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| Accomplice cases involve persons indicted and/or convicted (and in some cases,
later pardoned) for various actions viewed as enabling a slave to flee
or avoid recapture once on the run. Some people addressed in these cases
were guilty of no action per se, only of putting the idea in a slave's
head that he or she should run. Many of these cases were of unwitting participants
in a slave's flight, though a sizeable number reputed anti-slavery advocates.
Accomplices are those known or believed to have assisted fugitives on
the run. The various record series held at Maryland State Archives identify
this group as having violated any number of crimes. Most frequently, however,
expressions of the crime committed were phrased as “aiding and abetting,”
or “enticement and persuasion.” Either phrasing designated someone as having
assisted a slave attempting to escape or avoid recapture. Numerous free
blacks and whites were so convicted during the Antebellum Era in Maryland.
Investigation of the Maryland Penitentiary Prisoner Record, 1811 – 1869,
yielded seventy-eight persons incarcerated for various crimes against slavery.
This yield is the product of the single extant docket, and likely reflects
only a percentage of those actually convicted for such crimes. |
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