Who was the subject of an advertisement in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“RANAWAY …a Negro Man named DICK.”
An enslaved man known as Dick to his enslaver took advantage of the disruptions caused by the Revolutionary War to liberate himself by running away from his enslaver on September 5, 1776. Dick put into action for himself the rhetoric of liberty that circulated during the era of the American Revolution, though he did not need a Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson to realize the injustices of slavery.
The Declaration of Independence, including the “self-evident” truths that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” apparently did not inspire Francis Clark of Middletown, Connecticut, to contemplate whether Dick deserved his freedom. Instead, he wrote an advertisement that described Dick and offered a reward for his capture and return. He did so on September 9, allowing enough time for it to appear in the September 11 edition of the Connecticut Journal, published in New Haven. Like most other American newspapers, a new edition of the Connecticut Journal came out weekly. When Clark could not discover Dick on his own, he ran a newspaper advertisement as quickly as possible to reduce the chances that Dick would make good on his escape from bondage. The Connecticut Journal then carried the advertisement in subsequent issues.
Clark was so invested in finding Dick and so frustrated by his failure to do so that he wrote another advertisement on September 12. That one he submitted to the printing office in New London in time for it to appear in the September 13 edition. Enslavers sometimes published such advertisements in more than one newspaper, but they usually used the same copy in each newspaper, presumably copying from an original. Clark’s similar yet different advertisements written on September 9 and September 12 suggest that he hoped to capture Dick before it became necessary to run another notice in another newspaper. When Dick eluded him, Clark paid for another advertisement in hopes of enlisting more readers in his search for the fugitive seeking freedom.