Greenburg Gray (b. circa 1809 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-3350
Accomplice to slave flight, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, 1840
Biography:
Accused and convicted of having aided a fugitive from slavery by giving that person a pass, thirty-one year old Greenbury Gray received a seven year sentence to the Maryland Penitentiary, May 4, 1840. The facts of Gray's case have yet to be recovered, however, his story represents an acknowledgement on the part of slaveowners and their legislators that slaves seeking to flee had resources at their disposal. Many times these resources were other other slaves, and even free people, like Gray. For, more than a few times during the course of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century's Maryland law makers attempted to dissuade citizens from helping would-be fugitive slaves. Free blacks represented a specific target of laws since it was commonly known that they often gave or sold their certificates of freedom to enslaved blacks, allowing travel under the guise of legitimacy.
“An
Act relating to negroes [sic]” (Laws of Maryland, 1796, ch.
67) set a fine of three hundred dollars for free blacks convicted of giving
freedom papers of slaves. And, while no such penalty threatened whites,
blacks convicted of this crime, and unable to pay a monetary punishment,
faced being sold into servitude to work off their debt. By 1818, the Maryland
Legislature passed “An
act entitled, A further additional supplement to the act entitled, An act
concerning Crimes and Punishments” (Laws of Maryland, 1818,
ch. 157) setting stiffer penalties for accomplices to flight. This
law addressed free persons only. However, fugitives received much
assistance from other slaves, as well. Therefore, by the 1820s, the
legislature amended the law regarding accomplices to include punishments
of slaves – 39 stripes with a whip (“An
additional supplement to the act entitled, An act concerning crimes and
punishments,” Laws of Maryland 1827, ch. 15). Greenbury Gray,
a free black resident of Anne Arundel County, served the entire sentence,
receiving a release on May 4, 1847.
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