Abolition

by Tim Black

  “No. I have a family that wants freedom. Do you remember the Ennals family?”

  “Yes.”

  “They want to escape. Will you take them?”

  Mrs. Tubman thought a moment and then turned to Samuel and Heather. “What do you think, young-uns?”

  “Yes, let us help them,” Heather said.

  “I agree,” Samuel offered.

  “How many people?” Harriet Tubman asked the man.

  The man ran through a list of names, “Stephen Ennals, Maria Ennals, Harriet Ennals, Amanda Ennals, a baby, John Cornish and wife Jane.”

  Harriet Tubman began to calculate in her mind and finally responded. “Do they all have fresh clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  “We can use their old clothes with their scent and send them down river to confuse the dogs. I will also need some alum for the dogs to foul their noses. And some paregoric for the baby to keep it quiet. Have station masters along my regular route been notified that we are coming?”

  “Yes.”

  Heather remembered reading about paregorics. They contained opium. Not exactly healthy to give children but then in the 19th century mothers might coat their babies’ gums with cocaine during teething. But what were their choices? A crying baby could get them all killed, including Samuel, she thought. There was no place in antebellum America for 21st century morality.

  “Tomorrow is Saturday,” Mrs. Tubman said. “We should leave tomorrow night. Slaves have Sunday off, so they won’t be missed until Monday morning and we should be out of Maryland by then. We will stay off the roads and follow the river north.”

  “Be careful about that. Lots of white men patrolling the river taking black men into slavery lately,” the man said.

  “Do you have an extra pistol?” Mrs. Tubman asked,

  “Yes.”

  Harriet Tubman pointed to Samuel. “Give it to the boy. Heather, open your leather purse and give Mr. Smith a ten-dollar gold piece.”

  Heather handed Mr. Smith the money and said, “We are Quakers, Mrs. Tubman, we don’t kill people.”

  “Not asking you to,” Mrs. Tubman replied. “But if we are stopped, two guns are better than one. And Stephen Ennals will have no such problems. So Samuel can give him the gun after we pick up his people.”

  After a meal of biscuits and gravy, the trio retired to the barn to sleep, making do with a mattress of straw in a loft above the animals. Mrs. Tubman retired to the far end of the loft as if to give the teenagers some privacy.

  “I feel sorry for Mrs. Tubman,” Samuel, Heather said in a whisper.

  Professor Bridenbaugh spoke to the students. “Since I don’t sleep, I think I can be more useful standing guard outside the barn.”

  “Good idea,” Samuel said to the ghost. Then he turned to Heather, “Mr. Bridenbaugh could work as a scout for us on the Underground Railroad.”

  Samuel and Heather fell asleep next to each other and when they awoke at the sound of a rooster crowing, the two students seemed a bit embarrassed as Heather’s head was resting on Samuel’s chest and Samuel had an arm wrapped around her. Sometime during their dreams, they had moved closer together. Red-faced, Heather slowly removed her head from his chest and untangled his arm. Samuel rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked at Heather. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he told her. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “I know.”

  Heather smiled. She wasn’t worried about her conscious thoughts, but her unconscious was another matter for she remembered bits of a dream in which she was kissing Samuel, or he was kissing her. It didn’t seem to matter which way she thought of it. She looked for Mrs. Tubman at the other end of the loft. She was gone.

  Reading her thoughts, Professor Bridenbaugh said to Heather, “She got up some time ago. Went to the cabin. Ate breakfast with Mr. Smith.”

  After they descended from the loft, Heather made a beeline for the privy. Samuel, on the other hand, drifted behind the barn to do his business.

  Samuel waited for Heather to finish in the outhouse and then the two entered the cabin and sat down at the table next to Mrs. Tubman. Mr. Smith stood at a wood-burning stove with a skillet full of scrambled eggs. Mrs. Tubman was cutting slices from a loaf of bread.

  Samuel recalled reading an article online that stated that sliced bread wasn’t invented until the 1920s. Mrs. Tubman would be dead before a loaf of sliced bread was in a grocery store.

  The two teenagers ate heartily but passed on the unpasteurized milk that Mr. Smith offered them, preferring water instead. Louis Pasteur’s great discovery was still years away. In the 1850s milk was not always safe to drink.

  “We are going to help Mr. Smith at the farm today, and then in the late afternoon we are going to our meeting point for the Ennals group,” Mrs. Tubman said. “Heather, you and I will milk the cows. Samuel, you will work with Mr. Smith.”

  Heather had milked cows before as had many of the students at Cassadaga Area High School. A small farm was spread over the grounds at the school and Heather had taken a class on animal husbandry. Samuel, on the other hand, worked the hardest he had ever worked in his life, bailing hay and working on the human end of a plow as a mule dragged him through the fields, clearing the last vestiges of corn and preparing the field for the spring planting. Meanwhile a kaleidoscope of colors emanated from the trees, changing their foliage. The beauty of the setting almost made Samuel forget that his back was aching. How did these people do this day after day? he wondered. Modern Americans were such wimps, he mused.

  Mr. Smith fed them again before they departed in the afternoon. He handed Samuel a burlap bag with new clothes for the fugitives.

  “The dogs will follow the scent on the clothes,” Mrs. Tubman explained. “The fugitives will need to wash and put on new clothes.”

  Mr. Smith hitched up two horses to his wagon and Harriet Tubman joined him on the bench with Samuel and Heather in back.

  Just before sundown, they arrived at the far end of Harriet’s old plantation. Men were still in the tobacco fields, being managed by an overseer who sported a long bull whip. When one of the field hands was moving too slow for the overseer, he gave them a lash or two as a warning. Chills ran through his body when Samuel heard the poor man cry out. This is how his ancestors in the United States of America had been treated, he realized. It was a stark realization. He was angry. Inside his pocket, he grabbed the pistol and brought it out. He felt an urge to walk over to the overseer and shoot him.

  When Heather noticed the pistol in Samuel’s hand she became alarmed. She put out her hand and grabbed the barrel of the weapon, gently taking the gun from Samuel’s hand.

  “Don’t do it, Samuel,” she pleaded softly.

  He looked at her. His eyes were watering. He was having a tough time holding back the tears. “I just feel so…”

  “Angry?” she asked.

  “Yes…and hateful.”

  She reached up for his face and drew him down to her eye level, kissing him on the lips. Heather didn’t know what else to do. She hoped it would get the boy’s mind elsewhere. It did. He embraced her.

  “That’s enough of that,” Mrs. Tubman said. “We have work to do. Better give me the gun, Heather.”

  Finally, the day was over just before sunset and the men returned to their slave cabins.

  “We wait here,” Harriet said. “For two hours. Tomorrow is Sunday, so when they return to their cabins they are off-duty.

  Chapter 15

  The sound of a breaking branch announced the imminent arrival of the fugitive slaves. Samuel was reminded how far sound carried at night. Even the sound of a snapped twig might betray a group on the run. A small band of people consisting of two men, four women and one baby appeared, carrying satchels and bags tied to sticks, like hobos, Samuel thought. Mrs. Tubman took immediate command. She instructed Samuel to pass out the new clothes and then she led them to a stream where she instructed them to strip, bathe and change into new clothes. Harriet Tubman handed Stephen Ennals the pisto
l she had first given Samuel.

  After this was completed, Samuel collected all the old clothes and put them in the burlap sack and handed them to Mr. Smith, who tossed them in the back of the wagon. Then he took off down the road to the east.

  “Where is Mr. Smith going?” Heather asked.

  “To Seaford. He is taking the clothes to drop along the road to put the dogs on a different trail. We will follow the Choptank River. I want to be in Delaware before dawn,” Mrs. Tubman said.

  One of the women got second thoughts and she declared that she was going to return to the plantation.

  “That isn’t going to happen,” Mrs. Tubman warned.

  “You can’t stop me,” the woman replied.

  Harriet Tubman walked over to the woman, pulled her revolver from her dress and promised, as she pointed the weapon at the woman, “If you take one step back toward the plantation, it will be the last step you ever take.” Then she pulled the hammer back on her gun.

  The woman caved. She grumbled, but she joined the group and Mrs. Tubman made sure that she followed the woman for the rest of the night.

  “Should I be a scout for the group?” Professor Bridenbaugh asked the two students.

  “Yes,” Samuel whispered. “You can alert us to danger.”

  “Roger, wilco,” said Professor Bridenbaugh, using military jargon, wilco being short for “will comply.”

  An uneventful night followed. Averaging three miles per hour, the group managed nearly twenty miles before dawn. Following the Choptank River they remained in Maryland heading north. The autumn chill showed the wisdom of buying coats in Seaford. Regrettably, the fugitives had no such extra clothing, but Mrs. Tubman assured Heather that the slaves were accustomed to the cold and the nip in the air did not bother them. Freedom was more precious than comfort. Freedom had a warmth of its own.

  They stopped in a well-wooded area, adjacent to the river with a nearby fresh spring. Mrs. Tubman filled a pig’s bladder with spring water and the fugitives prepared to rest after first eating a meal of hardtack and some ripe apples that they picked along the way when they passed by an orchard. For some reason the farmer had overlooked one tree in his harvest, an omission that Mrs. Tubman believed to be Providential. “The Lord provides,’” she had said when they came upon the bountiful fruit tree. She led the group in a prayer of help for divine intervention.

  Professor Bridenbaugh floated away from the thicket of trees and bushes to reconnoiter the surrounding area. He did not return until the afternoon when nearly the whole group was awake. One of the Ennals had stolen a loaf of bread from the big house at the plantation as well as a carving knife, and a woman was cutting slices of bread for the group. Another of the women produced a glass jar of honey and began to spread the honey on the bread slices.

  Heather and Samuel sat together and ate their bread and honey. “This is amazing, Samuel,” Heather said. “We are actually helping rescue slaves.”

  “Yes,” Samuel said with a smile. “Heather…”

  “Yes, Samuel?”

  “I am sorry for my behavior. I lost my temper.”

  “I know. None of this is easy. Where do you think we are headed?”

  “Well in researching for the trip, I went to the Facebook site for the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway in Delaware and found a few of her favorite depots. One in Dover, Delaware, a Quaker Meeting House in Odessa, and Thomas Garrett’s place in Wilmington. From here to Dover is going to be a little tense, I think. You know Garrett aided about two thousand fugitive slaves in his forty years as a station master. In our time there is a statue of him at the Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park in Wilmington. I think we will be meeting him.”

  Heather considered the idea of a statue coming to life; that would be pretty cool, she thought.

  In the afternoon Bridenbaugh returned and reported to Heather and Samuel that he saw nothing suspicious in the area. But, by the next morning, back at their home plantation, it would be noticed when several slaves did not report for work. By the following afternoon, slave catchers would be notified.

  They walked through Maryland on Sunday night following the path of the Choptank River, taking refuge in a barn at a Quaker farm in the morning. Harriet Tubman introduced Samuel and Heather to the elderly couple who owned the farm. By Monday evening they were surprised to learn that news of the escape was already being circulated over Maryland, and perhaps Delaware, the husband said. He showed them a newspaper and pointed to an advertisement.

  Reward for the Return of Several Slaves $1000

  And then the ad detailed and described the Ennals family as well as a “top field hand John.”

  Samuel realized the runaway slaves now had a price on their heads. He had read about what slave catchers did to free black men who helped fugitives; they burned them alive, hanged them, or enslaved them.

  “You best stay a few days here,” the Quaker said to Mrs. Tubman. “Perhaps a week.”

  A week? Samuel thought. Why, they could be back safe in Philadelphia in a week.

  *

  A week turned into two and then three in response to the advice of the Quaker farmer. He had suggested to Mrs. Tubman that that such a large reward would bring out slave catchers by the dozens. The farmer’s call for patience proved to be prudent advice as Professor Bridenbaugh, floating around the area, reported seeing several men on horseback were riding through the county, apparently seeking the Ennals family, for they stopped wagons and searched the vehicles, checking to see if a runaway was beneath the canvas in the back of a wagon on more than one occasion.

  But by middle of the of third week when the Quaker man returned from a nearby town with a copy of the same newspaper, the advertisement was no longer in the periodical. When the man informed Mrs. Tubman, she declared they would leave that night.

  The group continued to follow the Choptank River into Delaware, spending the day in a forest. But Mrs. Tubman expressed her concern as the leaves were beginning to fall in earnest, denuding the trees of their covering camouflage of colors. Also, the nights were colder and even the hardy fugitive slaves were beginning to feel the chill.

  They made it to a depot outside Dover, Delaware, another farm with an ample barn. The slaves hid themselves away in a loft and rested. But they did not move again for another three days as they were cautioned by the station master that it was not safe to travel, even at night. Slave catchers had been searching throughout Delaware. Some, it seemed never gave up.

  They spent the next two nights in a depot in Smyrna, Delaware, before the station master there declared that it was safe to proceed to Odessa, a town that was fifteen miles away. When she was given the all-clear, then Harriet Tubman addressed the group.

  “Tonight, we are marching to Odessa. To the Appoquinimink Meeting House to meet Mr. Hunn,” Mrs. Tubman said. “We are going to be there in the morning,” she added. “We are getting close to freedom.”

  “Amen,” said one of the slave women.

  “Praise the Lord,” said another.

  Professor Bridenbaugh asked Heather and Samuel, “Do you want me to go out ahead?”

  “Yes,” Samuel whispered.

  Harriet Tubman set a steady walking pace and did not let up all through the night, although she did pause twice for breaks. Just west of Odessa, Samuel caught the flicker of a light heading in their direction. A man’s voice began to sing the first verse of Go Down Moses.

  A smile spread across Harriet Tubman’s face and she sang the second verse of the song in response. After a few moments, a clean-shaven Quaker holding a lantern appeared before them.

  “Hello, Mrs. Tubman,” he said.

  “Good to see you, Mr. Hunn.”

  “The sun will be up in a few minutes. I need to take you to the Meeting House.”

  Mr. Hunn led the group to the Quaker meetinghouse as the sun began to rise in the east. Samuel looked around the area for the meetinghouse and could make out a Quaker cemetery beside the worship area. The sun came through
the meetinghouse windows as the group entered the worship area. How plain and simple, the décor, Heather thought. The meeting room was not ostentatious in any way. Mr. Hunn led the group up a back staircase to a second floor. He removed a panel and stayed behind as Mrs. Tubman led the group into a secret space under the wooden eaves of the church. Samuel was the last of the group to pass into the large safe room and he heard the slight snap when Mr. Hunn replaced the panel, effectively hiding the fugitive slaves. Curious faces seemed to ask the abolitionist about the building.

  In a muffled voice, Mrs. Tubman explained. “This is one of my favorite depots. Safe and secure. I have used it in nearly every trip I have taken. We are totally hidden, but we need to whisper when we talk and take our shoes off when we walk. This is especially important during their worship service.”

  Because of circumstances, the group spent three days hiding in the meetinghouse. One evening when it was safe for everyone to come out from hiding, Mr. Hunn explained that slave catchers had been sighted in the area. His only conclusion was that it was dangerous to proceed.

  Samuel wondered how the rest of the group was making out in Harper’s Ferry. Seeing a story about the Harper’s Ferry raid in the Dover newspaper, Samuel learned that John Brown had been convicted and sentenced to hang. He wondered if he and Heather would be back in Philadelphia by the day after Brown’s execution to rendezvous with Mr. Greene and the others. As he and Heather walked around the meetinghouse in the moonlight, he shared his concerns with her and asked for her opinion.

  “Perhaps we should ask Mr. Bridenbaugh to float over to Harper’s Ferry and tell Mr. Greene we might be delayed. Samuel agreed, and they spoke to the ghost.

  He objected. “Mr. Greene placed me here to watch over you,” he said. “I cannot desert you.”

  “We can take care of ourselves, professor,” Heather replied. “Please Professor Bridenbaugh, please tell Mr. Greene that we might return later than we thought,”

  The ghost acquiesced. “As you wish then,” the spirit replied and floated off to Harper’s Ferry.