ABSTRACT
Bondsmen such as Tom are not easily accommodated by traditional understandings of early American history and African-American history. The advertisements that sought to rein in fugitives show the changing possibilities for black resistance in late-colonial America, especially in those areas like the mid-Atlantic where bound servitude had not yet been racialized. Any effort to appreciate the nature and impact of unfree mobility, however, needs to be specific to region and to time. The mid-Atlantic colonies have been seen as the seedbed of American ethnic and religious diversity and the liberal "pursuits of happiness". To late-twentieth-century eyes passing over the columns of an eighteenth-century newspaper, the advertisements can seem surprising, even outrageous, a rude reminder of forms of unfreedom that were doomed. It is impossible to know how many slaves and servants engaged in acts of disguise and self-transformation, because the main archive for that knowledge is the advertisements themselves.
