# 14: Impudence
This announcement of a slae was reprinted by Frederick Douglass in Frederick Douglass’ Paper in 1857 (my notes don’t have the exact date but someone can hunt it down). Obviously reprinted from a Southern newspaper.
This week’s installment isn’t a fugitive story but, oh Lord I wish it were. Perhaps it was. Perhaps the woman being sold here escaped someday. But for now, all we can see of this pastry cook’s life is this: she was to be sold away from the city where she had lived and where she doubtless had friends and family for the crime of “giving impudence.” Frederick Douglass saw this advertisement somewhere and reproduced it in his own paper without comment (check). It certainly does stand out and speak for itself.
But I am not Douglass and cannot resist some comment:
Most remarkable to me here is that the enslaver notes that she is “perfectly honest,” “very intelligent,” and highly skilled. She was even a “complete” seamstress. He wishes to see her for as high a price as possible because she is “valuable” to anybody, or everybody, except for him. To him, her impudence means she needs to be exchanged for coin. But it isn’t simply about money. Is it? If it were just that he needed money, he wouldn’t have added that cruel clause that “she is not to be sold in the city.” He seems intent on separating her from solace, love, or possibilities that urban life might have allowed her. Perhaps she had an elderly mother nearby. Or a child. Maybe a lover. And we could speculate, too, that the impudence might be somehow connected to a possible local lover. Did she spurn her enslaver’s assaults, and he imagines this is because of a real or purported lover? My imagined context spins.
I pray that this impudent pastry chef found a better situation than whatever it was that led her enslaver to place this advertisement. But we can be grateful, at least, that Frederick Douglass, who subscribed to and regularly perused Southern newspapers to find hideous fodder such as this to reprint, really did see her. She deserved context but that doesn’t mean it was necessary. Frederick Douglass knew what he was about to reprint it as it stood. Of course. These few lines spoke volumes.
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To Cite:
Ashton, Susanna. “Impudence" The Runaway Chronicles. Squarespace. 08/12/2024.