The Great Stain

by Noel Rae

  “All at once there was a wild halloo, and every eye was turned up to see the legs and part of the body of the prisoner protruding from the second story window, at which he was endeavoring to escape. Then arose a shout—‘Drop him!’ ‘Catch him!’ ‘Hurrah!’ But the attempt was a fruitless one, for somebody in the office pulled Nalle back again, amid the shouts of a hundred pairs of lungs. The crowd at this time numbered nearly a thousand persons. Many of them were black, and a good share were of the female sex. They blocked up State Street from First Street to the alley, and kept surging to and fro.”

  In the meantime Martin Townsend, an anti-slavery lawyer, had gone to Judge Gould of the State Supreme Court and obtained a writ of habeas corpus on Nalle’s behalf, “returnable immediately.” This in effect meant that Nalle had to be taken from Commissioner Beach’s office to Judge Gould’s office, only two blocks away, but those two blocks were filled with “an excited, unreasonable crowd.” As soon as the prisoner appeared in the doorway, escorted by four policemen, “the crowd made one grand charge, and those nearest the prisoner seized him violently, with the intention of pulling him away from the officers, but they were foiled; and down First Street to Congress Street, and up the latter in front of Judge Gould’s chambers, went the surging mass. Exactly what did go on in the crowd it is impossible to say, but the pulling, hauling, mauling and shouting gave evidences of frantic efforts on the part of the rescuers, and a stern resistance from the conservators of the law … A number in the crowd were more or less hurt, and it is a wonder that these were not badly injured, as pistols were drawn and chisels used.

  “The battle had raged as far as the corner of Dock and Congress Streets, and the victory remained with the rescuers at last. The officers were completely worn out with their exertions, and it was impossible to continue their hold upon him any longer. Nalle was at liberty. His friends rushed him down Dock Street to the lower ferry, where there was a skiff lying ready to start. The fugitive was put in, the ferryman rowed off, and amid the shouts of hundreds who lined the banks of the river, Nalle was carried into Albany County.” There was a good deal more, but the last line of the story runs: “He has since arrived safely in Canada.”

  A familiar figure was in the thick of the fight to rescue Nalle. According to Martin Townsend, the lawyer who obtained the writ of habeas corpus, “when Nalle was brought from Commissioner Beach’s office into the street, Harriet Tubman, who had been standing with the excited crowd, rushed amongst the foremost to Nalle, and running one of her arms around his manacled arm, held on to him without ever loosening her hold through the more than half-hour’s struggle to Judge Gould’s office, and from Judge Gould’s office to the dock, where Nalle’s liberation was accomplished. In the melee she was repeatedly beaten over the head with policemen’s clubs, but she never for a moment released her hold, but cheered Nalle and his friends with her voice, and struggled with the officers until they were literally worn out with their exertions, and Nalle was separated from them.”

  Writing in 1868 to Sarah Bradford, Tubman’s biographer, Thomas Garrett, a Quaker abolitionist and shoe-maker who lived in Wilmington, Delaware, had this to say:

  “In truth I never met with any person, of any color, who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul. She has frequently told me that she talked with God, and he talked with her every day of her life; and she has declared to me that she felt no more fear of being arrested by her former master, or any other person, when in his immediate neighborhood, than she did in the State of New York, or Canada, for she said she ventured only where God sent her, and her faith in the Supreme Power was truly great.

  “No slave who placed himself under her care was ever arrested that I have heard of. She mostly had her regular stopping places on her route, but in one instance when she had several stout men with her, she said that God told her to stop, which she did, and then asked him what she must do. He told her to leave the road, and turn to the left; she obeyed and came to a small stream of tide water. There was no boat, no bridge. She again inquired of her Guide what she was to do. She was told to go through. It was cold, in the month of March, but having confidence in her Guide she went in; the water came up to her armpits; the men refused to follow until they saw her safe on the opposite shore. They then followed, and, if I mistake not, she had soon to wade another stream; soon after which she came to a cabin of colored people, who took them all in, put them to bed, and dried their clothes, ready to proceed next night on their journey.”

  On another occasion Harriet went into Garrett’s shoe shop and said, “‘God tells me you have money for me.’ I asked ‘if God never deceived her?’ She said, ‘No!’ ‘Well! How much does thee want?’ After studying a moment, she said, ‘About twenty-three dollars.’ I then gave her twenty-four dollars and some odd cents, the net proceeds of five pounds sterling received through Eliza Wigham, of Scotland, for her. I had given some account of Harriet’s labor to the Anti-Slavery Society of Edinburgh, of which Eliza Wigham was secretary.” Members had contributed, and Miss Wigham had sent the money to Garrett to give to her. In those days a pound was worth just under five dollars, so five pounds yielded slightly more than the amount God had told Harriet to expect.

  Harriet never kept count of the slaves she helped to freedom. Sarah Bradford estimated the number at “somewhat over three hundred,” but her estimate did not include the many runaways she helped during the Civil War. Long after that war ended, Harriet wrote to Frederick Douglass for an endorsement of the book she and Sarah Bradford had written. Here is part of what he wrote in reply:

  “You ask for what you do not need when you call upon me for a word of commendation. I need such words from you far more than you can need them from me, especially where your superior labors and devotion to the cause of the lately enslaved of our land are known as I know them. The difference between us is very marked. Most of what I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day—you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scared, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt ‘God bless you’ has been your only reward.”

  Like Thomas Garrett, who had spoken to the Anti-Slavery Society of Edinburgh about Harriet Tubman, many other abolitionists went on speaking tours of Great Britain to raise money and to be buoyed up by popular support. Among them was James Pennington, author of The Fugitive Blacksmith, first published in 1849 in London where he was attending the Second World Conference on Slavery. By then he was an ordained minister, popular speaker on the abolitionist circuit, and author of The Origin and History of the Colored People. From London he would go on to Germany to visit the University of Heidelberg, where he was honored with the degree of Doctor of Divinity. This was a very far cry from his situation twenty-two years earlier when he had been an illiterate slave working as a blacksmith on a plantation near Hagerstown, in Maryland. It was an embittering experience, marked by hunger, fear, ignorance, neglect by his overworked parents, “the tyranny of the master’s children” and “the abuse of the overseers.” This went on until Pennington was nineteen, when he decided to escape.

  The immediate causes of this decision began on a Monday morning when, hearing of the late return of some of his slaves from a weekend visit to a neighboring plantation, “my master [Frisby Tilghman] was greatly irritated, and resolved to have, as he said, ‘a general whipping-match among them.’ Preparatory to this, he had a rope in his pocket and a cowhide in his hand, walking about the premises and speaking to everyone he met in a very insolent manner, and finding fault with some without just cause.” Encountering Pennington’s father, he complained about the absentees and swore “By the Eternal, I’ll make them know their hour!
The fact is, I have too many of you; my people are getting to be the most careless, lazy and worthless in the country.”

  “‘Master,’ said my father, ‘I am always at my post. Monday morning never finds me off the plantation.’

  “‘Hush, Bazil! I shall have to sell some of you, and then the rest will have enough to do. I have not work enough to keep you all tightly employed. I have too many of you.’

  “All this was said in an angry, threatening and exceedingly insulting tone. My father was a high-spirited man, and feeling deeply the insult, replied to the last expression, ‘If I am one too many, sir, give me a chance to get a purchaser, and I am willing to be sold when it may suit you.’

  “‘Bazil, I told you to hush!’ and suiting the action to the word, he drew forth the cowhide from under his arm, fell upon him with most savage cruelty, and inflicted fifteen or twenty severe stripes with all his strength, over his shoulders and the small of his back. As he raised himself upon his toes, and gave the last stripe, he said, ‘By the *** I will make you know that I am master of your tongue as well as of your time!’

  Pennington “was near enough to hear the insolent words that were spoken to my father, and to hear, see, and even count the savage stripes inflicted upon him. Let me ask any one of Anglo-Saxon blood and spirit, how would you expect a son to feel at such a sight? This act created an open rupture with our family—each member felt the deep insult that had been inflicted upon our head; the spirit of the whole family was roused … Although it was some time after this event before I took the decisive step, yet in my mind and spirit I never was a slave after it.”

  Soon after, the master found a pretext to whip James—“about a dozen severe blows, so that my limbs and flesh were sore for several weeks. This affair my mother saw from her cottage, which was near; I being one of the eldest sons of my parents, our family was now mortified to the lowest degree.” From then on “I thought of nothing but the family disgrace under which we were smarting, and how to get out of it.”

  He decided to escape to Pennsylvania, which in terms of distance was not far off, but for that very reason hazardous to reach because the roads were closely watched. He left in November, on a Sunday, “the holy day which God in his infinite wisdom gave for the rest of both man and beast.” All he had with him was a small bundle of clothing and a piece of corn bread. He had decided not to tell his family of his plans, nor even to say good-bye to them, for fear that doing so might lessen his determination. Once he had set out, “my only guide was the north star.”

  Three days later, tired and weakened by hunger, he was walking along a minor road when he came to a tavern—“a dangerous place to pass, much less to stop at. I was therefore passing it as quietly and as rapidly as possible when from the lot just opposite the house I heard a coarse, stern voice cry, ‘Halloo!’

  “I turned my face to the left, the direction from which the voice came, and observed that it proceeded from a man who was digging potatoes. I answered him politely, when the following occurred: ‘Who do you belong to?’

  “‘I am free, sir.’

  “‘Have you got papers?’

  “‘No, sir.’ ”

  “‘Well, you must stop here.’

  “By this time he had got astride the fence, making his way into the road. I said, ‘My business is onward, sir, and I do not wish to stop.’

  “‘I will see then if you don’t stop, you black rascal.’ He was now in the middle of the road, making after me in a brisk walk. I saw that a crisis was at hand. I had no weapons of any kind, not even a pocketknife, but I asked myself, Shall I surrender without a struggle? The instinctive answer was, No. What will you do? Continue to walk. If he runs after you, run. Get him as far from the house as you can, then turn suddenly and smite him on the knee with a stone. That will render him, at least, unable to pursue you.

  “This was a desperate scheme, but I could think of no other, and my habits as a blacksmith had given my eye and hand such mechanical skill that I felt quite sure that if I could only get a stone in my hand, and have time to wield it, I should not miss his knee-pan.

  “I had just begun to glance my eye about for a stone to grasp, when he made a tiger-like leap at me. This of course brought us to running. At this moment he yelled out ‘Jake Shouster!’ and at the next moment the door of a small house standing to the left was opened, and out jumped a shoemaker girded up in his leather apron, with his knife in his hand. He sprang forward and seized me by the collar, while the other seized my arms behind. I was now in the grasp of two men, either of whom was larger bodied than myself, and one of them was armed with a dangerous weapon. Standing in the door of the shoemaker’s shop was a third man; and in the potato lot I had passed was still a fourth man. Thus surrounded by superior physical force, the fortune of the day it seemed to me was gone. My heart melted away. I sank resistlessly into the hands of my captors, who dragged me immediately into the tavern which was near.”

  Having gone to such trouble to capture Pennington, the locals soon lost interest. They tried to haul him before a magistrate, but the magistrate was not in; they talked of collecting a reward of $200, but also half-believed his story that he was free; when he made a break they quickly re-captured him, but then left him in the custody of a nine-year-old boy; most of them then drifted away; and in the evening, while the few that remained were busy putting horses in the barn, Pennington had no trouble at all in sprinting across a field and into a nearby wood, with no one in pursuit.

  After a rainy night scrabbling his way through a thick wood, he came upon a road which he hoped led north. “The day dawned upon me when I was near a small house and barn, situate close to the road-side. The barn was too near the road, and too small to afford secure shelter for the day; but as I cast my eye round by the dim light, I could see no wood, and no larger barn.” Rather than contain hay, “the barn was filled with corn fodder, newly cured and lately got in.” Unable not to make a noise as he crawled in among the corn cobs “I had the misfortune to attract the notice of a little house-dog, such as we call in that part of the world a ‘fice,’ on account of its being not only the smallest species of the canine race, but also the most saucy, noisy and teasing of all dogs. The little creature commenced a fierce barking. I had at once great fears that the mischievous little thing would betray me. I fully apprehended that as soon as the man of the house arose, he would come and make search in the barn.”

  But that did not happen. After pottering about in the yard, the man of the house spent the day afield. After he had gone “my unwelcome little annoyer” returned “and continued with occasional intermissions through the day. He made regular sallies from the house to the barn, and after smelling about would fly back to the house, barking furiously. I cannot now, with pen or tongue, give a correct idea of the feeling of wretchedness I experienced.” In the afternoon he heard horsemen passing by on the road, and “from a word which I now and then overheard, I had not a shadow of doubt that they were in search of me.” But they rode on without looking in the barn, and when the man of the house returned at the end of the day he paid no attention to the renewed barking of the fice. Then the horsemen returned and Pennington heard them ask, “Have you seen a runaway nigger pass here today?” After mentioning that “a stiff reward is out for him—two hundred dollars,” they rode away, the man went into the house and “hope seemed to dawn for me once more.”

  As soon as it was dark he left the barn—the fice still yapping shrilly at him—and after “beating my way across marshy fields” and through “woods and thickets where there were no paths” he found his way back to the road. Passing by a cornfield he got an ear and then, to escape the bitter cold, crept inside a corn shock where, overcome with exhaustion, he fell asleep. “When I awoke the sun was shining around. I started with alarm, but it was too late to think of seeking any other shelter. I therefore nestled myself down, and concealed myself as best I could from the light of day. After recovering a little from my fright, I commenced again eating
my whole corn. Grain by grain I worked away at it; when my jaws grew tired, as they often did, I would rest, and then begin afresh. Thus, although I began an early breakfast, I was nearly the whole of the forenoon before I had done.

  “Nothing of importance occurred during the day until about the middle of the afternoon, when I was thrown into a panic by the appearance of a party of gunners, who passed near me with their dogs. After shooting one or two birds, however, and passing within a few rods of my frail covering, they went on, and left me once more in hope.” Next day “I continued my flight on the public road; and a little after the sun rose, I came in sight of a toll gate.” The gate-keeper was “an elderly woman, who I afterwards learned was a widow, and an excellent Christian woman. I asked her if I was in Pennsylvania. On being informed that I was, I asked her if she knew where I could get employ? She said she did not; but advised me to go W. W. [William Wright], a Quaker, who lived about three miles from her, whom I would find to take an interest in me. She gave me directions which way to take; I thanked her, and bade her good morning, and was very careful to follow her directions.

  “In about half an hour I stood trembling at the door of William Wright. After knocking, the door opened upon a comfortably spread table, the sight of which seemed at once to increase my hunger sevenfold. Not daring to enter, I said I had been sent to him in search of employ. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘come in and take thy breakfast, and get warm, and we will talk about it; thee must be cold without any coat.’ ‘Come in and take thy breakfast and get warm!’ These words spoken by a stranger, but with such an air of simple sincerity and fatherly kindness, made an overwhelming impression upon my mind. They made me feel, in spite of all my fear and timidity, that I had, in the providence of God, found a friend and a home.” And so indeed he had—just like William Wells Brown, who had also had the good fortune to meet a benevolent Quaker. But Pennington was even more fortunate, for while Wells Brown was willing to share his name, William Wright had once been a schoolteacher and offered to teach Pennington to read and write. This had long been one of his dearest wishes. In exchange for his lessons, he worked on the Wright farm for the next six months; but then word of his presence got around, and to avoid being taken by slave-catchers he went to live with another Quaker family, near Philadelphia. From there he moved to New York so he could continue his studies, and then it was on to Yale Divinity School, where he was allowed to attend lectures but “my voice was not to be heard in the classroom asking or answering a question. I could not get a book out of the library, and my name was never to appear on the catalogue.” Nor, unlike the University of Heidelberg, did Yale give him a degree. In spite of that he was ordained a minister, and it was he who performed the marriage ceremony between Anna Murray and his fellow fugitive, Frederick Douglass.