathan Prude, “‘To Look Upon the Lower Sort’: Runaway Ads and the Appearance of Unfree Laborers in America, 1750-1800,” The Journal of American History, 78 no.1 (1991), 124-59.
Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).
Billy G. Smith, “Runaway Slaves in the Mid-Atlantic Region During the Revolutionary Era,” in The Transforming Hand of Revolution: Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 199–230.
Billy G. Smith, “Resisting Inequality: Black Women Who Stole Themselves in Eighteenth‑Century America” in Carla Gardina Pestana and Sharon V. Salinger., eds., Inequality in Early America (Hanover, N.H: University Press of New England, 1999), 134-159.
Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz, Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1790 (1989).
Alvin O. Thompson, Flight to Freedom: African Runaways and Maroons in the Americas (Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2006).
David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).
Gloria Whiting, “Emancipation without the Courts or Constitution: The Case of Revolutionary Massachusetts,” Slavery & Abolition (November 2019): 1–21.
Glory Whiting, “Power, Patriarchy, and Provision: African Families Negotiate Gender and Slavery in New England,” Journal of American History 103 no. 3 (December 2016): 583–605.
Lathan A. Windley, ed., Runaway Slave Advertisements: a documentary history from the 1730s to 1790 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 4 vols.

Online Resources & Videos

Joanne Pope Melish, “Interpreting an advertisement for a runaway slave,” https://vimeo.com/16293143

“Runaway Slave Advertisements from the American Revolution,” Sophia’s Schoolhouse: Georgia Historical Society, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTQ58WzZj5Q

Simon P. Newman, “Hidden in Plain sight: escaped slaves in late-18^th and early-19^th century Jamaica,” The William and Mary Quarterly (OI Digital Reader), June 2018. (Free access to this online article). https://oireader.wm.edu/open_wmq/

“Runaways,” National Humanities Center resource, http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/enslavement/text8/text8read.htm

“Runaway Slaves and Servants in Colonial Virginia,” Encyclopedia Virginia: Virginia Humanities, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/runaway-slaves-and-servants-in-colonial-virginia/

“Resistance and Punishment” (including escape from slavery), George Washington’s Mount Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/resistance-and-punishment/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvsO6ocLs-QIViv_ICh3apQLvEAAYASAAEgLT7PD_BwE

“Runaway Slaves,” Women & the American Story, New York Historical Society, https://wams.nyhistory.org/settler-colonialism-and-revolution/settler-colonialism/runaway-slaves/

“Strategies for Escape: A Study of Fugitive Slave Ads, 1770-1819,” Princeton and Slavery, https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/strategies-for-escape

Online Sources of Maps

When searching for maps that correspond to runaway advertisements, it helps to first work out exactly where the place or places mention in an advertisement are located. For example, an advertisement in the Maryland Gazette (Sept. 13, 1759) reported that a “new Negro man” named Sambo had escaped from Jasper Mauduit who lived near Bladensburg in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Start by looking for Bladensburg, Maryland on Google maps: zoom out, and see where Bladensburg is located (about 7 miles north-east of Washington DC, and about 30 miles south-west of Baltimore).

You can then use the various collections of early maps below to find maps of Maryland and of Prince George’s County, and see exactly what the area and its roads were like.

You can also do google searches like the following:

Search for: Bladensburg AND Maryland AND “Jasper Mauduit”

This will sometimes bring up references and documents that will give you a little more information about the place: in this case I discovered that Jasper Mauduit had two small pieces of land (named Mauduit’s Discovery and Makeshift) in or near Bladensburg. If you find a detailed map of Prince George’s County in the 1760s pr 1770s you may even find these small plots of land/plantations.

USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer

Enables you to find a place, and then explore historical maps of that location.

Link: https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/topoexplorer/index.html

The John Carter Brown Library

Click on ‘Browse’ and then select ‘where’ (e.g. North America) and then click on ‘when’ and select a date (e.g. 1777). You can then browse through the available maps. Alternatively, enter a place in the search box in the top right corner (e.g. Virginia), and then either browse through the results or select a date under when.

Link: https://jcb.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/JCBMAPS~1~1

Library of Congress

Change from ‘Collections with Maps’ to ‘Search Maps’. Enter a place is the search box in the top right corner (e.g. Virginia), and then select a date range (e.g. 1700-1799). Then browse through the results.

Link: https://www.loc.gov/maps/collections