Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, Buffalo Morning Express,and New York Daily Tribune

Throughout the heated sectional debate over slavery, defenders of the institution sought to counter the everproliferating popular slave narratives, with their wrenching accounts of human suffering, with claims that the vast majority of slaves were happy and well-cared for. According to the proslavery propaganda, slaves were simple, childlike souls whose inferior nature suited them only to bondage under benevolent white masters. This insistence on the "happy slave" was often accompanied by indictments of the far harsher living conditions endured by poor free laborers in the North. Slaveholders were fond of citing largely undocumented cases of runaway slaves choosing to return to their masters after getting a taste of freedom's false promises in the North.

The following selection is composed of newspaper reports of a highly publicized capture of a runaway...