"republication [of runaway slave advertisements] turned the ads into a powerful indictment of slavery because they so frequently described runaways in terms of bodily mutilations. Embedded in local newsprint these advertisements had been documents, to be sure, but collecting them and reproducing them in another context for another audience made them know-show with much greater force."
Lisa Gitelman, 2014, Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents, p.4.











