Runaway Slave Magnet

The American Anti-Slavery Society (1833-1870) was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass was a key leader of the society and often spoke at its meetings. By 1835, the society had 1,000 local chapters with approximately 150,000 members including Theodore Dwight Weld, Lewis Tappan, Lydia Child, Maria Weston Chapman, Henry Highland Garnet, Samuel Cornish, James Forten, Charles Lenox Remond, Robert Purvis, and Wendell Phillips.

Month after month, the American Anti-Slavery Society mailed The Anti-Slavery Record to thousands of American homes. Every front cover illustrated how slavery violated human decency. Every issue documented the cruelty and violence of slavery, often in Southerners' own words. The Society's campaign used the most modern printing and distribution technologies to furnish the American imagination with scenes of horror taking place within their own nation's borders. The cover of the July 1837 issue featured this mass-produced image of a runaway slave often seen on handbills offering rewards for the capture of runaways. The Anti-Slavery Record sought to humanize the runaway in this issue, and it began with the words "To escape from a powerful enemy, often requires as much courage and generalship as to conquer".