Jesse Hudson (b. circa 1781 - d. January 8, 1844)
MSA SC 5496-3349
Accomplice to slave flight, Worcester County, Maryland, 1839
Biography:
The Worcester County Court convicted Jesse Hudson, a fifty-eight year old free black man on charges of enticing a slave to run away. While the details of the case have yet to be recovered, demographic considerations suggest Worcester underwent a transformation of sorts regarding the status of blacks there in the decades surround Hudson's arrest and conviction. These demographic considerations provide a context against which the broader meaning of Hudson's situation may be understood. Specifically, for the period 1820 - 1850, the county's total population grew only slightly (17, 421 - 18,859), while the free black population nearly doubled (1,638 - 3,014), and the number of slaves fell by twenty-five percent (4,551 - 3,444). The decline in slaves did not, it appears, effect the size of the total black population, for it remained constant (6,189 - 6,458) during the period, as did blacks' percentage of the population (36% - 34%). What changed was the status of blacks in Worcester. Free blacks as a group grew to comprise a greater percentage of all blacks in county between 1820 and 1850 (26% - 47%). In other regions of Maryland, and elsewhere in the slaveholding states, free blacks represented a threat to the institution of slavery, or so owners believed. While these figures bear no direct relation to the guilt or innocence of Jesse Hudson, his alleged actions can not be viewed separately from the time and place, generally, which they occurred. Committed to the Maryland State Penitentiary for a six year sentence beginning November 21, 1839, Hudson died there on January 8, 1844.
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