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in slavery. It was the custom in the State of Maryland to require of the free colored people to have what were called free papers. This instrument they were required to renew very often, and by charging a fee for this writing, considerable sums from time to time were collected by the State. In these papers the name, age, color, height, and form of the free man were described, together with any scars or other marks upon his person, which could assist in his identification. This device of slaveholding ingenuity, like other devices of wickedness, in some measure defeated itself —since more than one man could be found to answer the same general description. Hence many slaves could escape by personating the owner of one set of papers; and this was often done as follows: A slave nearly or sufficiently answering the description set forth in the papers, would borrow or hire them till he could by their means escape to a free State, and then, by mail or otherwise, return them to the owner. The operation was a hazardous one for the lender as well as the borrower. A failure on the part of the fugitive to send back the papers would imperil his benefactor, and the discovery of the papers in possession of the wrong man would imperil both the fugitive and his friend. It was therefore an act of supreme trust on the part of a freeman of color thus to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another might be free. It was, however, not unfrequently bravely done, and was seldom discovered. I was not so fortunate as to sufficiently resemble any of my free acquaintances as to answer the description of their papers. But I had one friend—a sailor—who owned a sailor's protection,†"Seamen's Protection Certificates" were issued to American seamen, both white and black, to protect merchant sailors from being unduly seized when working. A typical certificate identified its holder's name, age, place of birth, height, and any distinguishing physical features, such as tattoos or scars; nonwhites were additionally required to provide a racial designation. The certificate was signed (or marked) by its holder and included the signature of a witness attesting to the truth of the certificate's information. Because the protection granted its holders American citizenship, many blacks applied for the certificates. The advantages of protection became more and more limited for blacks after South Carolina passed its Negro Seamen Acts in 1822, which prohibited black sailors from debarking in the state's ports. Alabama, Louisiana, and the Spanish Caribbean colonies followed suit with their own variations of the law in the 1830s and 1840s. Despite these restrictions, African Americans often invoked the certificates as evidence of their citizenship rights. W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 5, 199-200; Ira Dye, "Early American Merchant Seafarers," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 120:332-33 (October 1976). which answered somewhat the purpose of free papers—describing his person, and certifying to the fact that he was a free American sailor. The instrument had at its head the American eagle, which gave it the appearance at once of an authorized document. This protection did not, when in my hands, describe its bearer very accurately. Indeed, it called for a man much darker than myself and close examination of it would have caused my arrest at the start. In order to avoid this fatal scrutiny on the part of the railroad official, I had arranged with Isaac Rolls, a hackman,†Driver of a hackney-carriage; a cabman. to bring my baggage to the train just on the moment of its starting, and jumped upon the car myself when the train was already in motion. Had I gone into the station and offered to purchase a ticket, I should have been instantly and carefully examined, and undoubtedly arrested. In choosing this plan upon which to act, I considered the jostle of the train, and the natural haste of the conductor, in a train crowded with passengers, and relied upon my skill and address in playing the sailor as described in my protection, to do the rest. One element in my favor was the kind feeling which prevailed in Baltimore and other seaports at the
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