NEW EDITION OF A LANDMARK BOOK ON SLAVERY IN NEW YORK In recent years, historians and researchers have taken a closer look at New York’s complicity in the “peculiar institution” of slavery. One of the books that helped shed more light on this tragic subject was the 2016 publication of In Runaways from Slavery in New York’s Hudson River Valley, 1735–1831. The core of that book by two Hudson Valley historical researchers, Susan Stessin-Cohn and Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini, was the reproduction and transcriptions of hundreds of 18th and 19th-century newspapers notices offering rewards for the return of enslaved persons who had escaped their enslavers and become “runaways.” Continuing their research since then, Stessin-Cohn and Hurlburt-Biagini discovered more than 250 additional runaway notices that prompted them to rewrite and greatly expand In Defiancé in this newly released Second Edition. A little background is called In 1799 New York State passed its first emancipation act, “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” giving hope to thousands of enslaved persons held on farms and in villages along the Hudson River Valley from Westchester and Orange Counties north to Albany, Schenectady and Troy. But many held in slavery were not willing to wait for what turned out to be a very gradual emancipation, as evidenced by the hundreds of newspaper notices posted by Hudson Valley enslavers promising rewards for runaway enslaved persons throughout the early 19th century all the way up to 1831. The stories these newspaper notices tell, together with the stories of hundreds of other enslaved persons who ran for their freedom earlier, in the 18th century, shed revealing light on the life of enslaved persons held in the Hudson Valley. Most enslaved persons held in the Hudson River Valley lived and worked and died and left behind no historical record―no birth certificates, no marriage records, no death certificates, unmarked graves. But In Defiancé rescues over 900 of those individuals from obscurity because they decided to free themselves; when their enslavers placed notices in local and New York City newspapers offering rewards for their return, they not only gave identity to some of the enslaved people, but also unwittingly indicted themselves before the bar of historical judgment. Surnames synonymous with Hudson Valley history―names like Schuyler, Van Rensselaer, Beekman, Rockefeller, Van Cortlandt, Van Buren, Livingston―appear throughout the book as the authors of the notices advertising rewards for the return of their enslaved “property.” Had these freedom seekers not run away, they, like the tens of thousands of enslaved persons who did not run, would have been lost to history, but by running they prompted reward notices for their return―notices that often provide at least their first names, sometimes a surname as well, and detailed descriptions of their age, color, gender, origin, language proficiency, and skills. In Defiancé is the result of over 17 years of research on behalf of Stessin-Cohn and Hurlburt-Biagini. In addition to the reproduction and transcription of 774 archival newspaper notices for runaways from Hudson Valley enslavers, the book also includes notices advertising runaways captured, notices advertising enslaved persons for sale, notices offering to purchase enslaved persons, and selected runaway notices from outside the Hudson River Valley region. Nine tables analyze the data in the 774 notices for runaways from Hudson Valley enslavers, and the book includes a glossary, indexes of names, locations, and subjects, 36 illustrations, and 5 maps from the 18th and 19th centuries.